Meticulously documented, this volume contains more than 1,500 endnotes which aid in analyzing all side of the complex issue of the role of federal law enforcement and the risks that their enormous powers pose to individual rights, judicial authority, and arrest procedures in the name of public safety. Photos.
Waco and Ruby Ridge were neither conspiracies nor flukes. They represent the worst-case scenario of problems that now plague federal law enforcement, including its militarisation, judicial rubberstamping of search and arrest applications, aggressive and violent arrest procedures, indifference to religious beliefs, the complicity of an overzealous media, and failed congressional investigations. In "No More Wacos", David B. Kopel and Paul H. Blackman use their expertise in law and criminology to outline the evidence in these cases and dozens of others to explain how and why such tragedies occur. Meticulously documented, this volume analyses all sides of this complex subject: flawed search warrants, authorities ignoring the difference between religious and criminal suspects, and intra-governmental deception, among other issues. Whenever problems are found, specific remedies are proposed - over one hundred solutions in all - both comprehensive and technical in nature. Each is offered in the hope of preventing future Wacos by properly placing federal law enforcement under the rule of law.