I also find it very strange that not one news agency has a pitcure of the mysterious "breeching ram."
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."
Seriously doubt $250,000 damage. That would in all likelihood easily pay to built this home from scratch.
We’re talking a 3 BR, 3 bath 1500 square foot home. Here’s the appraiser’s site information.
http://parcelsearch.arapahoegov.com/PPINum.aspx?PPINum=2075-03-3-01-031
I have a good deal more experience with fire and water damage costs. None really with explosion damage, so I don’t know how much damage the blast cause to the frame itself and how much disassembly would be required to repair it.
But the cost of repairing the holes in the wall shown in the pictures is just not that much at all. Cleanup of tear gas residue and fingerprint powder can be surprisingly difficult and expensive.
That said. A one guy with a gun justifies damn near leveling a house? This was not Ramadi and calling in an airstrike!
These SWAT cowboys are out of control. Everything is not a nail that requires a hammer. But we have cheerleaders here that seem to just love this stuff.
I will call you later for you to do the paperwork so you go home safe.
Not cheerleading anything.
Seems unlikely to me what they did was their only option.
Greenwood Village appears to be an older suburb community of less than 15,000. Doubt they have a whole lot of crime, and the SWAT team doesn’t get a lot of opportunity to use their cool stuff.
1.3% chance of being a violent crime victim in GV vs. 3.08% for Colorado.
http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/co/greenwood-village/crime/
Would not be at all surprised, given the small size of the city, if cops from neighboring cities were involved.
Oboy. Well, ah, you just carry on and have a nice weekend.
We've all heard of peopleofwalmart.com.
But I see the domain criminalsofwalmart.com is unregistered and available.
Is there enough content out there to make another entertaining site?
I also find it very strange that not one news agency has a pitcure of the mysterious "breeching ram."
What would Andy do?
Oh yeah, the guy is a character. But, Denver housing is the hottest market right now in the country. So getting someone in to repair this or rebuild will be very, very, difficult. And costly. And it will take a long time. He is out of his home for a long time, additional costs.
While GV is small, I think Mountain View gets the smallest town in Denver award. And they have a police problem:
Local cops have a tough job. Sometimes they're corrupt. Sometimes they make mistakes. I will take them over a federal force engineered to make sure we all follow the politically-correct line. And do not tell me that isn't what the storm-trooping Administration now watching its days winding down has in mind.
Local cops do have a tough job--as do any cops. The majority of cops are decent people. But giving cops swat teams and military hardware is almost always a bad idea. Taking out a nest of terrorists with AKs and RPGs is not the same as taking down someone stealing twinkies from Walmart--even if he does pull his 9mm or 38 on the cops because they cornered him.
This type of behavior would result in a courts martial for a military member. Our ROEs are much more restrictive, and most of our officers are much more responsible than the yahoo who authorized this cluster.
The solution to militarized policing is not more centralization, but that argument is not even being raised. A few years ago, local municipalities had the power to stop this train, but no one wanted to refuse Uncle Sugar's free toy express. Now that the lines have been established, only Congress can stop this administration from creating a de facto national police. Unfortunately, I hold little hope that our representatives have any such plan.
And Greenwood Village is one of the more pricy suburbs in Denver.
Sure, but that 10-20% gets us, bad.
Read post 35. You don’t get any sense of overreaction from the police? Wow. Hope you never cross them!
Oh my gosh, yes. How dare we object to police overreaction and destruction?!!!!!
Wow, you’re good. You’re on both sides! LOL
You don't understand, but you will when forced off at gunpoint (or hauled off dead if you resist). You have no right to your home when the government wants it. This is well established black-letter law.
There is, however, potential value in not agreeing or volunteering. At least that changes the expulsion from one you agreed to, so have no right to be compensated, to a taking.
Probably not as difficult to get a contractor as you might think. There is a whole industry of contractors who do restoration/reconstruction rather than remodeling or new construction.
I know, I’ve been in or around it for 30 years. How busy we are is to some extent disconnected from the general construction business. Our problem is getting certain kinds of workers when construction gets real busy.
It is. And getting permits is taking months right now in the metro... months.
Gee maybe they can’t find it buried in the ruble.
Or it got blasted out one of the numerous holes they blew in the structure.
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