http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxc597VQAJU

The Calvos could almost be said to have been lucky. After all, Minneapolis police shot it out with Vang Khang during a 2007 raid on the man’s home, only finding out after the fact that they had the wrong place (officers in the incident were decorated for their “bravery.”). John Adams was shot to death by police during a raid on the wrong house in Lebanon, Tennessee. And Cory Maye is serving life in prison in Mississippi after killing an officer who burst into his home after police staged yet another misfired and poorly planned drug raid that was supposed to hit the next-door apartment in his duplex.

Originally created to deal with emergency or other very-high intensity situations (e.g. snipers, hostages, barricaded suspects), SWAT teams were deployed on fewer than 3,000 occasions in all of 1980. Today, SWAT teams conduct raids more than 50,000 times per year, mostly while doing low-level drug enforcement. This is dangerous, hurtful and wrong.

Please sign the “Petition for Responsible SWAT Reform” to limit SWAT team use to the true emergency or high-intensity situations for which they were created — SWAT teams should be available but rarely used. When you’re done, please visit http://tr.im/pu9Z to watch the video, “SWAT Raids — No One Is Safe” and for more information about this issue. Then, please spread the word so others can see the video and sign the petition too.

Everybody in this country; Drug Free America workers, priests, social workers, surgeons, could all be subject to a no-knock raid at any given time. Nobody is safe!