Posted on 01/17/2008 8:46:35 PM PST by csvset
CHESAPEAKE
A Chesapeake police officer was fatally shot Thursday night as police attempted to serve a narcotics warrant at a home in the 900 block of Redstart Avenue, police said.
Police spokesman Officer Charles Thiebaud said the officers went to the residence about 8:30 p.m.
The officer was taken by ambulance with a police escort to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, soon followed by other officers and department officials.
Later, two police department sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the officer had died. The officer’s identity was not released.
After the shooting, scores of officers and heavily armed SWAT team members descended on the scene.
Officers went door to door, evacuating the residents of several nearby houses and telling other neighborhood residents to stay indoors.
Several blocks around the shooting scene in each direction were closed off with yellow police tape.
Police would not say if they know whether anybody was still in the house where the warrant was being served or, if so, how many people were there.
Just before 10:30 p.m., police began calling for the surrender of anyone inside the house. An officer on a loudspeaker called out the house number, saying “You need to put your hands up and come out. You need to do it now.”
Residents of the Avalon neighborhood were stunned by the violence.
“This is generally a very quiet place,” said Zach Blankenship, 25, a yacht carpenter. He said he was in his house a block from the shooting scene and watching a movie when he heard a gunshot.
“It was definitely a gunshot, no doubt about it,” Blankenship said. “I really didn’t want to believe it.”
Even then, Blankenship said, he didn’t think anything bad had happened. Only minutes later when he thought there was lightning outside did he look out his window.
“That’s when I saw there were plenty of police,” he said.
Blankenship said he looked down the street a short time later and saw medical personnel working on someone on the ground.
“They were doing chest compressions,” he said. After several minutes he said the victim was placed in an ambulance.
Another resident, Catrina Mitchum, 23, said she also heard what sounded like a single gunshot. It surprised her, she said, because the neighborhood is “always quiet.”
Mitchum, a graduate student at Old Dominion University, said she has lived there about 9 months, but spoke with a neighbor who has been in the area more than 18 years.
“They said this is the first time anything like this has happened around here,” she said.
At the hospital, more than 20 squad cars and unmarked police vehicles were lined up outside the emergency entrance. Officers from Chesapeake and Norfolk were there.
Staff writer Dave Forster contributed to this report.
RIP.
Prayers to his family.
I’ll comment. I don’t support no knock warrants.
Condolences to the family.
Choke on your own BS. No knock gets INNOCENT civilians killed very often.
Don’t bother debating with the state worshippers on here, it’s fruitless. Condolences to the officer’s family and hopes for quick justice.
What a tragedy. Prayers for the slain officer and his family.
OK, I'll comment. If this officer was given good intel and could identify the criminal, why didn't he wait till he could be snatched in the open?
That's my beef with SWAT. If I'm a criminal, the cops think I have illegal stuff and weapons inside my house, why don't they wait till I'm out in the open with no cover and pull up and snatch me. They've got a warrant, then they can reasonably go back to the house and search the house with little or no chance of ambush.
I mean no disrespect for cops, but a lot of the SWAT guys are very aggressive to some targets that seem to offer little resistance and then go all out on drug violators with poor intel.
Riiiiiight! How many can you name? How many search warrants are served daily in the US? How many search warrants have you served? How many times have you had to go through a door knowing there is a suspect with a gun on the other side? There is a necessity for "no-knock exceptions (note I said exceptions) to the rule.
Try to get that...or are you just anti-cop?
Without a war on drugs this officer would probably be alive today.
The risk/reward ratio sucks for the officer and the public. Success equates to getting rid of some drugs that are replaced within a matter of weeks, if not a few days. Failure is someone getting killed in a raid.
Close. Success equates with being able to seize homes, cars, money and other valuable assets. The amount of drugs taken off the streets is miniscule and doesn't even make a dent in distribution. The small level dealers arrested are quickly replaced.
Hope it was worth it.
Call the station and have him paged to call you back
What do you want us to do about it?
Maybe you need to log off of Free Republic and start making some phone calls.
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