Radley Balko comments in the National Review about the recent hypocrisy of members of the U.S. Congress as they reacted to the raiding of the office of Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-LA) Capitol Hill office by F.B.I. officers. The congressman, under investigation for bribery, had his office searched on the 20th of May with a properly executed federal search warrant.
Seeing one of their own - colleagues that is - being on the receiving end of a visit from law enforcement officials caused them to bellow in anger. It was “unduly aggressive” and “an act of tremendous violence”. Yet Balko points out that much more aggressive raids on their own constituents by heavily armed SWAT teams take place all the time, with hundreds of cases of botched raids. This came about, he argues quite plausibly, because Congress in the 1980s made available to police departments loads of surplus military gear very cheaply. This inspired police to look for new ways to use the equipment. Add to that their eligibility for grants on the basis of drug arrests and it is no surprise that there has been an “explosion in the number of ‘no-knock,’ forced-entry type raids in the U.S.”
Yet this opportunity to perhaps see raids from law enforcement officials from a new perspective - from the bottom up and up close rather than from the top down and from afar - merely caused the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives to start drafting a bill that would make this FBI raid on a congressional office - even of a likely criminal - the last.
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