In any one of these cases the police ought to check the local title records to see who owns the house and their own records to see if any disturbances or other unusual activity have been reported before trying to break in to the house. If the records check reveals nothing out of the ordinary, they ought to knock on the door during day light hours and properly identify themselves before attempting to enter, even if it did mean a few druggies would be able to destroy the evidence. In this case the woman probably heard the attempted forcible entry, feared for her life, and began shooting. The same thing could happen to anyone who lives alone and keeps a loaded weapon for personal protection.
Sound advice!
LLS
common sense advice, but law enforcement rarely uses that when it comes to "drug" raids. she's lucky she wasn't assaulted by swat.
War on Drugs uber alles.
"In any one of these cases the police ought to check the local title records to see who owns the house and their own records to see if any disturbances or other unusual activity have been reported before trying to break in to the house. If the records check reveals nothing out of the ordinary, they ought to knock on the door during day light hours and properly identify themselves before attempting to enter, even if it did mean a few druggies would be able to destroy the evidence. In this case the woman probably heard the attempted forcible entry, feared for her life, and began shooting. The same thing could happen to anyone who lives alone and keeps a loaded weapon for personal protection."
Well said, and bears repeating. It would be different if there were a violent felon hiding inside or it was a hostage situation. This should have simply been an investigation. Appears to be very poor judgment excercised by the cops again in their zealous and very costly war on drugs. More collateral damage...
they ought to knock on the door during day light hours and properly identify themselves before attempting to enter, even if it did mean a few druggies would be able to destroy the evidence.
***It looks like the adrenaline cowboys are taking over policy on raids like this. There is no glory in sending in someone half a day earlier to stop up the sewer line (now they can't flush drugs down the toilet, can they?) and then conduct daylight operations in full uniform right afterwards. Kinda like the branch Davidians -- ATF could have picked up Koresh when he was on his weekly run to get groceries, but there's no glory in it. If police work started to become as mundane as stopping toilets & picking up folks at the grocery store, adrenaline cowboys would lose interest and enroll in the war in Iraq, where we have real work for them to do.