>Second, dealers are, by and large, bad people for other reasons. Your suburban pot dealer isn't the target of no-knock raids. The targets are guys with long rap sheets of felony convictions, often for violent crimes.
This may (or may not) be true in Atlanta, but in South Carolina, it's demonstrably untrue. We had a wave of SWAT raids from 2006-2010 on poker games, culminating in this:
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When a police department forms a swat team, they're going to use it, even for minor offenses.
This may (or may not) be true in Atlanta, but in South Carolina, it's demonstrably untrue. We had a wave of SWAT raids from 2006-2010 on poker games, culminating in this:
http://pokerati.com/2010/11/poker-raid-in-south-carolina-1-p...
None of these poker game players were "guys with long raps sheets". In fact, most of them had no prior criminal record.
I know of numerous other SWAT raids for other white collar crimes like campaign finance violations but I don't have time to dig them all up now.
Finally, SWAT raids are routinely carried out on "suburban pot dealers". Here's one from a few months ago:
http://marlborough.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/swat-t...
Just Google "pot dealer" and SWAT and you'll find tons of other examples.