Meanwhile, injuries and sometimes deaths occur, and community trust in the police is shattered. Balko provides copious examples of SWAT teams raiding the wrong addresses or finding nothing but decriminalized marijuana inside. However, he writes, those who volunteer for SWAT teams or are chosen by police chiefs and sheriffs frequently harbor a cowboy mentality inappropriate when raiding homes unannounced with high-velocity weapons at the ready. Balko takes pains to state that police officers face daily danger and that most of them serve honorably. With SWAT teams often serving as the front line in the so-called "war on drugs," abuses have been occurring with alarming frequency since the 1960s. At Reason magazine and, before that, at the Cato Institute, Balko was a pioneer at tracking the excessive violence of SWAT teams, especially in the context of raids on private homes suspected of harboring violators of drug laws. The contemporary brutality forming the centerpiece of the exposé derives from Special Weapons and Tactics units-SWAT teams. Huffington Post senior investigative reporter Balko combines a searing exposé focusing on a specific kind of police brutality with a contextual history of police violence from the Roman Empire through today.
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