Posted on 06/05/2015 8:02:12 PM PDT by ican'tbelieveit
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. - "There was one gunman with a handgun and they chose to turn this house into something that resembles Osama Bin Laden's compound."
Leo Lech is more than a little upset, and he is not afraid to express it with colorful language.
After all, the house he purchased for his son now has gaping holes where it once had walls and windows. Past the exposed studs and insulation of the condemned structure, you can see artwork on the wall of a 9-year-old boy's bedroom.
"In any civilized nation ... this is the act of paramilitary thugs," he says he told the chief of the Greenwood Village Police Department.
The chief, Lech said, brushed it off.
The damage was inflicted by police and SWAT officers who were working to capture Robert Jonathan Seacat, a suspected 33-year-old shoplifter who allegedly barged into a random home Wednesday afternoon, and opened fire on police when they tried to arrest him a short time later.
The incident began Wednesday afternoon, when he was allegedly spotted shoplifting in Aurora. Seacat then drove to a nearby light rail station, where he ditched his car and ran.
Eventually, he ran into Lech's house on South Alton Street in Greenwood Village, where the 9-year-old boy was inside. Police dispatchers and the child's mother, who is engaged to Lech's son, talked the child out of the house.
The boy was unhurt, but the standoff was just beginning.
Seacat wasn't taken into custody until Thursday morning. The SWAT team said it used chemical agents, flash-bang grenades and a "breaching ram" to end the nearly 20-hour standoff.
"There was obviously some kind of explosive that was fired into here," Lech said, showing 7NEWS anchor Anne Trujillo the cavernous hole in the wall that used to protect the boy's bedroom.
Those holes are visible in nearly every room on the second floor.
A neighbor, who says the SWAT team used his home as a base of operations, points out that whatever the police used to blast the holes sent debris flying.
"When they used the explosives to blow apart the side of this house here, they broke our windshield," the neighbor said.
"There are holes just like this one all through the back of the house too," Lech said. "They methodically fired explosives into every room in this house in order to extract one person. Granted, he had a handgun, but against 100 officers? You know, the proper thing to do would be to evacuate these homes around here, ensure the safety of the homeowners around here, fire some tear gas through the windows. If that didn’t work, you have 50 SWAT officers with body armor break down the door."
Lech estimated roughly that his plan would have caused $10,000 in damage, as opposed to the $250,000 in damage he believes he is facing.
"This is an abomination," he said. "This is an atrocity. To use this kind of force against one gunman."
Lech explains that he had owned the home for two years and rented it to his son. It is now uninhabitable and may need to be completely leveled.
His insurance will pay for the structure, but Lech's son did not have rental insurance and the possessions inside are therefore not being covered.
"There was an engagement ring in there that would have been John's great-great grandmother's. It survived two World Wars, OK, but it didn’t survive the American police paramilitary operation."
I have no problem with them firing cyanide gas canisters inside.
Blowing walls off the house, damaging neighbors houses, shattering car windshields - whole different story.
The current anti-cop sentiment is creating a climate where crooks and wackos are being let off the hook. I’m not buying it. Sure, the cops overreacted, but this was an armed standoff. I’m sure the city will eventually offer the homeowner a nice settlement for what his insurance doesn’t cover.
It’s the guy who barricaded himself in the house and began shooting that started the whole thing in the first place.
“There was an engagement ring in there that would have been John’s great-great grandmother’s. It survived two World Wars, OK, but it didn’t survive the American police paramilitary operation.”
Color me somewhat skeptical. A ring is not going to be destroyed, normally, by this type of damage. I speak as someone who spent decades cleaning up damaged buildings.
“Sure, the cops overreacted, “
Way too much of that going on these days for my taste. Most cops I know can barely be considered competent with a handgun, let alone explosive devices.
May they never overreact in your neighborhood.
L
Pretty much, I’ve partied with a cop, and like he said about the Dallas cops and his speeding around drunk when I asked him to slow down because my wife was with us (pointing out that he was drunk and driving recklessly), “I’ll just show them my Houston badge”.
Guy seems like a character... they picked the wrong homeowner.
Ping!
Who started it is not the issue.
It's what followed.
If there’s an armed standoff in my neighborhood, I hope the cops are there. Sure, they’re human and they make mistakes, but 80-90 percent of the time it’s good to have them around when something like this goes down. It’s only when it goes bad that it gets reported in the MSM, which is obviously cheering for Obama to get that “national police force” he so obviously wants.
WHY are you buying the leftist crap? Obama and his people want to portray local police departments as inept or malevolent so they can get that "federal police force" Obama talked about so lovingly in the campaign into place. If FReepers are buying the media's obvious assistance in this effort, I truly do fear for the future of this free republic.
Stop buying the propaganda that takes an isolated local incident somewhere and turns it into a national furor. You're smarter than that.
What went wrong here?
It doesn’t look like some freak accident happened to turn them doing their job sanely and well, into a disaster. It looks like they were just doing just what they wanted to do.
The disaster was, that their system is insane, they don’t care, because they don’t have to care, the city unions are in charge.
If memory serves, Greenwood Village is the smallest “city” in the Denver metropolitan area. I doubt they have 35 cops on dept. I fined interesting they even have a SWAT Team.
Well stated. It used to be that police were trained to deescalate tensions in any situation, and everyone calmed down a bit as soon as the police arrived. Now, the police arrive shouting and cursing like regular thugs and provoke further violence by their behavior. Many pretend as if they are military and we citizens are merely "civilians" to be ordered around. Today's militarized police are alienating themselves from the society they have sworn to protect and serve, and that does not bode well for the future.
What is being taught to these guys, how are they keeping themselves pumped up and wired all the time?
Steroids bulk up the body but also puff up the mind.
Maybe I missed the /s tag.
Shirley you are not excusing blowing this guy's house apart in this manner?
As Rush likes to say, don't doubt me.
Some criminals wearing uniforms need to be locked up in prison. And then throw the keys away. It’s getting harder and harder to respect police - the good ones need to clean house ASAP!
“This is an abomination. This is an atrocity”.
If only SWAT officers were allowed to marry. No, wait, wrong abomination...
Well hell, why not a persistent nerve agent? I mean, if you are going to start using lethal chemical agents loose on civilians in populated areas, why not go all the way?
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