First point of BS. The PR person may not have seen the tactical operations plan that any SWAT team does nor is it likely to be released for public view. It specifically says if there is any intelligence on children and likely locations in the house, if it can be determined. Suboptimal or not, these is not a major deciding factor on go/no go. If they waited for optimal, they would never go.
Second point of BS. Common lawyer tactic to say the search warrant was never presented to the defendant. It attacks the very beginning of the chain of evidence, which any lawyer tries if they can’t beat the probable cause. EVERY search warrant has a return and inventory of which a copy is given to the defendant of the evidence seized. If they are not present, or refuse to sign it, it is left in a conspicuous place.
Third point of BS. ANY police officer can declare a person deceased if it is blatantly evident that he or she is so. The man was DRT, ok? He did not survive being hit so many times and the official coroners report will back this up. Cause of death: ex sanquination, means: gunfire.
Yes, the records were sealed after the raid. It’s not a coverup, I explained why they do that. If they did another raid immediately after that, and ten more after that one, they would still seal the case because of unindicted co-conspirators.
Drugs legal, less raids, less citizens dead, less cops dead. Now see the logic? Who says it was a no-knock? Do you know the circumstances in which no-knock authority is given by a judge? I don’t know the decedent’s criminal history, but if the intelligence bears out that he has violent criminal history, has known firearms, and military training, well, that’s about as good as it gets for no-knock authorization. This article does not say what it was.
I crapped all this man? He served. So what? I served. So did Timothy McVeigh, who earned a Bronze Star. He was a war hero too, at one time. But he, like the decendent, got involved in illegal activity. Guerenas got a search warrant issued on his house based on PROBABLE CAUSE, that’s part of the evidence and evidence found at the scene. But nice try at trying to ignore that.
SWAT commanders also take into consideration of allowing the suspect to leave his home and allowing plain clothes detectives to make the contact. This is in itself presents new tactical problems. People can barricade themselves at work, take hostages, then we have one of them demanding to know why this wasn’t done at home. Would you rather plan an operation to take a person down at a large employer with hundreds of employers and vast areas to search, or do it in a small contained area?
You let people get mobile in a vehicle they put hundreds at risk. In my experience they considered this man a high risk contact they needed to contain, as well as make a concerted effort to preserve the evidence contained in the home.
You call this poorly executed because someone died and because it does not match your uninformed expectations. The decedent made poor choices in life with getting involved in the narcotics trade, KNEW that a SWAT raid was not only a possibility but was a probability the longer he engaged in this activity and STILL carried on. I surmise he knew he was caught and was going down shooting, all of which could have been avoided if he did not point a rifle at officers and did not choose the life he did.
SWAT teams make a diligent effort to use tactical ammunition that expends it’s energy inside the body and not go through six houses. No one want’s that. Without the power of GOOGLE, you would be hard pressed to find any stories of innocents hit by SWAT teams using over penetrative rounds.