- Didn’t watch the Olympics? Darned good thing! Satan might have taken over your brain.
- Hm. Maybe that explains the guy in that picture. Naw. His brain (sic) just got taken over by stupid.
- Oh brother, they’re at it again. Guns as a disease. And this is more pseudo-sophisticated than the last attempt. (H/T PT)
- Is this a new low? Wrong-house raid with puppycide and handcuffed children. Just for starters. Clearly St. Paul cops were going for a world record in cruel and unconstitutional.
- Pretty amazing.
- Does it always seem worse when whistleblowers uncover secret spy systems that are not only run by ex-CIA types (is there really such a thing as EX-CIA if you’re still in the spy business?) but the companies doing the spooky stuff have weird, mystical names?
Oh well. On the lighter side …
I see your story about the crazy man assaulting his girlfriend and raise you:
http://gma.yahoo.com/bride-accused-murdering-groom-hours-wedding-210843418–abc-news-topstories.html
The world is a strange place full of strange people. Present company excepted, of course.
That guy had a girlfriend? Did they communicate in any discernible language?
Haha, Joel you crack me up. You know what they say? Every pot has a lid. Or some such like that. 😉
Woody. OMG. “I … did … not … kill … him … on … purpose.” No, lady. You only stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife. Purely an innocent action any happy bride-to-be might have impulsively taken toward her groom on the morning of their wedding.
Activity such as conducted by the St Paul police will continue until they fear retaliation. At a minimum they have to fear loss of jobs, retirements, freedoms etc. When they see that mistakes won’t be tolerated the senseless violence will continue.
In the meantime, homeowners should harden their houses to prevent these raids. make it difficult for the police to get in requirieng them to make a lot of noise. Make them work through layers of security, forceing each one. It would give time to get your family to a safe room, and call the police to find out what is going on.
Matt, another wrote: ” Make them work through layers of security, forceing each one. It would give time to get your family to a safe room, and call the police to find out what is going on.”
As a practical matter I doubt most homeowners are willing or financially able to live in a fortress. (Claire, how much would it cost to harden your house to Matt’s standard?) Such a life style would be difficult to describe as “freedom”.
Personally I would not live where that is necessary. Granted, not many want to live as a hermit like I do, but freedom has it’s price, whichever way you decide to achieve it.
Yep, what you said, Woody.
Matt, another, I totally agree that these horrors won’t cease until the people perpetrating them (both the raiders and their bosses) pay a serious price. The sooner the better, please.
But “hardening” houses? That’s for millionaires — the very people who aren’t often subject to raids. Besides which, “hardening” a house is, in itself, very likely to draw the attention of lawfolk.
I live in a poor, mostly immigrant neighborhood where there are frequent drug busts. My “protection” against wrong-house raids, such as it is, is being a silver-haired Anglo lady who looks innocent to the cops. AND living in an area where busts are still handled the old-fashioned way — without SWAT tactics. The idea of all these Mexican and SE Asian immigrants, scrabby meth addicts, and retired/disabled folks spending collective millions to “harden” their $40,000 – $80,000 houses (not to mention that many are also rental houses) — and to do it against a statistically small threat — is preposterous.
The only surprise I find with the guns as disease stuff is how long it took them to come up with it. Wait, wasn’t there some articles years ago about how some doctors thought guns were a disease? I seem to read something about that sometimes in the early Eighties. Which would make it being dragged out for public consumption again.
Jim B. — Yep. It was in the 1990s. I didn’t realize that the “guns as disease” meme had ever even gone away, though I knew it had quieted down a bit.
“But “hardening” houses? That’s for millionaires ”
Careful Claire, I’ve mentioned how dangerous it can be to get me brainstorming. Now the back of my mind will be trying to come up with ways to harden on the cheap.
I’m the embodiment of the saying “If you want something done, tell someone it can’t be done.” Some challenges just take longer than others.
You go, Ellendra. If nothing else, it’ll be an interesting challenge.
Hi Claire – a couple hundred bucks can go a long way toward hardening houses, maybe double that if you want the hardening to be less obvious. Will that low level of hardening keep out a determined invader (e.g. a SWAT team with explosives or an infantry squad)? No. But it can buy time for you to decide what to do.
Granted, you shouldn’t even be spending THAT money, but it’s not, as you say, for “millionaires.”
Making a house less likely to be victimized due to a law enforcement mistake doesn’t have to be expensive. The simplest measure one can take is getting the large size address numbers and putting them on the front door. This probably won’t help if the SWAT people insist on being illiterate, but if they are driving around in their SWATmobile and see from the road that your address is not the one they are looking for then it will offer a slim chance that you will not be targeted.
The fact is, if they want to get into your house, they will. No amount of hardening will prevent entry by a determined adversary. You may have a few minutes if you live in a concrete house with armored automatic shutters on the windows. The modern house has an outside wall that is bullet transparent and sledgehammer semi-transparent. It goes: siding, foam, 1/2″OSB, foam, drywall, paint, INSIDE. The most substantantial thing stopping entry is a 1/2″ thick sheet of wood. You may have a brick veneer. It is not bulletproof. 7.62 NATO will penetrate a single-thickness brick veneer. The only way to prevent SWAT from getting in is to keep them away from the house altogether. That requires perpetual surveillance with armed response.
Hobbit — Details?
JG — Good point. I’m thinking for some of these guys you’ll need verrrrrry large numbers — then hope those numbers didn’t get printed on their warrant by mistake.
Living in a small town also helps. “Oh, that can’t actually mean 832 Peace Street. That’s where the crazy dog lady lives. You know, the one who …”
“The only way to prevent SWAT from getting in is to keep them away from the house altogether. That requires perpetual surveillance with armed response.”
While bearing in mind that it only works once per household, and not for long.
That is correct Woody. If you stand alone agaisnt abuse you will probably get shot. Nobody wants to get shot. The usual logic argues that if you cooperate and comply then they will eventually get tired of kicking you and go away to find a different target. That type of logic used to work when one could trust in the humanity of the people authorized to do the kicking. These days, that logic serves the attackers. They are accustomed to dealing with a compliant population of mostly law abiding citizens who can be stomped on at will, then thank the abuser for protecting them.
I wonder how many times SWAT people have raided the wrong house and then discovering their mistake, apologised and left. It must be close to zero. Usually, if SWAT come in, they are going to hurt or kill somebody regardless of circumstances. Knowing this, you can make a choice. 1) hope they don’t permenantly maim you or your family as you get beaten to a pulp. 2) shoot back, take as many of them out of the fight as you can. The chances of getting killed, permenantly injured, or imprisoned are slightly higher with option 2, but once the door is broken in, your chance of being harmed is 100%. What if everyone took choice 2? After a few gestapo get shot they may take more care in choosing the right house.
Another public attitude that serves the gestapo is lawfulness. People tend to think that the law is infalliable. If somebody gets their house broken into by the police, they deserved it. Thankfully, this attitude is beginning to go go away. What if people took the opposite attitude, that breaking into a house without a warrant is not a mistake, it is a crime, and a crime worthy of a lynch mob burning down the police station?
If armed response to victimization and intense public scrutiny were adopted, after the bloody “learning period” there may be less instances of SWAT home invasion and brutality.
My view on the matter of hardening a house is probably myopic. I didn’t mean to imply making it a fortress, just requiring noise, time (relative) and effort to get in. If it will slow down home invaders, it will slow down SWAT, they are not supermen. Of course, you have to evaluate the threat of SWAT and Home Invaders and plan accordingly. I would imagine in most neighborhoods the risk is low. In my neighborhood the risk of SWAT invasion is low, the risk of home invasion moderate.
Bars on windows are normal. Shatter resistant windows or window films are not abnormal. Outward opening steel security door tied with a couple of quality dead bolts are normal in my area. Can be overcome, but takes noise and a minute or two. Steel solid door after that. Make sure it is tightly fit into a solid door frame which is bolted into the wall. Reinforce the quality doorknobs and a jamb with steel plates (sold in kits). Peg the hinge side of the door. etc. If you have interior spaces that can take doors (many older homes do) repeat the door treatment. Reinforce the safe room (master bedroom or bathroom?) doors as well. You need to look at you house with the eye of a carpenter and soul of a brigand.
Follow up to Joel’s comment:
I cringe to think of what she looks like…..
While hardening a site is important, keep in mind Sun-tzu’s dictum: The art of war is based on deception.
In order to deceive your opponent you have to understand him in detail — what motivates him, what he fears, what his biases are and what he admires and wants.
This is where the calculus shifts in favor of the individual and away from the team mentality. In the words of Edward Abby’s immortal character Seldom Seen Smith (in The Monkey Wrench Gang): One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothing can beat teamwork.
Couple deception with adequate forewarning and you have little to fear. They’ll spend an extra five minutes bashing down a hardened door only to find that you and anything of value are long gone or were never there in the first place.
As it happens, The Virginia Rifleman has an excellent post up on the topic: https://varifleman.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/thoughts-on-deception-operations/
Bearing in mind that we’re looking to get you time during a dynamic entry (which is also a method of choice for criminals more and more):
There is a version of this:
http://tinyurl.com/c9n2cwf
that actually fits into a metal-reinforced notch in the floor for greater immobility. It also provides you with a ready “whack-a-dope” tool right BY the door when not being used. I think the one with the notch is more spendy, but still in the “inexpensive” range.
Interior window covers – use snaplinks or similar to hold them below and to the sides. Make sure the links or hooks are screwed with heavy duty screws into interior wood studs, not just into the wallboard.
http://tinyurl.com/cng5y4c
Horizontal blinds secured at the bottom and top (with serious hardware) can also work like this to some degree. This slows down entry and makes tossing things THROUGH windows more difficult. Not impossible, just difficult.
Depending on price ranges:
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/unbreakable-window.html
Double up on your regular hinges, making sure that you’re using longer screws. Or try these with longer screws:
http://www.hardwaresource.com/hinges/SPECIALTY+HINGES/Piano+Hinges+-+Continuous+Hinges/