-- Philadelphia tosses hundreds of drug cases because of six lying narcotics officers. So far, all remain paid police officers, although they're no longer in narcotics.

-- Meanwhile, police unions in the Chicago suburbs have managed to negotiate contracts that allow cops to come to work after having a few beers.

-- Study: Coffee consumption correlates with a drop in mortality.

-- The likely source of the dumb "Friends of Hamas" rumor speaks up.

-- Ohio appeals court upholds resulting search after police see a man turn without a signal, chase him down, then use a battering ram to break into his home.

-- Headline of the day.

-- Of all the areas in which cops today could use more training, I'd put "willingness to shoot pregnant women, children, and the elderly" pretty low on the list.

One of my favorites, from 2006:

Some Tibetan monks on a peace mission in Omaha were recently raided by immigration officials in riot gear.

They have since bonded out of jail, but the monks hope to clear up any misunderstandings and return to their native land. For now, the six monks, their personal assistant, and an interpreter are staying in the Carter Lake home of Rob Gutha.

"They're marvelous house guests. It's wonderful to come home at the end of the day, and first thing, you're greeted with a cup of tea," Gutha said.

The monks come from a land of rich tradition, but a poor economy. Their leader, Kharnang Vangtul Rinpoche, said the monks came to the United States on a church-sponsored mission of world peace, hoping to share the plight of Tibetan people and never intending to cause trouble.

Before Carter Lake, the group was in Arizona. Their church sponsor abandoned them when the monks refused to recognize the sponsor's leader as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and Buddha. So the monks traveled to Omaha, not realizing that their immigration visas had been revoked. The next thing they knew, immigration officials showed up at their door with a SWAT team and arrested them.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Known around the neighborhood as "Pops," 80-year-old Isaac Singletary moved into his high-crime Jacksonville, Florida neighborhood in 1987 to care for and protect his sister and mother, both of whom were sick at the time. The retired repairman was known to sit in front of his house in a lawn chair and shoo and shame the drug dealers away from his property.

But in January 2007, two undercover narcotics cops posed as drug dealers set up shop on Singletary's lawn. Singletary first came out of his house and yelled at them to leave. They didn't. He went back inside. Minutes later, he came out again and told them to leave, this time while waving a handgun. One of the cops opened fire. Wounded, Singletary tried to escape into his backyard. The cops followed chased him down and shot him again, this time in the back. Singletary died at the scene. His killers never told him they were police officers.

The police initially claimed Singletary had tried to rob them. They then claimed that Singletary fired first. Five witnesses said that wasn't true. Who fired first wasn't really relevant, except as an indication that the police weren't telling the truth about the whole mess.

Here, Jacksonville police officers had committed crimes on an elderly man's property without his permission, refused to leave when he asked them to, then--perhaps inadvertently--baited him into a violent confrontation. They then killed him for taking the bait.

Three months later, investigating State Attorney Harry Shorstein initially expressed some frustration with the operation. "If we're just selling drugs to addicts, I don't know what we're accomplishing," he told the Florida Times-Union. But three months after that, Shorstein cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing. That may or may not have been correct under the law, but his report also included a couple of inconsistencies. First, while attorneys for Singletary's family found four witnesses who said the police fired first, Shorestein could find only one--a convicted drug dealer Shorstein deemed untrustworthy.

Second, while Shorstein did at least criticize the police officers for not identifying themselves before they started shooting at Singletary, he still put the bulk of the blame on Singletary himself, concluding the old man "was an armed civilian who refused orders to drop his gun." But those orders came from two cops dressed as drug dealers, who never disclosed that they were police. The implication from Shorstein's report is that Florida citizens are obligated to drop their defenses and submit any time a criminal orders them to do so.

Ironically, Singletary's death came a little less than two years after Florida passed a highly-publicized law expanding the right to self-defense. The "Stand Your Ground" law--which would (mistakenly) be the target of national criticism after the death of Trayvon Martin--removed the traditional legal requirement that when faced with a threat, you must first attempt to escape before using lethal force. But that seems to be exactly what Shorstein thought Singletary should have done.

An internal report from the sheriff's office also cleared the two undercover officers, Darrin Green and James Narcisse, of violating any department policies. The report, written by a shooting board of five members of the sheriff's department, concluded that they had followed department procedures, and that "no further action" was necessary. Narcisse, the first officer to fire at Singletary, was later fired for disciplinary reasons that the sheriff's department said were unrelated to the Singletary case.

Sheriff John Rutherford eventually conceded that Singletary was "a good citizen" and that his death was "a tragic incident." But he also rebuffed calls to end undercover drug stings like the one police were conducting on Singletary's property. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist visited Jacksonville later that month. When asked about Singletary's death, Crist called it one of the "challenges" to keeping a community safe.

In 2010, the city of Jacksonville agreed to pay Singletary's family a $200,000 settlement, though the city admitted no wrongdoing.

In sum, a "good citizen" defended his property from what he thought were criminals in a manner consistent with Florida law. He did nothing illegal. And the police officers who trespassed on his property, then attempted to sell drugs on his property, then killed him for attempting to defend his property, not only broke no laws, but their actions were also consistent with sheriff's department policy. Finally, those policies, the ones that caused all of this to happen . . . were not going to change.

All of which can only mean that Florida officials believe the death of an innocent 80-year-old man is an acceptable outcome of undercover drug policing. In Florida's war to keep people from getting high, Isaac Singletary was collateral damage, similar to the civilians killed by bombs during a just war. Regrettable, perhaps. But inevitable.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Sources: David Hunt, "In the wake of 2 fatal shootings, some question police tactics," Florida Times-Union, January 27, 2007; Mary Kelli Palka, "A neighborhood wonders: Why isn't the sheriff here?; Rutherford says a federal review isn't needed, defends not going to the scene," Florida Times-Union, January 30, 2007; Bridget Murphy, "Man's family wants cops to face charges," Florida Times-Union, July 28, 2007; Jessie-Lynne Kerr, "Board clears officers in shooting; 'No further action' is needed by police in the case of the January death of an 80-year-old man," Florida Times-Union, August 2, 2008; Matt Galnor, "City to pay $200,000 in shooting; Officers killed man in 2007," Florida Times-Union, June 22, 2010; Bridget Murphy and Jim Schoettler, "Drug stings to continue, sheriff says," Florida Times-Union, January 30, 2007.

At about 6:15 am in August 2005, a SWAT team converged outside the Sunrise, Florida, home of Anthony Diotaiuto.

The police said they had received an anonymous tip that there was marijuana in Diotaiuto's home, which they confirmed when an informant purchased an ounce of marijuana from the 23-year-old bartender and part-time student.

Diotaiuto's friends and family acknowledge that he was a recreational marijuana smoker, and may have occasionally sold small amounts of pots to friends. But they denied he was a major drug dealer. Diotaiuto, they said, had just bought the modest home with his mother after taking a second job and selling off his prized sports car. He had one previous conviction for possession of marijuana, when he was 16. Otherwise, Diotaiuto had no criminal record, and no history of violence or criminal conduct.

By 7 a.m. the raid was over. Diotaiuto was dead. According to police, the SWAT team knocked and loudly announced themselves, then waited 10-15 seconds before they broke down Diotaiuto's front door and set off a flash grenade. They say Diotaiuto was in his living room when they entered, and then ran to his bedroom, armed himself, and waited in a closet. When police opened the door, they said he raised his gun, at which point they shot him. Police said Diotaiuto was then slumped against the back wall of the closet, still breathing, but with his hand on the trigger, so they shot him again. By the time the shooting was over, Diotaiuto had 10 bullet holes in his head, chest, torso, and limbs. He didn't fire a shot. The police would wait three hours before contacting the county coroner.

Neighbors who were awake at he time of the raid told the local media they heard no announcement, only the gunfire. That doesn't mean necessarily mean the police were lying. But Diotaiuto had just worked a night shift, and had only been home a few hours before the raid. His family said he was likely asleep in his bedroom, away from the front door, possibly with the door closed, as the raid began. If neighbors didn't hear the announcement, it's certainly possible that he didn't either.

Immediately after the raid, a police spokesman told local reporters that Diotaiuto "had a gun and pointed it at our officers." Later the same day he revised the story. "In all likelihood, that's what happened. I know there was a weapon found next to the body." The police department would eventually settle on the claim that Diotaiuto had raised the gun toward the officers. The police also initially said they had found two ounces of marijuana in the house. They later reduced that to one ounce. By the time a grand jury heard the case, it was 16 grams, about a fourth of what police initially claimed, and an amount that would have earned Diotaiuto a misdemeanor had he survived the raid.

The police also found a BB gun, a shotgun, a rifle, and the handgun they alleged Diotaiuto was holding. All were legal. In fact, Diotaiuto had a valid concealed carry permit in the state of Florida. To get that permit, he had to fill out a variety of paperwork, undergo a criminal background check, allow himself to be fingerprinted, pay a fee, and enroll in a class on gun safety and firearms law. Bizarrely, Sunrise police claimed the permit indicated Diotaiuto was potentially dangerous--thus the SWAT team, flash grenade, and forced entry. It should have indicated precisely the opposite. Hardened criminals generally don't volunteer for registration and fingerprinting that will tie them to the guns they plan to use in their crimes. It's more the sort of thing law-abiding gun owners do. Of course, if you're going to claim that a registered gun owner poses a threat to police, a good way to prove the point would be to send a police team to break down his door at 6 o'clock in the morning--conditions where nearly anyone would quite naturally react against the intruders.

After the shooting, the Sunrise Police Department assured the media that all of the officers involved had stellar performance records. The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reported that both officers who shot Diotaiuto routinely received "above-average" or "excellent" reviews, garnered dozens of recommendations, and earned multiple "officer of the month" distinctions.

Of course, all of that was beside the point. Even Diotaiuto's closest friends and family didn't believe the police set out to murder him. It was a question of tactics--about whether sending a SWAT team into the home of a guy who was at worst a small-stakes pot dealer was an appropriate use of force. As Eleanor Shockett, a retired Miami-Dade circuit judge, told Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo. "What in the hell were they doing with a SWAT team? To break into someone's home at six in the morning, possibly awaken someone from a deep sleep, someone who has a concealed weapons permit? What did they expect to happen?"

At the time, Sunrise was a city of 90,000 people. It saw less than a single murder each year. This wasn't a city bleeding for lack of a SWAT team. But like more than 90 percent of cities its size, Sunrise had one.

His family later filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Sunrise and the officers who conducted the raid on his home. The lawsuit never made it to a jury. It was dismissed by a federal circuit court judge in summary judgment. In September 2010, that decision was unanimously upheld by three judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

The legal barrier for lawsuits in such cases is high, but the 11th Circuit panel's decision rested entirely on the police account of the raid. It completely dismissed the possibility that a groggy man who had just been subjected to a flash grenade--again a device that is designed to confuse and disorient anyone in the vicinity--might have mistook the SWAT team for criminal intruders. As for the neighbors who heard no announcement, the panel dismissed them in a footnote as "questionable evidence" before pointing out that "virtually every police officer on scene testified that the SWAT team knocked and announced before entering Diotaiuto's home."

The cops said they announced. Whether they were telling the truth, or it was even possible for Diotaiuto to have heard them, didn't matter.

Diotaiuto was the third Floridian killed in a drug raid in four months that summer.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

In February 2009, Chicago police raided both units of a flat as part of a drug investigation.

According to a lawsuit later filed by the wrongly raided family, as the police came in with guns drawn, Thomas Russell, 18, asked if he could pen up the family's black Labrador, Lady. They refused. When Lady then came around the corner to greet the officers, they shot her.

The police then held Thomas and his brother Darren at gunpoint while they scoured the apartment apart in a search for drugs. The police found no contraband, although they did find drugs in the other, separate unit in the flat. Despite the fruitless search, the cops then arrested Thomas Russell anyway, for obstructing police. He would later be acquitted.

In August 2011, a federal jury found that the police had violated the brothers' civil rights, and awarded the family a combined $330,000 in damages. After the verdict, a city spokesperson insisted the police had done nothing wrong. "The officers involved in this case were executing a valid search warrant when this incident occurred and were simply protecting themselves."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

In September 2005, police in Bel Aire, Kansas photographed what they thought were marijuana plants growing in a resident's backyard. They showed the photos to the local prosecutor, who showed them to a judge. All agreed. The plants depicted in the photos were marijuana.

After serving the warrant and searching the elderly couple's home for nearly an hour, the police discovered they had raided the wrong house. In fact, they just raided the home of the town's four-term former mayor, Harold Smith. And the alleged marijuana plants were sunflowers. The sunflower also happens to be the state flower of Kansas. It is depicted on the state's flag.

A report commissioned by Brian Withrow, the mayor of Bel Aire at the time, found that the police "were not acting with malice." Withrow apologized to the Smiths, but defended the officers, DA, and judge by pointing out that the plants "weren't blooming at the time."

The list of things for which police have waged often violent drug raids after mistaking them for marijuana is a long one. It includes (but likely is not limited to) elderberry bushes, tomato plants (several times), yellow bell pepper plants, umbrella leaf, ragweed, okra, hibiscus, kenaf plants, daisies, the scent of moss, the scent of a skunk, and a plastic plant purchased for a pet lizard's planetarium.

By my count, there have also been at least three incidents in which drug cops have mistakenly raided the home of a current or former mayor. One of the others was yesterday's Raid of the Day. The other was the 2008 raid on the home of Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Sources for the Bel Aire story: Deb Gruver, "Flowers only look like weed," Wichita Eagle, September 17, 2005; "Report: No Malice in Bele Aire Raid," Wichita Eagle, November 5, 2005.

On the night of June 3, 1992, the Venice, Illinois SWAT team conducted a raid on a suspected crack house. Part of the team used a battering ram to break into the front of the house, while the other officers entered through a back window.

They quickly discovered that they had raided the wrong address. In fact, they'd later learn that they had just raided the home of their own mayor.

Venice Mayor Echols wasn't home at the time, but when he returned and saw the damage, he contacted the police. When he learned the damage was the result of a raid gone awry, he grew angry. "To tell the truth, I don't remember what they said because I was furious," Echols told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "If I'd been here and heard that going on I probably would have taken my pistol and shot through the door. I'd probably be dead. And some of the officers would probably be dead, too."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

-- Animation of Cleveland police firing 137 shots into a couple's car. They found no gun or shell casings in the car.

-- Let's hope so.

-- The Institute for Justice is fighting a Minnesota town that wants to suspend the Fourth Amendment for rental properties. And the problem isn't limited to that town.

-- Another illustration of just how difficult it can be to fire bad cops. Oh, and here's another.

-- Dear Internet: I do not suggest that we teach Georgia state Rep. Earnest Smith a lesson about the First Amendment and the Streisand Effect but Photoshopping him into lots of embarrassing and hilarious scenarios.

In February 2004, police from three departments raided the Middletown, Pennsylvania home of James Hoskins looking for his brother on suspicion of distributing marijuana.

They arrested Hoskins' brother for possessing a small amount of marijuana, a glass pipe, and around $600. They left James Hoskins in a coma.

Hoskins was in his bed when he woke to the sound of someone breaking open his door. Naked and unarmed, he got up to investigate. As he approached his bedroom door, Middletown Township Detective Dale T. Keddie Jr. pushed his way into the room. According to Hoskins and his girlfriend, the detective never identified himself.

Keddie would later say he fired his gun at Hoskins when he mistook the t-shirt Hoskins was using to cover his genitals for a gun. The bullet entered Hoskins' abdomen, then ripped through his stomach, small intestine, and colon. It eventually lodged in Hoskin's leg, which later had to be amputated. According to Hoskins' girlfriend, he told his assailant, "I did not deserve this. Am I going to die?" At which point Keddie told him to "shut up."

Hoskins didn't learn that the man who shot him was a police officer until weeks later, when he awoke from the coma.

The police department saw no need to conduct an investigation into the shooting. The local district attorney at least did that much, but concluded that Keddie had done nothing wrong.

In January 2005 Hoskins settled with Bristol Township, Pennsylvania for $350,000. He settled with Middletown Township for an undisclosed sum, but an amount attorneys for both sides told the Philadelphia Inquirer "would be enough to cover Hoskins' medical costs for the rest of his life."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

(Sources: Larry King, "Man Shot in Apartment by Police Hopes for Justice," Philadelphia Inquirer, April 7, 2004; "Pennsylvania Police Fail to Investigate Shooting of Unarmed Man," Associated Press, September 3, 2004; Laurie Mason and Harry Yanoshak, "Cop Cleared in Shooting of Unarmed Man," Bucks County Courier Times, April 23, 2004; Larry King, "Middletown Settles Police Shooting; A Bristol Twp. Man Had Sued after a Feb. Raid Targeting His Brother Left Him Without His Left Leg," Philadelphia Inquirer, January 16, 2005.)

In 2003, Time magazine ran an article on a federally-funded anti-narcotics unit in Texas called the Capital Area Drug Task Force. Made up of cops from police departments in and around the Austin area, the task force had a bad reputation in many of the communities it served -- locals referred to them “Rambo wannabes." In one 11-month span, the task force would embark on three badly botched-raids, two of them resulting in fatalities.

The first came in February 2001, when the task force raided the home of Edwin Delamora, his wife, and two children. As two officers attempted to break open the door with a battering tram, Delamora fired his gun into the door. He would later say he thought his family was under attack. One bullet penetrated the door and struck Deputy Keith Ruiz, killing him.

Delamora had no prior criminal record. His attorneys claimed the raid was based on a confidential informant who turned out to be the brother of two sheriff's deputies -- information that was suppressed at Delamora's trial. Delamora was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison. Police found less than an ounce of methamphetamine and an ounce of marijuana in the mobile home. Prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty because of substantial doubt about whether or not Delamora knew the people outside his door were police. Of course if there was doubt about that, there should have been doubt about whether Delamora was guilty of murder.

That decision drew heavy criticism from Texas Attorney General John Cornyn -- now a U.S. senator. In response, Cornyn pushed for law requiring that juries be always be given the option to administer the death penalty in any murder case in which the victim was a police officer, regardless of whether judges or prosecutors believe it's appropriate.

Four months after the Delamora raid, members of the task force were riding in a Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter when they spotted what they thought was marijuana growing in the yard of 56-year-old Spicewood resident Sandra Smith. The helicopter landed, and the cops stormed the house. Smith had three visitors at the time. One, a Vietnam vet, said the helicopter was flying so low he flashed back to his time in combat. Another was napping, and opened his eyes to a machine gun pointed at his face. After kicking Smith's dog, ransacking her house, and holding her and her guests at gunpoint, the officers discovered their mistake. The alleged pot plants were ragweed.

The following December, the same task force raided another mobile home on a no-knock warrant. As they rushed into the home, they encountered 19-year-old Tony Martinez, who sleeping on a couch. Martinez was the nephew of the man named in the warrant. He wasn't suspected of any crime. As Martinez rose from the couch, Deputy Derek Hill shot Martinez in the chest, killing him. Martinez was unarmed.

That raid occurred less than a mile from the raid in which Deputy Ruiz had been killed ten months earlier. Both Edwin Delamora and Deputy Derek Hill claimed they made errors in judgment. Both said they thought at the time that the man they shot in the midst of a volatile drug raid posed a threat to them. Delamora was convicted of murder, and is still in prison today. Deputy Hill was cleared by a grand jury in April 2002.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

(Sources: John Cloud, "Guarding Death's Door," Time, July 14, 2003; Jordan Smith, "Another Drug War Casualty," Austin Chronicle, July 19, 2002; "Delamora attorney says key facts were withheld," Austin American-Statesman, July 29, 2002; "Cornyn: Death penalty must be option when officer killed," Associated Press, July 25, 2002; "Survivors sue Travis county over fatal raid," Austin American-Statesman, May 10, 2003; Claire Osborn, "Deputy not indicted in drug raid death," Austin American-Statesman, April 4, 2002.)

-- Number of times the word Isarel was used during the Chuck Hagel hearings: 166. Number of times the word drone was used: Zero.

-- If you're a police officer in Tucson, Arizona, killing a veteran, father, and husband in a botched raid that turns up no contraband won't get you reprimand or demoted, but sending a willing colleague sexually explicit videos will.

-- City spends a half million dollars defending a cop who lied on the witness stand in a case that led to a false murder conviction and the imprisonment of an innocent man.

-- Your dog is smart.

-- Tennessee has been giving free money to production companies to come shoot movies and TV shows in the state. The policy has been great for Larry the Cable Guy. For the state economy, not so much.

-- ICE public employee union opposes immigration reform, insists that Obama policies that have led to a record-setting number of deportations may be causing "low morale" among agents who would like to deport even more.

-- For you to play with: A fun, hi-res, panoramic photo taken from the top of the world's tallest building.

At 7:10 on a Thursday morning in July of 1999, narcotics officers in Roseville, California rushed the home of 78-year-old Sandy Sanborn and his wife Grace. Sanborn was knocked to the floor when he attempted to open the door just as police kicked it open. Agents next apprehended his wife, who awoke to find police pointing assault weapons at her head.

Both were handcuffed and held at gunpoint. The Sanborns later said that while searching the house, instead of simply opening the doors to their kitchen, pantry, and other rooms, the police ripped them off their hinges. After an exhaustive search that left their home in tatters, Police Detective Ron Goodpaster apologized, and the raid team left.

A subsequent investigative report in the Sacramento News & Review revealed that the search on the Sanborns' home came about after a deputy officer in the sheriff's department of a neighboring county discovered that the Sanborns' son had merely shopped at a hydroponic plant store. Customers of such stores were increasingly becoming the targets of police investigations and raids in the 1990s, even though there are plenty of uses for hydroponic supplies that have nothing to do with marijuana. (And of course it still happens today.)

The report also found that though police claimed in the search warrant affidavit to have found marijuana in the Sanborns' trash, the phrase they used, "The marijuana was fresh, green and still moist and had been recently cut from a mature marijuana plant," was identical to language used on dozens of other search warrant affidavits used to conduct similar raids.

The police found no marijuana -- or any other illicit substance -- in the Sanborns' home.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

In January 2005, police in Baltimore County conducted a 4:50 a.m. raid on the home of Cheryl Lynn Noel and her husband Charles. The target of the raid was the couple's son Matthew, who police had pulled over three months earlier. During the stop, police found a bag in his car that they said contained a suspicious white powder. The police say they then found marijuana seeds and cocaine residue in subsequent searches of the family's trash (which can be conducted without a warrant). That was enough for them to get a warrant for Matthew's arrest.

After taking down the family's front door and deploying flash grenades, SWAT officers stormed up the steps and broke open the door to the Noels' bedroom. Matthew Noel was sleeping downstairs at the time.

Because their daughter had been murdered several years earlier, the Noels kept a gun near the bed. The 44-year-old Cheryl Lynn Noel stood in her nightgown, nervously holding the gun as, what she thought were intruders stormed her bedroom. Noel was shot twice by Officer Carlos Artson, who was wearing bulletproof armor, and who fired at her from behind a ballistics shield. As Noel lay bleeding on her bedroom floor, she was then shot a third time from close range. She died in her home. The police found only a misdemeanor amount of marijuana in the house.

The police later said the aggressive tactics were necessary Cheryl and Matthew Noel were legally registered gun owners, and because Charles Noel had been convicted of second-degree murder 30 years earlier. Noel, who pleaded guilty in that case, told me in a 2007 interview that the crime was a "shameful" incident from his youth that got out of hand after he and some friends had beaten a homeless man. He had served his time, and had no incidents of criminal violence on his record since. Charles Noel did, however, have a history of animosity with police in Baltimore County. Noel had been publicly critical of the way police had handled the investigation of his daughter's death. The police initially ruled it a suicide. Noel had long insisted it was a homicide, and was eventually able to persuade them to investigate it as one.

Cheryl Lynn Noel had no criminal record. She was described by friends as a devout woman who led Bible study groups on her lunch break. A few weeks after the family filed a civil rights lawsuit in 2006, the Baltimore County Police Department gave Officer Artson the department's "Silver Star" for "valor, courage, honor, and bravery" for his actions during the raid on the Noel home. It's the second-highest award the department gives to police officers. Five months after the raid, the head of the SWAT team -- Col. Jim Johnson -- was named the new police chief for Baltimore County.

In March 2009, a federal jury returned a verdict in favor of the police, finding that (1) the third shot fired into Noel was not excessive, and (2) sending a 16-member SWAT team into Noel's home at 5 am over trace amounts of marijuana and in the family trash wasn't excessive, either. In June 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied the Noel family's appeal

Baltimore County Attorney Paul Mayhew made the city's position clear, insisting at the trial that "We do not apologize one minute" for Noel's death.

In July 2012, Officer Artson killed another man during a volatile forced-entry raid. Artson's SWAT team was raiding the home of 48-year-old Ronald Mevin Cox with an arrest warrant for Cox's niece, who was suspected of attempted murder. Cox was not suspected of any crime. Artson shot Cox when Cox came at him with a sword as the police broke into his bedroom.

In 2009 the Maryland legislature passed a law requiring police departments to issue detailed statistics on the use of their SWAT teams in response to the 2008 botched raid on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo. In 2010, the Baltimore County Police Department conducted 120 SWAT raids, or one every three days. Baltimore City conducted an additional 289 raids. Those figures do not include raids by federal agencies like the DEA or BATF.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

"This is war."

And with that, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates launched "Operation Hammer" in the spring of 1988. Like a lot of overly aggressive anti-crime initiatives, the plan was a response to a real problem. Gang violence had swept Los Angeles. The rising popularity of crack cocaine had created a new black market. The main thing new markets do is unsettle existing markets. With legal goods, the new order eventually gets established with innovation, customer service, efficiency, and the quality of the competing products. With illicit goods, the new order is established with violence.

Another problem was that Gates had put entire sections of Los Angeles on lockdown during the 1984 Olympics. Because the Olympics went without any real breaches in security, Gates emerged triumphant. It was quite the turnaround. Prior to the games, many had thought his job was in jeopardy after an inauspicious first few years, including some odd comments he had made after black suspects had died in the grip of a particular chokehold favored by LAPD. (Gates claimed that blacks must be particularly susceptible to the hold because their "veins and arteries do not open up as fast as they do on normal people.") But by essentially occupying the poorer parts of Los Angeles, Gates had at least projected the image of a safe city. So he kept a similar policy in place after the games were over, which of course did little to help relations between those communities and the police. Citizen complaints against LAPD jumped by a third from 1984 to 1989.

Operation Hammer was initiated by a particularly tragic drive-by gang shooting at a birthday party, but it was really just an intensification of the gang sweeps Gates had initiated during the Olympics, and that had continued since. In his autobiography, Gates credits the program with a modest decline in homicides in the city in 1988, from 812 to 736. (He also claims this was "one of the lowest rates in 20 years," a hedge that is basically deceptive. As recently as 1975, the city had only 556 homicides.) From 1985 through the early 1990s, the Los Angeles Times headlines repeated like the chorus to a maddeningly repetitive song.

September 18, 1989: "204 Arrested in Weekend Sweep"
July 17, 1989: "94 Suspected Gang Members Arrested"
September 9, 1990: "75 Arrested in Sweep by Gang Task Force"
February 24, 1991: "189 Arrested in 9-Hour Anti-Gang Unit Sweep"
August 20, 1989: "237 Held in Sweep; Violence Continues"
September 19, 199: "251 Arrested by Task Force in Gang Crackdown"
March 22, 1988: "33 Caught in Gang Sweep"
September 13, 1990: "'Operation Hammer' sweeps result in 75 arrests."
September 19, 1988: "700 Seized in Gang Sweep; 2 More Die in Shootings"
October 2, 1989: "Police Arrest 1,092 in Weekend Sweeps; Gang Killings Continue"
August 21, 1989: "LAPD Nails 352 in Operation Hammer"

The blip in 1988 aside, brute force plan wasn't working. There were 1,028 homicides in Los Angeles in 1980. The murder rate dropped (as it did in the rest of the country) until crack hit the scene in the late 1980s. By 1990, the number was back up to 982, and from 1990 to 1993, it was back over a thousand.

Gates' gang sweeps were indiscriminate. He admitted this. His strategy, he said, was to "put a lot of police officers on the streets and harass people and make arrests for inconsequential kinds of things . . . that's part of the strategy, no doubt about it." He imposed curfews in black and Hispanic neighborhoods, then swept up minors out after curfew. By one estimate, 75 percent of young black men in Los Angeles had been arrested under the program. Meanwhile, juvenile crime jumped 12 percent. By September, the Police Misconduct Lawyer's Referral Service had already registered an 80 percent increase in complaints of police abuse over all of 1987. When asked if the lockdown mentality was worth the costs, the press secretary for California State Senator Diane Watson -- who represented part of Los Angeles -- replied, "When you have a state of war, civil rights are suspended for the duration of the conflict."

One of the more notorious incidents of collateral damage in Gates' war came on Aug. 1, 1988, when a Los Angeles SWAT team raided four apartments on the corner of 39th Street and Dalton Avenue in the southwest part of the city. Again, the raid was in response to legitimate concerns. The neighborhood was infested with gang activity and drug dealing. When one family complained, gang members shot out their security lights and threatened to firebomb their home.

The problem was that the reaction, once again, was blunt, indiscriminate, and oblivious to the rights of the people the police were supposed to be serving and protecting. The police believed the apartments were serving as stash houses for the drug dealing gangbangers. They were also likely particularly angry because a man they believed to be one of the neighborhood gang members had recently called in a death threat to the local police station.

According to a report later released by LAPD internal affairs, Capt. Thomas Elfmont gathered his officers the night of the raid for a pep talk in which he urged them to "hit" the apartments "hard," to "level" them, and to leave them "uninhabitable." (He later denied saying any of this.) Elfmont didn't go on the raid itself. In fact, there was no one on the raid with a rank higher than sergeant. The lone sergeant was Charles Spicer, head of LAPD's anti-gang task force for the southwest part of the city. In subsequent interviews with internal affairs, he admitted to telling the unit to "kick ass," but said that though he was on site during the raid, he had no idea his officers were committing any sort of misconduct.

The cops certainly took their superiors' advice to heart. The internal affairs report later documented 127 separate acts of vandalism at the apartments. As the raid began, a caravan of police vehicles surrounded the building and more than 80 police officers emerged. Resident Tammy Moore was sitting on her porch holding her 7-month-old son as the police pulled up, rushed out of their vans, and ordered everyone out of the building. One of them struck Moore in the neck, causing her to drop her son to the concrete. He remained unconscious for 30 minutes. One man was struck in the face with a flashlight. A woman, lying on the ground, said an officer dropped a flashlight on her head, then responded with a nonchalant, "Oops." One admitted gang member was accosted across the street. One officer held his legs apart while another repeatedly kicked him in the crotch. They then ran a wire across his throat and choked him. Another man was struck four times by an officer wearing a weighted-knuckle sap glove. This was all before they had even entered the apartments.

Though he wasn't actually on the gang task force, rookie officer Todd Parrick, a former Navy SEAL, was permitted to go on the raid. He had heard the chatter about the raid -- that Capt. Elfmont wanted the apartments "taken off the map." So Officer Parrick brought his own ax. In the first apartment, Parrick had some trouble opening a pair of sliding wooden doors. So he used the ax. He then struggled to remove the grate from a furnace. So he used the ax. For reasons not made entirely clear, he then took the ax to a thermostat. (Perhaps he was cold?) He next put the ax in the dining room wall, the living room wall, and the side of a cupboard. When he couldn't jimmy open a drawer in the kitchen, he hit it with his ax. He also took his ax to the toilet. At one point, he nearly took his ax to a colleague, Officer Charles Wilson. Parrick would later say that as he drove home that night, he was pretty sure he'd get some sort of commendation for his ax-wielding. When he boasted of all of this to his wife, she brought him down to earth. She told him he would probably get fired. (He didn't, at least for what he did that night. Three years later, he'd be fired for head-butting a suspect, then lying about it.)

Officer Charles Wilson brought a toy of his own. When he learned about the raid, he went to a friend's welding shop to create his own customized battering ram, which he then proceeded to smash into a number of walls (not doors). When word got out that there might be an internal affairs investigation, he dumped the ram into the city sewer.

Resident Gloria Flowers was taking a bath when the police came in. She was made to stand up, naked, then lie down on the floor before an officer eventually threw a blanket over her. She asked what was going on. They told her, "You're being evicted." One officer then smashed her fish tank, for no apparent reason.

Raymond Carter, 21, had gone out to get pizza before the raid. As he tried to return home, he was pulled over. When the officer saw the address on his license, Carter claims the office said, "Oh yes, you're one of them," then detained him and put him on the ground in the front yard with the others.

Of the 37 people detained, the police arrested seven. They were again beaten, then taken to the police station, where they were made to whistle the tune to The Andy Griffith Show. Those who didn't, or couldn't, were beaten again. None of them were ever charged with a crime.

Before they left, the officers had shattered family photos, emptied refrigerators onto the floor, poured bleach on piles of laundry, and slashed through furniture upholstery. They also spray-painted "LAPD Rules" and "Gang Task Force Rules" on the walls.

They had achieved their charge for the night. The apartments were uninhabitable. The Red Cross provided housing for 10 adults and 12 children displaced by the raid. LAPD's haul: Six ounces of pot, and less than an ounce of cocaine.

By the time all the lawsuits were settled, the city paid out $4 million in damages for the 39th and Dalton raid, a record at the time. In 1991, Parrick, Spicer, and Elfmont were charged and tried for vandalism and conspiracy. The Los Angeles County Prosecutor's Office said there wasn't enough evidence to press assault or battery charges. The jury acquitted the officers of all but one charge, which was later dropped. In interviews, jurors said they thought the police witnesses were "flat-out lying" to protect one another, but said they acquitted because amid all the lying and dissembling, they had no way of knowing which officers committed what acts. The only officer to be convicted of a crime was Wilson, who took a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against the others. Only two of the 80+ officers were fired, although a couple dozen were given suspensions and reprimands. When asked for his reaction to the acquittal of the officers involved in the raid, Gates responded that he was "pleased."

And so Operation Hammer went on. By the end of the year, two unarmed citizens were shot dead during the campaign, one of them an 81-year-old man.

In 2001, the Los Angeles Times revisited 39th and Dalton with a retrospective on the raid. "The department was preparing people as if they were going to war," LAPD Assistant Chief David Dotson told the paper. "A police officer's job is not war; it's solving complex problems on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis. That's a difficult job, and it doesn't require screaming at people, putting their faces down in the street like dogs." Christopher Darden, the prosecutor who handled the case (and would later prosecute O.J. Simpson), said he wanted to file more serious charges but was stonewalled by the department's code of silence.

Parrick, who by 2001 was selling recreational vehicles, told the paper, "I believed I was doing the right thing by routinely stopping people on the street, hauling them into the police station to be fingerprinted and photographed. In hindsight, that is not what this country stands for. It wasn't right."

Carl Sims, the narcotics officer whose warrant instigated the raid, told the Times that though it got the most publicity, 39th and Dalton was hardly an anomaly. "There wasn't a lot of care taken. That was the mentality. At the time, if you were selling dope, we were going to knock your house down with a battering ram. And we were sure going to dump the sugar on the counter. It was the standard method of operation of the LAPD. We weren't just searching for drugs. We were delivering a message that there was a price to pay for selling drugs and being a gang member . . . I looked at it as something of a Normandy Beach, a D-Day."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

(Sources: Marita Hernandez, "Allegations of Abuse by Police Told at Hearing," Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1988; John L. Mitchell, "The Raid That Still Haunts L.A.," Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2001; Richard Serrano, "Reports Tell of Frenzy and Zeal in Police Raid," Los Angeles Times; Dave Zirin, "Want to Understand the 1992 LA Riots? Start with the 1984 LA Olymics," The Nation, April 30, 2012; Terry Pristin and David Ferrell, "3 Officers Acquitted in 39th-Dalton Drug Raid," Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1991; Daryl Gates, Chief, pp. 339-340; Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, pp. 250-253.)