Paramilitary Police State: their raving not rioting

<p>Just got this from my coworker Aaron Pava, originally posted on [l:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/22/13030/7546|DailyKos] apparently some swat teams from Utah County and Utah state shut down what is being described by promoters as a legal, permited rave on private property. You can judge for yourself the veracity of those claims (I am leaning towards believing them as it would seem foolish to attempt to throw a party of such size and expense without covering yourself with permits)</p> <p>after about 2 hours of partying, swat teams showed up, beat up some people, arrested others, fired tear gas. You can see a whole bunch of it in a video [l:http://homepage.mac.com/apexgrin/FileSharing2.html|here].</p> <p>Why is this important? 2 reasons: 1) militarization of the police (they become more aggressive and more dangerous) and 2) criminalization of a subculture and violation of civil rights and liberties. I am not saying that the drug laws should be disobeyed, in all likelyhood there was drug taking going on at the event, but there is drug taking going on everywhere, in law firms, hospitals, banks, baseball dougouts, the olympics (you get the point). Combine these types of warrantlyess raids with legislation like the [l:http://www.emdef.org/s2633/|R.A.V.E. Act] abd you have a bad combination, paramilitary swat teams amped up on adrenalin walking into parties with guns where people may or may not be on drugs looking to arrest people and then take the promoters to jail for the actions of their patrons,</p> <p>Utah law apprently doesn't allow gatherings of more than 250 people without a permit. do you think that mega churches in utah county regularly have 250 people gathering without a specific permit?</p>