Oops, wrong house
Radley has more instances of police putting on their ninja gear, grabbing their guns and breaking down doors at the wrong house. The overzealousness of the police in drug raids is getting a bit ridiculous. These make the case to allow civil action to be brought against individual officers personally, if you ask me. That approach would be problematic, of course, because everyone who ever got arrested would sue the officers involved. But surely there’s some way to hold these guys accountable and cause the police to be absolutely certain prior to ninjaing up and busting doors down.
June 8th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
I think it could work as the target of the lawsuits would be people who were *falsely* arrested and their property destroyed due malpractice – as it were – by the officers.
June 8th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
In his question about charges Mr. Balko wonders about whether a successful defender of his home would face charges if he shot and killed an officer. He need only look at the Corey Maye case in Ms. That is only one of many.
For my money, any cop killed in the wrong house after dynamic entry is paid for. He got what he asked for by being wrong and violently entering the home of an innocent. That is a crime. I don’t want to hear “mistake” or any other justification. A traffic accident is usually the result of a mistake, that may be the reason, it is not an excuse, and the wrong party assumes the loss. A purposeful act should, at a minimum, carry as much responsibility.
If it were to happen at my home, they have to kill me. If they don’t it won’t be over until I say its over.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Another interesting feature of all these SWAT raids is how they stack their procedures in such a way to never allow anyone to just open the door when they “announce” themselves.
I was watching that SWAT show on TV and they went to a house. When they first yelled “Police” someone looked out the window, and an officer yells “compromised” and you hear the annoucer say that if they are compromised they no longer have to wait the prescribed time during a “knock and announce” raid. So, let’s see how this plays out:
They yell police and wait X seconds and kick the door down, or…
They yell police and when someone checks to make sure they’re cops before opening the door, they kick the door down before they have time to open said door.
So, they set it up so there’s no way for you to politely open the door in time…so how is this really a “knock and announce” I thought the whole purpose of that was to actually allow a person to answer the door? Not one of those raids on those shows gave anyone enough time to get to the door before they smashed it down. This doesn’t even get into the whole “no knock” warrants.
That show is really enlightening about how the SWAT guys look at their job and the “rights” of people they “go to visit”