Very good points.
The whole thing looks to me like incredible incompetence, excessive force, and wanton disregard of the lives of any and all inside the house, including the wife and kid.
Let’s say the lead-up investigation showed that the deceased was selling pot AND was likely to be armed. But he has no history of violence or even anything beyond a traffic ticket. Still, you (the arresting officers) have to be careful, right?
So, what the *expletive deleted* are the SWAT team members doing? It’s as if they did everything they could to guarantee a shootout. Yet if the deceased HAD been ready for them, as another poster has pointed out, he’d have drilled 2 or 3 of the officers, all grouped together so conveniently, before they got him.
Either the guy is deemed to be highly dangerous and you go in with REAL surprise, QUICKLY (and maybe put stun grenades through all windows?), or, you have a freakin’ bullhorn, announce yourself clearly and repeatedly over a period of a few minutes from safe cover, and give the guy a chance to see your several marked vehicles and overwhelming force, and surrender.
Incidentally, relevant from a different angle: http://www.semissourian.com/story/1712037.html
“Either the guy is deemed to be highly dangerous and you go in with REAL surprise, QUICKLY (and maybe put stun grenades through all windows?), or, you have a freakin’ bullhorn, announce yourself clearly and repeatedly over a period of a few minutes from safe cover, and give the guy a chance to see your several marked vehicles and overwhelming force, and surrender.”
Worth repeating.
At this point, I don’t care if the ex-Marine was a guilty as could be. The police work sucked, and the shooting was incompetence.
Rather than spend all the money on the SWAT team, why not just have unmarked cars watching, and a black & white show up when the guy is returning from work?
This seems to me to be one of those increasing cases of using a SWAT team instead of good cops because SWAT exists and you can’t fund what you don’t use...so you use them.
Here is a true story of the Old West:
Wyatt Earp, now getting old, was hired to handle a mob at a bank. There was a run on the bank, and the mob was getting ugly. The bank hoped Earp’s reputation would frighten the mob.
Instead, Earp took a wagon, loaded some boxes with scrap iron, and then used his gun to ‘escort’ the payment to the bank. Since the bank had obviously just received money, and had hired Wyatt Earp to protect the delivery, the mob dispersed - content their money was safe.
THAT is a good lawman.
Agree....This was way over the top, uncalled for and totally out of control..
The scary part is there are those that are defending this unsafe, deadly chaos.