It was 5 AM when a group of heavily armed, uniformed men broke down the front door to raid a house. A ten year old boy who was sleeping on the couch awoke to see 15 men with guns drawn. The men searched and ransacked the house and then handcuffed the boy's father and 15 year old brother. The paramilitaries did not speak the language spanish, so they made the boy and his sister translate. The girl began to have an asthma attack but they wouldn't let her use her medicine.
This wasn't Iraq or Afghanistan and these weren't US soldiers. They were a SWAT team in Oakland, California, looking for a drug dealer, but unfortunately for this family, they broke in to the wrong apartment. The suspect was actually in a neighboring apartment. There was no apology by the SWAT team, nor was any compensation for the damage, nor any offer of emotional counseling. There were given a form to ask for restitution of their broken door, but 4 months later they have not received anything.
This wasn't Iraq or Afghanistan and these weren't US soldiers. They were a SWAT team in Oakland, California, looking for a drug dealer, but unfortunately for this family, they broke in to the wrong apartment. The suspect was actually in a neighboring apartment. There was no apology by the SWAT team, nor was any compensation for the damage, nor any offer of emotional counseling. There were given a form to ask for restitution of their broken door, but 4 months later they have not received anything.
I learned about this when the family came to my medical office 3 days later because the younger children of 10 and 12 years old were having anxiety attacks and insomnia. Worst of all, the children had been afraid that their father would be deported. A year ago a five year old boy was brought in for aggressive behavior. His mother, a Salvadoran immigrant, said that the SWAT team that burst into their apartment were looking for her younger brother, perhaps a low level drug dealer, and in that raid the little boy's grandmother was pushed down. I asked that mother a while later how things where, and her brother was back at home--I guess he was not such a dangerous figure after all.
That morning in my office I felt both sad and angry. As a doctor and as a human being I care deeply for my families. I've worked in East Oakland as a doctor for 35 years; the working class, immigrant families I know endure great hardships: poverty, violent crime, work accidents, deportation. It's an outrage that these raids are added to their quota of suffering.
I've done some research about SWAT and what I learned is alarming. Since the 1980s, when Congress mandated that the military make equipment available to civilian police as part of the War on Drugs, as many of 70% of the police departments in cities of over 50,000 have formed heavily armed SWAT units--and really, they are paramilitaries.
According to a report by the Conservative CATO Institute, paramilitary units are essentially soldiers, and soldiers are supposed to use lethal force and initiate violence on command. This contrasts with the police, whose role is to apprehend suspected law breakers, with minimum force, and adhere to constitutional procedures.
Albuquerque had to dismantle its SWAT unit after losing several wrongful death lawsuits. An outside evaluator said that, "They had an organizational culture that led them to escalate rather than de-escalate violence." In 1997 a SWAT team in Dinuba California--population 15,000--killed an innocent man during a raid. A jury awarded the family $12.5 million, and Dinuba, too, disbanded its SWAT unit. Dallas and Seattle no longer send SWAT teams on suicide calls or drug raids.
I made some calls to to the police review commission, the local city councilman's office, and a community organization dealing with police brutality. The family, although they are un documented and risk deportation, decided to press their case with the police. Maybe at least they'll get compensation for the damages to the apartment. Meanwhile the children are anxious and have trouble sleeping.
