Posted on 11/22/2006 7:06:38 AM PST by elkfersupper
Plainclothes guys breaking down doors sounds like a recipe for disaster, regardless of the presence or not of drugs. I'd think that uniforms would be helpful.
Would a letter sent in advance do?
"They kicked her door down talking about drugs, there's no drugs in that house. And they realize now, they've got the wrong house,"
As an addendum -- in the not too distant future, the US will have 92-year-old ladies who were at Woodstock, banging Jimi Hendrix.
Age does not equal innocence.
Aren't you quoting the lady's niece?
Yes, that would nice.
Incredible the number of people on "Free" Republic who are so frightened they believe we should just bend over and grab our ankles so state thugs can their way with us.
Yes, I am.
Maybe you should be more specific instead of throwing around sweeping generalizations about police work. If you're a cop and that is how it is done at your shop, fine, but I work in Financial Crimes, we serve our own warrants without the SWAT team thank you. Unless we have information on weapons in the house. That is a rarity. In my 6 years in this unit, I've served dozens of search warrants, always got the right address (because I do my homework) and only once did the SWAT team execute the warrant for me.
How it's done in your town isn't necessarily how it's done everywhere else so you might want to get out a finer brush before you paint all departments.
Best Regards,
I have friends in a pretty nice neighborhood whose neighbor across the street fell off the wagon, and is using and selling drugs out of his house. Pretty nasty characters coming and leaving by bicycle, walking in with nothing and leaving with brown paper bags, activity that picks up after a delivery is made, etc. He had a wife and twin little girls, fortunately the wife got them out and left him. Anyway, several people have called the police describing the suspicious activity over the last 6 months and nothing has been done. Honestly, what is the standard? It seems the police are either useless when needed, or dangerously incompetent when they do take action.
Gee and I thought I got this job by working out, testing and wanting to make a positive difference. Now I know that all I really had to do was get bullied in high school. What a load of garbage. Maybe you should go on a ride along and see the things we put up with in a night. In my unit, I've got 2 veterans, one from Vietnam, the other a Special Forces graduate, one officer decorated for a gunfight he survived after being seriously wounded and still managed to arrest the shooter. One guy is a SWAT officer as well and then me and the other mope. All we've got going for us is that we're college graduates who've played some sports in our high school days and survived gunfights on the job.
Yeah we got into a few brawls in high school, but none of us became cops so we could carry a badge and settle our grudges with the world. What's your grudge against cops? Or aren't the statutes of limitations up yet...
Regards,
Ridiculous.
This isn't at all hard to do. All they had to do was go to the Register of Deeds office to determine who held title to the property. Then they should have checked their own records to see if any unusual activity had been reported at the property by persons other than their informant. That would have given them a good reading on who was likely in the house and what it was being used for. If, for example, the neighbors had repeatedly complained about strangers constantly visiting the house, there would have been a good reason to believe their informant. If not, they should have taken more time to check out what was really going on.
When it comes to no knock, or nearly no-knock raids like this one, great caution ought always to be exercised. Many people, myself included, keep loaded weapons to deal with potential home invaders. If a gang of thugs in civilian clothes try to break down my front door and identify themselves as police, I'm likely to shoot at them. If there's any reasonable doubt, the cops should properly knock and identify themselves; otherwise, tragedies like this are sure to happen again and again.
We'll see who shot whom when they yank the bullets out of them.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1742500/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1742448/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1742449/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1742624/posts
Ding! We have a winner!
"We'll see who shot whom when they yank the bullets out of them."
"Ding! We have a winner!"
How likely is a conspiracy theory, that this evidence could be tampered with or suppressed?
The situation you describe, with plenty of corrororating evidence and clear identification of the perp, is the kind where an aggressive no-knock search, IMHO, would be appropriate.
Can't help but wonder if somebody wanted to buy the house. Is gentrification occurring nearby?
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