I was talking to an old Marine Corps buddy the other day. He’s a cop (patrolman) in an old New England mill town of 100,000. He’s been on a regional SWAT team in the past, though I don’t think he’s on one now. I asked him about “no knock warrants”.
In general, he said they are appropriate when drugs or a violent armed suspect(s) is involved. I asked him if there are better ways to pick someone up, like wait until they come out of the house.
“Oh, yeah”, he said, “That’s always better. Everybody comes out eventually”.
Then he told me a story. The other day he had to pick up this guy that had beaten up his girlfriend. The suspect supposedly had guns. My buddy rounded up these young cops that he works with and had trained. The young cops asked, “Shouldn’t we call SWAT?” “Nah, we don’t need them”, he replied.
Apparently, the suspect had been running his apartment lights off of an extension cord that ran out of the apartment and into the laundry room next door.
To get the suspect out of the apartment, my buddy unplugged the extension cord. When the suspect left his apartment to find out why the power went out, my buddy grabbed him, put him in an armbar, threw the suspect down the stairs, caught up with him, kneeled on his elbow and jammed a SIG into the suspect’s eye socket.
After one of the young cops cuffed the suspect, he asked my buddy, “why the eye socket?”.
My buddy explained, “Because it looks better than his mouth. If anybody happens to be watching, I don’t want it to look like I’m executing him. And it doesn’t break his teeth. Plus, the eyeball won’t put the gun out of battery. It squishes. And, lastly, it has a very dramatic effect”.
I asked him if he had heard the story of 92 year old Kathryn Johnson in Atlanta. He hadn’t heard of her. I told him the story. None of it surprised him. He said, planting drugs and setting people up was how the prior chief made his name when he was with narcotics.
