Posted on 10/12/2012 6:06:51 PM PDT by Altariel
A 12-year-old girl suffered burns to one side of her body when a flash grenade went off next to her as a police SWAT team raided a West End home Tuesday morning.
"She has first- and second-degree burns down the left side of her body and on her arms," said the girl's mother, Jackie Fasching. "She's got severe pain. Every time I think about it, it brings tears to my eyes."
Medical staff at the scene tended to the girl afterward and then her mother drove her to the hospital, where she was treated and released later that day.
A photo of the girl provided by Fasching to The Gazette shows red and black burns on her side.
Police Chief Rich St. John said the 6 a.m. raid at 2128 Custer Ave., was to execute a search warrant as part of an ongoing narcotics investigation by the City-County Special Investigations Unit.
The grenade is commonly called a "flash-bang" and is used to disorient people with a bright flash, a loud bang and a concussive blast. It went off on the floor where the girl was sleeping. She was in her sister's bedroom near the window the grenade came through, Fasching said.
A SWAT member attached it to a boomstick, a metal pole that detonates the grenade, and stuck it through the bedroom window. St. John said the grenade normally stays on the boomstick so it goes off in a controlled manner at a higher level.
However, the officer didn't realize that there was a delay on the grenade when he tried to detonate it. He dropped it to move onto a new device, St. John said. The grenade fell to the floor and went off near the girl.
"It was totally unforeseen, totally unplanned and extremely regrettable," St. John said. "We certainly did not want a juvenile, or anyone else for that matter, to get injured."
On Thursday, Fasching took her daughter back to the hospital to have her wounds treated.
She questioned why police would take such actions with children in the home and why it needed a SWAT team.
"A simple knock on the door and I would've let them in," she said. "They said their intel told them there was a meth lab at our house. If they would've checked, they would've known there's not."
She and her two daughters and her husband were home at the time of the raid. She said her husband, who suffers from congenital heart disease and liver failure, told officers he would open the front door as the raid began and was opening it as they knocked it down.
When the grenade went off in the room, it left a large bowl-shaped dent in the wall and "blew the nails out of the drywall," Fasching said.
St. John said investigators did plenty of homework on the residence before deciding to launch the raid but didn't know children were inside.
"The information that we had did not have any juveniles in the house and did not have any juveniles in the room," he said. "We generally do not introduce these disorienting devices when they're present."
The decision to use a SWAT team was based on a detailed checklist the department uses when serving warrants.
Investigators consider dozens of items such as residents' past criminal convictions, other criminal history, mental illness and previous interactions with law enforcement.
Each item is assigned a point value and if the total exceeds a certain threshold, SWAT is requested. Then a commander approves or rejects the request.
In Tuesday's raid, the points exceeded the threshold and investigators called in SWAT.
"Every bit of information and intelligence that we have comes together and we determine what kind of risk is there," St. John said. "The warrant was based on some hard evidence and everything we knew at the time."
But Fasching said the risk wasn't there and the entry created, for her and her daughters, a sense of fear they can't shake.
"I'm going to have to take them to counseling," she said. "They're never going to get over that."
A claims process has already been started with the city. St. John said it's not an overnight process, but it does determine if the Police Department needs to make restitution.
"If we're wrong or made a mistake, then we're going to take care of it," he said. "But if it determines we're not, then we'll go with that. When we do this, we want to ensure the safety of not only the officers, but the residents inside."
No arrests were made during the raid and no charges have been filed, although a police spokesman said afterward that some evidence was recovered during the search. St. John declined to release specifics of the drug case, citing the active investigation, but did say that "activity was significant enough where our drug unit requested a search warrant."
Fasching said she's considering legal action but, for now, is more concerned about her daughters.
"I would like to see whoever threw those grenades in my daughter's room be reprimanded," she said. "If anybody else did that it would be aggravated assault. I just want to see that the city is held accountable for what they did to my children."
So if they had hard evidence and all that evidence pointed to the necessity of a swat raid, why did it turn out they raided the wrong residence. They couldn't even determine that juveniles lived there let alone that there was no meth lab. This swat sh** has to stop, we need some new laws to reign in out LEOs.
That is f*cked up.
I think it is safe to say we are losing the war on drugs.
Whenever an Afghan civilian is wounded or killed by Coalition Forces, everything stops. It's a big deal. The news reaches General Officer level very quickly. Maybe even to the White House.
When an American cop or SWAT team wounds or kills Americans in their American homes in the middle of the night? Meh, no big deal.
I've stated before that the US military has stricter Rules of Engagement for the Taliban than cops have for American civilians.
So these idiots couldn't even know if children were in the home, but were certain that there were drugs and they needed to send in a paramilitery strike force to surprise a man with heart disease?
They should not only all be fired, but held personally responsible and arrested. Taxpayers should not have to keep footing the bill for this utter stupidity.
Just workin’ their way up the ‘challenge chain’.
Dogs, grannies, pre-teens.
Taking baby goose-steps.
It is obvious they need practice. But my concern that the whole point in this exercise is not controlling criminals, but suppressing the population of citizens when they realize what is planned for them.
Like many others I do not intend to live in a police state. We the People have our work cut out for us, preventing that. Beginning on November 6, 2012.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billings_Police_Department
“The Billings Police Department is a police department in Billings, Montana, the main law enforcement service in Billings, Montana. It is the largest city police force in Montana with about 142 sworn officers/80 civilian employees covering 41 square miles (110 km2) and a population of about 105,000. The city is divided into nine beats and patrolled by 75 officers.”
St. John said investigators did plenty of homework on the residence before deciding to launch the raid but didn’t know children were inside.
Did their homework? a simple thermal imaging camera would have told them how many were in there and where they were, we used those in the Navy when I was doing hostage rescue/CQC.
They should have found it, they put it there. And as a bonus they picked up the box of baking soda in the refridgeator and the can of Comet under the sink. Andthey may have took the jug of bleach from the utility room.
They wil get here. Because no innocent individual was shot and killed, this is a low priority situation for them.
About the same as the sun rising in the west. If I was betting, I would pick the sun rising in the west to put my money on.
“I think it is safe to say we are losing the war on drugs.”
But we are making phenominal progress in winning the war on liberty.
and the war on thugs. What do they need a SWAT for in Billings, Montana??? These teams are supposed to be the best of the best and yet they do this.
If they suspected a meth lab was there, then their action could have set off secondary explosions.
Did they fear that they were going to flush an entire meth lab down the toilet if they knocked first???
Most of these SWAT units like this one should be disbanded. More and more they are sounding like Special Weapons and Attack Thugs.
Actually, as regards TSA, I went through twice recently, and it was not nearly what I had heard described. First, the device uses microwaves, not ionizing radiation, so the cancer risk is not present as described. Second, I saw no patdowns at all. I feel the reason the public has not revolted is that the procedure wasn’t bad whatsoever. And I say this as a hardcore conservative.
Ugh... How the hell could you investigate a meth lab in a residence and NOT figure out there are kids there?
I smell ass covering going on...
That is truly tragic.
It’s not stupidity; it’s wickedness.
The problem isn’t that they really didn’t *know*, the problem is that, even now, they are *justifying* their behavior.
Only those who do not fear God would assault the innocent and have the temerity to defend their actions.
Fixed it for you.
And the Officer is his prophet.
Little tin gods.
I liked the poetic subtleties in my original work, thanks all the same.
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