Cops throw stun grenade into crib/baby in coma.

[MARTIAN]

This is the basic problem with the growing shitshow that is the paramilitarization of civilian American police forces.

No one is denying that large urban departments need a SWAT capabity and there is a time and a place for that longarm in the trunk of a vehicle.

The problem is that when tools become available, people want to use them. There's been an explosion in the proliferation of "tactical" tools and training to civilian police in the past decade or two.

Police in America (on general terms) belong to the community to which it polices. There's a reason the US model doesn't have a National Police/Gendarmerie. Policing in America isn't supposed to be about us-vs-them. This isn't about fighting the enemy.

If you want to fight the enemy, join the military. Subject yourself to military discipline if that's what you feel you need to do. Being a cop should be something else entirely.

Which isn't to say former or current servicemembers make for bad cops, but rather that there is a huge difference between the metaphorical thin red line and the thin blue line. It's something that people who have been on both sides are usually fairly well aware of while those who haven't worn green confuse because they wished they'd had and try to live out their fucking tactical entry fantasies.

/rant

I cant speak for the the American system, but I can honestly say I've never met an Officer who joined the force looking to "fight the enemy". It's also encouraged, here in Ontario at least, for Police Officers to work outside of their town or city of residence. The tactical bang bang way of dealing with bad guys doesn't extend across the border to the extent it exists down there.

While the city of Toronto has a serious gang problem, the fact that every call probably doesn't involve a concealed carrier adds to our more relaxed approach to even violent incidents. In America, the gun culture adds to the paranoia of the officers and a nervous cop makes a bad cop.

When almost everyone you encounter has a deadly weapon on their person it becomes a shoot first mentality.

Also, Canadian police officers are more thoroughly vetted, better trained and have a higher level of education than our southern counterparts. While relatively recent, it's almost impossible to get into an Ontario police organization without at least a Bachelors degree

 

[method115]

Yea I think they need to reconsider somethings and the way they are done.

It was a horrible accident; we will have to ask a cop on here if you are supposed to look before you throw and if this is what caused this accident.

The guy was known to be armed so it may be the swat team was needed.

So your believe all drugs should be legal? So mom and dad being meth heads would be no problem?

Mom and dad being meth heads is happening right now with the drugs being illegal. This idea that making drugs legal will just have everyone running around smoking crack is ridiculous.

I understand there are some idiots out there but when people make this argument I wonder if they think the rest of society is a bunch of idiots who need their hand held 24/7 throughout life.

 

[Stringer Bell]

nothing to see here. move along

 

[Stringer Bell]

I cant speak for the the American system, but I can honestly say I've never met an Officer who joined the force looking to "fight the enemy". It's also encouraged, here in Ontario at least, for Police Officers to work outside of their town or city of residence. The tactical bang bang way of dealing with bad guys doesn't extend across the border to the extent it exists down there.

While the city of Toronto has a serious gang problem, the fact that every call probably doesn't involve a concealed carrier adds to our more relaxed approach to even violent incidents. In America, the gun culture adds to the paranoia of the officers and a nervous cop makes a bad cop.

When almost everyone you encounter has a deadly weapon on their person it becomes a shoot first mentality.

you're assuming the gun created the culture and not the other way around.

 

[MARTIAN]

you're assuming the gun created the culture and not the other way around.

Regardless if it was originally the fighting, defensive people of the US that initiated the culture that is now obsessed today, it. Has no correlation to my post

 

[The Clamburglar]

This fucking "terrible accident" cop out needs to stop.

It is high time that cops start being held to higher standard. If you are going to raid a house, you make damn sure you know exactly who is inside, and most of all make sure your fucking target is there. The fact that this type of ineptitude is not only happening, but completely dismissed is mind-boggling.

Basically, they almost killed (and maybe did kill, we don't know yet) an innocent baby for no fucking reason at all, but don't blame them - it was just a terrible accident.

 

[Cid]

A few babies in comas is a small price to pay to keep your kids away from harm. So many of you are missing the big picture...

 

[Hadron]

You mean that when you militarized police, collateral damage increases?

Who could have foreseen this...?

 

[tdluxon]

"No-knock" warrants are one of the worst things that has happened to law enforcement. They are extremely dangerous to both the people in the house and the officers themselves. They are also almost never actually necessary (look as this case, the guy they were looking for wasn't even there). For example, in Ogden UT, in 2010 police stormed a house in the middle of the night and killed the occupant Todd Blair when they saw him holding a golf club they thought was a gun. Far from an isolated example. Also, it is standard procedure to kill the person's dog (real nice guys).

There have been many cases where an innocent person has been killed by police serving a no-knock warrant, and many cases of people that were totally innocent and had no connection to the crime police are investigated that have shot police officers. This has even happened in incidents where the police accidentally raided the wrong house!

If you were lying in bed sleeping and wake up groggy after you heard people knocking down your door then storming your house, your natural reaction would be to defend yourself with whatever weapon you have nearby. That leads to innocent people shooting police officers that they think are robbing their house, and to innocent people being shot by police officers who see them going for a weapon.

Even most cops hate serving no-knock warrants!

It is extremely rare when this type of warrant is necessary, but police departments are putting tons of people, including their officers. Yet they are becoming very common, over 80,000 in 2010 compared to 2,000-3000 most years in the 80s.

And that is not even addressing the fact that they may well be unconstitutional under the 4th amendment...

Stop the madness!!! Serve the warrant in the day with knock-and-announce, and you might want to make sure the person you are looking for is actually there first.

 

[The Clamburglar]

"No-knock" warrants are one of the worst things that has happened to law enforcement. They are extremely dangerous to both the people in the house and the officers themselves. They are also almost never actually necessary (look as this case, the guy they were looking for wasn't even there). For example, in Ogden UT, in 2010 police stormed a house in the middle of the night and killed the occupant Todd Blair when they saw him holding a golf club they thought was a gun. Far from an isolated example.

There have been many cases where an innocent person has been killed by police serving a no-knock warrant, and many cases of people that were totally innocent and had no connection to the crime police are investigated that have shot police officers.

If you were lying in bed sleeping and wake up groggy after you heard people knocking down your door then storming your house, your natural reaction would be to defend yourself with whatever weapon you have nearby. That leads to innocent people shooting police officers that they think are robbing their house, and to innocent people being shot by police officers who see them going for a weapon.

Even most cops hate serving no-knock warrants!

It is extremely rare when this type of warrant is necessary, but police departments are putting tons of people, including their officers. Yet they are becoming very common, over 80,000 in 2010 compared to 2,000-3000 most years in the 80s.

And that is not even addressing the fact that they may well be unconstitutional under the 4th amendment...

Good post.

 

[INeedARemedy]

Late in the game, 4th down, he throws up a prayer.....

TOUCHDOWN!!!!

 

[oldshadow]

Mom and dad being meth heads is happening right now with the drugs being illegal. This idea that making drugs legal will just have everyone running around smoking crack is ridiculous.

I understand there are some idiots out there but when people make this argument I wonder if they think the rest of society is a bunch of idiots who need their hand held 24/7 throughout life.

I said nothing about making it legal would cause everyone to go out and try it.
And I think the way we approach it should be changed to decimalize the user but not the dealers.

Right now you can remove children from a home because of an arrest over drugs which should be the main focus anyway. Most of the hard drugs you cannot be a recreational user. You end up with the drug being the focus of your life and money so the other family members suffer (kids). You can do whatever you like as long as you don

 

[oldshadow]

Good post.

I also agree with this.

 

[seatea]

50cent.gif

That's so wrong it's right.

 

[Crazyced]

Seriously? WTF is wrong with us here in America? The increasing militarization of the police is scary enough but this war on drugs that has been an abysmal failure needs to stop. Disgusting all-around here.

http://gawker.com/toddler-severely-burned-after-grenade-lands-in-crib-dur-1583704332

A 19-month-old boy was critically injured by a grenade in a police raid of a suspected drug dealer's home near Atlanta. According to the child's parents, he is in a medically-induced coma and has a 50 percent chance of surviving.

Police stormed the home with a no-knock arrest warrant for Wanis Thometheva, whom police say a confidential informant purchased meth from. According to authorities, Thometheva had also been found with illegal weapons, including an AK-47, during previous drug arrests.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Thometheva was not at the home at the time of the raid but was later arrested at another house on a felony drug charge of distribution of meth.

Officers had no indication that any children were inside the Lakeview Heights home when they returned around 3 a.m. Wednesday, Terrell said, and approached the same door where drugs had been purchased.

That door, which leads into a former garage that has been remodeled into a bedroom, was locked, so officers opened it, the Sheriff said. Then, a distraction device, or flash bang, was tossed inside.
Thometheva was later arrested by police at another home on a felony drug charge of distribution of meth.

Bounkham "Bou Bou" Phonesavanh was severely burned by the grenade and was the only one injured in the raid. "It landed in his playpen and exploded on his pillow right in his face," Alecia Phonesavanh, the child's mother, told WSB-TV. He was at the home with his parents and three sisters, who were visiting from Wisconsin after a fire burned down house.

"He's in the burn unit. We go up to see him and his whole face is ripped open. He has a big cut on his chest," Alecia Phonesavanh told WSB-TV. "He's only 19 months old. He didn't do anything."

Cornelia, Georgia police Chief Rick Darby told WSB-TV that "the entire unit is very broken up about the incident." The county sheriff stands by the decision to raid the home.

"The last thing you want is law enforcement to injure someone innocent," Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "There was no malicious act performed. It was a terrible accident that was never supposed to happen."

I wonder what timeframe there was between 'Drug entrence' and 'baby's room', if any.

Presumably the drug dealer lives there.

 

[Protectandserve]

Yea I think they need to reconsider somethings and the way they are done.

It was a horrible accident; we will have to ask a cop on here if you are supposed to look before you throw and if this is what caused this accident.

The guy was known to be armed so it may be the swat team was needed.

So your believe all drugs should be legal? So mom and dad being meth heads would be no problem?

I mentioned earlier that they are usually thrown from cover. The other way they are employed is through windows on a "bang pole" which is a 15 foot plus metal pull with a contraption at the end to deploy the flashbang and a punch to break the window.

They are generally thrown from cover, usually directly following a door breach with a ram or shotgun with breaching loads(fairly uncommon in the PD world). You don't really want to peek first or stay looking because they go off fairly quickly.

Like I mentioned, taking a known armed felon at his residence with a no knock warrant is stupid. Take him down somewhere else where you have the advantage. Let him get in a car, tail him, when he gets where he is going deflate his tires and then catch him as he comes back to the car. Much less likely he is gonna have his AK on him when you catch him coming back to the car from McDonalds...

I am completely against no knock warrants outside of a few extremely limited circumstances that rarely occur. It is dangerous for all involved. If someone breached my front door at 2am they would be receiving rifle rounds as soon as I picked mine up.

 

[KnightTemplar]

"No-knock" warrants are one of the worst things that has happened to law enforcement. They are extremely dangerous to both the people in the house and the officers themselves. They are also almost never actually necessary (look as this case, the guy they were looking for wasn't even there). For example, in Ogden UT, in 2010 police stormed a house in the middle of the night and killed the occupant Todd Blair when they saw him holding a golf club they thought was a gun. Far from an isolated example. Also, it is standard procedure to kill the person's dog (real nice guys).

There have been many cases where an innocent person has been killed by police serving a no-knock warrant, and many cases of people that were totally innocent and had no connection to the crime police are investigated that have shot police officers. This has even happened in incidents where the police accidentally raided the wrong house!

If you were lying in bed sleeping and wake up groggy after you heard people knocking down your door then storming your house, your natural reaction would be to defend yourself with whatever weapon you have nearby. That leads to innocent people shooting police officers that they think are robbing their house, and to innocent people being shot by police officers who see them going for a weapon.

Even most cops hate serving no-knock warrants!

It is extremely rare when this type of warrant is necessary, but police departments are putting tons of people, including their officers. Yet they are becoming very common, over 80,000 in 2010 compared to 2,000-3000 most years in the 80s.

And that is not even addressing the fact that they may well be unconstitutional under the 4th amendment...

Stop the madness!!! Serve the warrant in the day with knock-and-announce, and you might want to make sure the person you are looking for is actually there first.

Excellent post.

I have no problem with Cops going in like Judge Dredd on TRT if they know for a fact they are facing violent, dangerous criminals. But the intelligence has to be solid gold, and all other, less extreme, options explored first.

This kind of fuck up has been going on for a long time. The Waco Siege was a direct result of the ATF wanting to stage a "sexy" paramilitary operation. Koresh drove into town at least once a week; they could easily have arrested him with the minimum of violence.

 

[The Clamburglar]

Excellent post.

I have no problem with Cops going in like Judge Dredd on TRT if they know for a fact they are facing violent, dangerous criminals. But the intelligence has to be solid gold, and all other, less extreme, options explored first.

This kind of fuck up has been going on for a long time. The Waco Siege was a direct result of the ATF wanting to stage a "sexy" paramilitary operation. Koresh drove into town at least once a week; they could easily have arrested him with the minimum of violence.

Yep, and the same goes here.

A little surveillance beforehand would have told them that their target was not even home and they could have just sat and waited for him.

 

[TheFirstEMP]

"We'd do it again," said Habersham authorities.

 

[Crazyced]

Excellent post.

I have no problem with Cops going in like Judge Dredd on TRT if they know for a fact they are facing violent, dangerous criminals. But the intelligence has to be solid gold, and all other, less extreme, options explored first.

This kind of fuck up has been going on for a long time. The Waco Siege was a direct result of the ATF wanting to stage a "sexy" paramilitary operation. Koresh drove into town at least once a week; they could easily have arrested him with the minimum of violence.

One would hope that they have good reasons to operate this way and not just to SWAT on everyone's house.

Then again, I live in Ottawa. I can't ever remember an instance of police using flash bangs here.