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Comment by drak0n1c | Hacker News Reader

The FBI engaged in similar militarized theater for the recent arrest of Roger Stone. Dozens of armored SWAT officers, automatic rifles, and a CNN war correspondent van parked outside - all to arrest a solitary man sleeping his pajamas.

For historical context, this trend is due to the pendulum swinging back too far in reaction to the Miami FBI shootout [1], where officers were woefully outgunned.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout

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Roger Stone had posted multiple videos of him at a shooting range so its reasonable for them to assume he was in the possession of firearms.

so anyone who has been at a shooting range needs to be raided by a SWAT team when arrested for white-collar crimes?

The thing about a heavily armed society is that it necessitates law enforcement preparing for armed resistance in routine tasks as a default rather than exceptional case, if nothing else to reduce the probability of such resistance by reducing the expectation of it being successful.

You can't reasonably both have a pervasively armed populace and law enforcement unprepared to deal with armed resistance from suspects even when the crime of which they are suspected is not itself violent.

This is a different one:

> As a “Lawman” crew filmed the raid Monday, deputies serving a search warrant blew out the suspect’s windows and leveled his gate, frightening neighbors. Jesus Llovera, who was convicted last year of attending a cockfight but has no record of owning weapons, was arrested on charges of suspected cockfighting, Phoenix TV station KPHO reported. He was unarmed.

> Steven Seagal, Arizona Sheriff Use Tank to Bust Up Cockfighting for A&E Show (Update)

https://www.thewrap.com/steven-seagal-arizona-sheriff-use-ta...

SWAT raids are a terrible way to get the drop on anyone who is actually intending on armed resistance. They are on the other hand an excellent way to make sure that "accidents" happen, as they routinely do. They are an obvious terror tactic.

Possessing a firearm and handling it responsibly should not be justification for a massive pre-dawn raid. Especially when the target has no violent record, worked at and later cooperated with multiple federal agencies, and was a regular guest of the White House for decades without incident.

There was no evidence that the officers making the arrest would be at inordinate risk.

If I was an FBI agent tasked with apprehending a suspect and I knew that the suspect had access to firearms and had "predicted" violent insurrection I would likely have taken the same precautions they did.

When you're approaching someone who is armed, it's generally considered unsafe to surprise them in such a way it's impossible for them to know who you are and threaten their life.

In fairness, Stone also threatened a witness with violence: https://www.lawfareblog.com/roger-stones-arrest-was-appropri...

This is a natural consequence of policing in a heavily armed country.

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