Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind when I think “Department of Education” is No Child Left Behind, followed by a lot of trouble coming up with what else the DOE actually does in the government. Never in my life would I have thought that it contains its own set of federal agents that apparently have the power to raid people’s homes.

Yet, that’s what happened on Tuesday morning, as a California man woke to find feds from the DOE breaking down his door. And it gets uglier:

As Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts, he said the officers barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.

“He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there,” Wright said.

It turns out the agents had the wrong man. Not only the wrong man, but the person they were after wasn’t even a man, but his estranged wife! This poor guy was popped into a police car for six hours in front of his children. I suppose it’s better than the team shooting him down, like happened to Iraq vet Jose Guerena last month, right?

Not really. The militarization of our federal police force(s) has gotten ridiculous. When you hear more about raids than good ‘ol search warrants based on the fourth amendment then something is seriously wrong. Going further, there is absolutely no reason that so many federal agencies need the power to raid homes. The FBI? Sure. The DEA? Okay, I can see that in certain situations. But the Department of Education? Does an agency which is supposed to serve the educational needs of the country really need a police force to go around knocking down doors? I think not.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics there were 27 IG offices across the federal government in 2004 with almost 3,000 people authorized to carry weapons and make arrests. If you ask me, that’s 3,000 too many. Keep in mind these figures are from seven years ago, so the number has probably gone up by a lot since then.

Surely there are other agencies the Inspector Generals can use if they need people to be arrested, like the FBI, who is supposed to be our federal police force? Of course, I know the response will be that having separate forces is more efficient than having to coordinate with someone else. Maybe, but it also spreads out these kinds of resources over a very big and sprawling government, so that there is little to no accountability. Without accountability, you get situations like the Department of Education raiding a house for six hours before determining that the suspect isn’t there.

I think it’s time for Congress, and especially the Republican House, to begin shedding the government of so many police forces. Do that before we end up like all those other countries that had many competing security apparati, because that worked out swimmingly for them the last time I checked!