Police use of SWAT tactics has gotten out of hand, says author (podcast)
Rise of the Warrior Cop
July 2013
List price: $26.99
When author Radley Balko was working as a policy analyst for the Cato Institute, he covered the Drug War as part of the civil liberties beat. And news articles kept popping up about drug raids gone wrong, in which SWAT teams raided the wrong house or people were injured and killed.
“I kept reading these articles, and at the end there would always be a quote from a police department spokesman who would say, ‘This is an isolated incident, this almost never happens,’” he recounts to the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles. “And if you read enough stories about these ‘isolated incidents,’ you start to wonder how isolated they really are.”
In this podcast, Balko explains how his investigations led to his new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, and what the militarization trend might mean for the country.
Feature:
ABA Journal: “How did America’s police become a military force on the streets?”
ABAJournal.com: “10 police raids gone wrong” (photo gallery)
Related articles:
Salon: “‘Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book’: The new warrior cop is out of control”
Vice Magazine: “How Cops Became Soldiers: An Interview with Police Militarization Expert Radley Balko”
Nashville Scene: “In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Radley Balko tackles the dangers of militarized police units run amok on U.S. soil”
In This Podcast:
Radley Balko
Radley Balko is an award-winning investigative journalist who writes about civil liberties, police and prosecutors, and the broader criminal justice system. He is a senior writer and investigative reporter for the Huffington Post, where his blog posts can be read at The Agitator. Previously, he was a senior editor for Reason magazine and a policy analyst for the Cato Institute. Follow him on Twitter: @RadleyBalko
