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A letter that I wrote to my elected officials about the excessive use of SWAT teams
Raw
swat.md

I used the electronic forms to reach out to my representatives, but I recorded their address here because I use that in the letter

Senator Amy Klobuchar
302 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTION DC 20510

Senator Al Franken
302 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTION DC 20510

Congressman Tim Walz
1034 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Governor Mark Dayton
Office of the Governor & Lt Governor
116 Veterans Service Building
20 W 12th Street
St. Paul, MN 55155

Representative Clark Johnson
409 State Office Building
100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55155

Senator Kathy Sheran
75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Capitol, Room G-12
St. Paul, MN 55155-1606

what I said in the letters I sent

I'd like to call your attention to the excessive use of SWAT teams to serve no-knock warrants on non-violent offenders and the number of innocent victims who are terrorized, injured, and in some cases even killed. This is not just a problem that happens in other states; we're seeing botched raids resulting in injuries here in Minnesota too (1). Since many of these abuses are committed by local police departments, I'd like to ask you to introduce legislation to limit the use of SWAT teams here in Minnesota to situations where there is an imminent threat and prohibit deploying SWAT teams to serve warrants for drug searches, regulatory enforcement (2), debt collection (3).

This issue is receiving national attention thanks to reporting by the Economist (4) and National Public Radio (5) and also a recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union (6). A 2010 article from Reason.com estimated that there were 4.5 SWAT raids performed every day in the United States, but the ACLU report finds that only 7% of these were "for hostages, barricade, or active shooter scenarios. (7)" Please help restore some sanity to use of SWAT teams and make sure these abuses don't happen here at home any more.

(1) http://www.cato.org/raidmap
(2) http://www.salon.com/2013/08/29/11_over_the_top_u_s_police_raids_that_victimized_innocents/
(3) http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/08/no-really-swat-team-raids-hous
(4) http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/06/police-militarisation
(5) http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/06/24/325236889/report-points-to-dangerous-militarization-of-u-s-law-enforcement
(6) https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-web-rel1.pdf
(7) http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/01/45-swat-raids-per-day

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