Police can and do err when serving warrants with the advantages of surprise, armor and paramilitary weapons. The consequences of which being loss of property, dignity or, with infrequent tragedy, life, neither apology for nor defenses of the operations easily resolve mistakes. A 92-year-old Atlanta woman was shot dead ten months ago but should not have been a suspect or target, and while it turns out that the undercover policemen carrying out a "no-knock raid" hadn't the authority, the killing serves to characterize all arrests beginning with the smashing of a front door. Another storming of the wrong house or apartment, another staggering headline.
The libertarian's celebrated cause, now, is becoming exercised over seeming arrogations of the state, and police work that might go wrong in a hell of a lot of ways is too plausible an excess to ignore. Reason magazine lately features every bungled raid as part of a theme. Amid indignation, some questions that are asked each time should be, even if the strongest answers are different from the libertarian's. Are those moments of confusion, brought on when SWAT teams refrain from asking Hello, can we take you to jail? from outside, so crucial? Can police take more pains to get it right every time? Is any of this even within an agency's purview?
Members of these special teams can answer the first question; the constitutionally learned can help on the last. As for the second one, in 2005, says a criminologist at the Eastern Kentucky University, law enforcement agencies raided 50,000 times. How many foul-ups? Fifteen. At point-oh-oh-oh-three failures, a department yearly issuing five thousand speeding tickets should have only two of the fines overturned in court.
Unfortunately, as discussion about these stories continues it usually unravels into hostility for government, and one can observe a lot of Reason's readers telling each other how much they hate cops. At the end of the tirade is a moment often missed: reminding the irate libertarian that he knows, talks and openly protests executive missteps without reasonable fears, given that he lives in one of a few affording countries.