Door-Busting Drug Raids Leave a Trail of Blood ‒ NYTimes investigative report

[jct74]

Long feature article in the New York Times today about no-knock raids. Lots of good info, although I'm sure people here are quite familiar with some of the cases reported on.

Door-Busting Drug Raids Leave a Trail of Blood
Using SWAT officers to storm into homes to execute search warrants has led time and again to avoidable deaths, gruesome injuries and costly legal settlements.

By KEVIN SACK
MARCH 18, 2017

CORNELIA, Ga. — This town on the edge of the Appalachians has fewer than 5,000 residents, but the SWAT team was outfitted for war.

At 2:15 a.m. on a moonless night in May 2014, 10 officers rolled up a driveway in an armored Humvee, three of them poised to leap off the running boards. They carried Colt submachine guns, light-mounted AR-15 rifles and Glock .40-caliber sidearms. Many wore green body armor and Kevlar helmets. They had a door-breaching shotgun, a battering ram, sledgehammers, Halligan bars for smashing windows, a ballistic shield and a potent flash-bang grenade.

The target was a single-story ranch-style house about 50 yards off Lakeview Heights Circle. Not even four hours earlier, three informants had bought $50 worth of methamphetamine in the front yard. That was enough to persuade the county’s chief magistrate to approve a no-knock search warrant authorizing the SWAT operators to storm the house without warning.

The point man on the entry team found the side door locked, and nodded to Deputy Jason Stribling, who took two swings with the metal battering ram. As the door splintered near the deadbolt, he yelled, “Sheriff’s department, search warrant!” Another deputy, Charles Long, had already pulled the pin on the flash-bang. He placed his left hand on Deputy Stribling’s back for stability, peered quickly into the dark and tossed the armed explosive about three feet inside the door.

It landed in a portable playpen.

...

read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...drug-raid.html


Part 2: Murder or Self-Defense if Officer Is Killed in Raid?

Video report: Violence in Forced-Entry Police Raids

Also: How a Grenade in a Playpen Led to an Investigative Project

[Dr.3D]

Anybody can yell, “Sheriff’s department, search warrant!”. When it's dark and somebody is breaking down your door, I'm pretty sure, many folks would shoot the intruders and then identify them later.

[phill4paul]

5 star.

[CPUd]

Anybody can yell, “Sheriff’s department, search warrant!”. When it's dark and somebody is breaking down your door, I'm pretty sure, many folks would shoot the intruders and then identify them later.

They can't do that because it is illegal to falsely identify as a police.

[jkr]

They can't do that because it is illegal to falsely identify as a police.

[Dr.3D]

They can't do that because it is illegal to falsely identify as a police.

As if somebody who is planning on killing me and taking what they want, cares if it's illegal to do something.

[osan]

Part 2: Murder or Self-Defense if Officer Is Killed in Raid?

SD in every case, regardless of context. I don't care if you've been kidnapping, cooking, eating, raping, and murdering children, in precisely that order: I would convict no man for killing cops engaging in such actions. It is never right. It is the worst criminality on the planet, bar none.

This brand of behavior is the lowest form of criminal puerility that I can imagine. Nothing is lower, more rank, or felonious. It is the mark of men with hard-ons for power over others; adrenalin addicts who have no respect for their fellows, no matter who gets hurt. It is a shame that more are not killed in such raids. Were it so, they might think thrice before agreeing to commit such felonies which, as far as I am concerned, elevate the actions of the child molester in the way Obama's presidency did to that of Jimmy Carter.

The thinking that resulted in the adoption of these raids as common policy across the nation sprung from the drug war. Police, being the masturbating wannabes they tend, could not stand the fact that proper execution of warrants upon those in possession of scheduled substances routinely resulted in the residents flushing them down the toilet prior to opening their doors for inspection. THAT was the excuse they chose - "We have to do it, or the bad guys will get away..." Not a whit of them stopped to consider the glaring absurdity of the overall situation; the idiocy of the drug war itself and what it called upon them to become, which was nothing less than the most rank and foul criminals on the planet. They are literally more destructive, dangerous, and criminal than child-rapists, and those are the bottom of the barrel.

I remember years ago, on one of those horrid TV shows that polish the police knob in glorification of their fathomless criminality, a cop in a van on the way to executing a no-knock bragged to the entire nation how he got off on the rush of it; how he loved it. Incomprehensible criminal mentality, that.

The thinking that made for it: can't let the bad guys get away no matter what damage we cause; we are above you; we get off on it.

What, I say WHAT greater evidence does one require to demand these men be rounded up by their tens of thousands across the land, and relegated to the bowels of our dankest dungeons for the rest of their lives? The fact that it is tolerated by Americans damns us. The fact that we accept, praise, and even demand such treatment reduces us to the status well below that of pond scum. We deserve every outrage perpetrated against us, precisely because we show not the self respect of a boiled turnip.

Equality for equals. If you will not defend your rights, then you have them not. Equality for equals stems as much from attitude as anything else, if not more.

[Scrapmo]

Anybody can yell, “Sheriff’s department, search warrant!”. When it's dark and somebody is breaking down your door, I'm pretty sure, many folks would shoot the intruders and then identify them later.

Exactly. I'm surprised the non state employed criminals haven't tried this.

[osan]

Now to inflate the envelope another notch.

What is the status of one's rights when the reality of fighting the trespassers is that there is no winning? Are the rights then forfeit, or only in a state of disparagement? How far does one have to fight in order to retain his rights? Is the merely verbal assertion of claim sufficient? As a matter of principle, I say yes. As a matter of material result, usually not.

I faithfully assert my right to keep and bear arms, even when in NYC where I wear an empty holster. Yet, in '13 some goon with a badge cuffed me, really hard no less (wrists all cut up and I have photos to prove it) and he and his buddies went to town on me for 2 1/2 hours trying to find any pretense for throwing me in a cell. They failed. But the point here is that my rights were disparaged even to the meager extent that I expressed my claim as a Freeman. Did I lose my claims? I cannot quite say for certain.

[otherone]

They can't do that because it is illegal to falsely identify as a police.

Now THAT is funny.
Does The Texan know you're stealing his shtick?