other kind of guys are rob you rape your children and then demand that you thank them because they're good everybody is James Freeman out here at the Roswell Police Department again because the last time that I was out here they weren't open I recommend Roswell passing through I don't recommend anybody stop and stay for any amount of time an hour or two you've kind of seen what you need to see I'd recommend get now you know what they use that war machine for you work here how do the alarms form oh really it's kind of a contractor type deal yes right on what what do you think of this man war equipment on the streets of the US it protects the officers and the citizens what if it only protects the officers and it doesn't protect the citizens why they're protecting your options your officers can protect citizens really didn't know if they go in there to a small operation get hurt they can't help it so we've got the war machine right here get a better shot of it during the day than I could at night and I don't have the numbers off the top of my head of Swat raids but a good thing about video like this is that I don't actually I mean it's good to have some numbers off the top of your head but most of what I most of videos that I create are really for the viewer more than the individuals that I'm talking to in the video so I get to take and paste the actual statistics into the video later in 1972 paramilitary police units launched a few hundred drug raids annually within the United States by the early 1980s SWAT drug raid numbers increased to 3,000 annually and by 1996 the raids had increased to 30,000 annually most SWAT raids have been used for drug busts not on large drug cartels but low-level drug users and drug dealers in the war on drugs in the early 1970s when the war on drugs began it was said that about 1.3 percent of the u.s. population was addicted to illicit drugs 40 years billions of dollars and thousands of lives later that number sits at an identical 1.3 percent Scott I'm James how you doing nice to meet you I was curious about the military equipment you guys got out there oh yeah I'm sure can I ask some questions about it too and what you guys do with it all right how did you guys get a hold of it those things are pretty expensive right they are I don't know exactly how it works sorry I'm all out of order but its sound the same note that sticker there's to support your your local police and keep them independent yeah so on the same note what does that mean as far as independent mean independent of the feds or not sure I have no idea that's the first I've seen that I'm the lobby so alright cool so you gotta answer your other question it's a it was given to us on a leave it was some kind of federal grant program and clanked like an overflow from the military right to kind of help out local law enforcement with our high-risk operations but it's called the MRAP okay it's basically I can't remember it stands for so it's really intended as an armored personnel carrier not an assault vehicle is that right yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't label it as an assault vehicle we don't really do assaulting as a police department assaulting I think some people would beg to differ but some people am i I mean obviously it's just a matter of opinion but we just use it for protection for ourselves on those vulnerable moments where you're rolling up to a high-risk search warrant armed barricaded subjects hostage situations pretty much anything that our SWAT team would roll up on mine-resistant ambush-protected there you go okay so what would you guys consider high-risk do you get marijuana is legal in New Mexico now is that correct legal in New Mexico there's medical marijuana that's legal in okay so not it's been decriminalized but it's not necessarily like you can't just walk down the street it's all gonna join it's basically instead of getting an arrest citation you would get an on traffic citation for it see it's a fine government says you owe us money you've got the wrong fella in your car okay so yeah would you guys use something like this to bust say we got a marijuana dealer would you guys possibly use something like this to marijuana search warrants even like drug-related search warrants aren't generally listed as high-risk unless there's a history unless we specifically know the suspect has a history of violence either towards other people or towards police armed and dangerous type situations but but according the ACLU 62 percent of Swat raids surveyed were to conduct searches for drugs just under 80 percent were to serve a search warrant meaning 8 and 10 SWAT raids were not initiated to apprehend a school shooter hostage taker or escaped felon the common justification for these tactics but to investigate someone still only suspected of committing a crime in fact 7% of SWAT raids were for hostage barricade or active shooter scenarios in at least 36% of SWAT raid studies no contraband of any kind was found the report notes that due to incomplete police reports on these raids this figure could be as high as 65% SWAT tactics are disproportionately used on people of color 65 percent of SWAT deployments resulted in some sort of forced entry into a private home by way of battering ram boot or some other sort of explosive device in over half of those raids the police failed to find any sort of weapon the presence of which was cited as the reason for the violent tactics though often justified for rare incidents like school shootings or terrorist situations the armored personnel vehicles police are getting from the Pentagon and through grants from the Department of Homeland Security are commonly used on drug raids in other words where violent volatile SWAT tactics were once used only in limited situations where someone was in the process of or about to commit a violent crime where the police were using violence only to defuse an already violent situation SWAT teams today are overwhelmingly used to investigate people who are still only suspected of committing nonviolent consensual crimes and because these raids often involve forced entry into homes often at night they're actually creating violence in conference station where there was none before we don't really do assaulting as a police department just something narcotic related whether the I don't consider we don't consider marijuana uh narcotic you're looking at your felony level drugs hair.when math things of that nature but marijuana is a very I mean even felony distribution of marijuana is generally something that our our Narcotics Division will handle so we don't really take this kind of stuff we don't really use SWAT on on those types operations okay what is it that makes you guys decide that someone is armed and dangerous and that well there'd have to be some form a form of evidence whether it's a previous crime they've committed or threats they've made or something to deem somebody armed and dangerous and a lot of the times it's gonna go off of a criminal history they've been convicted or arrested for aggravated battery or shooting at her from a motor vehicle or felon in possession of a firearm a whole list of different criteria or we have information from a confidential informant that says hey this guy says he's gonna shoot it out with the police if he ever gets busted you know but we have evidence that police often pay confidential informants specifically to tell a lie to obtain a search warrant we also have evidence from Houston recently that police will claim that they have information from a confidential informant to obtain a search warrant where a confidential informant was never even involved at all in that particular case a SWAT raid was conducted based on the information from a confidential informant that just flat-out didn't even exist in that raid two innocent people were murdered and five officers were injured according to the original search warrant a confidential informant bought heroin at the house the day before the shooting but according to new documents ABC 13 obtained that may not be the case this all revolves around an undercover officer investigators went to that officers hospital bed where he gave them the name of two different informants investigators later questioned all confidential informants who had worked the officer and the confidential informants all denied making a buy from the residents located at 7815 Harding Street and ever purchasing narcotics from Regina Nicholas or Dennis Tuttle on top of that the particular informant in question said in the past there had been times when the undercover officer paid him money but did not require him or her to do any actual work for no mm-hmm so it has to be some actionable intelligence for us to say hey you know we need to use SWAT in this situation because a B and C okay basically like a checklist that we use you know if their risk to us is meets a certain criteria then we're gonna take something like this and all it is is just to protect us there's no amounted guns on it or anything like that right moments for us talking about the MRAP specifically in the equipment that we use our win we're driving up to the front of somebody's house or doing we don't use it for mobile takedowns because it's not very mobile it sounds like an f16 driving down the road and it's not very fast doesn't handle very well it's big and bulky but it protects us when we're rolling up to get set up in front of the house it's been shot or it has been shot at yeah it saved my life so you guys have used it out here multiple times yeah fairly regularly or okay oh man what what kind of round was that you know nine millimeter nine millimeter tires got popped which was a learning experience for us really yeah we figured like at least the handgun round would bounce off or to redirect it or stop it no it popped it didn't go through it but it definitely we had our guys standing on the other side and the bullets were going underneath it right by their legs I was up in the overwatch position and that's when that one hit and my hand got hit with the ricochet so it saved my leg and got hit it was just a reject and everything and that was what two years ago so yeah it's just it just protects us so we can go home to our families so what would you think if someone like myself rolled up in this into your parking lot too film you guys hold up in this I think that'd be pretty cool that you're pretty explosive so the government gave you guys this equipment right the federal government it's just a loan basically if we don't own it they didn't give it to us they just allow us to use it but still their problem I'll tell you what my personal concern with that is I told you earlier about that FBI memo that was sent out I know for a fact from experience that the federal government cannot stop lying like any I mean anything that comes out of their mouth now I just automatically assumed as a lie and so if if they're giving you guys toys and equipment to use whether it's something that is fun or it's something that truly saves your life does that mean that you owe them something does that mean that when they ask you to do something to citizens like enforce red flag laws or something like that that you might be inclined to say well alright cool I know I shouldn't do this but if I don't do it I'm gonna lose the equipment that saves my life I get that concern but we look at it more as we all work together and we necessarily couldn't afford something like this without that program a whole lot of worrying because we work autonomously from the federal government yeah at times like even local stuff they pick up our cases like we'll do most of the legwork and then they'll pick up our case is talking about criminal cases and prosecute them that way so they don't have influence on what we do on a day to day basis we're responsible to the people in the city of Roswell and obviously when you talk about the county the Sheriff's Office is responsible to the citizens and Chaves Council I want you to help wage a discriminatory ineffective drug war yeah there's free money in it so I can't tell you whether Scott is lying or just mistaken that these government handouts to these welfare recipients don't influence their day-to-day policing but the fact is that without the federal government giving these welfare recipients all of this money and equipment to fight the war on drugs they never would have been able to fight the war in other words these welfare handouts always have and always will influence their day-to-day policing whether they realize it or not without this welfare money there's a good chance that Scott's job might not even exist