Posted on 07/22/2013 5:52:54 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
Last year, the city of St. Paul paid the largest amount in lawsuits alleging police misconduct -- about $1 million in total costs -- in at least 17 years.
One case, settled for $400,000, involved a woman left with serious burns when St. Paul police used a flash-bang distraction device while executing a search warrant at her home.
In another case, a man who ran from police wound up with a skull fracture, gashes on his head that required 21 staples to close and burns to his face caused by chemical spray. The city settled his lawsuit, which alleged that officers used excessive force, for $249,000
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
I am hoping that the individual states will start to consider “police demilitarization acts”. That is, by state law, stripping police departments of much of their military armaments, SWAT teams, and a restoration of ‘peacetime’ police discipline.
Since county Sheriffs are effectively governors of their respective counties, such hardware should be transferred to them, and they should be in charge of any SWAT activities.
Then, the states require that all local and county SWAT operations must have a written warrant to conduct operations.
Finally, a currently suggested 10th Amendment law, called “Sheriffs first”, that if any federal police want to conduct searches or arrests in a county, they must do so with the notification and cooperation of the Sheriff, unless he is a target of their search or arrest. (This has already been proposed in nine states, but only passed both houses in Arizona then vetoed by the governor.)
Using a grenade to serve a warrant to a woman in her house is just nuts.
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