Question, your small child turns up missing, presumed abducted. An anonymous tip comes on that a child by that description was seen in the house of a known child molestor or a suspected drug lab. It gets dark. Does that SWAT team wait for daylight or better evidence or go through the door at 3am? Your call. You have people that saw that kid. Better yet kid is able to make a phone call and gives the address where they are at. You run warrant, oops kids meant to say 401 Main, but said 104 due to stress. Oooops, damn those head strong cops.
They bust in guys runs and is arrested ( maybe hurt ) child turns out to be his on a visit or whatever ( may live there ) but by some coincidence does resemble lost child.
Another tip comes in... Your call. Try the hot seat on, it burns all who sit in it.
You cannot have it both ways a felony is a felony. If police started picking and choosing which laws to more actively enforce, more so than they do now, imagine the outcry.
Are the cops who beat up the 80 year old completely innocent people guilty of anything, in your opinion?
There's your mistake. Police have always picked which laws to more actively enforce.
Most cops would recognize the diffence between a situation where an inocent hostage is involved and a search to uncover drugs. The fact that you don't makes me glad you have found an honest job.
Any government watcher with half a brain has not failed to notice the "felony-flation" of recent years. Used to be that this designation was saved for crimes deemed so heinous that they could be punished by death. Now it's a plethora of things that can result in a year of jail.
Force should match the danger to be abated. Rescuing a hostage, to any intelligent person, ranks higher than catching a sleeping drug dealer right this minute rather than tomorrow morning.
No one on that 3AM drug raid had the brains to question the continued operation after realizing that the targeted home was a questionable one. That makes them criminals with a badge, or complete morons on a mission, and with no civilian authority questioning any of it, it's policy by brute force.
You can't defend these actions without sighting policy. The policy stinks. But being you wear the badge, no one will ever get in your face and tell you otherwise. How can they, their home could be mistakenly raided next.
'OOPS' is not the answer the public wants to hear. But 'OOPS' is ALL we hear.
I still think that it was the officer who gave the bad information who is at fault, not the operators.
Here's a novel idea. How about before you go busting in the doors of this house in either of your two scenarios you check to see who lives there first?
Or are you going to do what the idiots in this story did and just bust in anyway?