"Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book": The new warrior cop is out of control

``In other words, if the DEA wants to stick it to medical marijuana users because they're flouting federal law, they can. If Steven Seagal wants to drive a tank into a man's living room to demonstrate his love of animals, he can. If the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) wants to send a SWAT team to a physicist's house to show that it's cracking down on illegal bottle rockets, it can. At worst, the DEA, the CPSC, and Steven Seagal will be chastised by a judge after the fact, though that seldom happens. Even on the rare occasions when someone actually gets into court and wins an excessive-force lawsuit stemming from a raid, the damages are usually borne by taxpayers, not by the cops who used excessive force. In some cases, community outrage and bad press have persuaded police agencies to change a policy here or there regarding the deployment of their SWAT teams. But if they want to reneg and go back to breaking down the doors of people suspected of stealing decorative fish, there's very little to stop them. ''