The FBI has a serious problem with toxic masculinity.

Watching the FBI’s pre-dawn arrest of infamous political fixer Roger Stone was like watching a particularly hackneyed Hollywood dud: Twenty-nine officers or agents, armed as heavily as B-actors with Navy-SEAL envy, approached Stone’s house as if on a dangerous commando mission. One would have thought they were trying to apprehend a murderous drug lord or a suspected terrorist.

Let it be said that Roger Stone is hardly a sympathetic figure. He’s been bragging for decades about his talent for political dirty tricks, and his cocky flamboyance approaches that of Gotham City’s Penguin. An indictment for Stone might be just deserts for the general tawdriness he has inflicted on the body politic for so long.

But was it really necessary to raid his house in riot gear? Did they expect him to resist arrest, guns blazing? Did they think he might try to create a diversion while trying to escape on a souped-up motorcycle? Or would you believe they thought he’d unleash two pit bulls and a dyspeptic chihuahua?

Aside from threats of violence or escape, the usual excuse for riot-gear raids is to keep the suspect from destroying evidence while the agents wait at the door. The idea that this scenario applied here is risible. Stone has known for a full year that he was in investigators’ crosshairs. He has predicted for at least five months that he would be indicted for something or other. If he had evidence to destroy, he surely would have done so long, long ago, rather than suddenly deciding to try such destruction in the few moments between when an FBI agent rings the doorbell and when he decides to answer it.

Common sense says agents wielding large, repeat-firing weapons, surprising people in the dark, are more likely to create the conditions for unintended violence and injury. But the FBI and other federal agents seem bizarrely and dangerously enamored of these ostentatious shows of force. They used similar tactics against longtime Stone running partner Paul Manafort when they first arrested him in the same Russia-related investigation. For years, such tactics by the FBI and other agencies have had deadly consequences, with mistaken shootings and suicides resulting, sometimes after the agents were acting on completely erroneous information to start with.

Local police forces using military equipment or unnecessary SWAT teams are also prone to such errors, so much so that libertarian columnist Radley Balko has built a whole career chronicling such abuses. Even when no immediate death or injury occurs from these over-testosteroned shows of force, the victims, some of them entirely innocent, can feel terrorized or violated, and rightly so.

In the specific case of FBI raids, the use or threat of force always will enjoy at least something of a judgment call. But the raids on Stone and Manafort certainly seem to run afoul of the intent of the FBI Investigations and Operations Guide, section 4.1.1 E, which requires that agents “employ the least intrusive means that do not otherwise compromise FBI operations.” This requirement is often repeated in other subsections of the guide.

America is not a police state, and its law enforcement agencies should make every effort to avoid looking like one.

It is hard to conceive a single reason why the FBI could not have merely called Stone’s lawyer, asked Stone to turn himself in, and avoided all the drama and potential danger. The man may be guilty as sin, but he was as much a threat to arresting officers as a canary is to a clowder of hungry cats.