This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, May 27th, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown. A man is shot and killed by 60 bullets in yet another SWAT raid gone wrong.

The victim this time was an Iraq war veteran.

Video footage is providing clues about what happened,

but the characterization of the raid and its executors raises serious questions

about the militarization of American law enforcement.

Cato Institute Legal Policy analyst David Ritker's comments.

The Pima County Regional SWAT team conducted a raid that killed a former Marine Jose

Grania and we've seen video now of the raid from a helmet camera. The raid does not make the

department look very good. The allegation that Grania was either a home invasion expert part of a gang that conducted home invasions to rip off rival drug gangs where he was a drug dealer himself.

It's not exactly clear what the story is coming from Pima County because it's changed a couple

times over the course of the the investigation that seems to be ongoing. The most alarming thing is that the court documents, the

warrants in support of the raid are sealed and not sealed because they didn't want to let on to the suspects of in the raid, but sealed after,

four days after the raid, and what increasingly looks like a cover-up of incompetence involved in executing the raid.

A positive note, I suppose, if there is one to be found, is that this footage exists.

Right, and we've seen the expansion of police cameras, helmet mounted cameras in this

instance, cameras mounted on the officers in a headset or on a chest

like a medallion that hangs around the neck or clips to the shirt.

So we're seeing video employed by law enforcement agencies, which is good both to counter allegations of

excessive force and in fact if the force is reasonable then the video will show that

it was. And and second it makes

great evidence and it makes the case for the prosecution it shows what

happened what we do know is that the soldier here was did not fire a weapon.

...