Posted on 10/28/2006 11:27:01 AM PDT by traviskicks
A Sugar Land woman says police went too far when they burst into her home and arrested her boyfriend and son on drug charges. The raid left her dog dead and caused thousands of dollars in damage.
"It was bang, bang, bang, then there was a boom as they broke the door in, threw the fire grenade, and then shot the dog," said homeowner Margot Allen. "This all happened in anywhere from five to fifteen seconds."
That's how Allen's son and boyfriend describe what happened that day. Sugar Land police acted on a tip. They say they found traces of marijuana and cocaine in her trash after a month-long investigation.
"There's no crack done in my house," she said. "There's occasional marijuana in my house. I don't do it because I don't happen to like it."
Based on the evidence in the trash, a regional SWAT team arrived at the home. Police say they knocked, waited 30 seconds, and then broke in with guns and a concussion grenade. The house suffered $5,000 damage and one officer shot and killed Margot's golden lab, Shadow, when police say it charged toward one of the officers. What did officers find inside?
"A joint half the size of my pinky fingernail and then one about this big," she said, showing a length on her finger. "And not anywhere near this big around."
The Sugar Land Police Department declined an on-camera interview, but they are defending their actions, saying they followed protocol to the letter.
The department says it was determined that the bust would be of a moderate risk. Even though they had no specific threat, they were prepared for firearms in the house and felt obligated to anticipate any resistance or violence. They say killing the dog was regrettable. They also say Allen's boyfriend has a history of drug convictions. But for Allen, it was overkill.
"They treated us like we were terrorists," she said. "They broke the door down. They shot my dog. They set my house on fire."
Both Allen's son and her boyfriend were charged with a Class B misdemeanor for that small amount of marijuana. That's punishable by up to six months in the county jail or a maximum $2,000 fine. Both of them will be in court on January 9.
As I said in my first post, this industry would now be dominated by Phillip Morris etc. rather than by drug cartels and not fund terrorism.
If no one is bleeding and no one is ripped off, the government should stay out of it.
I Imagine that it's SOP to shoot any dog that dosen't cower in absolute fear.
I thought these links might be of interest...
http://www.odmp.org/
http://www.aphf.org/lods.html
She had a joint - kill her and her family. Drugs are evil. < /sarcasm>
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you,d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur, what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!"
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
No, the real issue is the unnecessary violence. I remember a retired black pastor in Boston who died in one of these raids. They had the wrong house.
I remember an east coast southern couple with a dog being pulled over in their car and their dog shot as the cops chased after a fictitious robbery based on a phone call from an idiot.
I remember four plain clothes cops (three of which were rookies) pumping 41 bullets into a black man as he tried to get into his apartment building. They thought his keys were a gun.
None of these cops were ever were punished. In the dreaded private sector, you always get punished for your mistakes. This is not the case for public workers.
So if some loser puts some contraband in the trash in front of my house and makes a phone call I'm suddenly targeted for investigation and can have my door kicked in, life threatened and house damaged? Seems that since the law provides no privacy protection for your trash they shouldn't be able to use what's in it as evidence since anyone walking down the street could have put it in there. On the bright side, it sounds like the Dhimmicrats have a new tool in their toolbox to expel conservatives. /s
I tend to freak out over attacking dogs (not scared, more like an adrenalin reaction that turns me into Dr. Jekyll's monster). That said, if you can't take a golden retriever out with the standard police bataka (club) - geez. It's not like retrievers are particularly big, or trained as attack dogs, or even dangerous if they WERE trained as attack dogs.
I despise "law enforcement officers". They enforce the law.
And why is that, do you think?
BTW, it's "likelihood".
And don't forget that this raid cost the taxpayers thousands of dollars. But it was worth it! Our brave law enforcement officials go two joints off the streets!
Travis, you need to rethink that.
One of the things (maybe) which separates us from tyranny is that our military personnel are taught that they must not engage our citizens on our own soil.
Cops are becoming different.
They could refuse if they wanted to do so.
There, all fixed.
It's SOP to shoot the dog.
It should be SOP to shoot the invaders.
Cops are becoming different.
They could refuse if they wanted to do so."
Our Soldiers could also refuse orders that they don't agree with. That would not necessarily make them virtuous. When the rank and file start concerning themselves with the way that things ought to be and acting upon those impulses, rather than acting upon lawful orders of those appointed over them, that is when we're really screwed. What separates us from tyranny is not just that our military personnel are legally forbidden from engaging citizens on our own soil, but that they are led by professionals who recognize their subservience to that law and to their civilian masters. Take away the professionalism of our military leaders and then you have the potential for problems because that is when posse comitatus is worth no more than the paper it is written on.
Likewise, the rank and file police officers do not make their own rules. They follow the procedures within their departments. When they abandon their professional ethic and start acting upon their own impulses, which are obviously going to be skewed by their day in and day out dealings with the lowest dregs of our society, then that is when abuse of power and outrages really begin.
My answer is that they wear the masks because they are afraid of US.
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