SWAT Unit Kills Two Dogs, Finds Little Evidence In ‘No-Knock’ Raid

The Daily Caller ^ | 07/09/2014 | Chuck Ross

[moonshinner_09]

Instead of leaving with the drugs and weapons they were sent to find, a Minnesota SWAT team executing a “no-knock raid” left with the bodies of a family’s two dead dogs.

“The first thing I heard was ‘boom,’” Larry Lee Arman told KMSP, recalling the raid which occurred in St. Paul at 7 a.m. on Wednesday.

“Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Right in front of us.”

Equipped with a warrant for drugs and weapons, the SWAT unit barged in while Arman was asleep on a mattress with his two children, shooting Mello and Laylo, the family’s two pit bulls.

“One was running for her life, and they murdered her right here,” Arman said, with his dogs’ blood still on his sneakers.

“I was laying right here, and I really thought I was being murdered.”

Camille Perry, Arman’s girlfriend and the mother of his two children, was in the bathroom when the SWAT unit broke down her door. She expressed anger that the kids could have been injured.

“The only thing I was thinking was my kids were going to get hit by bullets,” she told KMSP.

According to the station, the SWAT unit was executing a search warrant for weapons and drugs. After the shooting and a search of the house, the police unit recovered none of one and very little of the other, finding a small amount of marijuana residue, some clothing, and a bong.

St. Paul police told KMSP that the dogs were shot because the SWAT unit feared for their safety, and department policy allows for the removal of such threats.

[B4Ranch]

It is time consuming but simple to follow these people home after work. Just follow them part way each day and you’ll soon know more about them than you were expecting.

[Rusty0604]

That is the same excuse all gov’t workers use for any problem and as an excuse for not using any logic or common sense. They are following policy. Following policy allows them to keep their job and pensions.

[skinkinthegrass]

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward. ”― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

[nothingnew]

Shooting a guy’s (judges) dog...at the most...gets you a month in some county jail.

I'd bet cold cash it would get you more than that.

FMCDH(BITS)

[zeugma]

Mr. Arman, has prior arrests for escape, possession of firearm by a felon, possession of drugs, fleeing police, conspiring to commit kidnapping, assault with dangerous weapon.

All of this means, that the cops have no option if they want to execute a search warrant other than storming his home with  a large group of masked gunmen, killing his dogs, and terrorizing his children (not to mention the extreme danger they were place in) , all to recover some "pot residue" and a bong.

Great job drug warriors!

[Ken H]

Equipped with a warrant for drugs and weapons, the SWAT unit barged in while Arman was asleep on a mattress with his two children...

They missed a golden opportunity to burn a couple of children. SWAT must be slipping.

[Cap'n Crunch]

I guess most of you don’t realize that drug dealers use pit bulls and other large dogs for protection from other drug dealers and also to give the police something to do should they raid the house. Some drug dealers even have the dogs vocal chords removed.

I’m not defending the police. My view of no-knocks has changed. No-knocks should be done away with.

My point in this is to show what a fine, upstanding citizen this guy is, other than the story painted by the media.

How many of you would want this guy as your neighbor? I’m guessing none. I’m also guessing many of you, had you been living next to this guy, would be belly-aching because of the perceived inactivity of the police to shut down a drug house.

[Cap'n Crunch]

I am simply pointing out what the media failed to point out. This guys a thug. Most likely been to prison more than once. Probably kept the pits for protection against other drug dealers and to deter the cops.

I suspect (though I may very well be wrong) that his conspiracy/kidnapping/assault/weapons charge came from him breaking into another drug dealers house.

Funny how people on FR think the media lies, unless of course it comes to something that the cops do.

Amusing to me.

[Cap'n Crunch]

Where did I defend evil? All I did was put up a partial list of his criminal history.

Although the police found nothing, as you say, I’m sure that their narcotics officers had prior drug buys from the house. In other words, they were likely selling drugs and people went to jail.

Though the media doesn’t print that part.

[FBD]

The initiation of deadly force against a nonviolent breach of law, is about as evil as you can get in a supposedly *free* society.

http://spatialorientationblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/swat.png

[Cap'n Crunch]

With only reading the media report of the dogs shot and only the word of a multiple time felon, I can’t say what prompted the police to get a no-knock warrant.

I will again say that I have changed my opinion on no-knocks. I believe the police should be taking more risk in order that innocent people, dogs, cats, or anything else that lives and breaths does not get injured or killed. And if they do, the police should be held liable.

[Delta Dawn]

Substitute the harshest word in the English language for the asterisks.

Democrat?

[cva66snipe]

It may be policy, but if I’m ever on a jury for a civil suit on something like this, the police are going pay out the nose for their arrogance.

If the legal and civil liability exemptions allowed law enforcement agencies and officers was eliminated this sort of GESTAPO crap would end overnight.

[cva66snipe]

Mr. Arman, has prior arrests for escape, possession of firearm by a felon, possession of drugs, fleeing police, conspiring to commit kidnapping, assault with dangerous weapon.

OK fine. That does not mean LEO should act like the GESTAPO doing raids. The man could have been served with a CIVILIZED Very LOUD knocks on the door a couple of times then forced entry. Or he could have been served while leaving his residence away from endangering kids. There are many civilized and SAFER ways to serve a damn warrant than bashing down a persons door unannounced terrorizing in many cases the wrong persons. What was the motive? We they afraid he would flush the drugs and they not be able to take away all he owned for department use or fill the government coffers? This crap started when raids became Profit driven. No contraband means no forfeitures for the department.

[Cap'n Crunch]

I agree.

[Trod Upon]

There are discrete ways to harden one’s abode against uninvited entry. Sure, they can still get in...with a bulldozer.