interest and they decided to give 2,000 trees to the united states in her honor. everyone was shocked. the trees that were sent or older, very tall, and but-infested. it was decided that there would have to be burned. in fact, president taft and self-made decision that there would have to be burned. the japanese were very accommodating and understanding and decided to send 3,000 to trees which arrived in 1912, and we still have a few around the tidal basin. >> meet helen taft, wife of the 27th president, william howard taft monday 99:00 deadline eastern on c-span and c-span three, also on c-span radio and c-span.org. >> up next on book tv radley balko talks about the militarization of the police and the united states, including the expanded use of s.w.a.t. teams to deal with low-level crimes. he argues that today police officers have become conditioned to seeing american citizens as

the enemy. this is about an hour and ten minutes. >> thank you so much for coming pretty we will go ahead and get started. i'm the director of government affairs for the cato institute commented it will be talking about the new book by radley balko, "rise of the warrior cop: the militarization of america's police forces." in the book, it goes through the current state of where police forces are, which is a little bit different than i think they used to be and what a lot of people realize they are. i will introduce our speakers in a moment, but one quick thing about what we will do today. we will have radley balko speak first. then we have marked lomax will talk with the issue. and then plenty of time for q&a. i also want to know that on the cato-affiliated website we have on maps that goes through a lot of the incidents that will be mentioned today and where they happened in the details of the story in the ongoing and updated. so let me briefly introduce our

speakers. radley balko is a senior writer and investigative performer for the huffington post record close set route to the civil liberties and the criminal-justice system and is also a media fellow at the cato institute. a former senior editor and has worked in the u.s. supreme court. cited by the mississippi state supreme court and has had a direct impact on multiple cases that the state level. mark lomox is the second director of the national tactical officers association previously working in liberia, west africa as a program manager for the united nations overseeing the liberian national police emergency response unit and a police support unit. he also served as the director for the bureau of training and education and retire with the pennsylvania state police with over 27 years of service and is a graduate of the fbi national academy. with that'll turn things over. >> thank you, and thanks to

cater for putting this on. thank you for agreeing to it. i'm just going to jump right and . so right around thanksgiving in 2006 a narcotics task force with the atlanta police department was out on patrol, i guess, and they saw someone walking along side of the road, and added they had previously arrested for various professes. they jumped out on him, threw into the ground, pulled a gun on them and it was later found out that they planted a bag of marijuana on him. he knew he had a long rap sheet. they knew it. they told him they would let them go if he told them where they could find a supply of drugs. so he made an address, basically on the spot. the address happens to be that of catherine johnston, a 92-year-old woman who lived in a

rough part of atlanta. she kept an old, rusty revolver by her bed that she used to scare off people when she felt threatened. now, what is supposed to happen at this point when they get a tip like this is this supposed to get a confidential informant to do a controlled by from this address. but that process could take two to three days and they wanted to get to the source of the by immediately for reasons i will explain in a minute. instead they may have been informed, to slide on the affidavit, created an informant out of thin air, claimed that the brunt -- bought the drugs from this address. instead of taking a few days it took a few hours. and by later that evening there were breaking down catherine johnson store. she heard people breaking into our house, gets up, grabs her trusty, rusty, nonfunctional revolver. when they break down the door she is standing their holding a gun. they opened fire and kill her.

now, the originally stated that she fired at them first. it found that that was not true. it began did not work. two officers were hit by bullets fired by other police officers. a call to ambulances for the wounded officers, did not call an ambulance and initially for catherine johnston. instead, they handcuffed her and left her to bleed to death on the living-room floor. one officer went down to the basement to plan marijuana that they claim she it's all. so at this point their realize they have to cover their tracks. they have to find an informant who is going to say he was the informant in a search warrant. they get to this guy that used in past investigations. you know, informants tend to be somewhat shady characters, rival drug dealers, drug addicts, people tried to get there on charges dropped or diminished. in to his credit, this guy would not play along. there is this amazing 91 call worried tells the number from the back of a cruiser atlanta and says they're trying to give

me to say i helped kill that old lady and i don't want any part of it. he realizes that this tip of the conversation he is having with these police officers is not going well, some regions of the cars are stiffly. pursue him. there is a surreal chase through downtown atlanta where he is trying to run, running from businesses, they're chasing after him. also working with the atf. he finds a phone, call says atf handler his moves in and pick some of the drives and not to the suburbs. that put him up in a motel and others a federal investigation. what we found in the federal investigation was that this was rampant in atlanta. line nine search warrants was,. these raids in the wrong house is were common. an 88-year-old woman who had previously been raided, the atlanta city council held hearings where lots of other people can floridian set to yes, this happened to us. and what the federal investigation found was that there were quotas on atlanta

police department's narcotics officers. hado wrestle many peoe each month, sees a minimum quantity of illegal drugs each month. this is out of performance reviews are done, this is how -- to the raises and promotions and how they were evaluated on how they did their jobs. there's a reason why. that was that there were federal grants that go strictly toward drug policing. so if you have all these police departments across the country competing for this limited pool of federal money that goes toward drug policing. there is pressure and on the police department to produce the kinds of statistics that will make the department competitive for these funds. they then pass that pressure on to their individual to of individual officers. eventually the entire a narcotics what was either fired or transferred to another department. promises for reforms that really did not end up happening. and had to create a civilian

review board, but it was later sort of rendered impotent by lawsuits from the police union. in the end, the 93-year-old woman was killed, and very little changed in form and -- in terms of actual or foreign policy changes. the lead with this story because it embodies a lot of let's talk when the buck. the perverse incentives, the use of the forced entry tactics. this was not a s.w.a.t. team necessarily. it was a narcotics task force, but it was a forced entry at night. the incentive was to take shortcuts around the fourth amendment. strictly not implying that all police officers lie on search warrants, but i am implying that these incentives create an inducement for taking shortcuts. i'm going to get into this. this is an old cold war ," commonly retreated to winston churchill, although i have not

yet found any proof that he said it. it was a sentiment that for a long time in this country this is i would distinguish ourselves from eastern bloc countries, democracy means when there's a knock on the door is probably the milkman. bring that up to show the perspective. you can think back on that and see how far we have come since the cold war. in the u.s. we have always had this -- from this firm line between the military and the police. there is a good reason for that. two very different jobs. the military's job is to annihilate an enemy. officers are to protect our rights. there are not similar jobs at all. the only similarities are that they both carry guns and are authorized to use force. unfortunately politicians think the jobs are very similar reals a lot, i think, about some of the policies we have today.

but for the most part we have done a pretty good job keeping the military out of domestic policing. we don't have soldiers patrolling the streets, soldiers during search warrants. during the regular ministration as a push to do that. they wanted to bring in active duty military troops. that was the military has pushed back on this. one of the few bad ideas this was the number two man the pentagon. marine major general. mendicancy basically his historical resulting in disaster. what i argue in my book is we have done this around it.

instead of bringing soldiers in to do domestic law enforcement we have allowed the encourage basically beyond like police and use the tactics of an adult the mindset of soldiers. in the outcome, the military were actually doing domestic policing themselves. so we will play a quick little game here. a game called copper soldier. i'm going to show you a photo. is a cop. soldier. cop. those are actually cops.

soldiers. soldiers. cops. that is an oregon state trooper. so you get the idea. it is becoming increasingly difficult to just tell the difference. so back and -- that's a cop, by the way. [laughter] i'm going to give you a little bit of history now. there are two kind of trends that were going on in the late 60's and early 70's. one of them was the rise in s.w.a.t. teams, and the other was the rise in the war on drugs. s.w.a.t. teams came about in los angeles when daryl gates was an inspector at lapd and was in charge of the department's response to the watts riot. and gates was very troubled by what happened. justifiably so. he basically thought he was in the middle of an urban war. these were guerrilla warfare tactics being used against the

city and police officers, firefighters. and gates feared that lapd had not -- did not have an audit -- at away respond. a lot of civil unrest. the reason to think that there would be more incidents like this. so he started looking for answers. he started working with some marines at camp pendleton in came up with this idea of assembling this -- and the unit of police officers that would be specially trained in specific areas to respond to these kinds of situations and basically deal with them immediately. so you would have somebody who was trained to deal with snipers, someone crowd control, breach or waste. the idea is this would be a very quickly moving unit that could respond instantly and with the overpowering force to these kinds of emergency situations. one interesting sort of historical nuggets of this, when you first broached the idea of the chief william parker at the time shot it down because he said that this came too close to

breaching this historical divide between the military and police. gates continued with the idea surreptitiously, and when a new police chief took over, parker died -- i think it was in 6768, he get the green light to go ahead with this idea. he named it s.w.a.t. the original acronym was special weapons assault team. someone at lapd said that is normally not get an idea to have a sultan the teams of the chases special weapons and tactics. there are couple early race that were very high profile. the very first one was on a black panther all that and l.a. that ended up being televised on state tv or city tv. the second was a few years later . that one thrust the s.w.a.t. concept into popular culture. everyone had been following. they kidnapped this newspaper heiress. a tabloid news story of the day.

and the fbi and then it al qaeda -- lapd cornered them at this building as the los angeles. all sorts of issues there. you can go to youtube and find video of reporters ducking under cars while they're reporting on a shed that was going on. and it really kind of pushed swap into the popular culture. euros you had taken on this domestic terrorist groups. so we did in 1975 a tv show produced by aaron spelling, which i highly recommend if you like 70's cheesy kind of fast-talking cop shows. amazing. and we get the milton bradley board game. that you masters said, lunchbox. little dicasts. you can get your son to raid his sister's dog house or whenever. and really kind of then it becomes this big idea. so at the same time then nixon in '72 declares war on drugs.

he pushes through this idea of that no not great. one of the interesting things about it is that it originally was in the rockefeller administration in new york. rockefeller had brought up the idea, and it was not something that police chiefs were clamoring for were demanding. it was not something that criminologists were saying was necessary. it was a political ploy, the rockefeller wanted to pass to show he was getting tough on drugs. the nixon administration then adopted the idea on the advice of a 29-year-old senate aide. this was not something law enforcement was demanding. and the no not raid ended up passing congress, two bills, one in d.c. and one that applied to federal agents working across the country. two interesting things that happened. in d.c. the chief of police actually decides not to use it. he says it is too invasive, too militaristic. it is effective. and he decides he actually takes it out of the metro police

manual and tells his office is not to conduct these rates. crime actually goes down over the next few years. well, it goes up and the rest of the country. i am not saying that not using the not great is why crime went down, but clearly it was not -- it did not hurt things in d.c., not using it. it did not make things worse. nationally these federal officers, federal narcotics officers started conducting these raids across the country. this was accompanied by a lot of rhetoric from the nixon administration dehumanizing drug offenders, really using this marshall rhetorics and we have to declare all-out war all-out race, referred to drug offenders as vermin. and you see these out of control narcotic and a federal narcotics officers raiding houses, and connecting rates without warrants committing wrong houses. the news coverage, the ap did some investigation.

cases where the wrong people were rated. three years later they repeal those laws and actually passed another law making the federal government liable for a mistake conducted by federal agents. and it was a rare moment with the drug war was not yet completely intractable and congress did sort of say we went too far here. yet the rise in spot team spirit throughout the 70's what teens were used for the original purpose, the idea of using violence to fuse and already violence situation. the state felons. and they're used in a way that is very effective, save lives.

there were usually in plain clothes, undercover officers during the 1980's. nbc these two trends converged. so you see this ratcheting up of the marshall rhetoric from the regular administration. he declared drugs a threat to u.s. national security. the drug war was compared to the battle in world war one, i have always found that in using. it is known as being this long, protracted, bloody battle that really did not mean anything and neither side really could claim victory after was done. the metaphor is probably more apt than he realized at the time , but you see really more and more of this dehumanizing of drug offenders from the reagan administration and from a lot of members of congress. this was actually a bipartisan. i mentioned in the book that the leading democrat in congress was

very, very critical of the reagan drug policy. not going nearly far enough. and so sort of a bipartisan race to an all-out war on drug offenders. yes, william bennett, reagan's education secretary and our first official drugs are who have one point said he would have no moral objection to publicly be heading drug dealers and then you have gates also who at one point said he thought that drug users cannot dealers, should be taken out in the street and shot. that was the position he had to walk back with his sun was, what -- call with drugs a couple times. you really do see this ratcheting up of the rhetoric. this has an effect on the way these policies are being carried out on the ground. he creates these joint task force is now. he start creating these federal

anti programs * making the military equipment available to police agencies to use. police departments are now allowed to start accessing in using their a lot of examples in the buck. this rhetoric serves to filter down to police agencies across the country. this is from just a few years ago. the sheriff in clayton county, georgia. and this is striking to me. this is not -- he is saying not only do we need to wage war on drugs, but it has to be, you know, a muscular, tough war like the normandy invasion, not one of those puny was like vietnam. he is talking about his own constituents and say we need to basically treat his own constituents as if we were invading the beaches of normandy again, when your share says that, that has to have an impact on the ways deputies look at the people that they are serving in the people of a community. so what we see is with this

military equipment going to the police department, federal grants that are tried -- tied to drug policing, police departments start s.w.a.t. teams and they're is a strong financial incentive to use them. the federal grants, you also have asset forfeiture which allows the police to take property that they think is connected to drug activity or illegal activity and some might. the person who owns the property never has to say if he would be charged with a crime and then you have to go to court to when the property back. you own it legitimately. and so there is this added incentive. so you have got your s.w.a.t. team. you can keep them in m until one of these legitimate emergencies cribs up or you can send them out on dry erase which has the potential to actually brevard back to the police department. so there's a strong incentive to sem out on track rates. this is -- in the late 90's there were a series of surveys done a police departments across the country and basically as some going back to the early

80's have many times they used their team. we found in the late 70's there were a few hundred rates per year across the country. think about these types of emergency situations. may make some sense. by the early 80's we're up to a few thousand per year. and when there was a follow-up survey done in 2005 we estimate there were up to about 50,000 per year. so from a few hundred in the 70's to about 50,000 per year, 2005. there is not really any good data since then, but all the trends that have been driving this have continued. so i think it's and 65 the state estimates that it is not going down. this was sheriff lee on law in richmond county, south carolina. this is a tank. he get this through a pentagon giveaway program. as a 360-degree rotating machine gun turret on top of that 260 caliber ammunition which is a type of ammunition that even the

military has restrictions on. it is completely inappropriate for domestic policing. he calls the state the peacemaker. he put out a press release when they came out with this photo with a "at the top the said from the bible, when he was announcing his tank. to give you an idea in what sorts of situations -- this level of force appropriate he may remember a few years ago, michael phelps was photographed smoking pot and south carolina. well, he personally took offense as big as it happened in this county. so is actually a lawsuit pending is a right now. take with a grain of salt that this is one half of the lawsuit. description of what happened is that he actually sent his s.w.a.t. team and to raid the homes of the people who were pictured in that photo. so there are these surreal descriptions of s.w.a.t. teams breaking into homes, throwing people on the ground, pointing guns at them and screaming, not

where the guns or where the drugs but what do you know about michael phelps. which is amusing and sort of terrifying of the same time. these are just some various photos of military gear utilized by police departments. a lot of you may have heard about this case in maricopa county where action stars even -- steve is a god and deputized. there were from a reality show. but they sent him out in a tank that he got to the pentagon program after this poor guy who was suspected of cockfighting. raising chickens to fight each other. unable @booktv ordered to serve the warrant he drove the tank into the guise of her. when asked if that was inappropriate use of force he said he was an animal lover. that is what the force was justified. in that euthanizing of the chickens and killing the dogs as well. these are just sort of -- this is a s.w.a.t. team at the

university of north carolina, charlotte. this is another trend. college campuses are starting their own s.w.a.t. teams. and the justification is always virginia tech, columbine, mass shooting incidents. we have to be prepared. the problem is that these incidents are rare. they get coverage when they happen, but they're is a sociologist at the university of virginia that has crunched the numbers and says that the estimates, the average mills school, a school or college campus can expect to see hamas on campus about once every six or 7,000 years. the idea that you need is what c-span2 every college campus to guard against the shootings is a little overblown. of course once you have it you want to use it, and there are plenty of drug offenders and drug dealers on college campuses to keep them busy once they're up and running. these are a couple maps that we did when i wrote this paper for the cato institute.

the idea was to dispel the idea that these mistaken raids, while rare in proportion to the total number of raids time, that they were rare in number. and there is no sort of comprehensive way to catalog. but i would estimate, i guess, stories of them a couple of times a week. these are actual documented cases. you can click on these contacts and get description of what happened with the media just a little bit. there are two other major milestones i want to talk about.

1996 when california legalizes medical marijuana. until this point the argument for this kind of force was that drug dealers were dangerous people, heavily armed, they had no moral qualms about killing police officers. and there are rebuttals of those arguments, but those were the arguments being made. we need this kind of forced to respond to a proportion a threat. like california illegalize medical marijuana it in several states did not follow suit the federal government responds by sending s.w.a.t. teams to re medical marijuana connects. at this point you can no longer say that these people are a threat. these clinics are openly operating. most of them have business licenses, operating under state law. the hippie mom-and-pop couple running the pot dispensaries are not going to take a gun out from under the counter and kill a bunch of federal agents. so at this point the use of this sort of force is about sending a message, about making an example

of these people because they're fighting federal law. i would submit that this is sort of a terrace and development. and the government is now using violence to make a political statement, this is not something we normally associate with a free society. of course these rates have continued ever since and in effect religious decelerated it be. the next kind of major milestone that we see michigan created a s.w.a.t. team in the last decade or so. start finding the stories were s.w.a.t. teams are being used for increasingly petty crimes. and also sort of using these crimes as a way to get around a fourth amendment which will explain the minute. we see the rise of the texas hold on poker game. responses from local communities where the s.w.a.t. teams are raised a -- rating is never a poker games. in some cases there may have been legitimate significant family operations, but in other

cases they are raiding bars that are openly advertise in this program. recently documented a case in dallas where they raided a veterans of foreign wars hall because there were conducting charity games that were not in compliance with texas law. instead of sending a couple bureaucrats to say you need to change a you're doing this they sent us what team to scare the hell out of marilyn. we now think that spot raids, to even enforce regulatory law, an average of one of these cases a few years ago in virginia. a 15-member police raid on a school all done under the guise of an alcohol inspection. you know, this was actually a drug investigation, but it did not have enough evidence to get a search warrant to conduct a drug search. instead, they belong someone from the regulatory agency and now this is officially in of all inspection in another rating it with the s.w.a.t. team. in the guy who owns the bar brought a federal lawsuit and the federal court of appeals actually said that there is

nothing unreasonable by sending a s.w.a.t. team to enforce regulatory law, which is also sort of -- this is in orlando, florida a few years ago. the police suspected there was jury activity going on in a without enough evidence to the search warrant. so they call the the state occupational licensing board who sent an inspector along, and now this is a license inspection to make sure their barber's were properly licensed to care. i think they arrested 37 people, either 37 of 47. and all but three were arrested for barbering without a license. two people at some drugs on the men were charged with misdemeanor and one had enough to be charged with felony. this is true of almost any government. he tried sarah seek out new reasons for your existence. racine is with s.w.a.t. teams. now being deployed. one point in the 70's there were the absolute last resort, now we are increasingly seeing them as a first resort.

in fact i just debated a police officer and fox is this morning he said that there are lots of police departments to only serve every single search warrant with the s.w.a.t. team. i was the first i heard that. again, this is not about assessing the threat. this is about we have a hammer, so every problem looks like a nail. i'm going to close with some of these. you will have to read the book to get this tequila kneele story. i encourage it. a team of tibetan monks and a peace mission who overstay their visas. naturally their response was to send a s.w.a.t. team. it started in seattle. i interviewed the police chief who orchestrated their response. he now calls it to -- because it one of the biggest mistakes of his career because he receives -- pcs the aches response since

then has been to expect confrontation. when you got expecting confrontation and inevitably happens. a scene from denver. the ratio of riot police tactual protesters. the t-shirt that the denver police union sold the into the protest in denver, two dozen date. it says, we get up early to beat the crowd. at this sort -- the fact that a police organization was selling these was rather disturbing. and this goes back to the -- what we call the mind set problem which is that when you take police officers and you on them like soldiers, train them in military tactics, switch to these battle dress uniforms which are more mimic the military and tell them there fighting a war, it does have an effect on the way they approach their jobs. i mean, i should not be surprising to anyone. and it sort of encourages them to as seeing the people that they serve as an other or an

enemy. i will close with this story because i think it really kind of illustrates how absurd things to become. so he was 21 at the time, 2001. police raid on his house. he lived in a duplex. the guy who lived on the other side and drug charges pending. his name was not of a warrant. his girlfriend's was, but they're rated both sides. he had no criminal record. home with his 18-month-old daughter about of 30 in the morning. he wakes up to the sound of people trying to break-in. the police claim they knocked and announce themselves. he says then he never heard them. you went to the better, laid down by his daughter with a gun that a cap on the night stand up in the mice with away. he did not. the door flies open. a figure in black enters the room. cory fires three shots and kills officer ron jones. now jones was white wearing black and a part of mississippi

where race is unfortunately still a suffocating part of everyday life. jones also happens to be the son of a town police chief. his version of events was that he had no idea these were police. the, you know, shot and fired one of these figures to protect himself and his daughter. as soon as you realize there were cops to surrender then dropped his gun with three bullets still left in again. the state's version was that cory looked out the window and saw that a rating team of police was coming at him, that he decided to take them on with a handgun, shot and killed one of them and then surrendered with bullets still left in the gun. you know, you can decide which of those in areas you find more plausible. but basically he had a wrote in his house that would have gone in the $50 fine. he was charged and convicted of capital murder. the intention of killing a police officer and sentenced to death. else gives her all the legal stuff that happened in between, but eventually a couple of years ago the conviction was

overturned by the mississippi supreme court. he was given a new trial. prosecutors decided that there would allow him to plead to felony manslaughter and he would get time served. at this point he had been in prison for ten years. i tell the story because at his homecoming party, very celebratory and joyous occasion. take the kids out for rides on is for real hair. a big soul food buffet and everyone is happy and joyous that he is out and free in back with his kids. talking to an attorney about this. we were happy, but at some point we realized how assertive was that we were happy. this is a guy who had done nothing wrong, maybe smokes pot, but he was not the drug dealer there were looking for. he had people break into his home in the middle of the night, put in a terrifying position of having to make this life-and-death decision, made a mistake, like a lot of police officers have done in these rates. the state then tried to kill him, taken away from his case for ten years, and this was a

guy you actually was great to his kids. the mother of the woman he had a child with out of wedlock testified as a character witness at his trial to give you an idea of what a father he was. and he was actually defending his kids that night. so we're sitting there, take away from his gifts for ten years, now has a felony record, never vote. he has to explain it is a felon every time he applies for a job. and this was one of the good stories. this was a good outcome. we were relieved that this happened. it was an illustration of just how low, i think, our expectations and become on this particular issue that we could be joyous at this particular occasion. with that at think i will turn it over to mark and will go from there. thank you. [applause]

>> good afternoon. how is everyone? [laughter] i wanted to thank the cato institute for providing this forum today. i want to thank you for your participation and attendance here and 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. yesterday morning a young 24- year-old orlando police officer, jason hijack, was shot twice during a traffic stop. he is recuperating in recovering

now. this is another incident to remind us all of the danger that faces our law-enforcement communities each day. i would like to thank radley balko on the release of his book. you are -- in looking at the reviews he has created quite a stir in the discussion of paramilitary station a police today. that's a good thing. discussion, critique and review of any price of -- prospekt, system, law, and your procedure is good for the growth, improvement, reflection, or change. we must never forget that policing in america is a civil servant position. it is funded by taxpayers and that they are accountable to the public. do you agree on that? all right. the perception of police has

mentioned in the book is that of us against them or them against us. to me, that is not an accurate statement. the vast majority of police officers take pride in their duties and are actively involved in the service and protection of our communities. stay in and day out these men and women risk their lives for security and freedoms of our public. however, there have been times when certain officers, units, and our departments have misused the authority and committed actions that have developed -- ended in injuries or accidents. there have been the catalyst for the immediate action which is rarely so. lately the use of tactical teams has 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 external and internal reviews and to learn from past best and worst practices to ensure that professionalism of police and tactical teams is portrayed and further developed and not misused. i have witnessed firsthand when i was in liberia, west africa, the tragedy of abuse of power and absolute power in policing and in the military. we in the united states are sometimes flawed granted but the gold seal for policing throughout the world. we should take pride in a compliment. in our country we have had -- we have many checks and balances that ensure our freedom.

one such check and balance was the freedom of speech, more specifically the media. having open discussions like the one we're having here today is necessary to insure accountability and necessary improvements in how we police. the ability to effectively communicate with and the law-enforcement community provides a peer review process allowing for the collective body of the best practices in internal accountability. the national technical officer association, a 30-year old nonprofit association comprised of dedicated members of the tactical enforcement community, k-9, and negotiators, corrections and control. they do not have to editorial regulatory authority.

they provide a forum for training and exchange of ideas through its quarterly publications, trading prices, and conferences. it advocates for professionalism , safety, and performance standards in the tactical community. those states have their as the texas association that also provide a similar form of training, exchange of ideas, a commitment to professionalism and performance standards. between the end tea zero a and the state association we recognize that there are times when mistakes were made for utilization of tactical crisis. sometimes lives are lost come back injuries sustained, and even police officers. very important. it is the depth -- the mission

of tac your teams to save lives. whether it is the victim, and census and, police officer , or even a suspect. through the use of such equipment, tactics, and weapons, these units are available tool that police departments can use for situations that are above the training and capability of first responders, and that is the intent and mission of s.w.a.t. with over 18,000 police departments, tragic situations will occur. however, the goal of zero occurrences of police-related injury, death, wrongful activity is the foundation of associations like the ngo way, the international association of chiefs of police, the police executive research forum, national sheriffs' association, and other associations similar.

your platform such as training, conferences, communications standards, their research, the capability to lessen the situations increases and the environment is enhanced. the concept of paramount transition in policing is up for discussion today. the use of tactical teams in the furtherance is in accordance with the book. ..

the black panther party, what was the other one? here is a picture of what was found. you can include that in the next book. also, ron has some corrections for this book that he needs to give you since he was there. you talked about it? also, mccarthy was one of the original founders of the members

represent some of the best tactical officers in the country to include large and midsize small department sheriffs and police departments to bring to the association a wealth of experience and also the instructor cadre. the ntoa had revised standards from the association's. the guidelines for the leadership again they do not have any regulatory or statutory authority. however, many teams have used them on the standards and whole or that develop their own policies as a framework. in addition many had many bonding and non-binding standards for the tactical teams.

currently, as mr. balko mentioned, it's difficult to get a big picture on the status of the use of tactical teams, how they are used, when they are used, the outcomes, what type of equipment is being used to pay their fair and several of limited studies in an area of the past several decades but nothing as far as the national in debt research study to be as a, i am pleased to announce today here that the ntoa is in a final agreement with the international association of the chief of police to conduct a national survey in debt research project covering hope in the past ten years on the use of tactical teams. the ntoa will fund the research project which will be conducted along with the chicago-based national research center. i would like to introduce john come of the research center director and he will be handling

this endeavor. along with the state association the right to distinguish perception from reality debunking the net where it proves otherwise or confirming improper procedures and practices that need to be addressed. today as evidence many individuals have reasonable interests and en understanding team practices more fully particularly citizens and the media, community organizations and governing bodies. the study will facilitate a more accurate view of tactical team actions from a statistically defined perspective over time versus focusing on anecdotal incidents. i know there are other areas of concern that are mentioned in this book and in the writings named in the pentagon giveaways,

the anti-terrorist grants, and asset forfeiture laws. these policies are legislative and executive office initiatives, which i know they will have comments on today. these initiatives need to be reviewed and discussed in a public forum with legislators in which the community can voice its opinion with their respective legislatures. it is through this process changes can be made if deemed so and it's all a part of our check and balance system that we have. so in closing i would like to thank you for your participation here and look forward to meeting with you afterwards and taking any questions you may have and also if you have any questions for mccarthy were john during

the q&a or after this session they are available also. thank you. [applause] before we open up i would like to give about a minute or so to address anything that they want it to. >> just a few quick comments i'm sure that we would disagree about what sort of situations are appropriate for tactical units and my definition or my range of situations are probably much narrower but in the extent we do have the teams i would like to emphasize and i find this out in the book that there are legitimate reasons for using the service tactics and that's when you have these immediate threats, when you have these emergency types of situations the chief objection is when

again you are using violence to diffuse already violent situations the objection is when you are creating violence and confrontation where there was none before which is what i would argue is happening on the drug race. but again i would like to emphasize i think there are legitimate reasons so the extent we are doing to have them i think ntoa provides a service id which is to establish a best practices and guidelines if we are going to have these units we want them to be as well-trained and professional as possible to get that said, this obviously they were very well armed. but this gets to my point also that i would not object to the use of those tactics in that way. that is a perfectly appropriate use you have a violent group that is depending on the story believe that a police officer went to respond to the knees complaint and had a bunch of guns pointed at him or other

scenarios. there are competing narrative's about what happened but i wouldn't consider this an inappropriate use at all so the fact that they were this well-armed i think proves it was a legitimate use for this type of force. that's about all i have actually. >> in reading mr. balko's book i went through a lot more of this than this. >> can i quote you on that? [laughter] can i put that in the paperback? [laughter] >> we have had discussions in the past, and we agree we more than disagree and the use of the tactical teams should be limited and therefore we advocate that it should not be used every day. it should be used as a last

resort for certain situations. so in that regard we are grateful. >> you are killing my street credit here. [laughter] >> questions for the panelists? yes, sir. >> some of the things have been covered around ten coming 11, 12 but the fact is half of that as a result if we take the sampling of the videos you can see the police and action. that number is actually killed and can reduce considerably if something was done with confrontational behavior almost every video shown shows some kind of improper action usually a great deal of improper action. if you go beyond that with the details right now, the fact is

the police need to be prosecuted when the overstep film all. these examples deer usually just write off the book. there are exceptions but if the police are not prosecuted when the overstep their rights, we basically live in a society of different people having different kinds of rights. they are effectively their such as the fbi and various other legislations. >> have you had a chance to comment? >> this is a common frustration. i think that the number of rogue police officers is very small as

a percentage of total police officers. the frustration comes when those officers are not held accountable and that suggests a more systemic problem. and a the other sort of related issue that i found is when you have one of these raids where an innocent person gets killed, the reaction from the police department and usually the prosecutors are inevitably that the police officers were following procedures so there was no criminal violation, and also there's nothing wrong with the procedures and we are not in to change the procedures. so if an innocent person buys through no wrongdoing of the officers because they are following procedure and there's nothing wrong with the procedures, the inevitable conclusion is that it is perfectly acceptable to have innocent people died during these drug raids. there is no other way to look at it. either something went wrong with this is an expected outcome and that is the frustration that when things do go wrong and i

imagine the vast majority of these are conducted very professionally and innocent people don't die but when things do go wrong it doesn't appear to be any significant accountability and i think that's where people think there's a more systemic problem. >> the first statement about the officer died in on the line of duty were being involved in traffic accidents more than being killed in the line of duty but that is a very big issue because that vehicle is a weapon whether they are being used to hurt others were hurt themselves >> [inaudible] >> by the police. so that is a true statement. getting back to accountability,

when i retired i was in charge of the state police academy, and one of my speeches and give to every academy class that i hold to my standards and the other academy classis is that effective tomorrow when you graduate you are held at a higher standard than anybody else 24/77 days a week in putting your family's and you're going to be watched. anything you do because somebody else can do it you can't get away with it. when it comes to the police department or a prosecutor not prosecuting misconduct, that is an issue that you and your community should take because the district attorney or the attorney general republic the elected officials and that's an issue that you take up with those. >> efficient and overwhelming

majority of them engaged in a conversational behavior in their dealings with people. >> i appreciate the comment. >> a quick question they basically get a description to seek confidentiality for [inaudible] is a registered? >> maryland is the only state that requires that now. >> you talk about the criminal side and the rules where what about the reform and maybe talking about language and

leadership to develop and proceed? >> i mean, it's not going to be a popular opinion but i think qualified immunity does kind of put officers in the state of mind that the are of the law. i do understand the argument that police officers need some extra protection so they are not sort of hesitating before using force when it is necessary. the community basically ruled out negligence to it so you have to prove basically the intent before you can even get into the courtroom. the police officers aren't actually paying these damages. it's very rare that a police officer or the jury awards punitive damages. it's usually the tax payers. so i don't know if it is a legal standard. i think it would be good to create something under that so at least agree just negligence of some kind could be addressed

through the system, but right now it's tough to get into court. >> i meant individual police officers to disconnect that's never going to fly. it's not coming to happen. >> you seem like a nice guy but [inaudible] two questions did they obtain a tank or make a t-shirt that advertisers [inaudible] and if they are not, why can anyone in this room conclude it is not a complete failure? >> but, on professionalism like

the t-shirt, mistake to get a that's a mistake. there is no way to quantify that. as far as the tank, the one and maricopa county is part of the one in l.a.. >> one of the first armored vehicles my department obtained from the second job that i had in training the government tactical people and we use them as rescue vehicles when citizens or officers were in that front yard after somebody was shot and shot and killed them. we don't know whether their lives are dead, so therefore our

first priority was one we recommend to law enforcement is citizen ct number one before officer safety period, end of story. and you are shaking your head, sir but the civilian officers were the ones who entered and phased out of the psychologist and she was shot multiple times and the serjeant is in a sample of putting citizens hefty ahead of a police officer safety. >> [inaudible] >> that is the armored vehicle. they were not utilized for a number of different purposes. one was houses that were heavily

fortified with weapons and they fortified them liked solid etc and they were utilized for that. the aclu from the suit against the and they had no weapons attached to them and the only weapons that could be utilized for them the highest speed to >> they were utilized supreme court appropriately. they said they should be regulated. how do you utilize them and we showed them our people work and how we administer the use of those and that california supreme court held was appropriate and that's how they were utilized. they were never done away with. now, maricopa county sheriff, who i really don't like -- [applause]

i consider the man and a goof. he got a regular tank and then he painted it with the maricopa county colors and a star on it and it in their list of his deputies. finally to mention one of them if i might, please triet in response to the officer, my partner was murdered december 8, 1960 and was beating adequately and appropriately. the officers for a variety of reasons one because they were not in uniform. number two, because they put themselves in vulnerable positions and they are practically on sound. they are either on trained or they don't listen to them train. the majority of cops who were

murdered of 12 years or more on the job or offered complacency and they put themselves in a position. finally, the president of the united states is protected by the secret service as you know. the cooperation between local, state and law enforcement should be given for the right reasons. we know that the security the president of the united states enjoys right now was developed by my swat team and that's where they got? so we have done good things together. the examples that he gives i agree with you. way too many police officers and police departments are not as professional as the need to be but let's not throw out the baby with the the the bathwater. don't take the concept that it's worked and saved a lot of lives

and tragic to get away from it without fixing the problems giving it and we want to do that and that is what mark is really good at and we are moving in that direction. and one day i hope i can meet your standards to more questions to i would be your biggest fan if you could ask questions. >> [inaudible] >> i think you could stop the 10f33 pentagon program. it's in the equipment was designed for use on the battlefield and it's been given to the police departments for use on american streets and neighborhoods against american citizens. so i mean just from a symbolic standpoint, that's important. but i think also the dern grants go to things other than just starting slot teams.

but they do start these multi jurisdictional drug task forces in the gang task forces across the country. the problem with the news is that because the span several jurisdictions, they don't release the six they are sort of clause i independent. so there's been a lot of problems with accountability with them, particularly as we've seen in texas but some of these other cases. so i think ending these grants that start these task forces also ending the grants that go to the drug policing in general on the program as incentives that i was talking about. and i mean again we can get back to the qualified immunity to the starter that's not going to pass but if it did it would be great. unfortunately i think the stuff the policies that have the most impact like ending the drug war are those that are the least likely to happen. so, --

>> [inaudible] i believe it is a different approach. maybe there would be a better. >> this is something that we probably agree on, the concept of community policing with police officers walked more beats and go to neighborhood meetings and they are encouraged to live in the neighborhood that they patrol and they have a stake in the community. and 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 the force to protect them not as somebody from the outside sent to them to

impose forced upon them. more community oriented policing if you hdother ideas. >> whoever is in charge. that's where it starts. >> we do have to -- i wish we could take everyone's questions but i assure the panelists will stick around. thank you for coming to the i think it's important we have the dialogue and continue even after the panel to stick around today. thank you for coming and please join me in thanking our panel list. [applause] >> thanks for doing this.

writing a memoir was difficult in a way because journalists are unfamiliar with the word to the we are used to writing about others, not ourselves. and i remember telling "the washington post" when i started to write the book that it wouldn't sell because it had no

sex in it. >> i think the most important thing a president can do to help the united states is to pick a time and place to keep the economy growing. if the economy doesn't grow, if there isn't jobs it's hard to be able to make a living. and so one of the jobs of the president is to have an economic plan that helps keep economic growth alive. the major chose to keep the peace pity i keep saying that that -- >> judges are like the umpires. umpires don't make the rules. they apply them. the role of an on player and a judge's critical. they make sure that everybody pleased by the rules. but it is a limited role.

nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire. >> of course the constitutional jurisprudence that all of the judges did were sit there and they are outside the strikes and that suggested the job of the justice was relatively mechanical. when justice kagan was questioned, she said well yes. we want the justices to be the focus, we want the war to be the focus but when the justices made a decision, it isn't always as clear or coming right down to the center of the strike zone and there is always some very frequently some degree of judgment that is involved in

determining whether it is constitutional or not. next from the annual roosevelt reading festival when hyde park new york, allida black discusses it is today that we must create the world of the [i futunare. this is] an hour. >> i am the director of franklil roosevelt presidential library,y and it is my pleasure to welcomc you to the keynote address ofthe

our tenth annual roosevelttival. reading festival dedicated the 9oosevelt library in 1941, he 1 declared its purpose to be topur learg together people to learn crom the past that they can gai in judgment in creating the tin future. we thkink that there is no bettr way of fulfilling the purpose o the roosevelt reading festival. it is also our way of showcasing just how completely for the research institution is beingst fulfilled by a variety ofy a authors to produce books of all kinds and in a wide variety ofge subjects.re's it's evidence that there iseare still much that can be learned and great inspiration drawn to the roosevelt era and to the roosevelt reading festival withr a grand audience across the grnd country.udience e ne of this would be possible without the creative and the poi minamics staffbl of the roosevea library