Baltimore police seem really defensive about the Noel case. Two called in to the Ron Smith show earlier this week to excoriate me for daring to suggest that sending a SWAT team into a family home at 5am after finding marijuana seeds in the household trash probably isn't an advisable police tactic.
Another Baltimore SWAT officer just berated me in an email in response to the Examiner article.
You'd think that the prevailing sentiment among Baltimore cops in reaction to an innocent woman's needless death at the hands of one of their colleagues would be empathy, perhaps even regret. Intead, thus far the reaction I've experienced has been to lash out at me for arguing that the case merits reevaluating the way Baltimore-area police use paramilitary tactics.
Ping
WTF?? This is really reaching in my book. On another note who would not respond in the same way at 4:30am as a home owner? Sick...really sick CYA tactics.
It's been going on for at least a decade.
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025953.php has some more information.
And a SWAT team was needed for some seeds???!
It's a damn shame this country is so whacked....
Yes but think how much safer we are now that those seeds have been confiscated
Recently had a "big bust" in a small town here in IN. Dug through the guys trash for months, used heat seeking technology with one man planes and ultralights to spot the grow room.
Don't think they used SWAT team, but most dozens of cops to catch a 61 year old guy with chronic back problems and 4 immature plants in his basement.
Our militarized local and federal law enforcement bodies are the standing army our founders feared.
Some people deserve respect, others demand it.
I have seen training given to police officers instructing them that computer evidence, like drug evidence, merits such no-knock tactics since there is some chance that a malefactor might be able to erase evidence before it can be seized.
>One officer kicked in her bedroom door with his boot and, without identifying himself or telling Noel to drop her weapon, shot her three times, including once after she had slumped to the floor, according to the suit.
The Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office ruled that Noel’s death was justified,<
Can't have citizens protecting themselves from intruders, you know.
I failed to appear in court in Baltimore for a case a few years back. A swat team surrounded the house of one of my relatives. A residence I had not been to for years. It was a traffic violation and was later dropped.
Their guns were drawn.
These police in Baltimore county are as bad as many of the criminals at times.
Breaking down bedroom doors at 4:30 they can not expect anything but a citizen ready to lawfully defend his life. Since they couldn't expect anything else it was premeditated homicide.
Unless there is more to this case than what is written here (you know the media, ignore the murder convictions of the other residents in the house) this is a clear case of police brutality.
I know many around here brag that they would return fire, but it sounds like the police had the drop on this family and they probably would have it on you as well. Think about that for you home defense....some early warning system.
It is sad when we must fear the police.
What is funny about this is that crime in Baltimore is not going down despite these tactics. Sounds like they only hit soft targets.
Once again, the moral to the story is, if you pick up a firearm, use it. It ain't a magic wand.
If these SWAT cops had been U.S. Marines in Iraq in a war zone, they would be on death row chained up to their eyeballs.
Rot in hell bastards.