SWAT officers enter home, take 11-year-old at gunpoint

World Net Daily,com ^ | Jan 7, 2008 | Bob Unruh

[JSDude1]

Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak. The boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy's father told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves. Someone, apparently the unidentified paramedic, called police, the sheriff's office and social services, eventually providing Leoniak with a report that generated the magistrate's court order to the sheriff's office for the SWAT team assault on the family's home in a mobile home development outside of Glenwood Springs, the father, Tom Shiflett, told WND.

[Just A Nobody]

Bookmark for later! Unbelievable!!!

[Domandred]

Important paragraph not in excerpt:

The paramedics were allowed to see the boy, and found no significant impairment, but wanted to take him to the hospital for an evaluation anyway. Fearing the hospital's bills, the family refused to allow that.

In other words it was a fund raiser for the hospital and not that they really thought the boy needed to go.

[wbill]

My parents rode an ambulance for 14 years apiece. They could tell stories that would make your hair turn white. There were a number of places in town that they didn't go without a police escort, for instance. And this is a small town...not urban Detroit.

If a person refuses treatment, paramedics need to honor it - (theoretically) no questions asked. They *will* ask the person (or guardian) to sign a form to that effect - it's for responders' protection. Please note - I say "theoretically" because drunks are #%^^# hard to reason with, and a person with their arm hanging off by a thread needs to go to the hospital, whether he thinks he's OK, or not. One of the things EMTs can do is wait for the drunk to pass out (usually from blood loss), then they have "implied consent" to treat the patient.

I know of many instances where patients refused treatment. Usually becuase they were drunk, on drugs, or engaging in some sort of activity (illegal or immoral) that they didn't want to make public. This doesn't smell like that, though.

There's a whole lot more to this story than is being reported.

[gaijin]

I’d bet $100 the kid is WHITE. Sorry for the Identity Politics, but that’s the truth...!

[Gabz]

This is just downright WRONG.

[Just A Nobody]

I was about to post this pic, but I will post these instead.

I'm sure this family is thankful their situation was more like your representation than this one.

[azhenfud]

Socialized medicine at the point of a gun.....

You vill comply von vay or zee next!

[PetroniusMaximus]

“There’s a whole lot more to this story than is being reported.”

Or there may not be.

[DBrow]

“Ever heard of the First Amendment, you loser of a sheriff?”

No, the sheriff is not a “constitutionalist”!

[CometBaby]

demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital

Somehow I think there is more to this story than we are being told.

[razorback-bert]

The sheriff also admitted that the injury to the child had been at least 24 hours earlier, because the fall apparently happened Thursday afternoon, and the SWAT attack happened late Friday evening.

Unfeaking believe a bull.

[dmz]

Phewww. 15 posts before someone suggests that this was done because they were Christian homeschoolers.

Of course, I could say that it happened because they were secretly indoctrinating the child into Opus Dei, and we’d both have the same amount of evidence to back our point (read: none).

[razorback-bert]

I thought Glenwood Springs was a small place.

The City of Glenwood Springs is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Garfield County, Colorado, United States.GR6 The United States Census Bureau estimates that the city population was 8,564 in 2005.

Less 10,000 people and they have/need a SWAT.

Bet they didn’t tax themselves to outfit a SWAT unit.

Too much loose government money floating around.

[untrained skeptic]

Sounds like this one could also be the result of the paramedic making up stories, or possibly the family made some overt threats to the paramedics who were just trying to check if the kid was ok.

We do unfortunately live in a world where parents are sometimes the ones that cause injuries to their children and then attribute them to falls.

Since children's services didn't just go out to the house and try and interview the family, I suspect that some serious threats were reported.

The article doesn't provide much real information, and WND has been knows to sensationalize stories.

[wbill]

True.

We're also all assuming that the reporter got the facts right. Any one, or all of them could be wrong.

Just sayin'. My bet is that one of the paramedics overstepped, some bureaucrat overstepped, or that the father was threatening in some way. Or all three.

Most of the folks that I know that ride ambulances are pretty level headed, practical people. They have to be...would you want to get out of bed at 3:00am, to reason with a drunk?

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

"In Doe V. Heck, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals held that parents have a fundamental right to familial relations including a liberty interest in the care, custody and control of their children," he said.

This county better get ready to get its checkbook out for a big $$$$$$$ settlement with the family.

[RachelFaith]

This is why I truly HATE Cops. The few and I mean few good Officers of the Law, are just too few and too powerless and have become nothing more than enablers of the police state. Anarchy is preferable to a police state... Because Anarchy won’t last very long before the citizens take charge themselves. The Wild West, wasn’t very wild for very long.

[nmh]

Phewww. 15 posts before someone suggests that this was done because they were Christian homeschoolers.

Of course, I could say that it happened because they were secretly indoctrinating the child into Opus Dei, and we’d both have the same amount of evidence to back our point (read: none).

---

Some of us READ the article and notice these things. We also notice PATTERNS of disdain fro home schoolers and Christians.

Do you think it’s right for this to happen?

I don’t!

What reason do you see for this happening?

[A Strict Constructionist]

“entered his home without his permission.”

I can’t they wanted their ambulance run fee enough to get shot for trespassing.

“self-proclaimed constitutionalist”

Well I would hope he believes in the Constitution.

Magistrates in many areas have large ego’s and no legal training, is that the case with CO?

[Hyzenthlay]

Finally started?

I remember maybe six years ago, something similar happened to one of my friends. She was about 12 years old, and we were playing kickball with a bunch of other kids from the neighborhood in a big empty lot across the street on a Saturday night. She twisted her ankle, then limped back home to her parents who gave her an ice pack and some advil. Well, apparently one of the girls involved in the game told her mom who called the police for child neglect because the girl wasn't taken to the doctor's (which was closed because it was a weekend and a night), so the next day her family got a visit from the police and the local social services department, demanding that they take her to the local hospital to check it out. The doctor, who was very fed up with the whole thing, confirmed that it was only a very mild sprain and she should keep it elevated and use crutches for the next couple days. A couple days later I got a nasty-looking second-degree burn on my wrist and wore long sleeves (in the middle of summer) or lots of bracelets to cover up the fact that anyoen was wrong because I didn't want to be the next kid the cops came to take to the hospital for something minor.