Henry County is a rural county south of the Atlanta airport. It used to be a really corrupt county with payoffs to the sheriff not an uncommon happening. That all stopped a few years ago thankfully, and I would like to think this was a major screwup, but certainly not done to harm anyone there. Demote, fire, or transfer the officers in charge, make this couple "whole" again with $25,000 and repairs and public apologies, but $8,000,000 is way out of the line of reasoning and should be tossed. In the middle of the night there is a reasonable explanation as to the mix up of addresses involved, and that is most likely what happened.
Yeah, sorta like explaining that in the middle of the night you didn't see the stop sign, speed limit sign, one-way street sign, etc. Officers are always sympathetic to those kind of excuses so let's give them a break.
"but $8,000,000 is way out of the line of reasoning and should be tossed."
The jury will decide how much they should get. A lawyer is always going to go overboard on the amount.
"In the middle of the night there is a reasonable explanation as to the mix up of addresses involved, and that is most likely what happened."
Whatever, the police made a mistake that should never have happened. If they can't get the addresses straight they shouldn't be cops.
Sorry Geezeer, but I could not disagee more. The war on drugs is irrational, if not frankly insane. It doesn affect the availability of drugs, only the price. It inevitably leads to the corruption of public officials. And it puts law-abiding citizens at significant risk, as this household amply illustrates. There have been many killings of innocent citizens in this exact setting. Severely punishing incompetence sends the right message to public officials. It is time to end the war on drugs, and if they don't get the message that the war should end, they should be prepared to pay dearly for their mistakes!
You're telling me that the police getting the wrong address in a middle-of-the-night raid where they're invading somebody's home at gunpoint is EXCUSABLE?
I don't care how dark it was or how poorly marked the addresses, unless the innocent victims had the wrong number painted on their house this should NEVER have happened. It's not like an officer accidentally hitting a pedestrian in a frantic firefight with twelve armed thugs. They had plenty of time, plenty of administrative and city information resources AND THE RESPONSIBILITY to get it right, not just go, uh, this looks like it's probably the place, let's send in a s***load of guns and take down whoever we find in there.
Somebody needs to be in the unemployment line, and if I were on the jury I'd be very sympathetic to the victims of this completely incompetent raid. We can't treat this crap lightly. And never mind the fact that the victims here were lucky this time -- next time somebody may well get killed. And it could be you or one of your family members.
You can stop wheezing now, time's up.
"In the middle of the night there is a reasonable explanation as to the mix up of addresses involved, and that is most likely what happened."
I completely disagree. Since this is when 'most' of these type of arrests are done, and these are supposed to be paid professionals, there is absolutely no excuse.
In the middle of the night, awoken from a sound sleep, many of us would have ended up in a shootout with the "intruders" and someone would have been hurt.
It seems like the PD needs some stronger message than "buying a new front door" to encourage them to be more cautious.
If you look at the government mandated fines (not civil lawsuits) imposed by Federal and State agencies on regulated businesses such as airlines, utilities and manufacturers that "screw up", perhaps $8 million is too high. But $50 k is IMHO way to low to get the level of attention that screw-ups like this deserve.
However, what really should happen is that the responsible individuals on the police department should be fired WITH cause and be personally liable for damages (including punitive damages), because you cannot afford to make idiotic mistakes like that when the 'could-happens' are so severe.
It should, as with *ANY* penalty, be something-anything- that ensures 100% chance it will never be repeated. IMHO that is the only criteria for an appropriate punishment. A few years hard labor for the officers in charge and anyone who could possibly have prevented this. At the very least I consider it attempted murder, as if someone came through my door without warning the only question would be if I used my Colt 357, 12 gauge or 300 win magnum; Somebody would have died, maybe me, thus attempted murder (I don't believe in degrees of such a crime- you took actions that might, conceivably led to the death of an innocent party it's attempted murder in my book. But since I don't believe in reform or redemption the only purposes of the law are retribution and prevention.
As long as one of the addresses involved is not yours, no doubt.