"The officers apparently figured out they'd hit the wrong home when they'd cleared the second floor''

i would think that if there going to be alowed to carrie guns. they should be smart enough to stand out side of a house and be able to tell if its a two storie house.

this is crap. I train guys that do this---and there smart enough to tell you which way the door is going to open in the next room---memeroize the floor plan, every time I see something like this---how stupid do they think the public is. Its all BS.Has any one heard of intel. They knew what they were doing!!!
its something you get before you go to a raid.

Makes you wonder if they pissed off someone on the PD...
Every single one of those officers should be up on charges as well as the schmuck in charge of the op.

They are lucky they didn't get freaking pasted by someone who actually DOES keep weapons in their home for self defense. One of these days they are going to knock down the wrong damn door and they are going to die. Law of averages catches up with everyone.

Not exactly a botched raid, but another great example of Justice Scalia's "new professionalism in law enforcement."

An undercover cop's use of a stolen gift card was caught on a security camera and recorded in store receipts, and he admitted it in statements to investigators.

But after more than two full days of deliberation, an Oakland Circuit Court jury returned a not guilty verdict in the case of Richard Craze in Judge Colleen O'Brien's courtroom. He had faced up to five years in prison if convicted.

The 12-year Madison Heights Police veteran was charged with larceny in a building in the theft of a $125 Home Depot gift card he picked up during a Pontiac drug raid in March. He was assigned to the Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team (NET) task force at the time.

"We hoped the jury would weigh all of the evidence," assistant Oakland County Prosecuting Attorney Paul Walton said outside the courtroom. "But you can never predict an outcome

"You might have one person who, for whatever reason, just has trouble with convicting a police officer with a crime, regardless of your evidence. Here we apparently had two."

The quote from his attorney is bizarre. After reading it, I felt like one of us was living in the twilight zone:

"The card didn't have someone's name on it or an amount on it," said Rickel. "He wasn't trying to deprive anyone of anything. He picked it up, and when he went to the store he used it. The jury agreed that intent to steal from the homeowner was never established."

He will now sue to get his job back. I will withhold further comment, since this is a family forum.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I just reviewed the two pages of this post, & they contain TEN, (10) substantiated cases of misapropriation of authority, violent house invasion, lethal threating with a loaded weapon, with intent to kill, and ransaking, child abuse, & tresspassing...(to name just the most egregious offenses)...ALL carried out under the "COLOR OF LAW" (which, in & of itself is against the LAW)!

WHY don't people get enraged...say something...SPEAK OUT? SIMPLE!

Because, first of all, in ALMOST every case, the event only occured in ONE Town, ONCE. So, to the involved, it was easy to "let the LEO's 'off the hook', since they only made one mistake"...apparently. BUT! IF all ten of these cases were published (along with the dozens of cases dear Airforce HASN'T found), then the story would begin to expose a PATTERN...not good for P.R., you know!

And, then there's the reality that NO ONE WANTS to prosecute the "HARD WORKING POLICE OFFICERS THAT ARE ENDANGERING THEIR LIVES DAILY, JUST TO PROTECT US! HOW UNGRATEFUL IT WOULD BE!"

Of COURSE, (as DICKWOLF) points out...there is that little, ittsy bitsey tiny wennie point about TRAINING...TAC PLANING...ACTION DRILLS prior...ect. In OTHER WORDS:

IF these PUBLIC DEFENDERS were, in fact, properly trained & constrained by PRACTICED DRILLS, none of these TEN EVENTS (and countless others), would have even occured.

Take, for instance, take the L.A. SWATT: Out of the HUNDREDS of "events" & "dynamic entries" that they've been involved in, I know of NOT ONE that was at EITHER the WRONG ADDRESS, or TIME or arrested the wrong "perp"!

WHY? Because the L.A. SWATT is a SERIOUSLY DEDICATED GROUP OF SERIOUSLY FOCUSED individuals that ARE DOING THEIR JOB right reasons! AND, THEREFORE, THEY DO IT WITH THE RIGHT TYPES OF TRAINING!........ PERIOD! ....END OF RANT!

For some reason, the story about a 2004 botched Maricopa County, Arizona SWAT team raid--in which the SWAT team burned down a house, killed a puppy, smashed a neighbor's car when they lost control of their SWAT military vehicle, and arrested one guy for outstanding traffic tickets--has been making its way around the Internet again. Radley Balko mentioned the raid in his piece for reason about how the SWAT team always kills the dog.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, remember, is the self-proclaimed "toughest sheriff in America." He was one of the first to acquire the tank-ish vehicle for his SWAT team, so it's only fair to point out that his boys lost control of the thing, and damned-near killed a bystander and her daughter.

In any case, in a Boing Boing thread on the story, one commenter links to a police discussion board thread about the raid. The headline?

Liberal news media slams Maricopa County Sheriff's Department....just wow

The thread then goes on to bash the reporter for daring to tell the story about how the SWAT team burned a home to the ground, totaled a car, and chased a puppy into a burning building to perish. No criticism at all for the bungling cops, mind you.

Some people just don't get it.

Onward and upward,
airforce

They will get it someday.

Yeah. Not in my county, it's gonna stop someday... I heard about that.

So, they chase puppies into a burning building. Next we'll find out that they eat babies and burn ants with a magnifying glass and cut in line.

Yes.

They also order sushi and not pay.

Another wrong house:

A West Philadelphia family says they were terrorized in their own home Sunday night and blame the Philadelphia Police Department. The Narcotics Division was conducting an undercover operation, responding to complaints of drug deals happening on a home on the 5400 block of Summer Street.

"The officers responded to the wrong home," said Inspector Aaron Horne, commanding officer of the Narcotics Division. "They made a forced entry. Once inside they were alerted to the fact it was the wrong residence."

The police department spouted the usual line about how this almost never happens. Except that it's the second incident in Philly this month. Also, this isn't particularly comforting:

In this case, he says surveillance officers didn't give an address of the home they were targetting.

"They gave a physical description, house with a black storm door, in front of the residence was a pick up truck. Unfortunately there was a house 5 doors away that had a black storm door with pick up in front. The officers didn't have time to determine which house was which," said Inspector Horne.

So instead, they just took their chances, knowing there was a 50-50 shot they would end up terrorizing innocent people?

Some real professionalism, there.

Inspector Horne said "On behalf of the Philadelphia Police Department and the Narcotics Strike Force, I'm totally willing to apologize for the efforts, the mistake. The overall intent was to eradicate drugs from the neighborhood."

Oh, well if that's the intent, I guess it's all okay, then. What's a terrorized family or two if it prevents Philadelphians from getting high; if—as I'm sure is the case now that the raids are complete—that neighborhood is now 100 percent drug-free?

Onward and upward,
airforce

Then when they shoot some citizen, who they startled awake at 3 in the morning, because he grab for his home defense weapon, they say OOPs but he did have a gun...

Another one, this time from northern California:

A Mill Valley couple, claiming a drug raid at their home was "shocking, traumatizing and improperly conducted," filed a lawsuit in federal court Thursday against federal drug agents and a Petaluma police officer.

Carl Keane and Chieko Strange say they were rousted from their Ferndale Avenue home last December by federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, accompanied by Petaluma police and deputies from the Marin County Sheriff's Office.

No drugs were found in the search, but Keane was arrested on suspicion of felony drug trafficking; Sonoma County prosecutors dropped charges against Keane in March.

The civil lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, claims conduct of federal agents Seth McMullen and John Silva and Petaluma police Officer Paul Accornero violated the couple's constitutional rights.

Keane and Strange's attorney, Michael Coffino of San Francisco, said the civil rights action was "based on the incidents that led to the arrest and (property) search."

Coffino said compensation was being sought for property damage as well as "for what this has done to their lives, which has been incredibly disruptive."

Authorities "shouldn't have been there in the first place," he said.

Keane declined to comment.

Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman Casey McEnry, who noted she had not reviewed the lawsuit, declined to comment on specifics, saying the agency "would let judicial proceedings take their course."

Onward and upward,
airforce

I have a simple question. What is going to happen when they hit the wrong house and some one hoses them down with a 7.62?

The answer is simple too, the JBT's die from 7.62 rounds then the rest of them lie and comit another massacre like Waco. No more no knock warrents should be allowed.

The answer is to not use SWAT teams to enforce nonviolent, consensual crimes. Better yet, make nonviolent consensual crimes not crimes, and end the problem altogether.

It is not a perfect world, there are some very dangerous people around, and there is a place for SWAT. But they should be used very, very rarely.

Onward and upward,
airforce

SWAT should only be used as a last resort. Uniformed police with a legitimate warrent in hand should always knock on the door first. Anyone wearing a ski-mask and breaking down a door without knocking first could be shot.

Check this action out: http://www.ohio.edu/outlook/07-08/September/53n.cfm

Or http://www.lancastereaglegazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070923/UPDATES01/70923003


I ask, what does a self-proclaimed rural college campus need a SWAT team for?

Because SWAT is cool, man. It's so much cooler than writing parking tickets.

Wyrm, you'll find the simple answer in that first sentence....sadly, but REALLY!

The idea that such HIGHLY TRAINED (that's a matter of opinion, BTW!) "SPECIAL OPS" personnel will enhance the Dept.'s capabilities is SOLEY BASED UPON LEGEND...rather than research!

God DAMN'EM! Their gonna' get someone killed, just to show how "CAPABLE" they are!

zeroedin, I guess it was more of a rhetorical question on my part. Really, there is no good answer, because honestly, there's no good reason to have a friggin SWAT team on a COLLEGE CAMPUS, especially a self-proclaimed 'rural campus'.

They want to get in on having their own JBTs instead of waiting for USGov to assign some "Blackwater" types to them untill they can fill the slot.

More on the raid in Petaluma:

The suit filed by Carl Keane and his girlfriend, Chieko Strange, of Mill Valley, names as defendants Petaluma Police Officer Paul Acconero and DEA agents Seth McMullen and John Silva.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, is meant to "redress one of the worst nightmares of any law-abiding citizen," the couple said in their filing.

The three defendants were among a group of DEA agents who burst into the couple's home Dec. 19 using a search warrant signed by a Sonoma County judge for an investigation of a cross-country shipment of six pounds of marijuana.

No drugs, drug residue, money or weapons were found during the search of Keane's house.

Strange, 63, said in the suit that a DEA agent held her down with a boot on her head as agents stormed through the house yelling, "Where are your weapons?" and "You know why we're here."

An Orwell quote seems appropriate here.

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever."

He wasn't far off--we're up to about 40,000 times per year in this country. All so places like Petaluma can be spared from scourges like six pounds of marijuana.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Airforce-
Thanks loads, brother, for being like a pit bull on these incidents of StormTrooper" mentality!!

They are growing exponentially. It's sickening! I am all for giving LEOs respect when deserved. But when guys like this continue to break the law and violate citizens Constitutional rights, they deserve, well, read my mind!

Keep up the great detective work. We NEED to be constantly reminded about this crap so it'll settle in REAL GOOD what & who we are up against!!!

KUDOS, Bro.

Thanks, but Mr. Radley Balko deserves the credit. I just help out a little.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Airforce, I realize this is NOT a "botched raid" but I felt it appropriate for this discussion forum! MUST SEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

YouTube Video here.

Warning:
This video is graphic and WILL make you queezy after seeing the blatant disregard for human life a "PIG" has for a U.S. Veteran.

If you listen closely, you can hear the VET (seated on the ground) telling off the cop by making remarks such as "I've been in real war" and such. The cop asks him (ASKS him mind you) to "Get up" and when the man complies, he's shot to death!

Absolutely SICKENING!!

We ARE under TYRANNY and DICTATORSHIP!! WAKE UP, people!!!


Benjamin Franklin said;
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Thomas Jefferson said;
"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press."

Thanks, A.Patriot2. I'll pass this along to Mr. Balko. Believe me, we need all the help we can get in finding these cases of police abuse and misconduct.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Addendum to the shooting story:
The person shot was not, repeat NOT killed. He survived. Shots were to leg, shoulder and chest I believe.

The cops been fired. The victim is suing the police department AND the cop personally.

That's a relief. I thank God he survived that incident! But what a bummer of a night he had - eh?

When tasering is not enough:

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article1.cfm?issue=09-25-07&storyID=28068

Keep 'en coming, folks!

I was witness to one incident where a taser had no effect on the subject. A man--clearly out of his mind--walked into the emergency room with a pistol tucked into his waistband, announcing he was God, and was going to take revenge for 9/11. Security officers evacuated the waiting room while the police were coming.

When police arrived, they ordered the man to lie on the ground. he said nothing, and continued to stand--apparently in a catatonic state.

After some discussion, we determined that the taser was probably the best less-lethal option we had.

He was tasered three times. Each time, his head would jerk up a little bit, then he would go back to his previous posture, standing with his chin on his chest, almost appearing asleep. and that was with enough juice to put an elephant on his knees.

It was finally decided that he was probably not faking his catatonic fugue. two officers rushed and tackled him and disarmed him. eventually, he was transferred to a different hospital.

I was amazed. If I hadn't seen it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. I'm pretty big, and when I was tasered in training, every muscle in my body went numb.

Onward and upward,
airforce



Onward and upward,
airforce

Being that these cops tackled him and disarmed him is what i call a REAL cop. They were not jackbooted thugs. A jackbooted thug would have just shot him 30 or 40 times and hollerd for more ammo. My hat's off to these guys!!

It still wasn't without risk, both to the officers and to the deranged man. Sometimes your options for ending a situation peacefully are pretty limited, and this was one of those times. We just couldn't think of anything better.

Onward and upward,
airforce

By MIKE ROBINSON (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
September 30, 2007 6:04 PM EDT

CHICAGO - Videotapes of angry officers savagely beating civilians and charges that a murder plot was hatched within an elite special operations unit have Chicago's troubled police department reeling again.

Adding to the department's woes is word from federal prosecutors that they are investigating claims that homicide detectives tortured suspects into confessing to murders that landed them on death row in the 1980s.

Not since club-swinging cops in baby-blue helmets chased demonstrators through clouds of pepper gas at the 1968 Democratic National Convention have Chicago police been so awash in trouble.
<a><img></a>

The biggest shock came Wednesday when federal prosecutors charged special operations officer Jerome Finnigan with planning the murder of another member of the unit to keep him from talking to the government.

"This kind of stuff on Page One is just horrible," and reinforces a misleading stereotype of police, said Roosevelt University political scientist Paul Green, who taught at the police academy for four years.

"The overwhelming 99.9 percent do their job professionally," he said.

But evidence of deep-rooted problems is piling up.

Finnigan, 44, also is one of six members of the special operations unit, created to crack down on gangs and drugs, who are charged with operating a shakedown operation aimed at civilians. Prosecutors say they have him on tape weighing the possibility of having someone kill a fellow special operations officer to keep him from becoming a witness against him.

Finnigan and his attorney, Michael Ficaro, declined to comment.

In July, three off-duty officers pleaded not guilty to charges that they beat four businessmen in a bar in a videotaped confrontation.

In another videotaped confrontation, off-duty officer Anthony Abbate was seen apparently beating a 115-pound female bartender because she would not serve him another drink. Abbate has pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of aggravated battery.

The quagmire is deepened by five federal lawsuits accusing police and city officials of covering up the torture of murder suspects at the Area 2 detective headquarters under violent crimes Lt. Jon Burge in the 1980s. Burge was fired in 1993 after a suspect in the murder of two officers allegedly was abused while in his custody.

A four-year study by two special prosecutors appointed by a Cook County judge, released in July 2006, found that Chicago police beat, kicked and shocked scores of black suspects in the 1970s and 1980s to get confessions. The report said it was impossible to file charges because the incidents were so old that the statute of limitations had long since run out.

On Wednesday, however, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald announced the federal government was stepping into the torture case, saying it would seek evidence of "perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice by members of the Chicago police department."

"It's political, it's cultural, it's systemic," said attorney G. Flint Taylor, who represents several former death row inmates now suing Burge and city officials.

Attorney Richard Sikes, who represents Burge in the five civil suits, said after Fitzgerald's announcement that allegations against his client "have been fairly investigated by the special prosecutors who found that charges were not appropriate."

The department has been slow to put its best foot forward. Officers in the news affairs office said only department spokeswoman Monique Bond could comment. Bond did not return three calls seeking comment over two days.
<a><img></a>

Mark Donahue, president of Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, said most officers are doing a professional job but the department's reputation has been hurt by the misdeeds of a minority.

"I subscribe to the few-bad-apples theory," Donahue said. "It is also due to the attention that the few bad apples are getting from the media."

The City Council recently revamped the Office of Professional Standards, which investigates charges that police officers abused civilians. Instead of reporting to department higher ups, as it did for years, the office now reports directly to Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Craig B. Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor, says such investigations in the past were shoddy and rarely resulted in discipline against the officers.

"If they investigated crimes the way they investigate complaints against police officers they would never close a case," Futterman says.

All too often, that's true. And on the rare occasions when a criminal case is brought against an officer, it is often tough to get a conviction. If we could privatize law enforcement, we could get more accountability--but eyes glaze over whenever I talk about this concept.

Onward and upward,
airforce

News story here.

Police come to a woman's house because her car by chance is similar to a car used in a recent bank robbery. She's not at all connected to the robbery. As she speaks with one police officer, another walks around back to look around. He walks her yard yard, where, as any reasonable person might suspect, one of her two dogs growls at the sight of a stranger poking around on the property.

The cop takes out his gun and shoots the dog dead while the woman's two-year-old son watches from 20 feet away.

Sergeant Chad Paulson of The Crow Wing Sheriff's Department says the deputy had his weapon drawn because the bank robber may have been on the premises. He also said the deputy "shot the dog because it approached him growling, baring it's teeth, with the hair on it's neck standing up."

This is absurd. The dog was a terrier lab. I've had hundreds of dogs bare their teeth at me. Not once have I thought my only option was to kill the thing.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Hey AF, not my eyes. I've been saying that for YEARS.

Trust me, Coolhand. You're the exception. But, if you really want to put a room to sleep, talk about privatizing our nation's roads and highways.

On a different note, go out and buy the November issue of reason magazine. Better yet, buy two, and give one away.

Radley Balko has an article in it that he's been working on basically since we first reported the Cory Maye case, and on which he's been spending much of his time for the last eight months.

The article zeros in on Dr. Steven Hayne, the doctor who did the autopsy in the Cory Maye case and, as it turns out, does the vast majority of all the autopsies in Mississippi. Dr. Hayne has some pretty serious credibility problems, beginning with the staggering number of autopsies he does each year. There's also a high probability that he has put a significant number of innocent people in prison, including (possibly) on death row.

I don't want to give too much away, because the issue is just now hitting newsstands. But we're hoping the story makes an impact. One justice on the Mississippi State Supreme Court has already cited some of Mr. Balko's prior writing on Hayne in throwing out his testimony in the murder trial of Tyler Edmonds. But the whole court stopped well short of decertifying Dr. Hayne as an expert in Mississippi's courts. This new article digs quite a bit deeper. He reviewed lots of depositions and autopsy reports, and interviewed more than 50 people, including dozens of Dr. Hayne's peers and former colleagues.

Incidentally, Mr. Balko did find one doctor in Mississippi who has in the past been willing to stick up for Dr. Hayne's credibility. he didn't find many, but there was at least one. This doctor is often present at Hayne's autopsies, and has in the past collaborated with Hayne to write medical articles and make presentations at conferences.

His name? Dr. Michael West, whose own qualifications seem to be largely a figment of his imagination.

Onward and upward,
airforce

This one took place in Henry, a small town in southern Virginia, in October of 2003.

Ariel Alonso and Jonathan Conrad were two lonely men who developed an interest in alchemy. After meeting on the Internet, the two men shared a home in Henry, Virginia, where they practiced amateur chemistry, producing various elixirs that they then sold on their website. Cooky? Sure. But not criminal. Conrad, in his 50s, was into alternative medicine, and generated most of the income from the venture. Alonso, in his 70s, was bit more eccentric -- he dabbled in metallurgy. The two had invested thousands of dollars in the lab, but were able to make a decent living from their web business.

On October 13, 2003, local authorities paid a visit to the home, where they saw the men's chemistry equipment, and (naturally) immediately suspected a methamphetamine lab. For reasons still unclear, a "field test" tested positve (there seem to be lots of false positives with these narcotics field tests). The DEA would later admit that test was only "equivocally" positive.

So later the same day, DEA agents raided the men's home. The raiding officers devastated the lab, shattering thousands of dollars in equipment, and arrested the men on charges of manufacturing methamphetamine. The two spent 18 days in jail.

Unfortunately for the drug cops, more extensive lab tests later revealed no sign of methamphetamine, nor of any of the chemicals used to make it. In fact, there were no signs of any illicit substances at all. The two men were released.

Despite their innocence, the DEA refused to compensate Alonso and Conrad for the damage drug agents did to their lab. With no source of income and lots of credit card debt used to buy the lab, Conrad moved in with a relative in North Carolina. Alonso had no family, and so moved back into the home, where he lived on Social Security. When his furnace broke, he had no money to repair it, and had to use his stove for heat. He eventually contracted lung cancer, and died in a low-income nursing home in September 2004.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Yes lots of false positives on a field test.

There is also a little signal a handler can give to a drug dog that makes it bark or act like it smells drugs.

Soon that will be caught on camera.

That's exactly why these house distroying ba$tards should have been shot when they came through the door!!

Botched raid victims William and Sharon McCulley, whose case Radley Balko mentioned in Overkill, were awarded $325,000 this week after a botched drug raid last year hit them and their grandchildren.

...That’s when, without a warrant authorizing entrance into the home of William and Sharon McCulley, but rather with an “anticipatory search warrant” that authorized them to search any property where the marijuana was transported, police entered their home.

Though the Toyota truck they had been following and the transported box wasn’t at the McCulley’s home, police then threw Sharon McCulley on the ground next to her grandchild and handcuffed her, pressing a gun so hard into her head it left a circular mark, according to the complaint.

Her husband, William McCulley, who has a severe nerve disorder and has a walker and leg brace, was also ordered to lie on the ground, but was unable to do so quickly because of his disability. Thrown to the ground by an officer, William McCulley’s implanted electronic shocking device to alleviate pain malfunctioned causing him to convulse, court documents state.

Onward and upward,
airforce

“anticipatory search warrant”


That's an oxymoron.