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A SWAT team in Florida decided to test their new military equipment by breaking into someone’s home on Friday.

Fascists: A SWAT team in Florida decided to test their new military equipment by breaking into someone’s home on Friday.

After conducting surveillance and gathering information for a judge to sign a search warrant, LPD called in its SWAT team to execute the warrant at a house on Empress Way in the neighborhood near Kelly Recreation Center, Sgt. Mike Lewis said. “We did not know if anyone was inside and we had information that the persons involved were armed,” Lewis said. “It was a safety issue.”

It was an opportunity for police to see how well their newly acquired Lenco BearCat armored vehicle would perform. City commissioners last year approved the purchase of the 22,000-pound bullet-resistant vehicle to replace a 1967 armored vehicle. The BearCat features new technologies, air-conditioning, cameras and seating for 12 officers instead of six.

On Friday, the SWAT team drove the BearCat down Lakeland streets and onto the front lawn of the house. The officers crouched behind and inside the vehicle, unsure of what was inside the house. The officers used tactical maneuvers to blow out the front windows, leaving curtains lying in the yard, and they gained entry into the attached garage.

From the story, it is very unclear whether they found any incriminating evidence at all. Mostly, it sounds like a bunch of stormtroopers getting a chance to play with their toys at the expense of an innocent private citizen.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • Pzatchok

    This will only stop when they accidentally raid a fellow officers home and possibly injure or kill him.

    Its obviously not stopped when they raided and shot up the wrong homes of innocent civilians. Sometimes even killing them.

    People are now called civilians and not citizens because the cops want to further distance themselves from association with us common folk. We are no longer called friends and neighbors.
    I think in part its due to so many coming back from active military service. They were apart from(and to their mindset above) the normal citizens and are just continuing that mindset. They have been taught and gotten into the habit of thinking like solders and are just bringing that attitude right back into their new civilian policeman life.

    Evidence of it is all over the country. the police officers increased desire for more and better military style weapons( stuff they learned on). More personal armor and better vehicles giving them more capability than before.
    None of which has ever shown to improve their daily duties and in many cases just intimidates and antagonizes the ‘civilian’ population.

    Their only real answer when questioned about why they want the new equipment is that it will save more officers lives. Not citizens lives but officers lives.

    But in any terrorist situation exactly how many officers have died compared to civilians? Very few.

    In no active shooter situation has the availability of military style weapons and armament in the hands of cops been proven to save one extra life. In almost every single case the shooter has either given up and surrendered to the first officers who show up on the scene or taken their own lives.
    The big guns and heavy vehicles always get their later and stand around looking intimidating on camera.

    I have never attributed the desire for more and bigger guns to any desire to ‘compensate’ for something lacking elsewhere on the officers or persons part. But in these cases I do think that the desire is compensating for the ever increasing lack of real, effective and proven police investigative work.

  • Edward

    “Detectives were searching the house Friday night.”

    How hard is it to spot a motorcycle? It isn’t like they fit in drawers or wall safes (behind pictures, etc.). Maybe they should have started with the garage. Or are the bad guys hiding motorcycles in the toilet tank, as if they were a drug stash, or something?

    One would think that the police would have learned to not look like the Keystone Kops of the silent movie era. Apparently, after a century, they have to relearn (or is it: have yet to learn) that embarrassing lesson.

    I suppose that once you bring in the SWAT team, you had better keep looking until you find something, otherwise you will look like a pack of fools, so the detectives kept searching through Friday night. Maybe the crooks hid the motorcycle in a file on the computer; they had better confiscate all the computers and have a look.

    And who is going to pay to fix the window and other damage?

  • Jake

    Sgt. Mike Lewis said. “We did not know if anyone was inside and we had information that the persons involved were armed,” Lewis said. “It was a safety issue.”

    There was absolutely no reason for a SWAT team to execute the warrant. The police could easily have kept watch on the house for a day or two to see who comes and goes, and then to execute the warrant as the occupants left the house or returned to it. These are the tactics of a police state. They need to be opposed.

  • Orion314

    the Sheeple are often surprised at how down-right-rude the gestapo can be….

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