[h/t to Joe Hufffman]
The Mad Rocket Scientist speculates about physical countermeasures against overzealous drug-raiding SWAT teams that can't read maps:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, it’s not hard to harden the home, it’s just not affordable. I would just love to hear about one these RAIDS coming up short because the doors wouldn’t batter down and the windows just chipped instead of breaking. I can just imagine the SWAT team standing outside of the little bungalow they tried to force, a bit perplexed that they couldn’t get in, when grandma’s voice comes out of the intercom speaker by the door, "Can I help you?".
I'm not too proud to admit to having fantasized about this once or twice.
"I'm very sorry, officer; if you'd have rung the doorbell and demanded access under a lawful warrant, I'd have complied immediately. But your behavior is indistinguishable from a home invasion, so my house's security system has automatically locked the place down, called my attorney, and begun its irreversible data-purging routine on all our computers. I'll be happy to let you in as soon as the ten-minute time lock expires. In the mean time, enjoy some smooth jazz while I call your department and verify that you're actually sworn peace officers."
They'd most definitely find a way to charge me with Contempt of Cop after an embarrassment like that, but it'd be worth it, even if measured only in unshot dogs.
[More seriously, I've often thought that if I was building a house from scratch on a large piece of property, I'd love to follow the plan of a Roman domus: one strong exterior door, and outward-facing windows only on the second floor, but with airy windows, balconies, and patios opening onto a central courtyard garden. Excellent security against petty criminals and mutant zombie bikers, but without the feeling that you're living in a fortress.]
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Michaeli eunt domus?
ReplyDelete'Course, this would likely just escalate SWAT entries to breaching charges placed against the kid's bedroom wall. I'd like to think that We The People would cry foul long before then, but the reaction to TSA molestation checkpoints has made me rather skeptical.
"Those people from Michael, they go the house"?
ReplyDeleteA domus is also significantly more vulnerable than a traditional western house to commandos fast-roping from stealth helicopters into the wholly undefended courtyard, so I think we have to reasonably assume a limit to how much government force a fixed dwelling can be designed to withstand. Slowing down a small-town paramilitary SWAT team long enough to verify they're peace officers may be do-able, but it's unreasonable to think any house could be a meaningful obstruction to a bona fide army houseclearing team, or a police entity indistinguishable from same.
A force indistinguishable from an occupying army requires a whole different set of countermeasures.
The fact that I messed up the latin just makes the Life of Brian reference funnier. To me, at least.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, Jeff Cooper suggests a domus-like approach to tactical architecture in one of the essays from To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth. I don't think he had no-knock raids in mind, though.
I once talked a Latin teacher into screening LoB in class on the weight of that scene.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, Jeff Cooper suggests a domus-like approach to tactical architecture in one of the essays from To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth. I don't think he had no-knock raids in mind, though.
Barbarians is barbarians is barbarians, I suppose. Some problems are perennial, and some basic solutions don't change much.
The whole hardened-house works best for me when the SWAT team is lying on the grass immobilized, overcome by gas emanating from the lawn sprinklers...
ReplyDeleteActually, an "open" courtyard can be made fairly unsafe for fast-rope entry without being obvious or unsightly. A fountain, maybe a rose trellis or two, a rock garden...
ReplyDeleteAnd if a plain old fountain isn't enough...
ReplyDeleteThat falls under "unsightly", though.
ReplyDeleteMatters of taste, and all that. I can think of little that would dress up a formal garden more that an electrified acid fountain. Except maybe a boiling electrified acid fountain...
ReplyDelete