Very Sorry
Radley Balko details three instances in which cops on drug raids hit the wrong houses. Oops, wrong house:
A police SWAT team paid a surprise visit to Paul Foley and his family late Wednesday evening, bursting through his front door, yelling and screaming at everyone in his house, and then apologizing for the disturbance.
Henry County police making a drug raid last week burst into the wrong house, roused a couple from bed and handcuffed the man.
“We dropped the ball,” Henry Police Chief Russ Abernathy said Wednesday. “It was inexcusable, not acceptable. Things like this do happen, but it is not supposed to happen to us.”
A longtime Bel Aire resident has presented a petition calling for the police chief’s dismissal, and the mayor has launched an investigation of what went wrong when police raided a couple’s home searching for marijuana and instead found sunflowers growing in the back yard.
Fortunately in these three cases, no one died.
October 21st, 2005 at 4:00 pm
Perhaps basic Botany needs to be part of cops training, as well as a lot more work on navigation…
October 21st, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Knock and Announce, it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.
October 22nd, 2005 at 7:04 pm
Oh good, we are still winning the War On Drugs!
October 23rd, 2005 at 3:41 pm
Fortunately in these three cases, no one died.
That is a pleasant rarity. No knock laws deny the rights of all Americans.