Raid of the Day [Archive] - Ron Paul Forums / Liberty Forest

Anti Federalist

01-23-2013, 03:55 PM

Raid Of The Day: Richard Brown

By Radley Balko

Posted: 01/22/2013 10:51 am EST
Updated: 01/22/2013 11:13 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/raid-of-the-day-richard-b_n_2526473.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

So as I've mentioned, I have a book on police militarization coming out in June. (Pre-order it here!) In anticipation of that, I'm starting a new "raid of the day" feature on this blog. Each weekday between now and then, I'll post the details of a militarized police operation. Most will be raids that were botched, on the wrong house, or in some other way went wrong. But I'll also feature some that went right -- or at least as intended -- which can be just as problematic. My intent here is to show the breadth and depth of the problems that come with a more militarized domestic police force. And, of course, to promote my book!

I know, June is a ways away. Not to worry! I have plenty of material. In fact, I could have started this feature a couple years ago, and still have had more than enough examples to take us through June.

Today's featured raid is the March 1996 raid in Miami, Florida that claimed the life of 73-year-old retired salesman Richard Brown.

The police in Miami had received a tip from an informant that Brown, who had no criminal record, was selling drugs from his small apartment.

So they sent the SWAT team.

The police claimed at the time that Brown began firing at them as soon as they entered his home.

So they fired back.

And they fired back.

And they fired back.

By the time they were finished, they had pumped 123 rounds into Richard Brown’s apartment—nine of them into Richard Brown. One Miami SWAT officer also mistakenly shot one of his colleagues in the back.

The police never found any drugs. They did find something else, which they weren’t expecting: Brown's 14-year-old great-granddaughter Janeka, whom he had raised. They found her cowering in the bathroom. When the raid began, Brown had told the girl to take the phone into the bathroom, to call the police, and to wait until it was safe. So she waited, prayed, and trembled as bullets dug into the walls around her. When she finally came out, she saw the bloodied body of the man who had adopted and raised her slouched in his bedroom closet. Janeka Brown would later receive a $2.5 million settlement from the city of Miami.

In 2002, she told 60 Minutes that she never saw the gun the police claimed Richard Brown fired to instigate the barrage of gunfire. That’s because it didn’t exist. "One of the officers supposedly picked up the gun—who gave it to another police officer, who gave it to another police officer, and then suddenly it came to the crime scene technician," Brown’s attorney said in an interview with the CBS news program. “And, of course, lo and behold, there were no fingerprints on it, or smudge marks or anything of that nature.”

That still wasn’t enough to prevent an internal report from clearing the SWAT officers of any wrongdoing. Former Miami Internal Affairs supervisor and 25-year police veteran John Dalton told the Miami Herald that the Internal Affairs supervisor at the time of the raid, William O'Brien, discouraged a thorough investigation of the Brown case. "They were very defensive about this shooting from the beginning," Dalton said, adding that he'd been "chewed out" by O'Brien for asking difficult questions. Raul Martinez, the Internal Affairs officer who cleared the men who killed Richard Brown, would later become Miami’s chief of police.

But the questions about Brown’s gun persisted, and eventually led to a federal investigation. Five of the officers involved in the Brown raid were indicted for lying about the gun. That investigation raised more concerns, and federal prosecutors started to look into other cases. From a 2002 CBS News report:

Now prosecutors have filed criminal charges against another half dozen Miami officers in four more shootings. They expect to go on trial in a year.

Guy Lewis, then U.S. attorney, laid out the government's case at a news conference. "These officers planted weapons," he said. "They lied about their roles in the shootings. They lied about what they saw. They falsified reports. They tampered with crime scenes."

Lewis claims the cops stole guns, wiped them clean of fingerprints and held on to them, sometimes for months, until they needed to plant them at a scene. The officers have pled not guilty and have been suspended with pay.

The officers all were members of Miami's elite police squads – the SWAT teams, the crime suppression unit, the street narcotics unit.

Officer Arturo Beguristain, who has been involved in more shootings than any other officer on the force, is one of those who emptied his weapon during the Brown raid. Beguristain alone fired 30 shots and also found the gun police say Brown fired. He also has found guns at two others shootings now under indictment.

One member of the SWAT team, improbably named Robert Rambo, testified for the prosecution. He told 60 Minutes that the SWAT teams in Miami “operated by their own rules” and “expected everyone else to lie to protect them.” In all, 11 Miami cops were tried on a variety of charges related to planting guns and covering up four shootings in the mid-1990s. In 2003, a federal jury returned a mixed verdict. Four officers were convicted for their actions with respect to two shootings, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict for the other seven.

Most notably, even though Richard Brown wasn't a drug dealer; even though he never fired at the Miami SWAT team, as they said he did; even though he never even had a gun; even though they recklessly fired more than 100 rounds into his house, killing him; even though they had no idea there was also a 14-year-old girl inside; despite all of that, all of the officers involved in the raid on Richard Brown were acquitted of all criminal charges.

There will be more problems with Miami SWAT teams in the coming years. More on that in future "raid of the day" entries.

Anti Federalist

01-23-2013, 03:58 PM

Raid Of The Day: Laquisha Turner

By Radley Balko

Posted: 01/23/2013 9:28 am EST
Updated: 01/23/2013 9:51 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/raid-of-the-day-laquisha-_n_2533473.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In 2008, FBI Agents raided the Richmond, California home of Artesia West as part of a drug and gang sweep. They were looking for West's son, who was wanted on drug charges, but didn't live at the house.

When West opened the door, she attempted to tell the agents they could search all they liked, but to be careful around her disabled daughter, Laquisha. Two years earlier, the girl had been left quadriplegic after she was struck by a bullet during a drive-by shooting.

But before she could speak, West later said, the agents "were coming in the side door shooting things.” The agents deployed flash grenades and repeatedly screamed at at the disabled girl to "get down." West told the San Francisco TV station KGO, "She kept telling them, 'I can't get down.'"

By design, flash grenades produce large plumes of smoke -- the intent is to distract and disorient the occupants of the residence about to be raided. But as the agents detained and questioned Wes while they searched her apartment, they left Laquisha Turner in the same room where they had set off the grenades. Because her injuries left her unable to move her wheelchair, she was forced to sit and inhale the smoke.

Turner fell ill after the raid, was hospitalized, and died a month later.

West blamed the smoke inhalation for her daugher's death. The December 2, 2008 KGO report indicated that autopsy results were due in a couple of weeks, but I've been unable to find any follow-up reports on whether the smoke was found to have contributed to her death. I've also been unable to track down Artesia West.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in June, but you can pre-order it here.)

Lucille

01-23-2013, 04:05 PM

Oh wow. He's going to do one a day until at least June? The reason commenters used to call it, "Balko's daily nut punch."

phill4paul

01-23-2013, 04:09 PM

Nice!

Anti Federalist

01-23-2013, 04:20 PM

I'll be sure to post each daily in this thread, if I can.

tod evans

01-23-2013, 04:21 PM

Sad thing is he's only scratching the surface.......

What a sorry lot of humanity we are that we get our bowels in an uproar over tools like guns but think it's perfectly alright for armed government agents to storm-troop homes searching for dope.

Make no mistake I'm glad folks are finally getting their panties in a wad, it's just a very blatant example of how utterly ignorant most of society is.

Anti Federalist

01-24-2013, 11:09 AM

Raid Of The Day: Sylvia and Elsa Romero

By Radley Balko Posted: 01/24/2013 8:04 am EST

Updated: 01/24/2013 8:41 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/raid-of-the-day-sylvia-an_n_2541465.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

November 2, 1992: Fordham University student Sylvia Romero and her sister Elsa were relaxing in their apartment when they heard a loud knock at the door. Before either of them could answer, the strangers outside began to beat down the door.

The door popped open, but was still held partially closed by a chain latch. Sylvia Romero then peered through the crack to ask what was happening and was hit with a burst of mace. When the door finally came open, 15 plainclothes narcotics cops stormed the apartment and pushed the two women to the floor. The sisters were strip-searched, handcuffed, then told to lie still at gunpoint while the cops ravaged their apartment. According to the Romero sisters, the cops never identified themselves as police. When Romero, by then sobbing, asked who the men were and what they wanted, she says one of them responded, “Bitch, shut the fuck up!”

The police found no drugs, but took the women into custody anyway. They were later released without charges. When they returned home, they found that the police had continued to search, and had caused more damage to their apartment. The cops had also taken their dog Crissy to the pound.

The raid was based on a tip from an informant that police would find heroin inside the apartment. Housing Police Chief Joseph Kinney told the New York Daily News that the raid was conducted according to "standard procedure." The women's brother, an attorney for the city of Hartford, Connecticut, told the paper, "My mother's biggest fear was that someone would break into the [sisters’] apartment and something would happen to her children. She never expected that it would be the cops."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

jkr

01-24-2013, 11:13 AM

make this a sticky!

XTreat

01-24-2013, 11:59 AM

cjm

01-24-2013, 12:15 PM

I'll be sure to post each daily in this thread, if I can.

subscribed.

Anti Federalist

01-25-2013, 02:06 PM

Raid Of The Day: Scott Bryant

By Radley Balko
Posted: 01/25/2013 8:55 am EST |
Updated: 01/25/2013 9:11 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/raid-of-the-day-scott-bry_n_2550158.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In late March of 1995, deputies with the Dodge County, Wisconsin Sheriff's Department claimed to have found traces of marijuana in a trashcan outside the home of Paul Shavlik, Cheryl Kadinger, and Jason Tews. That was reason enough for Lt. James Rohr, Det. Robert Neuman, Det. Anthony Soblewski, and Dep. Kevin Hill to wage a violent, no-knock, 2:45 am raid.

On the morning of April 1st, the three roommates were tossed to the ground, handcuffed, and held motionless face down on the floor at gunpoint for 45 minutes while the police, as the roommates put it, "tore the place to shreds." Kadinger says the officers also made sexual comments while rifling through her underwear drawer. They found no drugs and made no arrests.

Two weeks later, the same cops raided another home, again after claiming to have found marijuana residue in an outside trashcan. The second raid didn't produce a significant quantity drugs, either. But it did end with a tragedy.

Scott Bryant, 29, had a petty criminal history, but relatives said he had put all of that behind him after winning sole custody of his 8-year-old son Colten. It had been four years since his last arrest, and Bryant was working long hours as a tool and die maker to support his boy. He was also taking classes at a technical college, where faculty described him as "a straight-A student." Bryant's sister Shannon Halloff told the Wisconsin State Journal in 1995, "He's shown us the last few years what he's made of. He really turned his life around."

On the night of April 17th, Rohr, Neuman, Soblewski, and Hill gathered outside of Bryant's mobile home. Rohr would later say he knocked on the door before entering, but neighbors who were 100 feet from the trailer at the time said they heard no knock or announcement. Rohr kicked open the door, and he and Neuman went inside. Bryant was sleeping. Seconds later, Neuman shot Bryant flush in the chest. Bryant was unarmed. He died in his home as his son slept in the next room.

Neuman later told investigators he "couldn't remember" pulling the trigger. That was all he would say. Neuman was known in the department for making big drug busts that generated headlines. Sheriff Stephen Fitzgerald said the shooting was "tragic," and compared it to a hunting accident. The local district attorney determined that the shooting was "not in any way justified," put declined to press charges.

The following year Dodge County settled with the Bryant family for $950,000.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

kcchiefs6465

01-25-2013, 03:34 PM

tod evans

01-25-2013, 03:52 PM

One has to wonder what Boobus and Boobette would think if these cases were spoon fed to them like the various "wars" being waged on American citizens...

I may be fooling myself but I think at least 1/2 of the locals I see in the grocery store would be outraged............If they could be spoon fed reality...

Anti Federalist

01-28-2013, 02:22 PM

Raid Of The Day: Drug Cops Take Over Jerome, Arizona

By Radley Balko
Posted: 01/28/2013 8:23 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/raid-of-the-day-drug-cops_n_2562070.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

On October 15, 1985, more than 100 law enforcement officers swarmed the entire town of Jerome, Arizona. The historic hilltop hamlet was a boomtown in the 19th and early 20th century after copper deposits were discovered nearby.

Once the copper was gone, Jerome atrophied into a ghost town by the early 1950s. But some counterculture hippies rediscovered the town in the mid-60s, and for 20 years it served as an artsy, bohemian enclave.

Jerome also loved its pot. Residents grew the drug in the nearby hills, and legalization sympathizers had taken over the local government. Jerome officials took a live and let live approach to marijuana. That is, until an informant moved in and began recording his conversations around town for state and federal anti-drug agencies.

The team of state cops and federal agents moved in early that autumn morning. One resident told The New York Times, “To bring 100 policemen into a small town at 5 o’clock in the morning, dragging women and children out of bed, scaring them half to death, to get 9 or 10 pounds of marijuana is asinine.”

Police later said the haul was closer to 50 pounds. They arrested over 20 people, including the police chief, two city council members, and the former mayor.

A spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which organized the raid, explained to the Times why the aggressive tactics were necessary. “It’s a town that would like to secede and carry on its own life style. The people there strongly believe in an individual’s freedom, above all else.”

And we certainly can't have that.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

HOLLYWOOD

01-28-2013, 02:42 PM

WAT? Just pulling key quotes out of the news reports:

Raul Martinez, the Internal Affairs officer who cleared the men who killed Richard Brown, would later become Miami’s chief of police. "One of the officers supposedly picked up the gun—who gave it to another police officer, who gave it to another police officer, and then suddenly it came to the crime scene technician," Brown’s attorney said in an interview with the CBS news program. “And, of course, lo and behold, there were no fingerprints on it, or smudge marks or anything of that nature.” I presume there were only 'smug marks' or zero fingerprints on the bullets inside the gun too? Zero fingerprints/palm prints etc on the ammo clip/cylinder? How about the forensic test above all other tests and BS .gov statements; the minute DNA samples on the weapon. If Brown had a gun, (no matter how many different people handled the weapon), Brown's DNA would be all over the handgun and would be accurately tested for specific date/time.

A spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which organized the raid, explained to the Times why the aggressive tactics were necessary. “It’s a town that would like to secede and carry on its own life style. The people there strongly believe in an individual’s freedom, above all else.”
I presume this is why, with such little experience or education, LE warrant huge salaries and retirement/benefit packages. Do as we say, no matter how Unconstitutional or wrong, and you will be 'Protected and rewarded for life'

Lucille

01-29-2013, 01:14 PM

Raid Of The Day: Drug Cops Take Over Jerome, Arizona

By Radley Balko
Posted: 01/28/2013 8:23 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/raid-of-the-day-drug-cops_n_2562070.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

On October 15, 1985, more than 100 law enforcement officers swarmed the entire town of Jerome, Arizona. The historic hilltop hamlet was a boomtown in the 19th and early 20th century after copper deposits were discovered nearby.

I can't believe I never heard about this!

Once the copper was gone, Jerome atrophied into a ghost town by the early 1950s. But some counterculture hippies rediscovered the town in the mid-60s, and for 20 years it served as an artsy, bohemian enclave.

A spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which organized the raid, explained to the Times why the aggressive tactics were necessary. “It’s a town that would like to secede and carry on its own life style. The people there strongly believe in an individual’s freedom, above all else.” And we certainly can't have that.

I think it's still an artsy bohemian enclave. Not sure if the townspeople still feel that way (I bet at least one Paulian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maynard_James_Keenan) does, and we're actually looking at property near his winery) but, if so, I might have to consider relocating there myself!

That is, until an informant moved in and began recording his conversations around town for state and federal anti-drug agencies.

The dirty rat!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME69Fm0I25Q

Anti Federalist

01-30-2013, 02:42 AM

Raid Of The Day: Lloyd Miner

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/raid-of-the-day-lloyd-min_n_2562081.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

By Radley Balko Posted: 01/29/2013 8:42 am EST

On the evening of June 12, 1991, a Kansas City narcotics unit broke into the home of 33-year-old Lloyd Miner, clubbed him with a flashlight, smashed his toilet, turned over his furniture, pried the doors off of his cabinets, and destroyed some of his kitchen appliances before hauling the construction worker off to jail.

Miner sat in a cell for five hours before the police realized they had raided the wrong house. According to the Associated Press, "Maj. Dennis Shreve, commander of the Police Department's narcotics and vice division, said the error had occurred because the sergeant in charge of the operation had neglected to do a routine drive-by check with an undercover agent on the case."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

phill4paul

01-30-2013, 02:47 AM

Tod

01-30-2013, 03:16 AM

kathy88

01-30-2013, 05:28 AM

How did I miss this thread for over a week? Subscribed.

tangowhiskeykilo

01-30-2013, 11:04 AM

Fucking disgusting. I hate all these little piggies who think they are all big and bad cause they have a damn badge and gun. Even more disgusting is that us tax payers paid for all their mistake. Sorry for the vulgarity but these stories have really irked me to say the least.

Cops (and other government employees) should be held to the highest of standards and have a much harsher punishment. Example regular guy rapes someone and gets around 5 years. Cop should easily get 20 no parole.

Anti Federalist

01-30-2013, 03:21 PM

Raid Of The Day: Andrew Leonard

By Radley Balko Posted: 01/30/2013 8:31 am EST | Updated: 01/30/2013 8:46 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/30/raid-of-the-day-andrew-le_n_2580906.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

February 25, 2009: After taking down his door with a battering ram during a no-knock raid, police in Baltimore ransacked the home of 33-year-old Andrew Leonard, handcuffed him, and interrogated him and his wife for 15 minutes at gunpoint. The police kept asking the couple about a drug dealer they had never met.

They had the wrong house. The police had either been given the wrong address, or had mistransposed it onto the search warrant. They later nabbed their suspect a few door down.

Leonard spent the next two months trying to get the police to repair the damage they had done to his door. Because it wouldn't close, he initially had no choice but to nail the door shut and enter and exit his home through a back alley. After several weeks, a relative helped him take the door down and hang a new one. But Leonard persisted in trying to get the city to pay for the old one. He estimated the police had done about $1,200 damage.

The city eventually rejected his claim. City officials told him that because his address was the one on the warrant, the police hadn't really made a mistake. Frustrated, Leonard gave up, and called the city's trash pickup to come get his old door. They never came. Instead, city code inspectors came to Leonard's house and fined him $50 for storing the old door that hte police had broken in his backyard while he waited for the city to come pick it up.

At that point Leonard went to the Baltimore Sun. A reporter from the paper then contacted the mayor's office. Only after the newspaper intervened on his behalf did the city give Leonard any real attention. "Mr. Leonard's situation is very unfortunate," spokesman Scott Peterson wrote to the reporter in an email. "Now that this had been brought to the attention of the Mayor's Office, we will ... respond with the care, attention, and respect that he, like all residents in Baltimore, deserves."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

phill4paul

01-30-2013, 03:46 PM

Thanks AF. I was trying to find this exact case a coupla days ago.

Anti Federalist

01-31-2013, 02:01 PM

Raid Of The Day: John Hirko, Jr.

Posted: 01/31/13 EST | Updated: 01/31/13 EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/raid-of-the-day-john-hirk_n_2589653.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In April 1997, a SWAT team in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania raided the home of John Hirko, Jr. after an informant claimed to have purchased drugs from him. Within minutes Hirko was dead, and his body consumed by fire.

The police started the raid by tossing a flash grenade through a window, just a few seconds after knocking. When Hirko emerged from a bedroom with a gun, Officer Joseph Riedy shot Hirko 11 times, nine times in the back. One of the SWAT cops then detonated a second flash grenade near Hirko, sparking a fire that destroyed the house and prevented police or paramedics from giving Hirko any medical attention. The fire burned Hirko's body beyond recognition.

Hirko had no criminal record, but police claimed to have found evidence of drug distribution in the house after the raid. Hirko's fiancée said they were only recreational users, and that Hirko believed he was being robbed at the time of the raid. The local district attorney determined Hirko's death was a justifiable homicide. The following year Officer Riedy, the cop who killed Hirko, was named "Officer of the Year."

In the lawsuit Hirko's family filed against the city, expert witnesses for Hirko's estate testified that the disorienting effects of the grenade and its deployment in such close proximity to the alleged announcement, along with the lack of a clear police insignia on the SWAT team's black, military-style uniforms would have made it difficult for anyone to determine if they were being apprehended by police or invaded by unlawful intruders. Another witness for Hirko's family -- a police officer from the same department that conducted the raid -- testified that five months before the raid, he had warned senior officials in the department not to promote Officer Kirby Williams to head up the SWAT team, cautioning that, ''If the wrong guy gets up there, somebody was going to get injured or killed." Williams was promoted anyway. The SWAT team had no written procedures, and there were no standards or qualifications to join -- any officer who volunteered could serve on the team.

The expert witness for the city -- a longtime officer with the LAPD SWAT team -- testified that SWAT officers should not have insignia on their uniforms to make them easily identifiable as police officers, because doing so "would make them a target." He also testified that Hirko should not have been confronted outside his home, and that police were correct to storm the house to take Hirko by surprise. In short, he testified that there was nothing problematic about a raid that left a house destroyed, a man shot nine times in the back, and a charred corpse.

The federal jury disagreed, finding in 2004 that the SWAT team had violated Hirko's civil rights. Soon after the verdict, the city of Bethlehem settled with Hirko's estate for $8 million, nearly a fourth of the city's annual budget.

Read coverage of the case from the Allentown Morning Call here.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

WM_in_MO

01-31-2013, 08:51 PM

Thank you for posting these, I crosspost them to my fb page when I see a new one. It gets some interesting responses.

Anti Federalist

01-31-2013, 09:00 PM

Thank you for posting these, I crosspost them to my fb page when I see a new one. It gets some interesting responses.

Post them here, if you don't mind, as I do not, nor will I ever, "FarceBook".

Oh, and welcome aboard!

Anti Federalist

02-01-2013, 03:03 PM

Raid Of The Day: The Fasching Family

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/01/2013 10:04 am EST | Updated: 02/01/2013 11:12 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/01/raid-of-the-day_n_2568491.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Billings, Montana police say the 6 am raid they conducted in October 2012 was part of an investigation into a suspected meth lab. But there was no meth lab. And the 12-year-old daughter of Jackie Fasching suffered severe burns after the SWAT team used a broomstick to drop a flash grenade through a window into a bedroom where the girl and her sister were sleeping.

Police Chief Rich St. John told the paper, “It was totally unforeseen, totally unplanned and extremely regrettable. We certainly did not want a juvenile, or anyone else for that matter, to get injured.”

A photo the girl's mother provided to the Billings Gazette shows red and black burns down her side.

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/969927/thumbs/r-BILLINGSBURNS-large570.jpg?6

Fasching wasn't satisfied with that explanation. “A simple knock on the door and I would’ve let them in," she said. "They said their intel told them there was a meth lab at our house. If they would’ve checked, they would’ve known there’s not.” Fasching's husband, who suffers from congenital heart disease and liver failure, was in fact attempting to open the door to let the cops in just as they knocked it down.

As for the flash grenade, Fasching said it “blew the nails out of the drywall." There's also the matter of why, if they were looking for a meth lab, the police would have set off flash grenades in the first place. Meth labs are known to explode.

According to the Gazette, Chief St. John said investigators did "plenty of homework on the residence," yet somehow weren't aware that there were children inside. “The information that we had did not have any juveniles in the house and did not have any juveniles in the room,” St. John said. “We generally do not introduce these disorienting devices when they’re present. Every bit of information and intelligence that we have comes together and we determine what kind of risk is there. The warrant was based on some hard evidence and everything we knew at the time.”

It sounds like a pretty professional plan. Except that they were looking for a meth lab, and didn’t find it. And they weren't aware of the children permanently living in the home they claim to have thoroughly investigated. Clearly something went wrong.

St. John added, “If we’re wrong or made a mistake, then we’re going to take care of it . . . When we do this, we want to ensure the safety of not only the officers, but the residents inside.”

It seems clear that ensuring the safety of the officers was a high priority for the Billings SWAT team. But it's difficult to see how blindly dropping flash grenades into a bedroom shows much concern for the safety of "the residents inside."

St. John did promise to conduct an unbiased investigation of the incident -- and of the SWAT team he had just defended.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

02-04-2013, 12:08 PM

Raid Of The Day: Annie Rae Dixon

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/04/2013 8:52 am EST | Updated: 02/04/2013 9:06 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/raid-of-the-day-annie-rae_n_2615079.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In January 1992, a Gregg County, Texas narcotics team conducted a 2 am raid on the home of 84-year-old Annie Rae Dixon. According to police, an informant told them he had bought crack from Dixon's granddaughter.

Dixon, a paraplegic, was also bedridden with pneumonia at the time. When Officer Frank Baggett, Jr. kicked open the door to Dixon's bedroom, he'd say later, he stumbled, causing his gun to accidentally discharge, which sent a bullet directly into Dixon's chest. She died moments later. There were no drugs in Dixon's home. The raid team was also out of its jurisdiction. Dixon lived just across the county line in Smith County.

A subsequent inquest split with a hung verdict, divided along racial lines. (Baggett is white, Dixon was black.) Five months later a grand jury declined to charge Baggett with a crime. Dixon's death set off racial tensions in the town of Tyler. Andrew Mellontree, a black county commissioner, expressed the frustration of blacks in the area to the New York Times. "People can't accept the idea that a 84-year-old grandmother gets shot in her bed and it's not even worth a negligence charge," he said.

Once again, an innocent person died in a drug raid that turned up no drugs, weapons, or criminal charges. Once again, no one was held accountable, and no policies were changed. And so once again, the inevitable message sent to Annie Rae Dixon's friends, relatives, and community is that dead innocent 84-year-old women are a regrettable but inevitable--and therefore acceptable--occasional outcome in the war on drugs. Annie Rae Dixon was more collateral damage.

"We're used to the oops syndrome," local activist Rev. Daryl Bowdre told CBS News. "They can come in with their guns cocked and the gun misfires and somebody dies, and it's, 'Oops. Sorry.' But when you start killing our 84-year-old grandmothers, you know, that--that's when enough is enough."

More innocent grandmothers will die in drug raids in the coming years, including 57-year-old Alberta Spruill in New York in 2003, and 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta in 2006.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

cjm

02-04-2013, 08:34 PM

There's also the matter of why, if they were looking for a meth lab, the police would have set off flash grenades in the first place. Meth labs are known to explode.

egads.

leverguy

02-05-2013, 07:59 AM

The modern, militarized police are exactly the "standing armies" that the founders spoke of.

2young2vote

02-05-2013, 08:25 AM

They're probably using these people as practice. What better way to practice raiding someones home than to raid someones home?

Anti Federalist

02-05-2013, 01:06 PM

Raid Of The Day: The 39th & Dalton Edition

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/05/2013 9:02 am EST | Updated: 02/05/2013 9:45 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/05/raid-of-the-day-the-39th-_n_2621763.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

"This is war."

And with that, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates launched "Operation Hammer" in the spring of 1988. Like a lot of overly aggressive anti-crime initiatives, the plan was a response to a real problem. Gang violence had swept Los Angeles. The rising popularity of crack cocaine had created a new black market. The main thing new markets do is unsettle existing markets. With legal goods, the new order eventually gets established with innovation, customer service, efficiency, and the quality of the competing products. With illicit goods, the new order is established with violence.

Another problem was that Gates had put entire sections of Los Angeles on lockdown during the 1984 Olympics. Because the Olympics went without any real breaches in security, Gates emerged triumphant. It was quite the turnaround. Prior to the games, many had thought his job was in jeopardy after an inauspicious first few years, including some odd comments he had made after black suspects had died in the grip of a particular chokehold favored by LAPD. (Gates claimed that blacks must be particularly susceptible to the hold because their "veins and arteries do not open up as fast as they do on normal people.") But by essentially occupying the poorer parts of Los Angeles, Gates had at least projected the image of a safe city. So he kept a similar policy in place after the games were over, which of course did little to help relations between those communities and the police. Citizen complaints against LAPD jumped by a third from 1984 to 1989.

Operation Hammer was initiated by a particularly tragic drive-by gang shooting at a birthday party, but it was really just an intensification of the gang sweeps Gates had initiated during the Olympics, and that had continued since. In his autobiography, Gates credits the program with a modest decline in homicides in the city in 1988, from 812 to 736. (He also claims this was "one of the lowest rates in 20 years," a hedge that is basically deceptive. As recently as 1975, the city had only 556 homicides.) From 1985 through the early 1990s, the Los Angeles Times headlines repeated like the chorus to a maddeningly repetitive song.

September 18, 1989: "204 Arrested in Weekend Sweep"

July 17, 1989: "94 Suspected Gang Members Arrested"

September 9, 1990: "75 Arrested in Sweep by Gang Task Force"

February 24, 1991: "189 Arrested in 9-Hour Anti-Gang Unit Sweep"

August 20, 1989: "237 Held in Sweep; Violence Continues"

September 19, 199: "251 Arrested by Task Force in Gang Crackdown"

March 22, 1988: "33 Caught in Gang Sweep"

September 13, 1990: "'Operation Hammer' sweeps result in 75 arrests."

September 19, 1988: "700 Seized in Gang Sweep; 2 More Die in Shootings"

October 2, 1989: "Police Arrest 1,092 in Weekend Sweeps; Gang Killings Continue"

August 21, 1989: "LAPD Nails 352 in Operation Hammer"

The blip in 1988 aside, brute force plan wasn't working. There were 1,028 homicides in Los Angeles in 1980. The murder rate dropped (as it did in the rest of the country) until crack hit the scene in the late 1980s. By 1990, the number was back up to 982, and from 1990 to 1993, it was back over a thousand.

Gates' gang sweeps were indiscriminate. He admitted this. His strategy, he said, was to "put a lot of police officers on the streets and harass people and make arrests for inconsequential kinds of things . . . that's part of the strategy, no doubt about it." He imposed curfews in black and Hispanic neighborhoods, then swept up minors out after curfew. By one estimate, 75 percent of young black men in Los Angeles had been arrested under the program. Meanwhile, juvenile crime jumped 12 percent. By September, the Police Misconduct Lawyer's Referral Service had already registered an 80 percent increase in complaints of police abuse over all of 1987. When asked if the lockdown mentality was worth the costs, the press secretary for California State Senator Diane Watson -- who represented part of Los Angeles -- replied, "When you have a state of war, civil rights are suspended for the duration of the conflict."

One of the more notorious incidents of collateral damage in Gates' war came on Aug. 1, 1988, when a Los Angeles SWAT team raided four apartments on the corner of 39th Street and Dalton Avenue in the southwest part of the city. Again, the raid was in response to legitimate concerns. The neighborhood was infested with gang activity and drug dealing. When one family complained, gang members shot out their security lights and threatened to firebomb their home.

The problem was that the reaction, once again, was blunt, indiscriminate, and oblivious to the rights of the people the police were supposed to be serving and protecting. The police believed the apartments were serving as stash houses for the drug dealing gangbangers. They were also likely particularly angry because a man they believed to be one of the neighborhood gang members had recently called in a death threat to the local police station.

According to a report later released by LAPD internal affairs, Capt. Thomas Elfmont gathered his officers the night of the raid for a pep talk in which he urged them to "hit" the apartments "hard," to "level" them, and to leave them "uninhabitable." (He later denied saying any of this.) Elfmont didn't go on the raid itself. In fact, there was no one on the raid with a rank higher than sergeant. The lone sergeant was Charles Spicer, head of LAPD's anti-gang task force for the southwest part of the city. In subsequent interviews with internal affairs, he admitted to telling the unit to "kick ass," but said that though he was on site during the raid, he had no idea his officers were committing any sort of misconduct.

The cops certainly took their superiors' advice to heart. The internal affairs report later documented 127 separate acts of vandalism at the apartments. As the raid began, a caravan of police vehicles surrounded the building and more than 80 police officers emerged. Resident Tammy Moore was sitting on her porch holding her 7-month-old son as the police pulled up, rushed out of their vans, and ordered everyone out of the building. One of them struck Moore in the neck, causing her to drop her son to the concrete. He remained unconscious for 30 minutes. One man was struck in the face with a flashlight. A woman, lying on the ground, said an officer dropped a flashlight on her head, then responded with a nonchalant, "Oops." One admitted gang member was accosted across the street. One officer held his legs apart while another repeatedly kicked him in the crotch. They then ran a wire across his throat and choked him. Another man was struck four times by an officer wearing a weighted-knuckle sap glove. This was all before they had even entered the apartments.

Though he wasn't actually on the gang task force, rookie officer Todd Parrick, a former Navy SEAL, was permitted to go on the raid. He had heard the chatter about the raid -- that Capt. Elfmont wanted the apartments "taken off the map." So Officer Parrick brought his own ax. In the first apartment, Parrick had some trouble opening a pair of sliding wooden doors. So he used the ax. He then struggled to remove the grate from a furnace. So he used the ax. For reasons not made entirely clear, he then took the ax to a thermostat. (Perhaps he was cold?) He next put the ax in the dining room wall, the living room wall, and the side of a cupboard. When he couldn't jimmy open a drawer in the kitchen, he hit it with his ax. He also took his ax to the toilet. At one point, he nearly took his ax to a colleague, Officer Charles Wilson. Parrick would later say that as he drove home that night, he was pretty sure he'd get some sort of commendation for his ax-wielding. When he boasted of all of this to his wife, she brought him down to earth. She told him he would probably get fired. (He didn't, at least for what he did that night. Three years later, he'd be fired for head-butting a suspect, then lying about it.)

Officer Charles Wilson brought a toy of his own. When he learned about the raid, he went to a friend's welding shop to create his own customized battering ram, which he then proceeded to smash into a number of walls (not doors). When word got out that there might be an internal affairs investigation, he dumped the ram into the city sewer.

Resident Gloria Flowers was taking a bath when the police came in. She was made to stand up, naked, then lie down on the floor before an officer eventually threw a blanket over her. She asked what was going on. They told her, "You're being evicted." One officer then smashed her fish tank, for no apparent reason.

Raymond Carter, 21, had gone out to get pizza before the raid. As he tried to return home, he was pulled over. When the officer saw the address on his license, Carter claims the office said, "Oh yes, you're one of them," then detained him and put him on the ground in the front yard with the others.

Of the 37 people detained, the police arrested seven. They were again beaten, then taken to the police station, where they were made to whistle the tune to The Andy Griffith Show. Those who didn't, or couldn't, were beaten again. None of them were ever charged with a crime.

Before they left, the officers had shattered family photos, emptied refrigerators onto the floor, poured bleach on piles of laundry, and slashed through furniture upholstery. They also spray-painted "LAPD Rules" and "Gang Task Force Rules" on the walls.

They had achieved their charge for the night. The apartments were uninhabitable. The Red Cross provided housing for 10 adults and 12 children displaced by the raid. LAPD's haul: Six ounces of pot, and less than an ounce of cocaine.

By the time all the lawsuits were settled, the city paid out $4 million in damages for the 39th and Dalton raid, a record at the time. In 1991, Parrick, Spicer, and Elfmont were charged and tried for vandalism and conspiracy. The Los Angeles County Prosecutor's Office said there wasn't enough evidence to press assault or battery charges. The jury acquitted the officers of all but one charge, which was later dropped. In interviews, jurors said they thought the police witnesses were "flat-out lying" to protect one another, but said they acquitted because amid all the lying and dissembling, they had no way of knowing which officers committed what acts. The only officer to be convicted of a crime was Wilson, who took a plea bargain in exchange for his testimony against the others. Only two of the 80+ officers were fired, although a couple dozen were given suspensions and reprimands. When asked for his reaction to the acquittal of the officers involved in the raid, Gates responded that he was "pleased."

And so Operation Hammer went on. By the end of the year, two unarmed citizens were shot dead during the campaign, one of them an 81-year-old man.

In 2001, the Los Angeles Times revisited 39th and Dalton with a retrospective on the raid. "The department was preparing people as if they were going to war," LAPD Assistant Chief David Dotson told the paper. "A police officer's job is not war; it's solving complex problems on a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis. That's a difficult job, and it doesn't require screaming at people, putting their faces down in the street like dogs." Christopher Darden, the prosecutor who handled the case (and would later prosecute O.J. Simpson), said he wanted to file more serious charges but was stonewalled by the department's code of silence.

Parrick, who by 2001 was selling recreational vehicles, told the paper, "I believed I was doing the right thing by routinely stopping people on the street, hauling them into the police station to be fingerprinted and photographed. In hindsight, that is not what this country stands for. It wasn't right."

Carl Sims, the narcotics officer whose warrant instigated the raid, told the Times that though it got the most publicity, 39th and Dalton was hardly an anomaly. "There wasn't a lot of care taken. That was the mentality. At the time, if you were selling dope, we were going to knock your house down with a battering ram. And we were sure going to dump the sugar on the counter. It was the standard method of operation of the LAPD. We weren't just searching for drugs. We were delivering a message that there was a price to pay for selling drugs and being a gang member . . . I looked at it as something of a Normandy Beach, a D-Day."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

(Sources: Marita Hernandez, "Allegations of Abuse by Police Told at Hearing," Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1988; John L. Mitchell, "The Raid That Still Haunts L.A.," Los Angeles Times, March 14, 2001; Richard Serrano, "Reports Tell of Frenzy and Zeal in Police Raid," Los Angeles Times; Dave Zirin, "Want to Understand the 1992 LA Riots? Start with the 1984 LA Olymics," The Nation, April 30, 2012; Terry Pristin and David Ferrell, "3 Officers Acquitted in 39th-Dalton Drug Raid," Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1991; Daryl Gates, Chief, pp. 339-340; Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors, pp. 250-253.)

Anti Federalist

02-06-2013, 01:39 PM

Raid Of The Day: Cheryl Lynn Noel

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/06/2013 8:19 am EST | Updated: 02/06/2013 9:40 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/raid-of-the-day-cheryl-ly_n_2630163.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In January 2005, police in Baltimore County conducted a 4:50 a.m. raid on the home of Cheryl Lynn Noel and her husband Charles. The target of the raid was the couple's son Matthew, who police had pulled over three months earlier. During the stop, police found a bag in his car that they said contained a suspicious white powder. The police say they then found marijuana seeds and cocaine residue in subsequent searches of the family's trash (which can be conducted without a warrant). That was enough for them to get a warrant for Matthew's arrest.

After taking down the family's front door and deploying flash grenades, SWAT officers stormed up the steps and broke open the door to the Noels' bedroom. Matthew Noel was sleeping downstairs at the time.

Because their daughter had been murdered several years earlier, the Noels kept a gun near the bed. The 44-year-old Cheryl Lynn Noel stood in her nightgown, nervously holding the gun as, what she thought were intruders stormed her bedroom. Noel was shot twice by Officer Carlos Artson, who was wearing bulletproof armor, and who fired at her from behind a ballistics shield. As Noel lay bleeding on her bedroom floor, she was then shot a third time from close range. She died in her home. The police found only a misdemeanor amount of marijuana in the house.

The police later said the aggressive tactics were necessary Cheryl and Matthew Noel were legally registered gun owners, and because Charles Noel had been convicted of second-degree murder 30 years earlier. Noel, who pleaded guilty in that case, told me in a 2007 interview that the crime was a "shameful" incident from his youth that got out of hand after he and some friends had beaten a homeless man. He had served his time, and had no incidents of criminal violence on his record since. Charles Noel did, however, have a history of animosity with police in Baltimore County. Noel had been publicly critical of the way police had handled the investigation of his daughter's death. The police initially ruled it a suicide. Noel had long insisted it was a homicide, and was eventually able to persuade them to investigate it as one.

Cheryl Lynn Noel had no criminal record. She was described by friends as a devout woman who led Bible study groups on her lunch break. A few weeks after the family filed a civil rights lawsuit in 2006, the Baltimore County Police Department gave Officer Artson the department's "Silver Star" for "valor, courage, honor, and bravery" for his actions during the raid on the Noel home. It's the second-highest award the department gives to police officers. Five months after the raid, the head of the SWAT team -- Col. Jim Johnson -- was named the new police chief for Baltimore County.

In March 2009, a federal jury returned a verdict in favor of the police, finding that (1) the third shot fired into Noel was not excessive, and (2) sending a 16-member SWAT team into Noel's home at 5 am over trace amounts of marijuana and in the family trash wasn't excessive, either. In June 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied the Noel family's appeal

Baltimore County Attorney Paul Mayhew made the city's position clear, insisting at the trial that "We do not apologize one minute" for Noel's death.

In July 2012, Officer Artson killed another man during a volatile forced-entry raid. Artson's SWAT team was raiding the home of 48-year-old Ronald Mevin Cox with an arrest warrant for Cox's niece, who was suspected of attempted murder. Cox was not suspected of any crime. Artson shot Cox when Cox came at him with a sword as the police broke into his bedroom.

In 2009 the Maryland legislature passed a law requiring police departments to issue detailed statistics on the use of their SWAT teams in response to the 2008 botched raid on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo. In 2010, the Baltimore County Police Department conducted 120 SWAT raids, or one every three days. Baltimore City conducted an additional 289 raids. Those figures do not include raids by federal agencies like the DEA or BATF.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

02-07-2013, 01:45 PM

Raid Of The Day: Sandy And Grace Sanborn

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/07/2013 7:21 am EST | Updated: 02/07/2013 8:56 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/raid-of-the-day-sandy-and_n_2637486.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

At 7:10 on a Thursday morning in July of 1999, narcotics officers in Roseville, California rushed the home of 78-year-old Sandy Sanborn and his wife Grace. Sanborn was knocked to the floor when he attempted to open the door just as police kicked it open. Agents next apprehended his wife, who awoke to find police pointing assault weapons at her head.

Both were handcuffed and held at gunpoint. The Sanborns later said that while searching the house, instead of simply opening the doors to their kitchen, pantry, and other rooms, the police ripped them off their hinges. After an exhaustive search that left their home in tatters, Police Detective Ron Goodpaster apologized, and the raid team left.

A subsequent investigative report in the Sacramento News & Review revealed that the search on the Sanborns' home came about after a deputy officer in the sheriff's department of a neighboring county discovered that the Sanborns' son had merely shopped at a hydroponic plant store. Customers of such stores were increasingly becoming the targets of police investigations and raids in the 1990s, even though there are plenty of uses for hydroponic supplies that have nothing to do with marijuana. (And of course it still happens today.)

The report also found that though police claimed in the search warrant affidavit to have found marijuana in the Sanborns' trash, the phrase they used, "The marijuana was fresh, green and still moist and had been recently cut from a mature marijuana plant," was identical to language used on dozens of other search warrant affidavits used to conduct similar raids.

The police found no marijuana -- or any other illicit substance -- in the Sanborns' home.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

heavenlyboy34

02-07-2013, 01:47 PM

Before I start reading this epic thread, I just want to say the commas in the title are unnecessary and annoying. /nitpicky curmudgeon

Anti Federalist

02-07-2013, 01:51 PM

Before I start reading this epic thread, I just want to say the commas in the title are unnecessary and annoying. /nitpicky curmudgeon

Now that you mention it...

kcchiefs6465

02-07-2013, 03:23 PM

Both were handcuffed and held at gunpoint. The Sanborns later said that while searching the house, instead of simply opening the doors to their kitchen, pantry, and other rooms, the police ripped them off their hinges. After an exhaustive search that left their home in tatters, Police Detective Ron Goodpaster apologized, and the raid team left.

Good cop, bad cop.

shane77m

02-07-2013, 03:31 PM

Dr.3D

02-07-2013, 03:42 PM

I see these raids creating potential "terrorists" eventually. The pigs raid the wrong house and kill someone, the pigs get off with no charges, relatives of the person killed become "terrorists" and take the law into their own hands.
As I recall, that happened in the old west quite a lot, of course in those days, it wasn't law enforcement that made those people "terrorists" it was the lack of law enforcement.

Anti Federalist

02-11-2013, 01:23 PM

Raid Of The Day: James Hoskins

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/11/2013 8:39 am EST | Updated: 02/11/2013 9:09 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/raid-of-the-day-james-hos_n_2661588.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In February 2004, police from three departments raided the Middletown, Pennsylvania home of James Hoskins looking for his brother on suspicion of distributing marijuana.

They arrested Hoskins' brother for possessing a small amount of marijuana, a glass pipe, and around $600. They left James Hoskins in a coma.

Hoskins was in his bed when he woke to the sound of someone breaking open his door. Naked and unarmed, he got up to investigate. As he approached his bedroom door, Middletown Township Detective Dale T. Keddie Jr. pushed his way into the room. According to Hoskins and his girlfriend, the detective never identified himself.

Keddie would later say he fired his gun at Hoskins when he mistook the t-shirt Hoskins was using to cover his genitals for a gun. The bullet entered Hoskins' abdomen, then ripped through his stomach, small intestine, and colon. It eventually lodged in Hoskin's leg, which later had to be amputated.

According to Hoskins' girlfriend, he told his assailant, "I did not deserve this. Am I going to die?" At which point Keddie told him to "shut up."

Hoskins didn't learn that the man who shot him was a police officer until weeks later, when he awoke from the coma.

The police department saw no need to conduct an investigation into the shooting. The local district attorney at least did that much, but concluded that Keddie had done nothing wrong.

In January 2005 Hoskins settled with Bristol Township, Pennsylvania for $350,000. He settled with Middletown Township for an undisclosed sum, but an amount attorneys for both sides told the Philadelphia Inquirer "would be enough to cover Hoskins' medical costs for the rest of his life."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

kcchiefs6465

02-11-2013, 10:24 PM

Bump.

Nirvikalpa

02-11-2013, 10:27 PM

:eek: Subscribed. Unbelievable (and yet so believable).

BAllen

02-11-2013, 10:32 PM

http://www.crimethinc.com/tools/posters/police_front.pdf

Be afraid! Be VERY VERY AFRAID!!! Run for you life!! They're comin' ta getcha!!!
Scroll through that site. There's plenty of paranoia there. Get a buttload of it till ya shit yer pants!!

kcchiefs6465

02-11-2013, 10:35 PM

http://www.crimethinc.com/tools/posters/police_front.pdf

Be afraid! Be VERY VERY AFRAID!!! Run for you life!! They're comin' ta getcha!!!
You seem awfully familiar. What was your name before November?

ETA: I like your poster.

Oh, and I like the site too. (Though I haven't read through much of it yet)

'Fuck Police' (http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/fuckpolice.php) (Link to crimethinc.com for those in need of something good to read)

http://i.imgur.com/PpTSq6x.gif?1

http://i.imgur.com/Z8AlUWr.gif?1

BAllen

02-12-2013, 01:11 PM

Yeah, that's pretty good!
Plenty of stuff to keep Anti-Federalist busy for awhile. LOL
Here's another one:

How to Fuck the Police

On the Streets:
Organizing a Copwatch Program
Copwatch groups seek to contest or at least limit police repression by directly monitoring police officers. Copwatch volunteers patrol the streets, observing police and recording their interactions with civilians. They often concentrate on areas of high police activity or to which known trouble-making cops are assigned. Copwatch groups also advise people of their rights and listen to their stories, and otherwise endeavor to undermine and thwart the police state.

Most radicals, not to mention many others, realize that the idea of policing itself needs to be completely rethought. In the meantime, people have to be protected from the brutality they face daily at the hands of the police.

Anti Federalist

02-13-2013, 04:44 PM

Raid Of The Day: Sorry, Mr. Mayor

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/12/2013 3:34 pm EST | Updated: 02/12/2013 3:42 pm EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/raid-of-the-day-sorry-mr-_n_2671951.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

On the night of June 3, 1992, the Venice, Illinois SWAT team conducted a raid on a suspected crack house. Part of the team used a battering ram to break into the front of the house, while the other officers entered through a back window.

They quickly discovered that they had raided the wrong address. In fact, they'd later learn that they had just raided the home of their own mayor.

Venice Mayor Echols wasn't home at the time, but when he returned and saw the damage, he contacted the police. When he learned the damage was the result of a raid gone awry, he grew angry. "To tell the truth, I don't remember what they said because I was furious," Echols told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "If I'd been here and heard that going on I probably would have taken my pistol and shot through the door. I'd probably be dead. And some of the officers would probably be dead, too."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

02-13-2013, 04:46 PM

Raid Of The Day: Sorry, Mr. Mayor (Again)

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/13/2013 8:10 am EST | Updated: 02/13/2013 8:50 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/raid-of-the-day-sorry-mr-_n_2676919.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In September 2005, police in Bel Aire, Kansas photographed what they thought were marijuana plants growing in a resident's backyard. They showed the photos to the local prosecutor, who showed them to a judge. All agreed. The plants depicted in the photos were marijuana.

After serving the warrant and searching the elderly couple's home for nearly an hour, the police discovered they had raided the wrong house. In fact, they just raided the home of the town's four-term former mayor, Harold Smith. And the alleged marijuana plants were sunflowers. The sunflower also happens to be the state flower of Kansas. It is depicted on the state's flag.

A report commissioned by Brian Withrow, the mayor of Bel Aire at the time, found that the police "were not acting with malice." Withrow apologized to the Smiths, but defended the officers, DA, and judge by pointing out that the plants "weren't blooming at the time."

The list of things for which police have waged often violent drug raids after mistaking them for marijuana is a long one. It includes (but likely is not limited to) elderberry bushes, tomato plants (several times), yellow bell pepper plants, umbrella leaf, ragweed, okra, hibiscus, kenaf plants, daisies, the scent of moss, the scent of a skunk, and a plastic plant purchased for a pet lizard's planetarium.

By my count, there have also been at least three incidents in which drug cops have mistakenly raided the home of a current or former mayor. One of the others was yesterday's Raid of the Day. The other was the 2008 raid on the home of Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

kcchiefs6465

02-13-2013, 05:04 PM

The list of things for which police have waged often violent drug raids after mistaking them for marijuana is a long one. It includes (but likely is not limited to)...... and a plastic plant purchased for a pet lizard's planetarium.
http://i.imgur.com/3WAJOYI.jpg?1

heavenlyboy34

02-13-2013, 05:23 PM

Raid Of The Day: Sorry, Mr. Mayor (Again)

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/13/2013 8:10 am EST | Updated: 02/13/2013 8:50 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/13/raid-of-the-day-sorry-mr-_n_2676919.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In September 2005, police in Bel Aire, Kansas photographed what they thought were marijuana plants growing in a resident's backyard. They showed the photos to the local prosecutor, who showed them to a judge. A-ll agreed. The plants depicted in the photos were marijuana.

After serving the warrant and searching the elderly couple's home for nearly an hour, the police discovered they had raided the wrong house. In fact, they just raided the home of the town's four-term former mayor, Harold Smith. And the alleged marijuana plants were sunflowers. The sunflower also happens to be the state flower of Kansas. It is depicted on the state's flag.

A report commissioned by Brian Withrow, the mayor of Bel Aire at the time, found that the police "were not acting with malice." Withrow apologized to the Smiths, but defended the officers, DA, and judge by pointing out that the plants "weren't blooming at the time."

The list of things for which police have waged often violent drug raids after mistaking them for marijuana is a long one. It includes (but likely is not limited to) elderberry bushes, tomato plants (several times), yellow bell pepper plants, umbrella leaf, ragweed, okra, hibiscus, kenaf plants, daisies, the scent of moss, the scent of a skunk, and a plastic plant purchased for a pet lizard's planetarium.

By my count, there have also been at least three incidents in which drug cops have mistakenly raided the home of a current or former mayor. One of the others was yesterday's Raid of the Day. The other was the 2008 raid on the home of Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)
srsly? SRSLY? :eek: This is unusually dumb, even for TWATers.

kcchiefs6465

02-13-2013, 05:45 PM

srsly? SRSLY? :eek: This is unusually dumb, even for TWATers.
Seconded. How th do you confuse a sunflower with a cannabis plant? And they were supposedly trained narcos? The fail is strong with them. Insult to injury when the sunflower is your state flower. I don't think there is a facepalm big enough.

Anti Federalist

02-14-2013, 11:34 AM

Raid Of The Day: Thomas and Darren Russell

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/14/2013 12:02 pm EST | Updated: 02/14/2013 12:22 pm EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/raid-of-the-day-thomas-an_n_2687435.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In February 2009, Chicago police raided both units of a flat as part of a drug investigation.

According to a lawsuit later filed by the wrongly raided family, as the police came in with guns drawn, Thomas Russell, 18, asked if he could pen up the family's black Labrador, Lady. They refused. When Lady then came around the corner to greet the officers, they shot her.

The police then held Thomas and his brother Darren at gunpoint while they scoured the apartment apart in a search for drugs. The police found no contraband, although they did find drugs in the other, separate unit in the flat. Despite the fruitless search, the cops then arrested Thomas Russell anyway, for obstructing police. He would later be acquitted.

In August 2011, a federal jury found that the police had violated the brothers' civil rights, and awarded the family a combined $330,000 in damages. After the verdict, a city spokesperson insisted the police had done nothing wrong. "The officers involved in this case were executing a valid search warrant when this incident occurred and were simply protecting themselves."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

02-16-2013, 02:10 AM

Raid Of The Day: Anthony Diotaiuto

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/15/2013 2:16 pm EST | Updated: 02/15/2013 2:43 pm EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/raid-of-the-day-anthony-d_n_2696658.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

At about 6:15 am in August 2005, a SWAT team converged outside the Sunrise, Florida, home of Anthony Diotaiuto.

The police said they had received an anonymous tip that there was marijuana in Diotaiuto's home, which they confirmed when an informant purchased an ounce of marijuana from the 23-year-old bartender and part-time student.

Diotaiuto's friends and family acknowledge that he was a recreational marijuana smoker, and may have occasionally sold small amounts of pots to friends. But they denied he was a major drug dealer. Diotaiuto, they said, had just bought the modest home with his mother after taking a second job and selling off his prized sports car. He had one previous conviction for possession of marijuana, when he was 16. Otherwise, Diotaiuto had no criminal record, and no history of violence or criminal conduct.

By 7 a.m. the raid was over. Diotaiuto was dead. According to police, the SWAT team knocked and loudly announced themselves, then waited 10-15 seconds before they broke down Diotaiuto's front door and set off a flash grenade. They say Diotaiuto was in his living room when they entered, and then ran to his bedroom, armed himself, and waited in a closet. When police opened the door, they said he raised his gun, at which point they shot him. Police said Diotaiuto was then slumped against the back wall of the closet, still breathing, but with his hand on the trigger, so they shot him again. By the time the shooting was over, Diotaiuto had 10 bullet holes in his head, chest, torso, and limbs. He didn't fire a shot. The police would wait three hours before contacting the county coroner.

Neighbors who were awake at he time of the raid told the local media they heard no announcement, only the gunfire. That doesn't mean necessarily mean the police were lying. But Diotaiuto had just worked a night shift, and had only been home a few hours before the raid. His family said he was likely asleep in his bedroom, away from the front door, possibly with the door closed, as the raid began. If neighbors didn't hear the announcement, it's certainly possible that he didn't either.

Immediately after the raid, a police spokesman told local reporters that Diotaiuto "had a gun and pointed it at our officers." Later the same day he revised the story. "In all likelihood, that's what happened. I know there was a weapon found next to the body." The police department would eventually settle on the claim that Diotaiuto had raised the gun toward the officers. The police also initially said they had found two ounces of marijuana in the house. They later reduced that to one ounce. By the time a grand jury heard the case, it was 16 grams, about a fourth of what police initially claimed, and an amount that would have earned Diotaiuto a misdemeanor had he survived the raid.

The police also found a BB gun, a shotgun, a rifle, and the handgun they alleged Diotaiuto was holding. All were legal. In fact, Diotaiuto had a valid concealed carry permit in the state of Florida. To get that permit, he had to fill out a variety of paperwork, undergo a criminal background check, allow himself to be fingerprinted, pay a fee, and enroll in a class on gun safety and firearms law. Bizarrely, Sunrise police claimed the permit indicated Diotaiuto was potentially dangerous--thus the SWAT team, flash grenade, and forced entry. It should have indicated precisely the opposite. Hardened criminals generally don't volunteer for registration and fingerprinting that will tie them to the guns they plan to use in their crimes. It's more the sort of thing law-abiding gun owners do. Of course, if you're going to claim that a registered gun owner poses a threat to police, a good way to prove the point would be to send a police team to break down his door at 6 o'clock in the morning--conditions where nearly anyone would quite naturally react against the intruders.

After the shooting, the Sunrise Police Department assured the media that all of the officers involved had stellar performance records. The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reported that both officers who shot Diotaiuto routinely received "above-average" or "excellent" reviews, garnered dozens of recommendations, and earned multiple "officer of the month" distinctions.

Of course, all of that was beside the point. Even Diotaiuto's closest friends and family didn't believe the police set out to murder him. It was a question of tactics--about whether sending a SWAT team into the home of a guy who was at worst a small-stakes pot dealer was an appropriate use of force. As Eleanor Shockett, a retired Miami-Dade circuit judge, told Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo. "What in the hell were they doing with a SWAT team? To break into someone's home at six in the morning, possibly awaken someone from a deep sleep, someone who has a concealed weapons permit? What did they expect to happen?"

At the time, Sunrise was a city of 90,000 people. It saw less than a single murder each year. This wasn't a city bleeding for lack of a SWAT team. But like more than 90 percent of cities its size, Sunrise had one.

His family later filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Sunrise and the officers who conducted the raid on his home. The lawsuit never made it to a jury. It was dismissed by a federal circuit court judge in summary judgment. In September 2010, that decision was unanimously upheld by three judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

The legal barrier for lawsuits in such cases is high, but the 11th Circuit panel's decision rested entirely on the police account of the raid. It completely dismissed the possibility that a groggy man who had just been subjected to a flash grenade--again a device that is designed to confuse and disorient anyone in the vicinity--might have mistook the SWAT team for criminal intruders. As for the neighbors who heard no announcement, the panel dismissed them in a footnote as "questionable evidence" before pointing out that "virtually every police officer on scene testified that the SWAT team knocked and announced before entering Diotaiuto's home."

The cops said they announced. Whether they were telling the truth, or it was even possible for Diotaiuto to have heard them, didn't matter.

Diotaiuto was the third Floridian killed in a drug raid in four months that summer.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

GunnyFreedom

02-16-2013, 02:31 AM

I can only take this sht in small doses or I'm liable to end up destroying things in a rage.

Professor8000

02-16-2013, 04:55 AM

...
.....
.........
.................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ............

Murray N Rothbard

02-16-2013, 09:23 AM

When people today talk about tyranny they get scoffed at, "this is 'murrica, it can't happen here, won't happen here." Well, yes, it can, and it already is.

Anti Federalist

02-19-2013, 03:29 PM

Raid Of The Day: Isaac Singletary

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/19/2013 8:49 am EST | Updated: 02/19/2013 9:16 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/raid-of-the-day-isaac-sin_n_2716432.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Known around the neighborhood as "Pops," 80-year-old Isaac Singletary moved into his high-crime Jacksonville, Florida neighborhood in 1987 to care for and protect his sister and mother, both of whom were sick at the time. The retired repairman was known to sit in front of his house in a lawn chair and shoo and shame the drug dealers away from his property.

But in January 2007, two undercover narcotics cops posed as drug dealers set up shop on Singletary's lawn. Singletary first came out of his house and yelled at them to leave. They didn't. He went back inside. Minutes later, he came out again and told them to leave, this time while waving a handgun. One of the cops opened fire. Wounded, Singletary tried to escape into his backyard. The cops followed chased him down and shot him again, this time in the back. Singletary died at the scene. His killers never told him they were police officers.

The police initially claimed Singletary had tried to rob them. They then claimed that Singletary fired first. Five witnesses said that wasn't true. Who fired first wasn't really relevant, except as an indication that the police weren't telling the truth about the whole mess.

Here, Jacksonville police officers had committed crimes on an elderly man's property without his permission, refused to leave when he asked them to, then--perhaps inadvertently--baited him into a violent confrontation. They then killed him for taking the bait.

Three months later, investigating State Attorney Harry Shorstein initially expressed some frustration with the operation. "If we're just selling drugs to addicts, I don't know what we're accomplishing," he told the Florida Times-Union. But three months after that, Shorstein cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing. That may or may not have been correct under the law, but his report also included a couple of inconsistencies. First, while attorneys for Singletary's family found four witnesses who said the police fired first, Shorestein could find only one--a convicted drug dealer Shorstein deemed untrustworthy.

Second, while Shorstein did at least criticize the police officers for not identifying themselves before they started shooting at Singletary, he still put the bulk of the blame on Singletary himself, concluding the old man "was an armed civilian who refused orders to drop his gun." But those orders came from two cops dressed as drug dealers, who never disclosed that they were police. The implication from Shorstein's report is that Florida citizens are obligated to drop their defenses and submit any time a criminal orders them to do so.

Ironically, Singletary's death came a little less than two years after Florida passed a highly-publicized law expanding the right to self-defense. The "Stand Your Ground" law--which would (mistakenly) be the target of national criticism after the death of Trayvon Martin--removed the traditional legal requirement that when faced with a threat, you must first attempt to escape before using lethal force. But that seems to be exactly what Shorstein thought Singletary should have done.

An internal report from the sheriff's office also cleared the two undercover officers, Darrin Green and James Narcisse, of violating any department policies. The report, written by a shooting board of five members of the sheriff's department, concluded that they had followed department procedures, and that "no further action" was necessary. Narcisse, the first officer to fire at Singletary, was later fired for disciplinary reasons that the sheriff's department said were unrelated to the Singletary case.

Sheriff John Rutherford eventually conceded that Singletary was "a good citizen" and that his death was "a tragic incident." But he also rebuffed calls to end undercover drug stings like the one police were conducting on Singletary's property. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist visited Jacksonville later that month. When asked about Singletary's death, Crist called it one of the "challenges" to keeping a community safe.

In 2010, the city of Jacksonville agreed to pay Singletary's family a $200,000 settlement, though the city admitted no wrongdoing.

In sum, a "good citizen" defended his property from what he thought were criminals in a manner consistent with Florida law. He did nothing illegal. And the police officers who trespassed on his property, then attempted to sell drugs on his property, then killed him for attempting to defend his property, not only broke no laws, but their actions were also consistent with sheriff's department policy. Finally, those policies, the ones that caused all of this to happen . . . were not going to change.

All of which can only mean that Florida officials believe the death of an innocent 80-year-old man is an acceptable outcome of undercover drug policing. In Florida's war to keep people from getting high, Isaac Singletary was collateral damage, similar to the civilians killed by bombs during a just war. Regrettable, perhaps. But inevitable.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

02-20-2013, 10:12 PM

Raid Of The Day: Tibetan Monk Edition

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/20/2013 7:48 am EST | Updated: 02/20/2013 7:59 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/raid-of-the-day-tibetan-m_n_2723653.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

One of my favorites, from 2006:

Some Tibetan monks on a peace mission in Omaha were recently raided by immigration officials in riot gear.

They have since bonded out of jail, but the monks hope to clear up any misunderstandings and return to their native land. For now, the six monks, their personal assistant, and an interpreter are staying in the Carter Lake home of Rob Gutha.

"They're marvelous house guests. It's wonderful to come home at the end of the day, and first thing, you're greeted with a cup of tea," Gutha said.

The monks come from a land of rich tradition, but a poor economy. Their leader, Kharnang Vangtul Rinpoche, said the monks came to the United States on a church-sponsored mission of world peace, hoping to share the plight of Tibetan people and never intending to cause trouble.

Before Carter Lake, the group was in Arizona. Their church sponsor abandoned them when the monks refused to recognize the sponsor's leader as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and Buddha. So the monks traveled to Omaha, not realizing that their immigration visas had been revoked. The next thing they knew, immigration officials showed up at their door with a SWAT team and arrested them.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

tod evans

02-21-2013, 03:33 AM

Monks?

For heavens sake!

Anti Federalist

02-22-2013, 01:13 PM

Raid Of The Day: Robin Pratt, Shot And Killed In Front Of Her Daughter

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/21/2013 8:04 am EST | Updated: 02/21/2013 8:28 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/21/raid-of-the-day-robin-pra_n_2732361.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In March 1992, police in Snohomish County, Washington conducted six simultaneous raids on members of the same extended family. An informant had implicated the targets of the raids for the robbery of an armored car and the murder of its driver a year earlier.

One of the raids was on the home of Larry and Robin Pratt. The informant had implicated Larry Platt. Though police knew there were likely to be innocent people and possibly children in the house, they decided on the pre-dawn, no-knock raid instead of confronting Pratt as he was coming or going to work. The police had also obtained a key to the apartment from a landlord, but decided instead to enter the residence by slamming a 50-pound battering ram through a sliding glass door.

As they executed the raid, shards of glass flew out toward the Pratts' six-year-old daughter and five-year-old niece sleeping nearby. The police confronted 28-year-old Robin Pratt as she came out of her bedroom to see what was wrong. She immediately dropped to her knees. She briefly raised her head, looked at Dep. Anthony Aston, and said, "Please don't hurt my children." Aston then fired a single bullet into Pratt's neck. She bled out and died in front of her daughter.

The police then went to the bedroom, where they confronted Larry Pratt and put a gun to his temple. When he asked if he could move, the officer said if he did, he'd blow Pratt's head off.

Police later learned that the informant had been lying -- he admitted as much. Every one of the raids conducted that morning were waged against innocent families. The police never bothered to check the informant's statements with the accused before confronting them and their families with violence. If they had, they'd have found that every one of the people he had implicated -- including Larry Pratt -- had solid alibis disproving the informant's story.

There were other signs that should have tipped police off about the informant's credibility -- or at least made them reluctant to put enough faith in his tips to wage full blown SWAT raids. Other parts of his story -- a getaway car dumped in a lake that was never found, for example -- hadn't checked out, either. An FBI agent involved in the case had also warned local investigators that the informant's tips were often unreliable. The informant had also told police that the people involved in the robbery had simply deposited the stolen money into their bank accounts. The police never checked the accounts for any large deposits.

Det. Aston would later say he couldn't remember how or why he shot Robin Pratt. There is no dispute that she was on her knees, and posed no threat when Aston shot her. A coroner's inquest would later find the shooting "unjustified," but the jurors split on whether there was evidence Aston committed a crime. The Washington State Attorney General's Office declined to press criminal charges against him.

In 1994, the Pratt family settled with the town of Lynnwood and with Snohomish County for about $4.5 million.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

02-22-2013, 01:18 PM

And those drive by postings were for what, exactly?

Hmmm..."TarHeel" something or other or "azxd", amirite?

http://www.crimethinc.com/tools/posters/police_front.pdf

Be afraid! Be VERY VERY AFRAID!!! Run for you life!! They're comin' ta getcha!!!
Scroll through that site. There's plenty of paranoia there. Get a buttload of it till ya shit yer pants!!

Yeah, that's pretty good!
Plenty of stuff to keep Anti-Federalist busy for awhile. LOL
Here's another one:

How to Fuck the Police

On the Streets:
Organizing a Copwatch Program
Copwatch groups seek to contest or at least limit police repression by directly monitoring police officers. Copwatch volunteers patrol the streets, observing police and recording their interactions with civilians. They often concentrate on areas of high police activity or to which known trouble-making cops are assigned. Copwatch groups also advise people of their rights and listen to their stories, and otherwise endeavor to undermine and thwart the police state.

Most radicals, not to mention many others, realize that the idea of policing itself needs to be completely rethought. In the meantime, people have to be protected from the brutality they face daily at the hands of the police.

Lucille

02-22-2013, 01:28 PM

As they executed the raid, shards of glass flew out toward the Pratts' six-year-old daughter and five-year-old niece sleeping nearby. The police confronted 28-year-old Robin Pratt as she came out of her bedroom to see what was wrong. She immediately dropped to her knees. She briefly raised her head, looked at Dep. Anthony Aston, and said, "Please don't hurt my children." Aston then fired a single bullet into Pratt's neck. She bled out and died in front of her daughter.
[...]
Det. Aston would later say he couldn't remember how or why he shot Robin Pratt. There is no dispute that she was on her knees, and posed no threat when Aston shot her. A coroner's inquest would later find the shooting "unjustified," but the jurors split on whether there was evidence Aston committed a crime. The Washington State Attorney General's Office declined to press criminal charges against him.

YHGTBFKM He murdered her in cold blood, FFS. What a bunch of dumbass boot-lickers.

Chester Copperpot

02-22-2013, 01:31 PM

yeah make this thread a sticky

Chester Copperpot

02-22-2013, 01:31 PM

I can only take this sht in small doses or I'm liable to end up destroying things in a rage.

+1

Anti Federalist

02-22-2013, 03:00 PM

YHGTBFKM He murdered her in cold blood, FFS. What a bunch of dumbass boot-lickers.

Dumb?...no, not a mistake, they know what they are doing.

Anti Federalist

02-22-2013, 11:18 PM

Raid Of The Day: 2001 Idaho Raid Results In Three Fatalities, Turns Up Four Grams Of Pot

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/22/2013 3:35 pm EST | Updated: 02/22/2013 3:47 pm EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/22/raid-of-the-day-2001-idah_n_2744111.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

On January 3, 2001, Jerome County, Idaho sheriff's deputies James Moulson and Phillip Anderson conducted a drug raid on the Eden home of George Timothy Williams, a man described by an informant as one of the leading suppliers of marijuana in the county. Jerome County Sheriff Jim Weaver and Undersheriff Jocelyne Nunnally also went on the raid. It's unclear if they announced themselves before entering--the surviving officers say they did, Williams' neighbors said they heard no announcement. But when Anderson and Mouslon forced their way inside, Williams met them with a gun. The three men exchanged gunfire. All three of them died.

A subsequent search of the home turned up less than four grams of marijuana. Lawsuits brought by the families of the slain deputies and by Williams' family revealed that the informant whose tip led to the raid was a woman who lived with Williams, and alleged that the sheriff's department threatened to take the woman's child away from her if she didn't give them incriminating information about Williams.

The county settled with the families of the slain deputies. The lawsuit brought by Williams' family was dismissed in federal court. A subsequent investigation by the Idaho State Police found no criminal wrongdoing on the part of the sheriff's department or the deputies who conducted the raid.

Sheriff Jim Weaver's aggressive anti-drug policing later made him the subject to a recall campaign (it was unsuccessful). The shootout also become a central issue in his 2004 reelection campaign.

In 2007, Moulson, Anderson, and Nunnally were awarded Idaho's Medal of Honor for their actions on the night of the raid.

(War on Us - AF)

mad cow

02-23-2013, 12:45 AM

In 2007, Moulson, Anderson, and Nunnally were awarded Idaho's Medal of Honor for their actions on the night of the raid.

Pathetic.Three dead over 4 grams of pot.And they get Medals of Honor for this???

Anti Federalist

02-23-2013, 07:00 AM

Pathetic.Three dead over 4 grams of pot.And they get Medals of Honor for this???

Combat Quals (posthumous)

kathy88

02-23-2013, 07:52 AM

I truly appreciate you posting these AF. But damn...

Anti Federalist

02-25-2013, 09:21 PM

Raid Of The Day: Reader Contribution Edition

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/25/2013 10:49 am EST | Updated: 02/25/2013 11:28 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/25/raid-of-the-day-reader-co_n_2759070.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

A reader writes:

My apartment was raided by the swat team serving a search warrant for an embezzlement issue (re: nonviolent). It wasn't for me or my family of course. It was the for someone who moved out three months before. I was lucky; I leave for work work at 5:20am and was not there. My wife was traumatized but not mistreated (she was hustled out when she opened the door but not pinned to the ground or anything . . . our daughter was left in her bed while they swept the apartment for the person on the warrant). Still, it was a ridiculous and unnecessary risk* considering the crime in question. A couple of normal deputies, with guns in the holsters, could have served a warrant of this kind (and that's exactly how I think it would have been done 15 years ago) and ushered in the detectives and postal inspector looking for evidence. Really, a Judge's oversight is obviously no longer enough.

(* my wife and I both, legally, own firearms...)

The reader asked that I not use his name. But he did send and give me permission to post the search warrant, which you can view here. This is far from the most disastrous raid we've covered here. But it's another data point illustrating just how routine this sort of thing has become. Why is it necessary to wake people before dawn and point guns at them for an embezzlement warrant? And of course, even assuming that this suspect was some sort of violent mobster, and embezzlement was only one of his many suspected crimes, if you are going to serve the warrant this way, at least do enough homework to know your suspect has moved out -- and an innocent family has moved in -- three months prior to the raid.

The firearms addendum is not an irrelevant point. There have been numerous instances where the fact that a suspect was a legal, registered gun owner was indicated by police as a reason why SWAT tactics were necessary. That's absurd, and should at the very least suggest that maybe they have the wrong person -- hardened criminals tend not to register their weapons with the government. But it should also be a red flag for the gun rights community. Additionally, as these tactics continue to spread to enforce increasingly petty and nonviolent crimes, we're almost certain to see more wrong-door raids on legal gun owners. It isn't difficult to see a lot of tragic outcomes, there.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

02-27-2013, 08:03 PM

Raid Of The Day: Leland Elder And Mary Schultz

By Radley Balko Posted: 02/27/2013 11:28 am EST | Updated: 02/27/2013 11:47 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/raid-of-the-day-leland-el_n_2774170.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In September 1991, 85 agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Forest Service, and the New Mexico National Guard conducted a massive early morning raid on the rural farm owned by retired florist Leland Elder and his wife Mary Schultz. Guard troops, cops, and federal agents wore camouflage face paint and steel helmets, and brought a tank and a helicopter as they stormed the property, the couple were eventually surrounded in their home by six heavily armed men, handcuffed, and thrown to the ground. The couple told Scripps-Howard that the government officials kept screaming, "Tell us where the drugs are!" Tell us where the drugs are!"

The raid also hit a trailer that the couple rented to Sina Brush and her 15-year-old daughter. The two women were rousted from bed and tossed to the floor at gunpoint.

Schultz, who was treated for depression and anxiety after the raid, told Scripps-Howard, ""We are innocent victims in the war on drugs. As law enforcement changes from a 'Lets talk about it' philosophy to a Delta force, invade first program there will be many more innocent people swept up in these raids."

Customs had flown over the couple's property with thermal energy detecting equipment and found "above average" heat emanating from buildings on the farm. But the agents didn't note that other houses in the area were giving off the same sort of heat. The agents described hoses the family used to water olive trees as a marijuana irrigation system. They also mistook sunflowers, geraniums and marigolds for "marijuana-like plants."

The raid turned up nothing illegal. In the ensuing months, the couple sent out letters to all the agencies involved asking not for compensation, but only for an apology. Mary Schultz told Scripps-Howard, "We just wanted the government to admit it was wrong--to understand that care must be used before armed troops are sent into the homes of its citizens."

They never got one. So they filed a lawsuit. It was tossed out of court because the agencies were protected by sovereign immunity. The couldn't sue any of the agents individually, because they all refused to give the couple their name. When the couple appealed, the New Mexico National Guard finally paid them $5,000 to drop the suit in 1995.

Said Schultz, after the settlement: "We're still angry as hell and hurt that our government can do this, but after what happened at Ruby Ridge and in Waco, I quess we should be glad to be alive."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

03-01-2013, 03:51 PM

Raid Of The Day: Jeffery Robinson

By Radley Balko Posted: 03/01/2013 10:31 am EST | Updated: 03/01/2013 10:38 am EST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/01/raid-of-the-day-jeffery-r_n_2789672.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In July 2002, police in South Memphis raided the home of 41-year-old Jeffery Robinson, a gravedigger who lived in a small building near the cemetery that employed him. The police had received a tip that someone was selling marijuana near the cemetery.

Seconds after kicking down Robinson's door, the raid team shot Robinson in the neck. They later claimed he had charged at them with a box cutter. While he lay in intensive care fighting for his life, Robinson was charged with possession for the small amount of pot the cops found near a camper in the yard behind his home. He died six weeks later.

An internal police review and a review by the Tennessee Attorney General's Office found no wrongdoing on the part of the raiding police officers, and for the next two-and-a-half years, they remained on the force. But a 2004 lawsuit filed by Robinson's family cast doubt on the raid and the credibility of the cops who carried it out. The alleged box cutter Robinson was holding was never fingerprinted. A federal jury later determined it was planted. The shirts worn by Robinson and the officer who shot him vanished after the raid. Trial testimony revealed that police bought a new polo shirt, still in its wrapper, and filed it into evidence as the shirt Robinson wore the night he was shot. A medical examiner and blood spatter expert also testified that the shooting couldn't possibly have happened the way the police claimed it did.

The federal jury concluded that the officers shot Robinson without justification, then tampered with the evidence to cover up their mistakes. The jury didn't believe the investigation conducted by the police department's internal affairs division. The following February, the eight officers involved in the raid were suspended, more than two years after the raid. Robinson's family won $2.85 million in damages against the officers, and negotiated a $1 million settlement from the city.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

heavenlyboy34

03-01-2013, 04:15 PM

But it should also be a red flag for the gun rights community. Additionally, as these tactics continue to spread to enforce increasingly petty and nonviolent crimes, we're almost certain to see more wrong-door raids on legal gun owners. It isn't difficult to see a lot of tragic outcomes, there.

Not a smart move on the SWATters' behalf. Eventually people are going to figure out that following the law re: registration makes them a target. The smart ones will just not register, buy black market, etc. Now the TWAT teams are going to find themselves at the action end of much scarier guns than they ever imagined dealing with. (unintended consequences, anyone? /facepalm)

kcchiefs6465

03-01-2013, 07:11 PM

....
The federal jury concluded that the officers shot Robinson without justification, then tampered with the evidence to cover up their mistakes. The jury didn't believe the investigation conducted by the police department's internal affairs division. The following February, the eight officers involved in the raid were suspended, more than two years after the raid. Robinson's family won $2.85 million in damages against the officers, and negotiated a $1 million settlement from the city.

Here I figured nothing was going to happen to them. Boy was I wrong...

AGRP

03-01-2013, 07:20 PM

Seconds after kicking down Robinson's door, the raid team shot Robinson in the neck. They later claimed he had charged at them with a box cutter. While he lay in intensive care fighting for his life, Robinson was charged with possession for the small amount of pot the cops found near a camper in the yard behind his home. He died six weeks later.

Because people who sell marijuana always carry a small amount and have a box cutter near by to attack intruders.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2021809/Marijuana-plant-Mayor-84-fires-entire-police-department.html

Anti Federalist

03-04-2013, 03:54 PM

Raid Of The Day: Stephen Shively And Officer Tony Patterson

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/04/raid-of-the-day-stephen-s_n_2806817.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

By Radley Balko Posted: 03/04/2013 1:50 pm EST | Updated: 03/04/2013 2:06 pm EST

October 12, 1995: At around 3 am, college student Stephen Shively woke up to the sound of police battering down the door to his apartment in Topeka, Kansas. He quickly called 911, and told the operator he he was being burglarized.

As the battering continued, cracks appeared in the paneling around the door frame. Shively retrieved a gun, and fired at the figures he saw through one of the openings. His bullet hit Officer Tony Patterson, killing him.

Despite Shively's 911 call -- which would seem to suggest he didn't know the intruders were police -- the local prosecutor threw a capital murder charge at Shively, alleging he intentionally killed Patterson to protect the 12 ounces of marijuana that the police found in Shively's apartment.

At trial, the jury passed on the capital murder charge, but did convict Shively of aggravated assault, along with drug charges for the marijuana. The trial judge sentenced him to three-and-a-half years in prison, explaining that he didn't fit the description of “a drug lord with horns and fangs.” In 1998, another state judge released Shively eight months early.

The following year, the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled that the search warrant authorizing the raid on Shively's apartment was illegal. From the opinion: "Regrettably, the loss of an officer's life might have been prevented if the affidavit had been candid and not designed to mislead the magistrate into issuing the search warrant."

The six police officers who took part in the raid were awarded the Topeka Police Department's Medal of Merit.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

kcchiefs6465

03-04-2013, 04:11 PM

Anti Federalist

03-05-2013, 01:31 PM

Raid Of The Day: "This is what happens when your grandma sells crack."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/the-agitator

Huffington Post | Radley Balko | March 5, 2013 1:52 PM ET

Chicago police terrorized six children in the wrong apartment, demanding at gunpoint that an 11-month-old show his hands, and telling one child, "This is what happens when your grandma sells crack," the family claims in court.

Lead plaintiffs Charlene and Samuel Holly sued Chicago, police Officer Patrick Kinney and eight John Does in Federal Court, on their own behalves and for their children and children.

The six children were 11 months to 13 years old at the time. Plaintiffs Connie and Michelle Robinson are Charlene Holly's daughters.

The complaint states: "On November 29, 2012 in the early evening hours Charlene Holly was in the first floor apartment at 10640 S. Prairie in the front room helping minor Child #1, Child #2, Child #4, and Child #5 rehearse songs for their church choir. Charlene was also caring for Child #3, who was 11 months old. Child #6 was in the upstairs apartment alone.

"Charlene and the children heard a loud boom outside and a voice cry out 'Across the street!'

"Defendant Officers John Doe 1-8 burst through the door to the first floor apartment dressed in army fatigues and pointing guns at Charlene and the children. The officers yelled at Charlene and the children to 'Get on the ground!' The officers referred to Charlene and the children as 'm---f---ers' numerous times . . .

"Charlene continually asked what the purpose of the detention was," the complaint states. "Finally, an officer produced a warrant and handed it to Charlene. The warrant was for an individual named 'Sedgwick M. Reavers' and the premises listed was 'The second floor apartment located at 10640 S. Prairie Ave. A yellow brick two flat building with the numbers 10640 on the front of the building.' In other words, the warrant clearly identified the proper location as the second floor apartment. Charlene, Samuel, and the children were in the first floor apartment . . .

The family claims that "the following day Charlene discovered the family dog, Samson, not in the basement where the family kept him, but in an upstairs laundry room. Samson could not have reached the laundry room without human assistance. On information and belief, defendant Officers dragged and choked Samson from the basement with the dog pole and left him in the upstairs laundry room unattended, where he died."

Samuel Holly also went to the police station the day after the warrantless search to complain, but "despite his numerous calls the night before, was told that he could not make a complaint and he 'should have made a complaint last night," the family says.

It's always worth noting that Courthouse News stories are usually accounts drawn from one half of a lawsuit. So gauge your outrage with that in mind.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

03-11-2013, 10:23 PM

Raid Of The Day: Xavier Bennett, 8, Killed In 1991 Drug Raid

By Radley Balko Posted: 03/11/2013 4:14 pm EDT | Updated: 03/11/2013 4:37 pm EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/raid-of-the-day-xavier-be_n_2855157.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In November 1991, police in Dekalb County, Georgia conducted a 2:30 am drug raid on the home of Bobby and Kathy Bowman.

Shortly after the officers took down his door with a battering ram, Bobby Bowman fired at them, wounding one officer. He would later say he thought he was being robbed. The police shot back. Outside the house, Investigator Charles A. Povilaitis fired three bullets through a closed window backed by drawn shades. The window was part of the bedroom where Bowman's eight-year-old stepson Xavier Bennett was sleeping. One of the bullets struck the boy, killing him. Povilaitis initially denied firing his gun at all, then claimed to have fired fewer bullets than he actually did. He was suspended for five days.

The police found about 3 grams of crack cocaine, and misdemeanor amounts of other illicit drugs. Bowman was convicted of drug possession with intent to distribute, and of assault on a police officer for the shot that wounded one of the raiding cops. He was also initially charged with murder for starting the gunfight that caused his stepson's death.

He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

03-13-2013, 05:44 PM

Raid Of The Day: Jose Colon

By Radley Balko Posted: 03/12/2013 3:27 pm EDT | Updated: 03/12/2013 3:35 pm EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/raid-of-the-day-jose-colo_n_2862332.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

One night in April 2002, police in Bellport, New York were preparing for a heavily-armed raid that included a helicopter.

As four SWAT cops rushed across the front lawn toward the targeted house, 19-year-old Jose Colon emerged from the front door. According to the police account of the raid, as the officer rushed the door, one officer tripped over a tree root and fell forward into the lead officer, causing the lead officer's gun to accidentally discharge three times.

One of the three bullets hit Colon in the side of the head, killing him.

The police said they screamed at Colon to "get down" as they approached, though two witnesses told a local newscast that, (a) their screams were inaudible over the sound of the helicopter, and (b) the officers appeared to be frozen before the shooting. That is, the witnesses didn't see any of the officers trip. One witness later recanted his story after speaking with police.

Colon, who didn't live at the house, was never suspected of buying or selling any illicit drugs. The police proceeded with a search of the house, and seized eight ounces of marijuana. A subsequent internal investigation found no criminal wrongdoing on the part of police.

Colon had no criminal record. He was two months away from becoming the first member of his family to graduate from college.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

03-19-2013, 10:36 AM

Raid Of The Day: The Hay Family

By Radley Balko Posted: 03/19/2013 10:10 am EDT | Updated: 03/19/2013 10:19 am EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/raid-of-the-day-the-hay-f_n_2907178.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

At about 6 am on the morning of March 8, 1985, 60 law enforcement officers staged a raid on the Point Arena, California ranch owned by Bill Hay and his wife Karen. Point Arena is in Mendocino County, due south of Humboldt County. The two counties, along with Trinity County, make up the "emerald triangle," the rugged, heavily-forested part of northern California that state and federal anti-drug agencies and the state's National Guard had been targeting through the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, or CAMP.

When Hay answered the loud knock at the door, he told a local paper, a federal agent "threw some papers in my face . . . while he held a gun up nose." Hay's wife and son Robert were already awake, and also held at gunpoint. His son Richard was rousted from sleep with a gun pressed to his temple. Within minutes dozens of camouflage-clad narcotics cops from at least seven local, state, and federal police agencies fanned out over the Hays' 11,000 acre farm. The raid included 14 vehicles, two ambulances, two aircraft, and a "lunch wagon" -- in case the raiding cops worked up an appetite.

The raid was based on a tip from a confidential informant, who told police that the Hay ranch was the site of a massive underground drug warehouse, where they'd find stacks of marijuana bales and crates of cocaine, all packaged and ready for sale. After six hours of searching, they found nothing of the kind. The agent in charge then ordered a search of the Hay house. The drug cops ransacked the place, rifling through drawers and cabinets, apparently in the hope that Bill Hay was hiding an enormous drug storage facility in his sock drawer. They finally brought in drug dogs to sniff every inch of the Hay household. They found no contraband.

In all, the Hays were held at gunpoint for eight hours, during which they were not permitted to talk, eat or drink, change out of their bedclothes, or use the toilet. The Hays said several SWAT members mocked them as they ate lunch in front of them, and at one point, began simulating intercourse with a plastic deer lawn ornament on the family's front lawn. The warrant allowed the team to look not just for drugs, but for "paraphernalia" used to harvest and package illegal drugs. At one point, a narcotics officer demanded to know why Hay was in possession of a large supply of baling wire. Hay pointed out that he kept a thousand head of cattle, 900 sheep, and had a baler in the barn. He then pointed to his huge of supply of hay, stacked in bales.

Finally, the police flew their informant to the Hay ranch, where he told them they had raided the wrong property. The Hays would later learn that the informant -- described on the warrant as trustworthy and reliable -- had previously told police the ranch was in Sonoma County.

Three years later, the Hay family filed a law suit in state court. Judge John Golden ruled the trial that the search warrant was invalid. The jury found for the Hay family, and awarded them $8 million in damages. Some jurors wept. After the trial, jurors chipped in to buy roses for Karen Hay.

The Ukiah Daily Journal reported that juror Hans Zwetshoot said the Hays' account of the raid reminded him of the stories his father told him about life in Nazi-occupied Holland.

Meanwhile, California Deputy State Attorney General Paul Hammerness called Judge Golden a "villain" for his ruling on the search warrant, and said the monetary award wasn't justified. When asked why it wasn't justified, he replied that "the Hays really weren't damaged."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

tod evans

03-19-2013, 03:58 PM

Meanwhile, California Deputy State Attorney General Paul Hammerness called Judge Golden a "villain" for his ruling on the search warrant, and said the monetary award wasn't justified. When asked why it wasn't justified, he replied that "the Hays really weren't damaged."

Chalk up another instance of why I believe prosecutors should be disemboweled on the public square...:mad:

Fucking asshole!

Anti Federalist

03-21-2013, 10:43 AM

Raid Of The Day: Cheryl Ann Stillwell, Killed In A Drug Raid Over Two OxyContin Pills

Radley Balko | March 21, 2013 12:06 PM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/raid-of-the-day-cheryl-an_n_2924701.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Cheryl Ann Stillwell, a 41-year-old computer engineer, was concerned about the drug activity around her home on Florida's Amelia Island. According to friends and family, she had repeatedly asked police to do something about the problem, including offering them the use of two other houses she owned in the neighborhood.

Stillwell was reclusive, perhaps even paranoid. She kept a gun in the home, and had on a prior occasion pointed it at a cable installer she thought was an intruder. She often moved her couch up against the door to keep out criminals, and had installed a video camera outside her front door. But Cheryl Ann Stillwell died at the hands of the police, not the drug dealers she feared.

Stillwell suffered chronic pain from a work-related accident, and a doctor had prescribed her OxyContin to treat it. In December 2005, police say a confidential informant reported buying two Oxycontin pills from an “unknown white female” at a house whose description matched Stillwell's cottage. Stillwell's brother told the Florida Times-Union that she had given the two pills to an acquaintance who later got into trouble with the police. At 5:30 am on December 22, a Nassau County SWAT team and a few federal agents raided Stillwell's home, one of three raids they conducted that morning. Neither Stillwell's name nor the house's address was listed on the warrant. The police had no idea whom they were raiding.

The police initially said Stillwell fired at them, at which point they opened fire. Later, after post-mortem forensics determined that Stillwell had actually fired her weapon only after she was shot, the police story changed. Officer Dallas Palecek, they said, fired only after seeing Stillwell's finger "twitch" on the gun's trigger. A report by Florida Assistant State Attorney Granville Burgess later questioned how that was possible, given that Palecek was a good distance away from Stillwell and it was dark at the time.

Burgess also criticized the heavy-handed tactics. “As far as this team knew they were executing a search warrant on a single white female with no violent history who had sold one time a minor amount of drugs. If they had had background information I'm sure they would have approached it differently.” An FBI report raised the same questions. Yet both reports, along with a report from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, ultimately cleared Palecek of any wrongdoing.

While possibly negligent, it seems right that Palecek was cleared of criminal conduct. This tragedy, like those before it, was a question of tactics. Unfortunately, Stillwell's death didn't move the police department to change their tactics, either. In an interview with the Times-Union five months after the raid, Nassau County Sheriff Tommy Seagraves said that all search warrants in the county were still served by the SWAT team.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Anti Federalist

03-21-2013, 10:44 AM

Raid Of The Day: "Operation Ready-Rock"

Radley Balko | March 20, 2013 1:01 PM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/raid-of-the-day-operation_n_2916660.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

As the drug war escalated in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the crack epidemic, police in some cities began raiding entire neighborhoods. The raids were authorized by constitutionally-suspect search warrants giving them permission to raid multiple residences at once. One example came in November 1990, when 45 police officers dressed in camouflage and black hoods raided an entire block of homes in North Carolina. They were from the Chapel Hill and Carrboro police departments, the Orange County Sheriff's Department, and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. The raids, part of an investigation dubbed "Operation Ready-Rock," went on for four hours. According to the subsequent lawsuit, everyone raided and apprehended was black. The astonishing search warrant affidavit condemned an entire street of people. The officer asserted, "[W]e believe there are no 'innocent' people at this place . . . Only drug sellers and drug buyers are on the described premises."

Journalist Christian Parenti describes what happened next.

The assault force--dressed in combat boots, green camo' battle dress uniforms, body armor, hoods, masks, goggles, and kevlar helmets--armed itself with the usual array of "tactical" gadgetry: less-than-lethal "blunt trauma impact ordnances," chemical sprays, and [Heckler & Koch] MP-5s, MP-54s and Colt AR-15s. For maximum results, the the operation was launched on a Friday night with teams of officers storming the block from all directions, cutting off every path of escape and then combing the area with drug-sniffing dogs. Even amidst the military frenzy the courtesy of the old South prevailed: whites were allowed to leave the area, while more than a hundred African-Americans were searched. The warrant also included the search of a pool hall called the Village Connection. In typically "proactive" fashion SWAT commandos made a "dynamic entrance," smashing in the front door and forcing the occupants to the floor at gunpoint. While the captives were searched and interrogated, the bar was ransacked for contraband. The commotion left one elderly man trembling on the floor in a pool of his own urine.

Despite the affiant's statements, the raids netted just 13 arrests. Meanwhile, three dozen of the citizens who were raided but not arrested brought lawsuits alleging civil rights violations. In 1993, Orange County Superior Court Judge Knox Jenkins berated the raiding officers in a three-page statement that he read in front of a crowded courtroom. In 1996 the city and county governments settled for $200,000.

Just a year after the settlement, the same four police agencies sent 37 officers to raid the same area of the county. The Village Connection pool hall had shut down, so young people were congregating on nearby Broad Street In Carrboro. That led to neighbor complaints of noise, drinking, and drug use. So backed by a National Guard helicopter circling over head, police raided a house they claimed was being used for drug distribution. This time, a crowd gathered near the raid site to jeer the police officers. The police found no drugs in the home.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

fr33

03-21-2013, 11:01 AM

Anti Federalist

03-21-2013, 11:05 AM

It's ironic that she was a drug warrior who called the police but was also a drug user herself. She was an enabler to her murderers.

Do Not Call Cops.

tod evans

03-21-2013, 04:37 PM

It's ironic that she was a drug warrior who called the police but was also a drug user herself. She was an enabler to her murderers.

So many folks draw lines in their own minds between "good" drugs and "bad" ones instead of throwing off the programming and looking at drugs, all drugs, as medication...

Just because your Dr. provides you morphine or amphetamines doesn't make you better or different from the guy/gal on the corner that you turn your nose up at..

Maybe this girls family will open their eyes, it's kinda late for her..

Anti Federalist

03-22-2013, 06:44 PM

Raid Of The Day: Rusty Windle

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/22/raid-of-the-day-rusty-win_n_2933875.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Radley Balko | March 22, 2013 1:39 PM ET

In the spring of 1999, a 46-year-old ex-con named Roy Parrish befriended 25-year-old electrician Rusty Windle at a blue collar bar in the town of Wimberley, Texas. After a few conversations, Parrish talked Windle into trying to find him some pot. Windle was no drug dealer. It took him six days to find his new friend some marijuana. When the ex-con asked Windle again, he could only find a few grams and, embarrassed, sheepishly refused to take any money for it.

Parrish was a paid drug informant. At the time he working for the Hays County, Texas Narcotics Task Force. Windle was also a gun collector, so Parrish attempted to bait him into making a silencer for him, which is a federal crime. Windle was reluctant, but finally gave Parrish a metal tube, some washers, and instructions on how he make one himself. Parrish turned it all over to the ATF.

Word had also been getting in the town about the parties Parrish would throw, which flowed with booze (and, allegedly, plenty of minors), and inevitably involved him asking people to score him some drugs. One acquaintance (and friend of Windle's) told Texas Observer reporter Nate Blakeslee, "He asked everybody to get him pot, he practically begged you for it."

As for Windle, friends told Blakeslee he had moved to Wimberley at teh age of 18 to get a fresh start after a rough childhood in Florida. Until he met Parrish, he was doing pretty well. Windle had “developed a reputation as a quiet, extremely dependable, even-tempered, and likable man,” Blakeslee reports. He wasn't dealing drugs so much as reluctantly doing a favor for someone he thought was a friend.

Once Parrish had persuaded Windle to get him enough pot for Windle to be charged with a felony, the task force struck. On May 17, 1999, they descended on Windle's home for a pre-dawn raid. Windle awoke to a disturbance in front of his home, and answered the door holding a rifle. Police say that when they heard the slide action of a rifle bolt, Officer Chase Strapp backed away from the door. Seeing armed men dressed in black approaching his house, and watching one of them then retreat from his porch, Windle pointed his weapon at Strapp. Strapp fired four rounds from his semiautomatic weapon, hitting Windle three times, killing him in his own doorway.

Police later discovered that Windle's weapon was unloaded, and the safety mechanism was still activated. They found less than an ounce of marijuana in his home. Though some officers claimed they announced themselves outside of Windle's home, he wasn't the only one raided that morning based on Parrish's informant work that morning. Others who were claimed the police never announced themselves before executing those warrants. One of those raided was targeted for selling Parrish half a bottle of Vicodin for $30 after Parrish had attempted to buy prescription drugs from the same man's 72-year-old mother.

Windle left behind a 7-year-old son, Christopher. After Windle was cremated, his mother took his ashes back to Florida, where Christopher helped spread them near where Windle grew up.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

phill4paul

03-22-2013, 06:57 PM

Christ!... These are all documented in his new book? "War and Peace" must be a short story.

Anti Federalist

03-22-2013, 07:08 PM

Christ!... These are all documented in his new book? "War and Peace" must be a short story.

A bible of tyranny.

heavenlyboy34

03-22-2013, 07:17 PM

Land Of The Unfree, Home Of The Slave :(

Anti Federalist

03-22-2013, 07:19 PM

Land Of The Unfree, Home Of The Slave :(

Land of the LockDown, Home of the Knave.

phill4paul

03-22-2013, 08:05 PM

A bible of tyranny.

http://www.christianhomeandfamily.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/1000.jpg

Anti Federalist

03-25-2013, 03:23 PM

Raid Of The Day: Daniel Castillo, 17, Killed In A 2007 Early Morning Bust

Radley Balko | March 25, 2013 10:18 AM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/25/raid-of-the-day-daniel-ca_n_2948929.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

In February 2007, police in the small town of Wharton, Texas say an informant told them about drug sales going on in a home on Sunset Street. The police didn't bother to attempt to buy any drugs themselves, or send an informant to attempt a buy. Instead, one officer reported observing heavy traffic at the home, which was inhabited by 17-year-old Daniel Castillo, his parents, his brother, his sister, and his sister's one-year-old child.

On February 17, the police conducted an early morning raid. According to Ashley Castillo, Daniel's sister, she, her brother, and her child were sleeping when the police came in. She woke up, stunned, and screamed at the intruders, "Pleases don't shoot my baby!" Her cries woke up her brother Daniel, who rose from his bed to defend her. That's when Sgt. Don Falks shot Castillo in the face, killing him.

Falks -- who according to Castillo's family was known around Wharton as "The Terminator" -- told a different story. He said Castillo was awake when he entered the room, and lying in wait. When he entered, he said Castillo punched him in the face, then reached for an object from his waistband that Falks believed to be a gun. (A small knife was found near Castillo's body.)

Days after the raid, Wharton County Sheriff Jess Howell noted that Sgt. Falks had been given counseling to deal with the trauma from the raid. No one offered the Castillo family similar counseling. The following month, a grand jury declined to indict Falks on any criminal charges.

Daniel Castillo had no criminal record. He had recently enlisted in the Army. The police later claimed to have found $5,000 worth of cocaine and marijuana and to have arrested an uncle of Castillo's during the raid. The Castillo family said the drugs were found in a car parked in the family driveway belonging to a boyfriend of one of Castillo's sisters, and that he -- not an uncle -- was the one arrested. Castillo's 14-year-old brother was also arrested after demanding to see a search warrant. He was later released with no charges.

Of course, even if we assume everything about the police account to be true -- that someone was dealing drugs from the Castillo home, and that Daniel Castillo came at Sgt. Falks with a knife -- the incident illustrates the perils of forced-entry drug raids. It seems unlikely that Castillo, given his background and plans for the future -- would have knowingly attacked a heavily armed, heavily armored police officer with a knife. It seems far more likely that he thought Falks was a criminal intruder who had broken into his bedroom, and was protecting his sister and her child.

Castillo's aunt later wrote of the incident:

The entire family is afraid that people are going to see this as "oh well, just one less young hispanic male for us to deal with." They've got the wrong family this time. They will not come into our homes and kill our children and then move on with their lives. As long as we have no justice, we will always be there to remind them that an innocent young life was taken. They didn't even give him a chance to be tried and convicted of anything. That lone cop was the judge, jury and executioner. They shot him as he stood next to his sister who was holding her 1 year old baby. They hauled his mother away in handcuffs as she struggled to get to her son. They refused to even let her contact his father at work to let him know that his son had been shot. His 14 year old brother got reasonably upset and demanded to see the warrant. They arrested him for "interfering with a police investigation" and hauled him off to juvie. To this day, the only reason they even got a hint of what was in the warrant was because the media was able to get it before them.

When word spread that Danny had been shot, the police blocked off the ER at the local hospital and kept everyone out. (Its a very small town and word spreads fast.) . . .

The family just wants to know why. Why did they do this? Was it an accident? Was he spooked by something? Just give us some sort of reason. Its all so senseless. Junior is dead. He will never graduate high school, he will never get married or have children. All beacsue some informant told them that a "David Castillo" was dealing drugs out of the house and the police believed him. Had anyone ever just gone to the house and knocked on the door, they would have discovered that there was NO David Castillo at that residence. There was a mother, father, their children and two grandchildren. Why didn't someone do that? WHY?

The Castillo family's federal lawsuit was settled in 2009. The terms of the settlement are bound by a confidentiality agreement. As of January, Falk was still with the Wharton Police Department.

Anti Federalist

03-27-2013, 03:14 PM

Raid Of The Day: Cat Urine And The Opera Singer

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/the-agitator

Radley Balko | March 26, 2013 9:27 AM ET

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

On July 19, 1993, Brian and Elizabeth Davis, their infant, and their two-year-old son woke to the sound of armed, masked police officers from a narcotics task force breaking into their home.

The Davises had been involved in an ongoing dispute with neighbors. At some point, the neighbors suggested to police that the couple was manufacturing methamphetamine. As evidence, the neighbors noted a faint smell of cat urine coming from the Davis home, and pointed out that Brian Davis had "no visible means of support."

In fact, Davis was an opera singer. The raid turned up no drugs or evidence of any illegal activity. In a subsequent investigation, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office called the raid "unfortunate," but insisted that in sending armed, masked men to storm a family's house early in the morning -- based only on a tip from aggrieved neighbors -- the police had "acted properly."

The state settled with the Davises in 1996 for an undisclosed amount of money.

(Raid of the Day archive here.)

Sources: Dick Cowen, "Odors didn't lead to drugs," Allentown Morning Call, January 15, 1996; Dick Owen, "State settles lawsuit over city drug raid," Allentown Morning Call, January 15, 1996

Anti Federalist

03-28-2013, 03:28 PM

Raid Of The Day: Lewis Caldwell

By Radley Balko Posted: 03/28/2013 10:50 am EDT | Updated: 03/28/2013 11:02 am EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/28/raid-of-the-day-lewis-cal_n_2971597.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

On March 6, 2003, six NYPD police officers dressed in riot gear broke down the door to the home of Lewis Caldwell. Police handcuffed Caldwell, a lung cancer patient, and forced him to the floor at gunpoint.

Caldwell's wife returned home from work to find her home filled with police officers and police dogs. She pleaded with the officers to release her husband from the handcuffs, citing his medical condition. They kept him restrained for more than an hour. Caldwell said police were "laughing and joking" while searching his apartment. They found nothing incriminating. They had raided the wrong home.

When the Caldwells filed a complaint, they said a lieutenant called to tell them the raid was completely justified, and "there's nothing you can do about it."

Deborah K

03-28-2013, 03:29 PM

Someone please explain to me the point of the ACLU????

Anti Federalist

03-28-2013, 03:37 PM

Someone please explain to me the point of the ACLU????

"Left Wing" pressure relief valve.

Deborah K

03-28-2013, 03:38 PM

Well, I know they like NAMBLA, but you'd think they'd take some of these police brutality issues on.

Anti Federalist

03-28-2013, 03:42 PM

Well, I know they like NAMBLA, but you'd think they'd take some of these police brutality issues on.

Neither the left wing or right wing relief valve organs will directly confront the state or it's enforcers.

Which is, of course, their purpose.

Anti Federalist

03-29-2013, 07:07 PM

Raid Of The Day: Hawaii 5-Uh, Oh

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/29/raid-of-the-day-hawaii-5-_n_2980691.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Radley Balko | March 29, 2013 2:40 PM ET

Given the amount of force the Kaua'i, Hawaii Police Department meted out to catch him, you'd think David Hibbitts had gone on a spree of orphanage-and-nunnery-burning. Yet when Hawaii Fifth Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Watanabe finally sentenced him in May 2006, he got all of five years probation, some fines, and community service. His crime? He had mailed 11 pounds of pot to his home in Hawaii while visiting California.

A year earlier, Kaua'i police had intercepted the package and outfitted it with a radio transmitter. They then obtained an "anticipatory search warrant," which authorized them to search whatever house the package was in when it was opened. Hibbitts retrieved the package from the post office. The police followed his Toyota pickup truck down the Kaumuali'i Highway, then into a private neighborhood. But by the time the transmitter indicated that the box had been opened, the police had lost track of the truck. There were seven houses on the street. They had a one in seven chance of getting the right place. So they picked one at random, even though the truck they had been following wasn't parked in any of the driveways.

Inside that house, William and Sharon McCulley were babysitting their grandchildren. According to the McCulleys' subsequent lawsuit, the police entered the home quickly and threw Sharon McCulley and one of the grandchildren to the ground. They screamed profanities at her, put a knee into her back, and pushed a gun to her head, hard enough to leave an imprint of the barrel on her scalp. William McCulley was in the kitchen. Due to a nerve disorder, he used a walker and a leg brace. He also used an implanted device that delivers electrical impulses to help him manage pain. When the police ordered him to the floor, he was apparently too slow to respond, so an officer threw him down with violence. That caused his electrical device to malfunction. He began convulsing -- or as the lawsuit colorfully put it -- "flopping like a fish."

The police had raided the wrong house. When they finally realized as much, they picked another house to raid. Still no box. Finally, on the third try, the police raided the home with Hibbitts, the box of marijuana, and two others inside.

In October 2007, Kaua'i County settled with the McCulleys for $325,000.

phill4paul

03-29-2013, 07:52 PM

Anti Federalist

04-01-2013, 12:45 PM

Raid Of The Day: Indoor Gardening Hobby Brings Pot Raid

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/01/raid-of-the-day-indoor-ga_n_2993262.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Radley Balko | April 1, 2013 12:56 PM ET

From the Kansas City Star, just this week:

"This is how we were awakened: banging, pounding, screaming," the mother, Adlynn Harte, said Friday. "My husband opened the door right before the battering ram was set to take it out."

The father allegedly was forced to lie shirtless on the foyer while a deputy with an assault rifle stood over him. The children, a 7-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy, reportedly came out of their bedrooms terrified, the teenager with his hands in the air.

And all because the couple, Robert and Adlynn Harte, bought indoor gardening equipment to grow a small number of tomato and squash plants in their basement, according to a lawsuit filed this week. The equipment was never used for marijuana, the couple says, and no one in the family has ever used illegal drugs.

Nearly a year after the SWAT-style raid, the Hartes still don't know what evidence deputies used to persuade a judge to grant a warrant to search their home in the 10300 block of Wenonga Lane on April 20. Their requests for records that could provide such information have been denied by the sheriff's office.

The most likely reason the department won't release the records is that they don't want the public knowing how paltry their evidence was -- in this case, it appears to have been insufficient to distinguish a perfectly legal gardening hobby from a marijuana grow.

These investigations and ensuing raids of people who garden have been going on for years. In fact, in one of our earlier Raid of the Day entries, Sandy and Grace Sanborn were raided in 1999 merely because the couple's son had shopped at a store that sold hydroponic equipment -- because the latter is often used to grow marijuana. And if your gardening habit doesn't get you raided for where you shop, there's also the chance it could get you raided because your local drug cops don't know the difference between marijuana and whatever legal plant you happen to be growing.

Anti Federalist

04-03-2013, 01:17 PM

Raid(s) Of The Day: Operation D-Day

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/raids-of-the-day-operatio_n_3006269.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Radley Balko | April 3, 2013 8:35 AM ET

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

In May 2008, as part of a massive effort tellingly codenamed "Operation D-Day," Florida law enforcement and DEA agents raided 150 homes around the state that were suspected of growing marijuana. The impetus for the raids was a new state law that dramatically increased prison sentences for growing pot. Floridians faced up to 30 years in prison for pot plants, even if police had no evidence that the plants were intended for anything other than personal consumption.

One of the raids hit the Opa-Laka home of Noel and Isabel Llorente, Cuban immigrants who say they came to America to escape government oppression and the commando tactics of Cuban police. Noel Llorente, who was just leaving for work, was pulled from his vehicle, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed at gunpoint. The agents then ripped the Llorente's front door from its hinges, and confronted Isabel Llorente. She thought she was being robbed, and was attempting to call the police.

(Welkome to Amerika Herr Llorente. - AF)

The police had raided the wrong house. The Llorentes said they were given only a curt apology, and the police were on their way. They left no search warrant, and no contact information for the Llorente's to arrange to repair the damage the police did to their home. "When I asked them about the door, they said, 'Sorry," Noel Llorente told a local TV station. "When I asked them about my reputation, they said, 'Sorry.'"

Despite the heavy-handed tactics and the saturation raids, the police found all of 10 guns. Of the 135 people they arrested, only 10 merited felony drug charges.

shane77m

04-03-2013, 01:37 PM

Raid Of The Day: Indoor Gardening Hobby Brings Pot Raid

Nearly a year after the SWAT-style raid, the Hartes still don't know what evidence deputies used to persuade a judge to grant a warrant to search their home in the 10300 block of Wenonga Lane on April 20. Their requests for records that could provide such information have been denied by the sheriff's office.

The most likely reason the department won't release the records is that they don't want the public knowing how paltry their evidence was -- in this case, it appears to have been insufficient to distinguish a perfectly legal gardening hobby from a marijuana grow.

Sounds like their purchases were tracked or perhaps their electricity usage?

WM_in_MO

04-03-2013, 01:52 PM

You don't need to grow your own food mundane, you are reported.

kcchiefs6465

04-03-2013, 02:27 PM

Sounds like their purchases were tracked or perhaps their electricity usage?
That is one way. They do fly overs in helicopters with Forward Looking Infrared Radar. (FLIR) The ones around one hundred thousand dollar a piece that show heat signatures. High pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide (MH) will heat your foundation and make your house glow like a Christmas tree. (aside from using more electircity than your average, which may have contributed to the probable cause as well) After they identify a house with an excessive heat signature they send undercover cops to snoop around. They can then attest to the smell of marijuana or even cameras on the outside of your house etc. All of it goes towards the probable cause. They probably have a rubber stamping judge and didn't figure that some people actually do grow large gardens of legal plants inside their homes.

If you are going to grow tomatos indoors, use LEDs with an appropriate red to blue spectrum. They make some really good ones but they are expensive as all hell. They give off 20% as much heat as HPS or MH lights while giving you the best of both worlds with spectrum. Last a lot longer as well.

Anti Federalist

04-06-2013, 01:38 AM

Raid(s) Of The Day: "Operation Carribean Cruise"

Radley Balko | April 5, 2013 6:07 PM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/05/raid-of-the-day-operation_n_3024198.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

James Bigelow, a retired lieutenant with the Washington, D.C. Metro Police Department, awoke early on the cold morning of February 22, 1986 to the sound of his doorbell and a knock at the door. That was quickly followed by the sound of a sledgehammer smashing into the same door. As he and his wife ran downstairs, they were met by a team of narcotics agents, along with those agents' guns.

Bigelow, 58 at the time, had a brother who was a former deputy police chief in D.C. His son was still a police officer with the department. Somehow, the cops had still managed to mistakenly raid his home. Bigelow and his wife sat at gunpoint while police ransacked their home. They found nothing. They didn't bother fixing the front door, which they had clear of its frame.

At about the same time, Thomas Timberman awoke to a sharp knock at his door. When Timberman, a career foreign service worker, answered the door, he was met by two agents dressed in dark clothes, carrying shotguns. They didn't tell him they were police. Instead, they told him he should go look at the door to the basement apartment he was renting out. That door too had been knocked off its frame. Timberman rented the apartment to a colleague, a senior official at the State Department. That official was on vacation at the time. Eventually the officers admitted they had made a mistake. They had intended to raid the home next door.

That same morning, narcotics agents also raided the home of Ewan Brown, who worked for the Washington Post. According to Brown, the police quickly looked over the house, after which the head of the raid team said, "I think we have the wrong house." They spent the next two hours tearing the place apart, anyway. Brown tried to point out that his house didn't match the description of the house described in the warrant. He tried to tell them that neither he nor the nephew who lived with him fit the description of the dreadlocked Rastafarian the police were looking for. They found no drugs, briefly apologized, and left. "It was like the allied troops at Normandy," he'd later say.

In all, 530 police officers -- 12 percent of the Washington, D.C. police department -- plus federal agents from the IRS, U.S. Parks Police, ATF, Immigration, and the IRS conducted 69 simultaneous raids all across the city. "Operation Caribbean Cruise" intended to target a ring of Jamaican drug smugglers. It was the largest planned police operation in Washington, D.C. history. They had anticipated making over 500 arrests, seizing hundreds of pounds of marijuana worth millions of dollars, and confiscating dozens of automatic weapons. The early morning raids were the culmination of a 16-month investigation.

The final tally: 27 arrests, 13 of them for mere possession of marijuana. The cops also seized 13 weapons, and found $20,000 in illegal drugs. In the end, the number of people the police department had assigned merely to handle the paperwork for the rests they had expected to make exceeded the number of people who were actually arrested. They found none of the alleged Jamaican drug dealers. "The dismay of police was evidence soon after the raid began at 5 a.m.," the Washington Post reported, "as officers, some solemn-looking and others laughing at their misfortune, congregated around police vehicles outside the targeted homes and packed away their shotguns, bulletproof vests, sledgehammers, and helmets."

Still, the D.C. police department had little sympathy for the people they had wrongly raided. From the Washington Post:

Deputy Chief Shugart said that police had received a number of complaints from people who said that police had mistakenly raided their homes. He said that in those cases, the police had gone back to the source of the allegations and confirmed that the information in affidavits filed in support of the search warrants was accurate.

"They [the people who protested the police actions] don't control all the people in their homestead," he said, adding, "We will work with them to make repairs" of any unnecessary damage done during the raids."

Shugart's dismissive attitude toward the people who'd just had guns pointed at them and had their homes ransacked shows just how far law enforcement officials could be removed from the people they served. First, merely verifying with, say, a confidential informant that the raided house was the same addresses where the informant claimed to have bought some drugs doesn't mean it was a legitimate raid. Informants lie. They're especially likely to lie if they've just sent the police who work with them, pay them, and know where they live to the wrong house. But even Shugart was correct -- even if the homes, curtilages, or properties of innocent people were being used by drug pushers without their knowledge -- that doesn't change the fact that he'd just sent armed men to storm the living rooms and bedrooms of innocent people at five o'clock in the morning. If drug dealers were selling form the porches or front yards of D.C. residents while they were at work, or sleeping, or on vacation -- and if they'd just done a 16-month investigation, you'd think this would be a detail D.C. police would have picked up -- perhaps that's a good reason to apprehend the suspects during a controlled buy, instead of with dynamic entry pre-dawn raids.

Not that the D.C. police weren't embarrassed. But they were embarrassed that they hadn't collected a larger bounty to lay out on a table for the news cameras, not that they had just subjected innocent people to unnecessary violence. Borrowing from Winston Churchill, one unnamed city official quipped to the Washington Post, "Never have so many gathered together to confiscate so little for so much overtime."

phill4paul

04-06-2013, 01:49 AM

So what is the "official" estimate? 202 tomes a month or 4 times per month per state. Lol. And they are supposed to be keeping records of all homicides by police? Still don't? Executive branch not complying with the legiislative branch? I've head about this before.......

Anti Federalist

04-08-2013, 12:21 PM

Raid Of The Day: Pedro Navarro

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/08/raid-of-the-day-pedro-nav_n_3036671.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Radley Balko | April 8, 2013 8:53 AM ET

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

In the summer of 1998, two Houston police officers pulled over a car with three men inside. One of them, 28-year-old Ryan Baxter, admitted he had been drinking and smoking crack. He was subsequently arrested for public intoxication and for providing alcohol to a 15-year-old who was also in the car.

Already on probation, Baxter cut a deal that would let him off the hook if he told the cops where he had bought his drugs. Baxter's story eventually led the police to 6711 Atwell Street. At 1:40 am, nine officers from the city's anti-gang task force gathered outside of apartment 16. The informant knocked on the door, and when it opened, the officers swarmed the place. As the cops came in, Pedro Navaro, 22, ran back toward his bedroom. The police followed, squeezing into a narrow hallway as they pursued him. At some point, Officer David R. Barrera's gun "accidentally discharged," striking Officer Lamont Tillery. Mistaking Berrera's gun for hostile fire, the other officers emptied their weapons at Navarro, killing him. He was shot 12 times, nine times in the back. The police found no drugs in the home.

Six of the nine officers involved were investigated. A grand jury would later clear five of them, and indict one for a misdemeanor. He was later acquitted of misdemeanor charges. All were later fired from the Houston Police Department.

Anti Federalist

04-12-2013, 01:06 AM

Raid Of The Day: Atlee Swanson

Radley Balko | April 11, 2013 7:10 AM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/raid-of-the-day-atlee-swa_n_3059694.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

On July 9, 1997, a team of NYPD cops conducted a 6 a.m. no-knock raid at the East Harlem home of Atlee Swanson.

The police broke into Swanson's home, then demanded to know where "Joey, Jason, and Sean" were. Swanson said she knew no one by those names. The officers refused to show Swanson a search warrant, handcuffed her, and told her she faced 7 to 15 years in prison for selling drugs from her home. She was then put in a holding cell for 31 hours.

When Swanson finally returned home, she said her apartment was "trashed and vandalized." Three years later, Swanson received a copy of the search warrant in the mail. Only then was she informed that the cops had mistakenly entered the wrong apartment building.

Anti Federalist

04-17-2013, 08:23 PM

Raid Of The Day: NYPD Mistakenly Busts In On Octogenerian Couple

By Radley Balko Posted: 04/17/2013 3:23 pm EDT | Updated: 04/17/2013 3:25 pm EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/17/raid-of-t_n_3102929.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

On March 31, 2004, six officers toting riot shields and military-style weapons rapped on the door to the Brooklyn apartment of 84-year-old Martin Goldberg and his wife Leona, 82. When Goldberg opened the door, police stormed the apartment, pushing Mr. Goldberg aside and ordering him to the floor. “They charged in like an army,” Goldberg, a decorated World War II vet, told the New York Post.

“They knocked pictures off the wall.” The police had the wrong apartment. The investigation veered off course 10 days earlier, when an informant pointed police to one of two housing project buildings as the home of a drug dealer. The cops just stormed the wrong building. Shortly after the raid, Leona Goldberg was hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat. “It was terrible. . . . It was the most frightening experience of my life. . . . I thought it was a terrorist attack,” Mrs. Goldberg told the Post.

(It was - AF)

An NYPD officer later told the paper, “Obviously, there was a breakdown in communication. These were relatively inexperienced officers, and they may have been less than vigilant.”

Anti Federalist

04-23-2013, 09:45 PM

Raid Of The Day: Brenda Van Zwieten

Radley Balko | April 22, 2013 1:49 PM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/22/raid-of-the-day-brenda-va_n_3133352.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Brenda Van Zweitan, 51, was shot and killed during a 2010 drug raid on her home by the Broward, Florida Sheriff's Department. According to police, Van Zweitan was holding a handgun when they approached her in the home, and then refused to drop it when ordered to do so. Van Zweitan's boyfriend was arrested without resistance.

In the weeks before the raid, however, Van Zweitan had been robbed, and the man she believed committed the robbery had threatened her on the Internet. Her friends and family also pointed to the fact that she had no prior criminal record, and that the police entered the home in a particularly aggressive and terrifying manor -- by smashing through a sliding glass door -- to suggest that she likely wasn't aware that the armed intruders in her home were police. Van Zweitan was also a PTA member, a grandmother, and a local political and environmental activist.

The raid came after two suspects police had arrested claimed to have bought marijuana and prescription drugs from Van Zweitan. The police reported finding prescription pills plus small quantities of a variety of illicit drugs in the house, although Van Zweitan's boyfriend was charged only for possession of marijuana. (Her family said after the raid that she had valid prescriptions for the pills.) The SWAT officers who shot her were later cleared of any wrongdoing.

Van Zweitan was the third person in five years killed by area SWAT teams conducting drug raids.

Mani

04-23-2013, 11:00 PM

tod evans

04-24-2013, 05:57 AM

Van Zweitan was the third person in five years killed by area SWAT teams conducting drug raids.

This sentence horribly downplays the number of people killed by government every year!

The "area" could be that specific band of soldiers marauding as police home turf.

Anti Federalist

04-26-2013, 12:51 PM

Raid(s) Of The Day: The CAMP Raids

By Radley Balko Posted: 04/26/2013 11:20 am EDT | Updated: 04/26/2013 1:35 pm EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/26/raids-of-the-day-the-camp_n_3163932.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In the mid-1980s, the federal government and the state of California stated the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, or CAMP. The program combined federal law enforcement and military resources with state law enforcement in an effort to eradicate marijuana cultivation in the northern part of the state.

It effectively turned parts of California into a military zone. CAMP sent U-2 spy planes over the skies to search for pot, then sent -- literally -- black helicopters full of armed National Guard troops, drug cops, and sometimes even volunteers to cut down the plants. Anyone who happened to be nearby could be detained, often at gunpoint.

Journalist Dan Baum writes in his book Smoke and Mirrors, that CAMP roadblocks started hauling whole families out of cars and holding them at gunpoint while searching their vehicles without warrants. CAMP troops . . . went house to house kicking in doors and ransacking homes, again without warrants." California Attorney General John Van de Kamp also recruited LAPD cops to raid suspected pot grows in the northern part of the state. Baum reported that the the feeling within the department was that spending a couple weeks of raiding hippies in a place like Humboldt County was like "summer camp."

More from Baum:

A CAMP team rousted a family form their home at gunpoint and shot their dog. A CAMP helicopter chased a nine-year-old girl down a dirt road and pointed guns at her. Another hovered so low over a woman taking an outdoor shower that she could see the pilot laughing. CAMP troops were searching without warrants not only the homes of suspected pot growers, but also the neighbors' homes as well, ostensibly to "protect themselves." Once inside, the troops would empty the refrigerator, pilfer what they wanted, and leave empty beer cans on sofas and counters. No home or vehicle in Humboldt County was immune from a helicopter assault and a warrantless search. The citizens of the county, who had first welcomed CAMP as a way to get rid of dangerous lawbreakers, now viewed the operation as an occupying army.

The journalist and drug law reform advocate Arnold Trebach also tells a series of CAMP anecdotes in book The Great Drug War.

At about 9 am on August 16, 1984, Charles Ervin Keys and his five-year-old son Arthur spotted a diamond formation of helicopters coming toward their home. The choppers came with 100 feet of Keys' hillside home, "shaking and blowing the tree tops." A half hour later, the largest helicopter came back while Keys was in his outhouse. The pilot maneuvered the aircraft to eye level, then hovered, "watching me defecate . . . He blew the toilet paper away and Arthur had to retrieve it for me." Later, CAMP troops entered Keys' home while he was away, without a warrant, and seized his .22-caliber rifle. Keys had already sworn he was not growing marijuana, and they had produced no evidence to the contrary. Yet when he complained and asked for the return of his gun, he was told to keep quiet, or he'd be arrested and charged with cultivation.

Marilyn Bewith, 52, described herself as a "conservative Republican." She kept a journal during the CAMP raids. From an entry on August 17, 1984: "They came again this morning at about 8:00 o'clock. A large cargo-type helicopter flew low over the cabin, shaking it on its very foundations. It shook all of us inside, too. I feel frightened . . . I see how helpless and tormented I am becoming with disgust and disillusionment with the government which has turned this beautiful country into a police state . . . I feel like I am in the middle of a war zone.

The following month, the helicopter buzzed the home of Allison Osbourne, who lived in the town of Briceland with two young girls. "It seems that we are in Vietnam or Nicaragua," she wrote. "The helicopters chased them (two 12-year-old-girls) up Perry Meadow Road, for about 20 minutes. When my daughter and her friend would hide under the bushes, the helicopters would lift up; when the girls would try to run to the nearest house, the 'copters would come again and frighten them . . . They saw guns, and though they were going to be shot!"

"As I came around a bend, a CAMP troop with an M--16 rifle was standing in the road," wrote Hal Friedberg. He told me to halt. I kept moving and told him I was later for work. He told me to 'stop or I will shoot your ass.' I stopped. I asked him why he stopped me. He told me to put my hands on the dash. He then radioed someone else saying that "I have two suspects. What should I do?" He was told to let us go . . . The whole time his weapon was pointed at us, and at some point he was joined by two other troops with weapons pointed at us . . . I was shaken and highly nervous the whole day."

Within a year, the CAMP program had extended to other states, and by 1985 was operating in all 50.

The program is still operational today.

Anti Federalist

05-10-2013, 12:45 AM

Raid Of The Day: Derek Copp

By Radley Balko Posted: 05/09/2013 4:19 pm EDT | Updated: 05/09/2013 4:29 pm EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/raid-of-the-day-derek-cop_n_3247811.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

In March 2009, a Michigan SWAT team in full battle attire raided the apartment rented by Grand Valley State University students Derek Copp and Conor Bardallis. Only Copp was home, and was sleeping. As the raid team attempted to break in by way of a rear sliding door, Copp awoke, threw open the curtains, and reached for a flashlight. As he did, Ottway County, Michigan Dep. Ryan Huizenga shot Copp in the chest. He would later say his gun "accidentally" discharged. Copp, who was unarmed, spent nine days in the hospital, but did eventually recover from his physical injuries.

An investigation by Michigan State Police Det. Lt. Curt Schra found that Huizenga had improperly put his finger inside the trigger guard of his gun. Huizenga's attorney blamed Copp for the shooting, arguing that by opening the curtains and reaching for an object as the police were breaking into his home unannounced, Copp startled Huizenga, giving the officer no choice but to shoot the student. Huizenga later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of reckless discharge of a firearm. He was placed on probation for six months, then returned to both the police department and to the SWAT team.

The raid came after police had purchased small quantities of marijuana from Bardallis, who was the actual target of the raid. But police later alleged both roommates were selling pot. Copp pleaded guilty to delivery of marijuana. He was sentenced to 18 months of probation. Bardallis also pleaded guilty to distribution, and was sentenced to 18 months of probation, a $500 fine and a six-month driver's license suspension.

In the end, the police conducted a volatile, fully-armed, nighttime SWAT raid, then shot a man in the chest, over consensual crimes that merited no more punishment than a couple fines and probation. In the ensuing lawsuit, Copp's attorney asked for an investigation into "the actions of West Michigan law enforcement agencies carrying out S.W.A.T. team assaults with automatic weapons and full battle gear against college honor students and others with no prior criminal records, who are believed to be in possession of small quantities of marijuana." He added, "If they persist in pursuing marijuana users, they should do so with caution and not in a reckless, cowboy-like manner as was done in this case. This is West Michigan, not the Wild West."

In 2012, Copp accepted a $144,000 settlement. One of the conditions of the settlement was that he help work to expunge the misdemeanor charge from the criminal record of the man who shot him in the chest.

Anti Federalist

05-11-2013, 03:28 PM

Raid Of The Day: Trevon Cole, 21, Killed During Pot Raid

Radley Balko | May 10, 2013 3:07 PM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/raid-of-the-day-trevon-co_n_3254784.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

In June 2010, Trevon Cole, 21, and fiancee Sequioa Pearce (who was nine months pregnant) were in bed at 9:00 pm on a Friday evening when Las Vegas narcotics officers forced their way into the couple's apartment for a drug raid. Cole dashed to the bathroom to flush a small supply of marijuana down the toilet, but was stopped when Det. Bryan Yant kicked open the bathroom door and apprehended him. What happened next is in dispute, but the raid -- and Cole's life -- ended when Yant fired one round from his rifle into Cole's head at close range. Cole was unarmed.

Yant testified at a coroner's inquest that when he kicked open the bathroom door, Cole was squatting in front of the toilet, and that Cole stood and brought his hands up to a firing stance while holding a shiny object that Yant thought was a gun. Other officers described the action as a "furtive movement." Assistant District Attorney Chris Owens disputed Yant's account, noting that the evidence suggested an an accidental discharge. Yant was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing. The inquest uncovered serious errors in the drug investigation leading up to the raid, including the fact that Cole wasn't actually the target of the raid. The police had mistook him for another man by the same name who had several prior marijuana-related charges.

In 2002 Yant had been the subject of another coroner's inquest after shooting a man lying face-down on a sidewalk. Yant claimed that the decedent was aiming a gun at him, but the gun was found 35 feet from the suspect's body. He was cleared in that inquest, too. A 2011 investigation by the Las Vegas-Review Journal found that over a ten-year period, coroners inquests cleared 97 percent of police investigated for shootings or inappropriate use of force.

Anti Federalist

05-15-2013, 12:53 PM

Raid Of The Day: Eurie Stamps, Grandfather Of 12, Killed In Botched 2011 Drug Raid

Radley Balko | May 14, 2013 11:29 AM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/raid-of-the-day-eurie-sta_n_3273127.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

On the night of January 5, 2011, police in Framingham, Massachusetts conducted a drug raid on a Fountain Street apartment. They were looking for 2o-year-old Joseph Bushfan and Dwayne Barrett. Police allege an undercover officer had purchased drugs from the two men earlier that evening.

Bushfan was arrested minutes before the raid when he came out of the apartment. Barrett didn't reside at the residence. But the police went ahead with the raid, anyway. They took a battering ram to the door, set off a flash grenade, and forced their way inside. As the SWAT team moved through the house, screaming at everyone to get on the floor, Officer Paul Duncan approached 68-year-old Eurie Stamp. Stamps lived at the residence with his wife Norma Bushfan-Stamps, the mother of suspect Joseph Bushfan. Stamps, who was not suspected of any crime, was watching a basketball game in his pajamas when the police came in. By the time Duncan got to him in a hallway, he was lying face-down on the floor with his arms over his head, as per police instructions.

Duncan would later tell investigators that for his own safety, he decided to restrain Stamps, even though he was following instructions, and wasn't the suspect. From his interview:

"I make a decision at that point. My options are, focus on him like this and say, 'Don't move, don't move.' But what happens if there's a gun or something hidden anywhere and he just reaches quick? What happens? . . . I decided I'm going to go beside of him, get his hands behind his back, not to handcuff him, but just tighten up on his hands and kneel down on him so he can't reach for anything at all. In the back of my mind it takes any threat that maybe someplace I can't see completely out of the equation as far as any firearms or weapons,"

As Duncan moved to pull Stamps' arms behind him, he says he fell backwards, somehow causing his gun to discharge, shooting Stamps. The grandfather of 12 was shot dead in his own home, while fully complying with police orders during a raid over crimes in which he had no involvement.

The following March, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone described the shooting this way:

As he stepped to his left, (Duncan) lost his balance and began to fall over backwards. Officer Duncan realized that his right foot was off the floor and the tactical equipment that he was wearing was making his movements very awkward. While falling, Officer Duncan removed his left hand from his rifle, which was pointing down towards the ground and put his left arm out to try and catch himself. As he did so, he heard a shot.

Leone's report never explains how the gun fired -- if Duncan improperly had his finger on the trigger, if he inadvertently latched on to the trigger as he fell, or if the gun somehow fired on its own. In any case, per Leone's account, the bulky equipment Duncan was wearing to protect himself may have contributed to his killing of Stamps.

Leone ruled the shooting an accident, and found no fault with the way Duncan or the SWAT team performed. While it's true that criminal charges against Duncan were probably unwarranted, it's also true that citizens who mistakenly shoot police officer during drug raids aren't afforded the same sort of consideration. The double standard is particularly bothersome when you consider that police get training on how to handle these situations, citizens don't; that police have the advantage of knowing what's about to happen; and that the tactics used in these raids, by their very design, are intended to confuse and disorient their targets.

Ultimately, another innocent, unarmed person was shot dead by a cop in the course of a highly-volatile raid on a private home. But according to police and the local prosecutors, the cop wasn't responsible. Nor, they said, were the policies that sent the SWAT team into a man's home at night to enforce laws against consensual crimes in the first place. Certainly, the victim wasn't responsible. Which can only mean that the occasional innocent, unarmed grandfather of 12 gunned down in his own home while watching basketball in his pajamas is a price Massachusetts officials are willing to pay to prevent people from getting high.

kcchiefs6465

05-15-2013, 01:27 PM

....or if the gun somehow fired on its own.
:rolleyes:

Anti Federalist

05-17-2013, 02:02 PM

Raid(s) Of The Day: Two From Recent Headlines

Radley Balko | May 16, 2013 11:35 AM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/raids-of-the-day-from-thi_n_3286313.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

Two examples today, both taken from recent headlines. First, from Texas:

Driving in the early morning hours to his job at a metal shop in Buda, Miguel Montanez at first thought the approaching lights were a school bus or a tow truck.

But Montanez says it was a Hays County SWAT truck that rammed his car head-on. As they collided, another police vehicle pinned him from behind, he says.

He heard a shot.

“I saw my windshield crack, and I ducked down as low as possible,” Montanez said. “I really thought I was going to die.”

Seconds later, he says, three deputies were pointing assault rifles at him. “That’s when I heard one of the officers say, ‘Oh, (expletive), we got the wrong guy,’ ” Montanez said.

[...]

The front end of Montanez’s green BMW is now crumpled from its impact with the SWAT truck. The windshield sports two spider-webbed cracks that look like bullet holes and burn marks that Montanez believes were from flash-bang grenades. The passenger window is gone, broken out during the stop, he said.

According to a "heavily-redacted" report, the Hays County police say the tactics were necessary in part "in order to maximize safety to community . . ." I'm sure Mr. Montanez will be relieved to know that he was nearly killed in the name of keeping the community safe.

The second story is fairly mild, as these things go. It's from Seaside, California.

"Just seeing the image of my son with his eyes wide open and staring at these police officers with their guns drawn was so troubling to me," said a Seaside woman, who wanted to stay anonymous.

The mother said her home was raided Thursday morning, and said a warrant was issued at the wrong house.

It was an abrupt start to her day.

"My son runs in and says Mom there's someone banging on the door," she said.

That someone was police, guns drawn and warrant in hand.

"Literally they all pile out of their van and lined up, as they strategically line up to raid a home," she said.

In this case, the police did at least knock, and waited long enough for someone to come answer the door. They had a warrant for a felon, and appear to have raided the wrong address. But note this bit from the article:

Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller said during raids agencies are always working with old information.

"You do the best you can and you try and build it as you go through the searches," said Sheriff Miller.

All the more reason to avoid violent, volatile tactics.

Anti Federalist

05-17-2013, 02:05 PM

Raid Of The Day: Doy Vanderburg

Radley Balko | May 17, 2013 2:48 PM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/17/raid-of-the-day-doy-vande_n_3294507.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

At about 12:30 am on October 29, 1980, a narcotics task force from the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, and the DeSoto, Duncanville, and Lancaster police departments approached the house at 4202 Falls Drive in Oak Cliff, Texas. They had an arrest warrant for David Lynn Martin, who was suspected of drug crimes. Unfortunately, their records were out of date. Martin had moved out months earlier. Doy Vanderburg, 22, and his fiance Nancy Garrett had since moved in.

When they knocked at the door, Vanderburg looked out and saw armed men in casual clothing. He retrieved his gun. Vanderburg claimed the police never identified themselves, and that when they kicked down the door and saw he had a gun, they began firing. The police claimed they knocked and announced themselves and that Vanderburg -- who had no criminal record -- just opened fire on them, for no particular reason, "knowing full-well they were police officers." (The claim is made more dubious by the fact that Vanderburg was never charged with a crime.)

One officer was struck in the legs and shoulder. Another was shot in the stomach when a backup Dallas officer showed up after the shooting had begun, mistook the undercover cop for a suspect, and shot him -- just as Vanderburg had.

Vanderburg was shot in the head and abdomen. According to a lawsuit filed by his family, the police immediately called for paramedics for themselves, but waited more than an hour before getting medical attention for Vanderburg. Seven hours passed between the time he was shot and the time he was taken into surgery.

Police later arrested Martin -- their suspect -- at his new address. He was charged with misdemeanor drug crimes and released on bond the same day.

Vanderburg would undergo more than 80 surgeries, and incur medical costs of over $2 million. The raid left him deaf and paralyzed. He ultimately died from his injuries in 1986. A grand jury reviewed the case, and declined to indict any of the police officers on criminal charges. Shortly after Vanderburg died, the Dallas County DA's Office reopened the case when the coroner ruled his death a homicide. But for a second time, the grand jury declined to issue any indictments.

By 1988, the various jurisdictions involved with the task force had settled with Vanderburg's family for a little over $3 million. But no police agency admitted any wrongdoing.

Anti Federalist

05-21-2013, 06:51 AM

Raid Of The Day: Jeffrey Miles

Radley Balko | May 20, 2013 1:58 PM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/20/raid-of-the-day-jeffrey-m_n_3307691.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

On March 26, 1987, more than 25 police officers in Jefferson County, Kentucky (Louisville) help serve warrants on 37 people implicated in a five-month drug investigation. One of the suspects was Billy Ray McCue. When the police attempted to find McCue's current whereabouts, they found an address in the town of Okalona that he had given two years earlier when he renewed his driver's license. Without conducting any additional surveillance or further investigation to confirm that the address was still where McCue resided, Jeffersontown police officers John Rucker and Don Johnson went to the address to apprehend McCue.

The problem: McCue had long since moved out. The house had since been occupied by respiratory therapist Jeffrey Miles, 24, his wife Lucy, and their 8-month old son.Miles was working two jobs at the time to save up for a down payment on a house, so he was sleeping when Rucker and Johnson came to his home at around 6 in the evening in search of McCue. According to the police officers, they knocked and announced themselves, and when no one came to the door, Rucker forced his way inside. Rucker drew his gun, then walked through the house to the back to let his partner in. As the two started to search the place, Miles had woken, and apparently mistook them for armed criminals. According to Rucker, as he made his way from the kitchen to the living room, Miles grabbed his gun, and the two erupted into a struggle, during which Rucker says his gun accidentally discharged. The bullet struck Miles in the throat. He died 45 minutes later.

Miles had no criminal record, no connection to McCue. They later conceded they had simply broken into the wrong house. Four hours after Miles died, police arrested McCue. They found his correct address by looking him up in the Louisville white pages. Rucker later said there was a bright evening sun in his eyes that prevented him from seeing that the man he was fighting with wasn't McCue. The Jeffersontown police chief initially dismissed the shooting as an accident and told Rucker to take a few days off, "just to take it easy." But a month later, a grand jury indicted Rucker for manslaughter. He was suspended with pay pending the outcome of the trial. The following November, a jury acquitted him of the charge.

Asked to respond to what had happened, Lucy Miles said simply, "My husband was in his own home, minding his own business. Someone walked in and shot him."

tod evans

05-21-2013, 06:54 AM

War on Drugs!

'Murika!

Fuck yeah!

Anti Federalist

05-23-2013, 08:22 PM

Raid Of The Day: Lewis Cauthorne

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/raid-of-the-day-lewis-cau_n_3325902.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

By Radley Balko Posted: 05/23/2013 11:04 am EDT | Updated: 05/23/2013 11:05 am EDT

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

In November 2002, Lewis Cauthorne was in the basement with his mother, girlfriend, and three-year-old daughter when a police team raided his Baltimore home. The cops didn't announce themselves. Cauthorne had no prior criminal record. His father had been robbed and killed while working as a cab driver.

When the police broke down his door, Cuathorne fired at them with his .45-caliber handgun. He claimed he thought they were criminals. The police fired back. Four officers were wounded, but miraculously, no one was killed. The police initially claimed to have found six bags with traces of marijuana, empty vials, a razor with cocaine residue, and two scales in Cauthorne's home. But an ensuing investigation found peculiarities with the evidence that precluded Cauthorne from being charged even with a misdemeanor. There was no record of where exactly in the home the drugs were found, and crime lab technicians were told by police not to photograph the evidence. The raid was based on a tip from a confidential informant.

The officers who conducted the raid were unavailable for interviews with investigators -- some for days after the raid, others for weeks.

Cauthorne was arrested after the raid and served spent six weeks in jail until prosecutors decided in January 2003 that he had acted in self-defense. They dropped the charges, and Cauthorne was released. The four wounded officers were issued citations of valor.

kcchiefs6465

05-23-2013, 09:45 PM

Citations of valor huh?

In the mundane world we call them warrants for arrest.

Ah, what it must be like to be above the law.

Anti Federalist

05-27-2013, 11:55 AM

///

Anti Federalist

06-05-2013, 03:41 PM

Raid Of The Day: Bruce Lavoie

Radley Balko | June 5, 2013 11:29 AM ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/raid-of-the-day-bruce-lav_n_3390584.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator

Note: The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.

At 4:30 am on August 3, 1989, officers with the Hudson, New Hampshire, police department met at the police station for a briefing. They'd be executing three simultaneous drug raids that morning in an apartment complex on Roosevelt Avenue. The raid on Bruce Lavoie, a 34-year-old machinist, would be done by Sgt. Stephen Burke, Officer Ronald Mello, and Albert Brackett, the town's chief of police. The chief was wearing a t-shirt with the word "Police" printed on the front and back. The other two officers were wearing black tactical uniforms.

A confidential informant claimed to have seen Lavoie sell a pound of marijuana to his upstairs neighbor, 25-year-old Kevin Hughes. Under New Hampshire law, in order to obtain a warrant for a no-knock raid, police must show specific information that the suspect either is violent or is likely to dispose of evidence. They had no such information on Bruce Lavoie. They stated in the warrant affidavit only that "individuals involved in drug dealing frequently carry firearms." Nashua District Court Judge Gauthier signed the warrant, anyway.

When the police broke in, Lavoie, 34, and his sons Jonathan, 8, and Steven, 6, were asleep in the master bedroom. Lavoie's other son Robert, 11, was asleep in his own bedroom. Bruce's wife Susan was sleeping in the living room. Chief Brackett announced his presence by smacking the Lavoie door three or four times with a battering ram, sending it flying open with the final blow. Susan Lavoie woke up with a start. She had recently been victim of two serious encounters with a neighbor, one in which he choked her, and another that ended with him beating on the family's door with a baseball bat. She feared he had come back for more.

In one hand, Sgt. Stephen Burke carried a Ruger 9 millimeter sem-automatic pistol, with a flashlight taped to his forearm. In the other hand he carried a 20-pound ballistic shield. Mello carried a shotgun with a flashlight strapped to its barrel. When the door came open, the two of them entered the house, both crouched behind Burke's shield. Seconds later, Burke fired his gun. The bullet sped through a hallway wall, into the room where young Robert Lavoie was sleeping, pierced a vacuum cleaner parked in the bedroom, then penetrated a second wall before stopping in a hallway on the other side. Burke would later say he didn't remember discharging his weapon.

Chief Brackett entered the house last. He hit the living room, where he put Susan Lavoie on the floor. According to police accounts, Burke then continued toward the master bedroom, where the door was partially open. As he neared the door, he said saw Lavoie, dressed only in his underwear, attempt to shut the door. Burke thrust his shield into the door, knocking Lavoie back into the bedroom. As Lavoie fell, Burke claimed the man grabbed at his gun gun, at which point he "felt pressure" on his left hand and "heard the gun discharge." Burke later said he didn't remember firing that shot, either.

The bullet struck Lavoie in the left side of his chest, then angled down into his abdominal cavity. He'd later die in surgery. His last words: "Why did you shoot me? What happened?"

Robert Lavoie, the 11-year-old, later told investigators that he woke to the pounding at the door, saw armed men enter the apartment, and heard a gunshot. He then saw them run into his father's bedroom and heard more shots. Jonathan, the eight-year-old, said he woke to gunshots, then looked and saw his wounded father lying on the mattress next to him.

Chief Brackett would later say he heard Burke scream "Let go of my gun!" just before the second gunshot. Mello claimed he heard Burke yell "He grabbed my gun!" after the second shot, just as he saw the two figures fall to the mattress.

In subsequent interviews, the paramedics who responded to the shooting said the police acted suspiciously. Hudson Fire Department Lt. Robert Bianchi and firefighter David Sassak said that when the call came in, they weren't told that they were responding to a shooting, but rather to an "unknown problem." If they had been told it was a shooting, they would have sent more personnel. When they arrived, Chief Brackett ran out to the ambulance and told them someone had been shot, but that it "wasn't one of ours." Brackett then told Bianchi that he wanted "only certain paramedics" to treat Lavoie. When Bianchi tried to call for the needed extra help, Brackett wouldn't allow it, and said instead that he and the other officers would give him whatever help he needed. Bianchi said that when he then asked for the officers to retrieve the stretcher from the ambulance while he treated Lavoie in the house, the officers wouldn't comply. He and Sassak had to leave Lavoie unattended to get the stretcher themselves.

There were other oddities in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Susan Lavoie said the police told her that her husband had only been shot in the arm, and was in good condition. It wasn't until she arrived at the hospital that she was told he was dead. When she and Lavoie's brother then asked to see the gunshot wound after he was pronounced dead, Chief Brackett wouldn't allow it. Crime lab reports would later show that none of Lavoie's fingerprints were on Burke's gun, nor was there any gunshot residue on Lavoie's hands.

The police did find a "small amount" of marijuana in Lavoie's house, as well as what they called "residue" of cocaine. Lavoie was unarmed when he was shot.

On the night of the raid, Susan Lavoie told police that one of the officers, dressed all in black, looked like Michael Keaton in the Batman movie. According to witnesses, at a public hearing on the raid the following month, several off-duty officers from Nashua showed up in Batman t-shirts to mock her.

Facing mounting public outrage over Lavoie's death, Chief Brackett commissioned a review of the raid and his department from the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Not surprisingly the resulting report -- written by former LAPD Officer Robert McCarthy -- was reluctant to criticize his fellow men in blue. In fact, of the 17-page report, less than one page addressed the Lavoie shooting, the reason the report was commissioned in the first place. According to the Nashua Telegraph, McCarthy praised the Hudson Police Department for its "high degree of professionalism" in "aggressively attack[ing] the drug problem." Despite the fact that neither Susan Lavoie nor her sons heard any police announcement, and that Susan Lavoie thought she was being attacked by a neighbor, McCarthy concluded that the police "wore easily identifiable uniforms," "loudly announced they were officers," and "gave clear commands." McCarthy then used an odd comparison to blame Bruce Lavoie for his own death: "The grabbing of the steering wheel of a speeding police car by a suspect could create the same result."

Of course, a suspect who commandeers a speeding squad car away from the police officer driving it knows full well what he's doing. Bruce Lavoie confronted Sgt. Burke during a 5 am no-knock raid on his home, after Burke had already fired a bullet inside of Lavoie's home. McCarthy's report also completely disregarded statements from Susan Lavoie and the Lavoie children. Even if the Hudson cops did announce themselves as loudly and clearly as they claimed, it's certainly conceivable that the sleeping family may not have heard them, may have been overcome by panic or fear, may have thought they were the unstable neighbor, or, given that Burke had already fired his gun in their home for no reason, simply didn't believe them when they said they were police. McCarthy's report showed a complete lack of empathy for the people -- even the innocent people -- subjected to one of these raids. McCarthy's report -- which again was commissioned in response to public anger of Bruce Lavoie's death during a drug raid -- went on to recommended that Hudson police officers get pay raises and better benefits.

McCarthy's report, and the general official response to Lavoie's death, also demonstrated one of many double standards that would begin to emerge in the handling of these botched drug raids. Chief Al Brackett asked for a no-knock raid because, he argued in his affidavit, drug dealers like Bruce Lavoie tend to be dangerous. Thus, they need to be taken by surprise. This is why they did a no-knock raid at 5 am. But post-raid, the officers and McCarthy argued that Lavoie should have known they were the police --even though they used tactics designed to make him unaware of their presence. Consequently, they argued, Bruce Lavoie was the only one to blame for his own death. But these two assertions can't exist side by side. One can't argue that violent, volatile tactics are necessary to preserve the element of surprise, then argue that the suspect shouldn't have been fully aware that it was the police who were invading his home. But that's exactly what they argued, and it's what police have argued in the years since when a no-knock raid ends in tragedy.

A subsequent report on the Lavoie raid from the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office reached the same conclusion, although that report did at least direct some strong criticism at Burke for the shot he mysteriously fired shortly after entering the house. It also concluded with a paragraph about how drug raids are "a tense and potentially dangerous activity." This paragraph was included to get at Burke's state of mind during the raid, and to excuse his actions as those any reasonable police officer would take under similar circumstances. Notably, it fails to mention that the police crated those tense and dangerous conditions when they decided how and when they'd serve the search warrant. While it went to great lengths to consider the mindset of Sgt. Burke in needlessly firing his gun shortly after entering the Lavoie house, it failed to consider the mindset Bruce Lavoie, a man with a full time job and no criminal record, asleep with his two young boys, who woke up to the sound of a gunshot, and then to the sights and sounds of armed men in his home. The report also failed to explain why Hudson police would decide to carry out a "tense and potentially dangerous" drug raid in a home in which three children were sleeping inside. There are only two possibilities: They either hadn't done enough investigating to know there were children inside, or they didn't care.

The following year, New Hampshire Superior Court Judge William Groff dismissed the evidence seized by police as well as a confession after another raid in Hudson, finding that the police had "flagrantly violated" the state's knock-and-announce requirement. That raid on 21-year-old Christopher Roystan occurred in April 1989, four months before the raid that ended Bruce Lavoie's life. The knock-and-announce rule wasn't just a formality, Groff implored in his ruling, but an important safeguard to "protect citizens' rights to privacy in their homes and prevent unnecessary violence which could result from unannounced entries." Groff found that, as in the Lavoie case, the search warrant affidavit contained no specific information suggesting Roystan could be violent. Instead police asked for -- and were given -- a no-knock warrant based only on boilerplate language about how, in the officer's experience, "drug dealers often keep weapons and ammunition in their homes."

Groff's ruling highlighted another trend that would play out alongside the increase in paramilitary drug raids over the next 20 years -- the increase in gun ownership in America. As Groff wrote, the "potential for serious injury or death to innocent persons when police resort to unannounced entry is also manifest. In New Hampshire, where many law-abiding citizens own guns, the potential for violent responses that might be aroused in a startled homeowner suddenly faced with armed unknown persons, endangers citizens and police alike."

The defense attorney in that case found that more than half the warrants executed by Hudson police over the previous two years were served with no-knock raids, many authorized by search warrants with the same boilerplate language.

Hudson police also videotaped the Roystan raid. Groff seemed alarmed by what he saw:

It is doubtful that the court would have appreciate the extreme violence attendant to the execution of the warrant by mere verbal description. The actions of the Hudson Police in this case, which is apparently representative of their general procedure in executing all search warrants for narcotics, underscores the importance of the enforcement of the knock and announce rule. The potential for unnecessary violence and injury to police and citizens by virtue of the indiscriminate use of such tactics is staggering.

The remarkable thing about that passage is that a state judge who regularly ruled on the reasonableness of searches (and presumably signed off on search warrants himself) apparently had no idea about the manner by which search warrants in his jurisdiction were being served. Judges are supposed to be the backstops for the Fourth Amendment. Here, even a judge who understood the amendment's value and importance was oblivious to what was happening after the warrants were signed.

In a bit of candor, Lt. Don Hamel, head of Nashua, New Hampshire's narcotics division, admitted that police departments in the state were changing the way they conduct raids in the wake of the Lavoie raid and Groff's ruling. "The tide is turning. The courts are looking into affidavits and search warrants much closer, and I think that's a good thing. It does rock us back on our heels a bit, but in the end it's making us better."

But other chiefs around New Hampshire reacted to Groff's ruling with a shrug. In the Nashua Telegraph, several dismissed the decision as an isolated case that probably wouldn't affect their own procedures. Unfortunately, they were right. Hamel was wrong. The raids would continue, in New Hampshire and elsewhere. And skeptical judges like Groff would soon become anachronisms.

In November 1990, the town of Hudson reached a $800,000 settlement with the Lavoie family. Part of it went to Susan Lavoie immediately, and part of it to the Lavoie boys when they turned 18. Susan Lavoie was also able to force some changes in department policy. The Hudson SWAT team was disbanded for two years. In a 1994 interview with the Nashua Telegraph, Richard Gendron said the department was doing more "consent searches" for drug warrants instead of nighttime raids, although the department still continued to do some raids with the help of SWAT teams from police departments nearby.

Stephen Burke resigned from the Nashua Police Department five months after the raid to take a position with another, undisclosed police agency. Chief Albert Brackett resigned a year later to take a job as a deputy with the Hillsborough County, Florida Sheriff's Department. He would be investigated in 1991 after a suspect died of massive internal bleeding while in his custody. Brackett had chased the man down, tackled him, cuffed him, then put a knee in his back for several minutes, ignoring the suspect's pleas that he couldn't breathe. He was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing in that case too. He was subsequently promoted to detective.

The Lavoie children had nightmares for years, and required intense pschological counseling. Robert Lavoie dropped out of school at 16. In 1998, at the age of 21, he was packing up his belongings to move out of the house where his father was killed when police pulled over the U-Haul truck he was driving. Police searched the truck and found LSD. He was charged with possession with intent to sell.

Susan Lavoie remarried, then was separated after filing several domestic violence complaints against her new husband. She also accumulated a criminal record of her own in the following years, including charges for writing bad checks, punching a police officer, and drunk driving. She eventually lost custody of her children.