provide a microcosm, i think, the very much larger picture of the human relationship of the environment. we have no choice here in the southwest. we have no choice but to figure out how to create a sustainable relationship with the colorado river. without the hoover dam, we wouldn't be here. without the canals to bring the water to us, we wouldn't be but this is a desert. there would be a few people here but not all of us certainly. the great megalopolis grown here in phoenix and los angeles, all of those areas wouldn't have the growth that has if we don't pay attention to the importance of using the river anymore sustainable way. that's been huge challenge and a look at 100 years of a rivers history, and i've only seen some real hope towards the end of that 100 years, and beyond, and the 21st century where starting to pay attention of a

crisis before we look for reasonable solution. but looking at the whole picture, looking at the whole picture of the river helps us understand yes, why we exist the way we do here in the southwest. it also helps us understand the role of rivers surface water in arid regions, and other parts of the world. but it also gives us a larger picture, a piece of a larger picture of how humans relate to the environment and the stresses and strains that come along with it or the political fights that hamper, creating a sustainable relationship, all of the barriers that stand in the way of making better use of our natural resources. and we can look at what didn't work, plenty of fat, but we can also look at what did work and what is working now. and what kind of changes we can make. i think it would be a fabulous example for river watersheds

throughout the world. >> for more information on all of the cities visited by booktv's local content vehicle, visit us online at c-span.org/localcontent. >> up next on booktv, bradley rall could talks about the militarization of the police and united states including the expanded use of swat teams to do with low-level crime. mr. balko argues that today police officers have become conditioned to seeing american citizens as the enemy. this is about an hour and 10 minutes. >> thank you so much of them today. were going to go in and get started. on laura odato, the director for the kid is acute and today we will talk about radley balko's new book which is "rise of the warrior cop: the militarization of america's police forces." in the book it goes through sort of the current state of our police force are which is a bit different.

i'll introduce her speakers in a moment but a quick thing about what we'll did today. we will have radically speak first to mark lomax will talk about the issue as well and then we'll have plenty of time for q&a. i also want to note on the cato affiliate website we have a map that goes through what radley will mention today, an ongoing, updated so it's a good resource for anyone who's interested in the topic which i think is all the. let me briefly introduce our speakers. radley balko is a senior writer and investigative reporter for the "huffington post" where he covers civil liberties and the ship and train criminal justice system it is a former senior editor for reason magazine and has worked with the u.s. supreme court. mark lomax is that the director of national tactical officers association. he worked in library west africa as a programming for united

nations overseeing liberian national police route emergency response unit. is also serve as the director of the bureau for education a retired with a pencil in state police with over 27 years of service and also is a graduate of the national academy. with that, i will turn things over to radley. >> thank you. thanks for cato for bring this on and thanks for the ntoa for having a talk with me today. i'm going to jump right in. so, right around thanksgiving in 2006, a narcotics task force was out on patrol i guess, and they saw someone walking alongside the road. fake i.d. previous arrested for braces drug offenses.

they jumped out on him, threw him to the ground, pulled a gun on him and we later found out planted a bag of marijuana on him. in you get a long rap sheet. they knew had a long rap sheets of the told them they would let him go if he told them where they could find a supply of drugs. so he made up an actress, basically on the spot. the actress happened to be that of a 92 year old woman who lived in a rough part of atlanta. she kept an old russ revolver by her bed to scare people when she felt threatened. what's supposed to happen is a point when they get a tip like this, they're supposed to get an informant to do a controlled by at this address. but that process could take two or three days in atlanta and wanted to get to the drug supply community, for reasons that i will explain in a minute. instead they made up and informant, just lik lied on

affidavit, created an informant out of thin air, claimed about the drugs on this address. instead taken a few days to process took a few hours. and by later that evening, they were breaking down the door. she heard people breaking into her house but she gets up, grabs her trusty rusty nonfunctional revolver. when they break down the door she stand holding a gun to the open fire, kill her. now, they originally said they fired after first. again didn't work the two officers by bullets fired by other police officers. they call to investors for the wounded officers come did not call and maintenance initially for her. instead they handcuffed her, and left her to bleed to death on her living room for the one officer went down in the basement to plant marijuana that they claimed she had sold. so this point they realize they have to cover their tracks.

they have defined in for him to say he was informant named on the search warrant. so they go to this guy that refused in the past, and informants tend to be somewhat shady characters, rival drug use, drug addicts, people are trying to get their own charges dropped or diminished. and to this good this guy would not play along. this amazing 911 call what he does the number from the back of a cruiser in atlanta and says that trying to get me to say i helped kill that old lady and i don't want any part of it. he realizes this is not going, the conversation is having with the atlanta police office isn't going also jumped out of the car and starts to flee. they pursue him. there's a surreal chase through downtown atlanta were just trying to run, they're chasing after he was also worked with atf at the time, calls a sandler and they swoop in and pick them up and tries it out to the suburbs. they put them up in hotel. now there's a federal investigation.

so what we've done in the federal investigation was that this was rampant in atlanta. lying on the search once was common, that the raids on the wrong houses, but the fact it was in 88 your one who lived near johnson reviewed and rated in her own home. the atlanta city council held hearings were other people said this happened to us. what the federal investigation found was that there were quotas on atlanta police department narcotic office prepared to seize an amount of drugs each month but this is how their performance reviews were done. this is how they decided that raises, who got promotions. this is how they were evaluated on how they did their job. the federal investigation didn't get into this but the reason why they were -- their federal grants that go quickly towards drug seizures.

competing for limited pool of money that goes for drug police were the pressures on the police department to produce the kind of statistics that will make the department competitive for the science and faith in past that pressure on to the individual officers. eventually the entire narcotics squad was either fired or transferred to another department. they were some promises for reforms that really didn't end up panning out in the end. didn't create a sibling review board but it was later rendered impotent by losses from the police unions to and in the end, this 92 year-old woman was killed and fertile change in terms of actual reforms or policy changes. i lea feed with vista because is more than bodies a lot of talk about in the book. in this place and says, the perverse incentives, the use of the forced entry tactics. this wasn't necessarily a swat team to this was a narcotics

unit. forced entry at night, take shortcuts on fourth amendment. certainly not imply that all police officers want on seek search warrants want him implying that they create an inducement for taking shortcuts. so i'm going to get into the this is an old cold war quote commonly attributed to winston churchill also have the into the city. but it was a sentiment that for a long time in this country this is that we distinguished ourselves from eastern bloc countries, from police states. democracy means that when there's a knock on the door 3m is probably the movement. the next shows, to give a perspective, by the end we get to the lecture can think back on the court and see how far we've come since the cold war. in the u.s. we've always had,

drawn this firm line between the military and the police. there's good reason for that. the military's job is to annihilate afford enemy. they are not similar jobs at all. the only similarities are that they both carry guns and authorized to use force. many seem to think that jobs are similar. but for the most part we've done a pretty good job keeping the military out of domestic policing. we done of soldiers patrolling our streets. we don't soldiers doing search warrants. although during the reagan administration there was a push to do that. and during that push it was reagan and some member's of congress want to bring in active military troops to start conducting drug rates, making arrest the it was the military that pushed back and it's one of the few that ideas on criminal

justice that didn't pass during the reagan administration. this was the number two man at the pentagon at the time. you can see basically, this was from assessment to congress that this is a very dangerous thing to do, to bring the military in. so we've done a good job keeping the military out of domestic law enforcement. what i argue in my book is about we have done in and around. this idea, instead of bringing soldiers into law enforcement, we have allowed and encouraged police officers to basically be armed like, use the tactics of, be dressed like and adopt the mindset of soldiers. and the outcome i think this is troubling if military were actually doing this themselves.

we're going to put a quick little game here. this is called, or soldier. tell me if this is a police officer or a soldier. i will do that all of these are either police in the u.s. or members of the u.s. military. start here. this is a cop. soldier. cop. those are actually cops. soldiers. soldiers. cops. that's an oregon state trooper. so, you get the idea, right? is becoming increasing difficult to tell the difference. this is a cop by the way. so going to ge give you a little bit of history. there are two kind of trends

that were going on in the late '60s and early 70s. one of them was the rise of the swat team to the other was the rise of the war on drugs. swat team came in los angeles when delegates was in charge of the department response to strike. he was very troubled by what happened in the watts riots and justify we so. he basically thought he was in the middle of an urban war. that these were guerrilla warfare tactics being used against the city can against police officers and firefighters. gates feared that lapd did not have an adequate way to respond to these types of situation. there was a lot of civil unrest. it was good reason to think there was going to be more incidents. so he started to look for answers. he started working with some marines at camp pendleton and came up with this idea of assembling this elite unit of police officers will be specially trained in specific

areas to respond to these kinds of situations and basically deal with and immediately. so he would have somebody who was trained indian with snipers, control, and that would be a quickly moving it i could respond instantly and with overpowering force to these kinds of emergency situations. one interestiinteresti ng sort of historical nugget to this, when he first broached the idea, parker shot the idea down because parker said that this game to close to breaching this historical divide between the military and the police. gates continue with the idea, and then when a new police chief took over, when parker died, he got the greenligh green light td with this idea. special weapons and tactics.

there's a couple early rates that were very high profile, the first rate was on a black panther unit in l.a. that ended up being televised on state tv, or cbtb. the second was a few years later on the liberation army. everybody had been following the sla. they kidnapped patty hearst, the newspaper heiress, the tabloid news story of the day. and so when the fbi and lapd headquarters of the sla and the building in los angeles, there were all sorts of news crews there. you can find video on youtube. it kind of pushed swat into a pop-culture. these are heroes are taken on domestic terror group that a lot of people were afraid of. so we did in 1975 a swat tv show produced by aaron spelling,

which i highly recommend if you like 70 tv shows. we get the milton bradley swap board game. swat lunchboxes, little swat mobiles you can give your sons. and really swat becomes this big idea. so at the same time in 1972, nixon declares war on drugs. he pushes this idea through, one of the interesting things is it original and was, it was originally and the rockefeller administration in new york. rockefeller brought up the idea and it was not something that police chiefs were clamoring for, demanding. it was basically a little boy, something rockefeller wanted, getting tough on drug. the nixon administration adopted

the idea. again, this is not something law enforcement was to many. and it ends up passing congress. there were two bills actually. two interesting things that happen in d.c. the police chief jerry wilson decides not to use it. he says it's too invasive, too militaristic and it's ineffective. he takes it out of the metro police manual and tells his office not to conduct these raids. crime was down the next years what goes up and the rest of the country. clearly it didn't hurt things in d.c., not using it. they didn't make things worse. nationally though the federal officers, federal narcotics officers started conducting these raids across the country. this was accounted by a lot of rhetoric from the nixon

administration, dehumanizing drug offenders, really using martial rhetoric and went to declare all-out war. you see this sort of out of control my products officers raiding houses, conducting raids without warrants, warrants on the wrong houses. so of these raids then get news coverage of the new york times and ap does investigate and find dozen more case where the wrong people were rated. congress holds hearings and three years later they repeal the laws and pass another law making the federal government liable. it was evermore meant -- it was a rare moment. congress said we went too far and we need to reign things back a little bit. so throughout the 1970s, these two trends continue. you got the drug war, the rise of swat teams.

by 1975 to about 500 swat teams. five years earlier had been one. they were used for this original purpose, this idea of using violence to diffuse an already violent situation. they were being used to respond to riots, active shooting situation, hostage taking, escaped felons. and their use in way that is very effective, that they have lied and the drug was number one in its own way. it was in the 1980s you see these two trends converge when reagan takes the drug war metaphor and makes a very literal. so you see this ratcheting up of the martial rhetoric and the were rabbit and the reagan administration the he declared drugs a threat to national security. he compared the drug war to the world war i battle which have

always found amusing because it's known as this long protracted bloody by adding that didn't mean anything and neither side could claim victory after it was done. the metaphor is probably more apt than reagan realized at the time. but you see but more and more of this dehumanizing of drug offenders from the reagan administration and members of congress. this was bipartisan to i mentioned in the book the leading democrats in congress were very, very critical of reagan's policies but they were critical for the not going far enough. so with a bipartisan race to an all-out war on drug offenders, you have william bennett who was our first official drug czar who at one point said he would have no moral objection to publicly beheading drug dealers. dates at one point said he thought drug users, not dealers, should be taken out and shot. it was a position he had to walk

back when his son was caught with drugs a couple of times. but you really do see this ratcheting up of the rhetoric and this has an effect on thewag carried out on the ground. reagan brings the national guard and, start on drug enforcement. he creates these task forces. he starts making, putting these anti, federal antidrug grants. this is pentagon defense department equipment here. we will see this expand rapidly throughout the late '80s and '90s. this is just, there are lots of examples. this rhetoric starts to filter down. this was just a few years ago. a sheriff in clayton county, georgia. this is depressing.

not only do we need to wage war on drugs, but that has to be a war like the normandy invasion. he's talking to his own constituents anything we need to basically treats his own constituents as if we were invading normandy. when you're a sheriff, that has an impact on the way deputies look at the people there serving and the people in the community. so then what we see is what the military quickly going to the police department, the the federal grants that are tied to drug policing, please departments start swat teams and there's a strong financial incentive to use them. in addition to federal grants you asset forfeiture which allows police to take property that they think is connected to drug activity or illegal activity in some way. the person who owns the property has to never be charged with a crime and then had to go to court to win the property back, to prove you own it legitimate. there's an added incentive now.

you can't just walk in, you can put in the mothballs and toward the legitimate emergencies creeps up, or you could send them out on these drug raids which has the potential to bring revenue back to the police department. is a strong incentive to stand your swat team out on drug rates. this is a criminologist in the late 90s but did a series of surveys of police department across the country. and asp invasive of going back to the early '80s how many times these this watkins. what he found in the late '70s there were a few hundred swat raids per year across the country in which if you think about these type of emergency situations, may make some sense but by the early '80s were up to a few thousand per year, and he did a follow-up survey in 2005, he asked me where up to about 50,000 per year. from a few hundred in the '70s to about 50,000 per year in 2005. there isn't any really good data since then but all the trends have been driving this has

continued. 's i think it's a safe estimate that probably has not gone down. this is a sheriff in south carolina. he got this through the pentagon giveaway program. it has 360° rotating machine gun shirt on top -- current on top. it's completely inappropriate for domestic policing. it's called the peacemaker. he put out a press release with his photo with a quote at the top that said they are the children of god. to give you an idea in what sorts of situations they find this level of force appropriate. in a room a few years ago michael phelps remember was photographed smoking pot in south carolina.

mr. shea personally took offense to this because it happened in his county. there's a lawsuit pending against them right now, taken with a grain of salt as one half of a lawsuit with the description of one or happened is decent the swat team in the raid the homes of the people who are pictured in that photo. so there are these descriptions of swat teams breaking into these homes, throwing people on the ground, pointing guns at him and screaming not wadah khanfar were other drugs, but what do you know about michael phelps? which is amusing and sort of terrifying at the same time. these are just some various photos of military gear utilize police -- by police departments. in maricopa county where this steven seagal had been deputized by sheriff joe arpaio. they were filming a reality show so steven seagal went out in sheriff joe's own thank you got

from the pentagon program. they send them after this guy who is suspected of cockfighti cockfighting. and urges her the work on them, steven seagal drove the tank into the guy's living room. when asked if that was an appropriate use of force, he said he was an animal lover. so that was supposed to justify. they ended up in euthanizing all the chickens and a couple dogs as well. this is a swat team at the university north gilad chirla. another trend where singh, now college campuses starting their own swat teams. the justification is always virginia tech, columbine, mass shooting incident and we have to be prepared. the problem is these mass shooting incidents are very rigorous to get a lot of coverage when it happened but a sociologist has crunched the numbers and he anticipates or says, he estimates the average middle school, high school or college campus can expect to see

a homicide on campus about one every six or seven dozen used to the idea that you need a swat team of every college campus i think is little overblown. of course, once you have a swat team, you want to use and there's plenty of drug offenders and drug abuse on college campuses to keep them busy once they're up and running. these are a couple of rates we did, or maps we did when i wrote this paper for the cato institute precalculus the kind of dispel the idea that these mistaken raids bob ritter proportions to the total number of rates done, that they were rare in the number. and there's no comprehensive way to catalog these, but i would estimate i get stories sent in a couple times a week but these are all documented cases. you can click on one of these and see what happens with the media coverage. these are cases were completely

innocent people were killed in one of these rates. these were not even nonviolent offenders. these were people whether that nothing, i got the wrong house. these are cases where a completely innocent person was killed in one of these rates. i think there are over 50 of these catalog now. i'm going to try to speed it up a little bit. so there are two kind of the major milestones i want to talk about. the first comes in 1996 when california legalized medical marijuana. and tell this point the argument for this kind of force, these rates, is that, that drug is working to people, they were heavily armed. they had no moral qualms about killing police officers. there are rebuttals to those arguments. those were the origin is being made and that we need this kind of forced to respond to a threat. when california legalized marijuana and several states

followed suit, the federal government sent swat teams to reduce medical marijuana clinics. at this point you can no longer say that these people are a threat. these clinics have business licenses big operating under state law. the hippie mom and pop couple running the pockets into a not going to take a gun out from under the count and killed a bunch of people, right? ..

so first we see the rise in the mid-two thousands. we see responses from local communities but the spots teams are reading neighborhood poker games. in some cases there may have been legitimate gambling operations. they were open advertising this poker game they were having. the recently documented case in dallas they rated a pattern of saturn wars consider québec team texas law. instead of bureaucrats who say to change your doing this, they send us what team to scare everyone. we now see s.w.a.t raid. i read about this in the nicest part of virginia.

it was done under alcohol inspection. i said someone along and this was actually a drug investigation, but they didn't have enough evidence to get a search warrant for the sunset debris that somebody from the regulatory agency evinces and alcohol spec should even that they are prepared to s.w.a.t team to enforce it. the guy who owned the bar brought a federal lawsuit in federal court of appeals said there's nothing that reasonable about running a s.w.a.t team to enforce regulatory the college is also terrified. and within the outcome of florida, the police suspected drug activity going on a barber shops. they didn't have enough evidence to get a search warrant on the civic audit state occupational licensing board who sent an inspector industry licensure inspections to make sure propers were properly licensed to cut hair. there were 37 or 47 and all but

three were arrested for bribery without a license. they did find two people who had drugs in one habitat to the church at with a felony. this is true about most any government at tt. there's a suspicion where you seek out the reasons for your existence and we see this with s.w.a.t teams now deployed. they were the absolute last resort and that we are increasingly seen as a first resort. i first debated a police officer fox news who said there are lots of police departments who only serve every single search warrant with the s.w.a.t team. again, this is not about assessing the threat. this is we have a humor so every problem looks like a nail. i am going to close with -- glatzer read the book to get the shaquille o'neal story, but i

urge it. this is a team of tibetan monks who overstayed their visa to visit actually to respond is to send us what. increasingly seen aggressive response to protesters in seattle in 1989. i actually read the police chief at the time the orchestrated that response for now cause of one of the biggest mistakes of his career because he seen how response protests have had to expect confrontation. eco-expect confrontation on either side. this is a scene from denver. the ratio of police to protesters. this is the t-shirt that denver police union sold leading to the dnc in denver to designate. it says to get up early to beat the crowd. the fact that a police organization is selling t-shirts is rather disturbing. this goes against the knights a

problem, which is when you take police officers and arm them like soldiers come and train them type geeks coming to switch to these uniforms, which are more in the next military and you tell them they are fighting a war, it does have an affect on the way they their job. that should not be surprising to anyone. and kirsten at some point see the people they serve as another or an enemy. i will close at the story of cory made because it really illustrates how absurd things have become. corey was 21 at the time today after christmas 2001. there is a police raid on his house. the guy who lived on the other side had to charges pending against him. cory's name wasn't on the war in. they rated both sides of the duplex. cory had no criminal record. he was some of his 18 -month-old

daughter. he makes it to send of people breaking into his apartment. cory says he never heard them. he went to the bedroom, laid down with a gun he kept on the nightstand. the door flies open and a figure of black enters the room. corey fires three shots and kills officer ron jones. jones is like the cory was back in a part of mississippi where races suffocating part of everyday life. cory's version of the best was yet no idea these were police. he shot and fired one of these figures to protect himself and his daughter and as soon as he realized, surrendered in chapters 10 to three bullets left in the gun. the states version was cory the out the window and saw a team of police is coming at him, that he decided to take them on with a

handgun that he shot and killed one of them and surrendered with the listen again. decide which of those those in areas hit by more plausible. basically he had a roach in his house that would lend him a $50 fine. he was charged and convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. i was scared to the legal stuff that happened in between. eventually a couple years ago from his conviction was overturned by the mississippi supreme court. the prosecutors decided they would allow him to plead with manslaughter and he would get time served. at this point in prison for 10 years. at his homecoming party in mississippi, taking kids out for rides on his four wheeler and everybody's happy and joyous when he's back at case.

we were happy for two. we realize how absurd it was super happy. this guy had done nothing wrong. he was not the jugular they were looking for food people breaking news held in the middle of the night, putting them in this terrified position. he made a mistake, like a lot of police officers have done in the streets. the state then try to kill him. this is a guy who was great to escape. the mother of the woman he had a child with out of wedlock care or ice what a good father he was. he was defending escape that night. he now is a felony record. he has to explain his o'fallon every time he applies for a job. this was one of the good stories. this is a good outcome. we relieved this happening.

it was an illustration of how low our expectations have become on this particular issue that we could be joyous that this particular occasion. i will turn it over to market buco for mayor. thank you. [applause] >> good afternoon. how is everyone? i wanted to thank the cato institute for providing this forum today. i want to thank you for your

participation and attendance here in your interest in the subject. first, i want to acknowledge the dedication and service our men and women in blue provide to us every day. just yesterday, i left orlando florida it yesterday morning a gallon 24-year-old orlando police officer, jason hijack was shot twice during a traffic stop. he's recuperating in recovery now. who makes this a reminder of all the danger that faces our lot worse than each day. i would like to thank mr. balko for the release of this book. looking at the reviews, he is creating quite a stir in the discussion of para- militarization of police today, which is a good thing. discussion, critique and review of any process system, policy,

and/or procedure good for the growth of improvements, reflection and change. we must never forget that policing in america is a civil servant position, that it's funded by taxpayers and that they are accountable to the public. you all agree i'm not? the perception of police as mentioned in mr. balko spoke is us against them or them against us. to me that is not an accurate statement and that the vast majority of police officers in the united states take pride in their duties and happily involved in the service and protection of our community. they had come a day outcome that these men and women risk their lives for freedom and security of our public. however, there are 10 types

certain officers have misused their authority and committed actions that have resulted in injury or death of innocent tunes. these incidents have been the catalyst for media, court, governing body critical review, which is rightly so. lately, the use of tactical teams have been under much scrutiny also. therefore, it is paramount to actively address those perceptions, whether true or false through forums like this and comprehensive research studies, ask turbine internal reviews to learn from them past vast number practices to ensure professionalism of tactical chain is portrayed and further developed and not misused. i witnessed firsthand in liberia

the tragedy of absolute power and policing in the military. we in the united states are sometimes thought, granted the cold steel for policing throughout the world. we should take pride in accomplishment. in our country, we have many checks and balances that ensure our freedom for security and not compromised. one such check and balance is the freedom of speech. more specifically, the media. having open discussions like the one we have here today is necessary to ensure accountability and necessary improvements on how we police. moreover the ability to effectively communicate within the law enforcement community by the peer review process outline for the collect his body of

internal accountability. the national tactical operation is comprised of dedicated member of the attack to go enforcement community, canine negotiators medical services. again toa does not have statutory or regulatory authorities. it provides a forum for training and exchange of ideas for the quarterly publications, training classes. it advocates for professionalism, safety and performance standards in the tactical community. most states have their own state tax to call that also provide a similar foreign for training, exchange of ideas, committed to

professionalism and performance standards. between the ntoa and state associations, there are times that should steaks are made in the utilization of tactical teams. sometimes lives were lost, injuries sustained and even police officers. it's a very important statement. it is the mission of tactical teams to save lives. whether it is for the gun, police officers or even the suspect. due to use of specialized equipment, tactical weapons, these units are available tools police departments can use in situations about the training and capabilities of first responders. that is the intent admission of s.w.a.t. with over 18,000 police

departments, tragic situations will occur. however, the goal of zero occurrences of police related injuries, deaths, rod fleck dvds is the foundation of association like the ntoa, international association of chief police, chief executive research forum, national sheriffs association and other similar for platforms such as training, conferences, communication standards, capability to lessen the situation increases and the environment to develop professionalism. the concept of para- militarization and policing is up for discussion today. the use of tactical teams in furtherance of a concept is one of the cornerstones of mr. balko

spoke. the first s.w.a.t team was developed in the tpt in los angeles. that number of tech all teams have increased since the inception of the youth have often increased. today we are honored to have the retired lapd, ron mccarthy, one of the first s.w.a.t officers. ron, stand up. he's quiet now. but he was personally involved in several los angeles incidents mentioned in the book. the plot and their party. but was the other one? sla. here's some from ron's personal collection of what was found at this time.

you can include that. also, ron has some corrections for this book that he needs to case since he was there. you talked about it? also, sergeant mccarthy was one of the original founders of the ntoa. again, ntoa represent the best tactical officers in the country to include large company size, small department shares in police departments to bring the association about the pics. the professionalism. they are part of the instructor cadre. the ntoa recently published the ntoa spot standards, which were revised up the input from individual's estate tax association.

the standards are recommendations and guidelines for tactical teams peered again from the ntoa does not have regulatory or statutory authority. many teams have used them to standard in all or developed their own policies using them as a trademark. in addition, many states have bonding to non-training standards for cut both teams. currently it is difficult to get a big picture of the status of the use of tactical teams, how they're used, whether used, outcomes, the quick use. there have been several limited studies in an area over the past several decades with nothing as far as the national police search study. so i am pleased to announce today here that does ntoa is in the final agreement with the international association of

chiefs of police to conduct a national survey in the research project covering the past 10 years for the use of tactical teams. the ntoa will fund the research project conduct to along with the chicago-based national research center. i would like to introduce mr. john berman. johnny cia cpu research standard direct her and he will be handling this endeavor. the ntoa and state associations will distinguish perception from reality, debunking myths were reliable information proves otherwise for confirming a proper procedures or practices that need to be addressed. today is evident by your attendance, many individuals have interest in understanding tactical teams practice is more

fully, particularly citizens, and media, organizations and governing bodies. this study will facilitate a more accurate tactical team action from a statistically defiant perspective overtime versus focusing on anecdotal information. i know there are other areas that can earn that mr. balko mentioned in this book and writing, mainly the pentagon's giveaway, copperheads commended dhs paragraphs, medical marijuana raids and forfeiture laws. these policies are legislative, which i know the mta will have comments on today. these initiatives need to be renewed -- reviewed and discussed in the public forum with legislators in which the community can voice its opinion

that they are legislatures. through this process, changes can be made. in closing, i want to thank you for your participation here. i look forward to meeting with you afterwards in taking any questions you may have. also if you have any questions during the q&a at or after the session, they are available also. so thank you. [applause] >> before we open up to q&a, i would love to give radley and mark a minute or so to address anything. >> just a few quick comments. i'm sure mark and i would disagree about what sorts of situations are appropriate for

tactical units in my definition or my range of situations will be much narrower. to the extent they do have s.w.a.t teams, i would like to emphasize thalintiff in the book that there are legitimate reasons for using these sorts of tactics and that is when you have these immediate threats to life, emergency situations. the chief objection is when you have -- the appropriate is when he is for illustrative user or develop situations. the objection is when you are creating violence and confrontation with her was not before, which is what i would argue is happening on the stroke raids. but i would like to emphasize they do think there are legitimate reasons for s.w.a.t teams. to the extent we have done, ntoa provides a valuable service that they establish best practices, guidelines.

if we had these units, we want them to be as well-trained and professional as possible. that said, obviously the black panthers are very well armed. this gets to my point also that i would not get to the use of this type accident rate. that is a perfectly appropriate use for a s.w.a.t team. depending whose stories you believe the police officer to respond to a noise complaint or other scenarios, competing narratives about what happened. i would not consider this an appropriate use at all. the fact they were the second person was a legitimate use for this horse. that is about all i have actually. >> i am reading mr. balko spoke. [inaudible] cannot put them on the

paperback? but we've had discussions in the past and we agree more than we disagree. the youth of s.w.a.t or tactical teams to be limited. that's who we advocate that it should not be used every day. they should be used as a last resort for cert situation. so in that regard, we agree. >> you are killing my street criteria. >> questions for either panelists? yes, sir. [inaudible]

[inaudible] [inaudible] the details that are hard to cover right now. the fact is the police need to be profit units when they overstepped the law. they do lots of these things that we see examples of constantly and they are usually just let off the hook. so there are exceptions, but the exceptions are rare. if police are prosecuted when they overstepped their right, we basically live in a society of different people having

different kinds of rice, just like the feudal system. we are effectively there as far as the fbi and what rights they have as individuals and various other legislation. >> let me give you guys a chance to comment. >> this is a common frustration. the number of rogue police officers is very small as a percentage of overall police officers. the frustration can save when those aren't held accountable not suggest a more systemic problem. the other related issue i started this raises when you have one were administered and gets killed, the reaction from the police department and prosecutors is inevitably the police officers were following seizures so they were not applied with the procedure. there was no criminal violation

and also not develop procedures. so if an innocent person dies and throughout wrongdoing of the officers because they were following his future did nothing wrong with the procedures, the inevitable inclusion this is perfectly acceptable to have innocent people died during these raids. either something about what this is an expected outcome or a tolerable outcome. that is the frustration up in things go wrong and i am much in the vast majority of these raids are conducted conducted professionally and innocent people don't die. when things go wrong, but doesn't appear to be any significant accountability and that's what people think there is a more systemic problem. >> well, your first statement about the officer -- [inaudible] or been involved in traffic accidents more than being killed in the line of duty.

that is a very, very big issue because that vehicle is a weapon, whether it is being as to hurt others or themselves. [inaudible] by the police. that is a true statement. getting back to accountability. when i retired, i was in charge of the state police academy. in one of my speeches i could give to every academy class that i hold to my standard in all the academy classes that went to the academy when i was there is that effective tumor when you graduate from your holiday hires and it than anybody else, 24/7, seven days a week, including your family. you will be watched. anything you do come you cannot get away with that.

when it comes to police departments are prosecutors, not prosecuting misconduct, that is an issue that you and your community should take a. because the district attorney or the attorney general's are publicly elect officials and those are issues you could take up -- [inaudible] >> -- shows an overwhelming majority engaged in a confrontational or excessive behavior -- >> will stick around afterwards, but i would think to get some other questions. [inaudible]

>> in maryland, it is. maryland is the only state that requires that out. >> bearing the back. >> you talked about the criminal side of it. intent is a part of that when you talk about the rules. [inaudible] baby talk about negligence, who developed the procedures involved. >> this is not going to be a popular opinion with police officers, but the qualified opinion does it officers in the state of mind that they are above the law. i do understand the argument police officers need extra protection said they are not hesitating before using force when it is necessary. the qualified community ruled out negligence. you have to prove malicious

intent before you can get into a courtroom. the police officers are personally paid in these damages. a thread that a police officer -- it is usually the taxpayers that pay these lawsuits. i don't know the legal standard. i think it would be good to create something under that, so at least egregious negligence is some kind addressed through the tort system. right now it is tough to even get it in to court. >> i meant individual police officers. >> that's never going to fly. it's just not going to happen. >> this is primarily for mr. lomax. he seemed like a nice sky and i don't mean to be rude or anything, [inaudible]

or make t-shirts that advertise advertise -- [inaudible] >> your comments on professionalism make t-shirts, mistake. that is a mistake. there's no way to qualify that. as far as the tag, the one in maricopa county was part of the one in l.a. [inaudible]

my department obtained from a second job i had, training government. we used them as rescue vehicles when citizens were in the front yard after someone had shot them were shot and killed them. we don't know whether they are alive or dead whether the word is so obvious that we know they are dead. therefore, our first priority and one we recommend to law enforcement or citizens safe to eat number one before officer safety. come the end of story. you're shaking your head, sir, but the civilian officers at fort hood were the ones who entered and faced the psychologist who is murdering people at fort hood and she was

shot multiple times in the starship put mr. hasan down. that is an example of putting citizens safety ahead of the police officer safety. [inaudible] they were utilized for a number of different purposes. one was houses heavily fortified with weapons and they were like a geo and they were utilized for that. the aclu filed a suit against them. they had no weapons attached to them and the only weapons that could be utilized with the weapons officers carried. the highest caliber for that was at 308. they were utilized, the supreme court found, appropriately.

they said they should be regulated. have utilized them? we showed them our paperwork and how we administer the use of those. that california supreme court held was appropriate enough that they were utilized. they were never done away with. now, maricopa county, sheriff joe r. pio, who i really don't like. i consider them in a goof. having said that, he got a regular tank and painted it with the maricopa county colors and a star on it and it embarrassed all of his deputies. they were embarrassed. they put it in parades. finally, i would like to mention one thing if m. night. in response to a series being murdered, my partner was fine flashlight batteries when he was

murdered december the eighth, 1960. i think he was behaving adequately in a probe really. officers murdered for a variety of different reasons because they were uniformed. that has happened. two, they put themselves in vulnerable positions under attack for young sound. they are either on trains or they don't listen to their training. the majority of cops who were murdered past 10 years of on-the-job usually comes from complacent fee. they put themselves in a position to be vulnerable. final point. the president of the united states is protected by the secret service as you know. the cooperation between local, state and federal law enforcement should be good for the right reasons. the motorcade security that the case enjoys right now is developed by my s.w.a.t team and that's where they got it. so we had to get things

together. i read mr. transcendence book and the examples he gave made me sick. i agree with you. way too many police officers and police departments or is not as professional as they need to be. but let's not throw the baby with the bathwater. don't take a concept that is work and saved a lot of lives and trash it and get away from it without fixing the problems. we want to do that. that's the mark is really good at and we are moving in that direction. one day i hope i can reach your standards. with our association. >> we have time for two more short questions. [inaudible]

>> yeah, sure. i think you could stop the 1033 program. this is equipment designed for use on the battlefield and he given the police department used on american streets and american neighborhoods of american citizens. just in a symbolic stand point that's important. also, the crisco to things other than just starting to s.w.a.t teams. they do start multijurisdictional drug task forces and gain task forces across the country. the problem is because they stand jurisdictions coming they are sort of quasi-independent, so there's problems of accountability as the scene in texas for some of these other cases. ending these grants to start these task forces, also an integrated which created lot of the perverse incentives i was talking about.

again, we get back to qualified immunity. that's a nonstarter. if he did, it would be great. the policies that have the most impact second in the drug war and those is likely to happen. >> question in the back. [inaudible] [inaudible]

>> this is something i probably agree on. the concept of community policing, were police officers put a neighborhood meeting. they are encouraged to the neighbors the patrol said they have a stake in the community. the community has a stake in them so when it is time to use force, the community sees it as one of their own using force to protect them, not somebody from the outside and to impose forced upon them. more community oriented policing and you had some other ideas. [inaudible] >> we do unfortunately have to wrap a tiered we are out of time. i'm sure our panels will stick around. thank you offer coming. it is important we have the dialogue even after our panelists will be kind enough to stick around today. thank you for coming. please join me in thanking our

panelists. [applause] >> what are you reading this summer? books tv wants to know. >> i don't think i'm going to read that for a while. they treat the books for the summer by george packer and blind dates. i'm almost through with that premise i can recommend it having read it. it is a gripping tale of basically the unwinding of the middle class. george packer is not in the book at all himself. it is the unwinding of america, but also the middle class. you need people who love jobs, have been found in ice, whose have declined rather than rising

away. the policies expected them to do in this country. it's really a very provocative and important book. so that i recommend highly. i am looking forward to rachel kushner's, the flamethrower. i haven't read back at them but the story of a young woman in the 1970s. what intrigues me about it besides just the story is that laura miller talk about how rachel kushner's authority in this book is really intriguing, but also rattling sound of reviewers who weren't used to a woman taking the liberty she take in the books. i can't wait to see what it really means. and finally, i am also getting around to steer itself that came out earlier this year. it is a big book. schlepping it to the beach will

be found. it is intellectual history and also wove in and with the coming of the prosecution of world war ii, tying the international together in a way that most scholars cannot do and also tracing the unraveling of the new deal back to his roots when it excluded african-americans in order to get certain legislation passed, which set up the conflict in the 60s and 70s an african-american were due to get their rights, to get things they didn't get from the new deal and the new deal coalition fell apart. that's the importance that we people trying to take apart the new deal coalition.

>> here's a look at the best-selling nonfiction books of independent booksellers across the country. topping the list this week.