Quote Originally Posted by bourbon View Post
I fear that civil asset forfeiture is driving a lot of this. I think forfeiture funds have become a significant source of budgetary funding for police departments in many states, creating incentives to seize property from the criminal low-hanging fruit (Ma and Pa Stoner).

The proliferation of SWAT teams across our country is also troublesome. At the least – on a practical level – can these smaller departments devote adequate resources to train and equip these units?

Is there a connection between the boom in civil asset forfeiture since the 80's/90's and the proliferation of SWAT units?
After several decades, most people have wised up to the DUI scam. That's left a large hole in the operating budget for a lot of municipalities. Civil Asset Forfeiture does a nice job of closing that. Add in the need to justify all that expense for training a SWAT team, and the temptation to over react in order to over use in order to generate funds would be unbearable to an average person.

Fortunately, all our politicians are above average, and thus have the integrity and self discipline not to engage in such ... activities.