Posted on 06/09/2006 7:38:19 AM PDT by VRing
A Stockbridge couple whose home was mistakenly raided by Henry County Police last year as they sought a drug suspect is seeking $8 million in damages from the incident.
In a lawsuit filed last month in Superior Court against county officials and police, Roy and Belinda Baker say they were roused out of bed by police who used a battering ram to knock down their door and threw concussive grenades into their home around 1 a.m. Sept. 30.
“The Law Enforcement Defendants accosted the Bakers in the hallway to their bedroom, where they had been sleeping, and yelled at the Bakers, threatened, assaulted and unlawfully touched the Bakers, and placed the Bakers face down, at gunpoint ...” the suit says.
(Excerpt) Read more at henryherald.com ...
I guess it depends on what one would reasonablly call an honest error. I was in the Air Force, so let's use that as an example. Say I accidently drop a 2,000 lb bomb on a school. "Oops! Sorry. An honest error, 'cause the "bombs' away" button looks just like the map light button on my F-16 flying in the dark."
Now this sounds pretty stupid, and you just never hear of something so stupid happening. One important reason things like this don't normally happen is because our military is a highly trained and disciplined force. No one get to fly an F-16 until they can identify every button, gauge, knob, switch, trigger, lever, etc, etc, in the dark, upside down, and a thousand other possible situations. Another is the pilots themselves take what they do seriously, check and recheck things, know how to follow orders, and aren't reckless. We have a saying in the Air Force, "There are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots."
In those rare circumstances when accidents cause a loss or potential loss of live, an accident review board will convene that often leads to a court-martial. The definition of honest error in these cases is extremely small. Many a good man had his military career ruined because he or a subordinate screwed up. Some say it's not fair but thats the way it works. And it has a profound impact on the rest of us doing the job right the first time.
I have seen too many police officers and other law enforcement types who could use a good dose of military training and discipline. Mistakes that can or do take lives need to be punished, not only by the powers that be, but by our citizens, and the rank and file police corps need to ensure cowboys like that are shunned. "Measure twice, cut once" is an adage used by carpenters that should be applied to every police nightime no-knock raid's map reading and address verifiying protocols.
We are disagreeing only on the amount that would be equitable for the wrong committed.
Well said; totally accurate description.
Those innocents should get up on their hind legs and fire some of these people.
Apples and oranges.
The couple deserves to be awarded equitable damages and the police deserve to be disciplined. The amount of damages is what I am questioning.
OK, I say that the award has to be so large that the people that are forced to pay it see red and force the real guilty party to change the way they do business. You suggest that a token award that is lost in the bigger picture is enough. From that I deduce that you like the way things work now and you see no reason to change. Am I close?
"the police deserve to be disciplined."
Duh. The problem is that this will never happen. Hence the huge award.
I have no tolerance for the activity of lawyers who seek to appropriate money from others for their enrichment, purely taking advantage of ANYONE's misfortune. Sadly, in the growing number of cases in Civil Actions, it's ALWAYS the Consumer and/or the TAXPAYER who fund this assault. Big Tobacco, Big Corporations, and Big Government are the substantial targets. If only people would realize that the government has no money, and it's YOUR TAXDOLLARS that come from YOUR EARNINGS that are being appropriated.
Just as no action was taken on Tort Reform, and the grand-daddy of them being "Class Action Lawsuits", we pay more for goods, services, taxes, etc. as a result. From Car Insurance to Medical Insurance premiums, to the warning-label-extravaganza we have today, they all have roots in Civil Lawsuits driving the costs up.
gone now.
No.
Some states, including Georgia (where this incident occurred) have an elected judiciary. Texas has the same thing; if the judge doesn't do his job to the satisfaction of the people, there's a very good chance he'll be out of a job next election.
Yep, start from there and work my way up. What kinda crap is "Oops, sorry, wrong house! My bad!"????
Sure, you are right, it is a quite different outcome. I don't agree or disagree on the amount of damages. That's for the courts to decide but to an extent I share your concern about the rest of us having to pay out a huge amount. But in the military even accident discharges of weapons or bombs falling in the middle of the woods are punished by court-martial.
Still, in both cases people could have easily been killed, and it was only dumb luck that prevented that in the police's case.
Perhaps law enforcement in this country needs to have a separate court to prosecute these breaches in discipline. And that's what something like this is--a breach of discipline. I can't see how anyone could call that an honest mistake. There has to be a very, very high level of planning, discipline and care going into something that could have dead bodies as an outcome. Plan execution has to be followed to the letter. The map reader or address verifier got it wrong. Some one else should have verified before they went in. That should have been part of training, and double man address verification performed each time as a matter of standard operating procedure.
I have long felt that police should be subject to criminal charges when they purposefully abuse or misuse their authority. Call it "Breach of Public trust". Throw in any elected official into that as well.
I can't see how anyone could call that an honest mistake.
We do not have any information on what led the police to that address. Any number of things could have caused such an error: Transposition of numbers in the address, 1128 instead of 1182, is but one example.
Similiar incident happened several years back (in the 80s if I remember right) in Vegas, but with an assault team of bounty hunters, not cops. Kicked in a door in the middle of the night, came in with weapons drawn. The homeowner responded with a full magazine before being gunned down, his girlfriend too. At that point, the bounty hunters realized they had the wrong address, and the two dead people on the floor were not the suspects they were seeking.
Some of the bounty hunters were dead or wounded and got left behind as the rest all ran to their vehicles and fled the scene.
The Taxpayers want a Drug War, they'll have to cover the costs of the occasional screw-up. So it goes.
If the idea is punitive damages, great. I just don't believe those folks were wronged seriously enough 'win' a jackpot worthy of retiring on.
If punititve damages need to be extracted fine, I agree. I'm not defending incompetence. Give to widows & orphans, or another worthy cause.
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