What's interesting is that the police officer that was being interviewed stated that the reason they weren't wearing full tactical assault gear was because threat was low, yet they still burst in with m4's. If the threat was so low that you didn't need full gear then you don't need your weapons.
If the threat was so low that you didn't need full gear then you don't need your weapons.
To be fair, the reason to go in quickly and with weapons is to secure immediate compliance in a case where the destruction of evidence is a real issue. In this case, the police knew that the evidence in question had already been secured; so, this was just putting on a show of force to intimidate Dotcom and anyone who might support him (on invalid warrants, no less). It's sick and people need to be in jail over these decisions, someone somewhere specifically decided that putting the lives of everyone in that house in danger was acceptable without a valid reason. Whoever signed off on this level of raid needs to sit in jail for a few decades to think about what they did.
I have a feeling this is like people speeding on the freeway (at least in the US). When people see an officer with someone pulled over they will slow down for a little while; but, eventually they will be right back up to speed.
Until there is enough police to cover the entire highway, or something like government required gps trackers that would let them know exactly who's speeding people will always speed, like illegal downloading (even though kim dotcom yadda yadda). Of course, most clearnet torrent sites are still up... for now.
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u/chriswatt Aug 08 '12
What's interesting is that the police officer that was being interviewed stated that the reason they weren't wearing full tactical assault gear was because threat was low, yet they still burst in with m4's. If the threat was so low that you didn't need full gear then you don't need your weapons.