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Let us remember we are only hearing the side from the cops

Did you read the article? There are several other witnesses, which is why this is a story in the first place. If it was only the cops side we probably never would have heard about it.

Ahtman wrote:

Let us remember we are only hearing the side from the cops

Did you read the article? There are several other witnesses, which is why this is a story in the first place. If it was only the cops side we probably never would have heard about it.

I wouldn't say they were really "witnesses" in the sense that they saw what was going on. The most reliable one is in his 60s and claimed that he "heard" all of the shots, and didn't see the truck roll up.

There's two other houses involved in that the police asked to enter the premises to ensure nobody was hurt by rifle rounds being used(which strikes me as odd and makes me wonder if the Marine didn't have a rifle, because SWAT is supposed to be using H&K MP5s for the majority of situations like this in built-up areas specifically to ensure that rifle rounds don't travel from house-to-house and injure anyone else).

You forgot the wife. Again, if there was no one to have another side of the story and it was just the polices side, there would be no story. So the guy is in his 60's, that doesn't mean he has dementia or is in failing health. It is hard to miss hearing 71 assault rifle shots being fired in a suburbs in the morning so I'm not sure why there are apostrophes around 'heard'. Even the fact that you are dismissing another perspective on what happened shows there is indeed another perspective. You couldn't be dismissive of something that didn't exist.

Karon wrote:*72 bullets go into the man who was armed, but had never taken a threatening action*

Call me a pussy, but pointing a gun at someone is a threatening action where I come from.

Anyway, this is a bad situation. I understand the cops' point of view, as well as the point of view of the people that were being raided.

If it turns out that he was, in fact, dealing drugs I will be more sympathetic to one side of the story however.

Ahtman wrote:You forgot the wife. Again, if there was no one to have another side of the story and it was just the polices side, there would be no story. So the guy is in his 60's, that doesn't mean he has dementia or is in failing health. It is hard to miss hearing 71 assault rifle shots being fired in a suburbs in the morning so I'm not sure why there are apostrophes around 'heard'. Even the fact that you are dismissing another perspective on what happened shows there is indeed another perspective. You couldn't be dismissive of something that didn't exist.

Where did I say that he had dementia? Or that he's in failing health?

I put apostrophes around 'heard' because if they fired 71 assault rifle shots(assuming that SWAT was using assault rifles rather than SMGs, which is a big assumption) at the guy--then either the Marine was taking cover and exchanging fire or the SWAT team for Pima County has terrible fire discipline.
I also put apostrophes around 'heard' because there's no feasible way the guy or his wife counted the individual shots unless the officers fired more rounds after the whole thing went down.

If it is indeed true that the police didn't announce themselves as such before entering the home, then they are in the fault. Period.

rubiksnoob wrote:If it is indeed true that the police didn't announce themselves as such before entering the home, then they are in the fault. Period.

True.

That's why I'm reserving judgement until we actually know what happened.

Monster Rain wrote:

rubiksnoob wrote:If it is indeed true that the police didn't announce themselves as such before entering the home, then they are in the fault. Period.

True.

That's why I'm reserving judgement until we actually know what happened.

What's bothering me about the whole situation is that the Marine was clearly keyed up enough to not be "coming out of a daze" and grabbing his gun.

By his wife's own admission, he was awake. He told her and one of their two sons to hide in the closet, while he grabbed his rifle.

Kanluwen wrote:Where did I say that he had dementia? Or that he's in failing health?

You stated he was in his 60's as if that meant that meant he wasn't a reliable witness because of his age. If that wasn't what you were trying to say you failed horribly in getting a different idea across. No one ever claimed to have heard and counted 71 shots, just that they heard a lot of shots. We know the police fired 71 times because they count their ammo and we know that the dead man never fired a shot because his weapon was tested and shown to never be fired as well as no shell casings or, you know, cops with bullet wounds. Your responses still have the feel of someone not reading the entirety of the articles and then going back and picking up bits but still getting the whole scenario.

Kanluwen wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:

rubiksnoob wrote:If it is indeed true that the police didn't announce themselves as such before entering the home, then they are in the fault. Period.

True.

That's why I'm reserving judgement until we actually know what happened.

What's bothering me about the whole situation is that the Marine was clearly keyed up enough to not be "coming out of a daze" and grabbing his gun.

By his wife's own admission, he was awake. He told her and one of their two sons to hide in the closet, while he grabbed his rifle.

Not taking one side or the other until more evidence comes out. But my boy served in Afghanistan and came back shellshocked. Got drunk at a farm party then bugged out when someone went out to the field with a shotgun, screamed at us to take cover. It is possible that while he was awake and alert, his mind was miles away and simply running on instinct.

Kanluwen wrote:I put apostrophes around 'heard' because if they fired 71 assault rifle shots(assuming that SWAT was using assault rifles rather than SMGs, which is a big assumption) at the guy--then either the Marine was taking cover and exchanging fire or the SWAT team for Pima County has terrible fire discipline.
I also put apostrophes around 'heard' because there's no feasible way the guy or his wife counted the individual shots unless the officers fired more rounds after the whole thing went down.

The sheriff's department has confirmed that it was 71 semiautomatic shots.

What bothers me about this case is that the cops never instructed the victim to disarm himself. They delayed an amublance crew for over an hour, then dismissed them once he was dead. The wife called 911 because she didn't know what was going on, and said that the cops never identified themselves. Finally, and most importantly, the officers lied, first saying that the victim had shot at them, then changing their story that the safety was still on.

Fortunately for the officers, the victim had better fire control than they did.

Its a bad bussiness, even if he was a drug dealer.

I feel bad for his kid, five years old is no age to see your father bleed out and die on the front lawn.

Monster Rain wrote:

Karon wrote:*72 bullets go into the man who was armed, but had never taken a threatening action*

Call me a pussy, but pointing a gun at someone is a threatening action where I come from.

Anyway, this is a bad situation. I understand the cops' point of view, as well as the point of view of the people that were being raided.

If it turns out that he was, in fact, dealing drugs I will be more sympathetic to one side of the story however.

How can you blame this man for holding his gun towards several heavily armed and armored SWAT members, whom he thought were burglars at first?

Pay attention to the part where it says the deputy fired his weapon into the wall, which prompted 70 bullets to go into this man who hadn't fired a shot.

What the feth is that?

Karon wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:

Karon wrote:*72 bullets go into the man who was armed, but had never taken a threatening action*

Call me a pussy, but pointing a gun at someone is a threatening action where I come from.

Anyway, this is a bad situation. I understand the cops' point of view, as well as the point of view of the people that were being raided.

If it turns out that he was, in fact, dealing drugs I will be more sympathetic to one side of the story however.

How can you blame this man for holding his gun towards several heavily armed and armored SWAT members, whom he thought were burglars at first?

Pay attention to the part where it says the deputy fired his weapon into the wall, which prompted 70 bullets to go into this man who hadn't fired a shot.

What the feth is that?

Thats called a bad shoot.

Frazzled wrote:

Karon wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:

Karon wrote:*72 bullets go into the man who was armed, but had never taken a threatening action*

Call me a pussy, but pointing a gun at someone is a threatening action where I come from.

Anyway, this is a bad situation. I understand the cops' point of view, as well as the point of view of the people that were being raided.

If it turns out that he was, in fact, dealing drugs I will be more sympathetic to one side of the story however.

How can you blame this man for holding his gun towards several heavily armed and armored SWAT members, whom he thought were burglars at first?

Pay attention to the part where it says the deputy fired his weapon into the wall, which prompted 70 bullets to go into this man who hadn't fired a shot.

What the feth is that?

Thats called a bad shot.

Another stellar illustration of the utter failure known as the "War on Drugs".

It's time for this insanity to stop. Why are heavily armed gunmen continuing to kick doors in and kill citizens in their own homes?

Basic ROE (rules of engagement) for the military has a term called the "inherent right to self-defense." If you feel you are in danger of losing your life/limb/eye sight, you have the right to respond with lethal force.

There's also fratricide pervention. Positively identifying your target and deciding that the target is A - hostile, B - an enemy (or suspect in this case), and C - armed. It seems to me that both sides did this fairly well. The marine identified the officers as friendly and did not fire. The SWAT officer identified the marine as hostile (pointing a gun in his direction) and armed. I would have taken the shot as well.

I'm not really blaming the guy who ended up shooting him - He had an AR15 pointed at his chest - which a TAC vest will do eff-all against at that kind of range. It's the events leading up to the shooting that concern me.

I've also never heard of them issuing a four house warrant like that. I thought the law for warrants had to be that to look for evidence located in a specific area. I was unaware that a suburban block (well, 4 houses) was specific enough.

Was the man a suspect? Did they find ANYTHING illegal going on in that house. I see a massive wrongful death lawsuit happening any day now.

They didn't say that the 'four house warrant' was for a suburban block.

It was for four houses in the county. The other three addresses have not been released.

The problem is that since rifle fire was apparently used, the SWAT/Police went door to door to the houses around the Marine's to 'check to make sure noone was harmed by penetrating rounds'.

My bad

Dont you think that if the marine wanted to shoot atleast one of the "intruders" he would of? Its not like his sights were off. And he wouldent fire a warning shot because he would of announced that. But thats just my 2 cents

I am still wondering why the feth the deputy shot a bullet into the wall that the article says prompted the 70 bullets.

Reminds me of this http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=250_1273098290 (NSFW, swat team shoots family's dogs)

Swat team serves a warrant that was about to expire, they suspected the house to be a stash house. Kick in the doors in the middle of the night, they shoot a caged pitbull and a corgi. All they found was a weed pipe with resin in it. The guy's wife and kid end up being escorted past their dead/wounded dogs (I think the corgi only lost a leg). I felt sick after watching the video. It's a perfect example of how slowed the war on drugs really is.

Crablezworth wrote:Reminds me of this http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=250_1273098290 (NSFW, swat team shoots family's dogs)

Swat team serves a warrant that was about to expire, they suspected the house to be a stash house. Kick in the doors in the middle of the night, they shoot a caged pitbull and a corgi. All they found was a weed pipe with resin in it. The guy's wife and kid end up being escorted past their dead/wounded dogs (I think the corgi only lost a leg). I felt sick after watching the video. It's a perfect example of how slowed the war on drugs really is.

Yup.

The War on Drugs is rather hilarious, considering there is no War on Alcohol.

ChrisWWII wrote:The point seems to be that it wasn't that he was groggy, it was that he heard someone breaking into his house, without any prior identification.

I made that point specifically in regards to people pointing out that the guy had been working nightshifts, and that this was an explanation that he might have missed the flashing lights of the SWAT van. My point was that if he was that groggy, then he really shouldn't have been backing his judgement in whether he had to use lethal force to defend his house.

Now, it may be the case that he wasn't groggy. That's just speculation on the part of this forum. But we can't have it both ways, speculating that he was too groggy to detect police lights and in a right state of mind to make a life and death decision over home defence.


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Brushfire wrote:You know, they could have just camped outside with some uncover cops, and surprised him at his car. I think many of these SWAT drug raids are overkill, where big boys just like to dress up in militarized gear.

When making raids on a drug cartel, they like to raid multiple houses simultaneously. If they wait for the optimum time to nab one guy, then the rest of the organisation will realise this is happening and take actions to destroy evidence. So instead they like to go into mulitiple houses all at once.

There is certainly overkill in the use of SWAT in the US, no denying that. In Australia our equivalent of SWAT, the TRG, will only gear up in response to actual instances of violence, or to raid organisations where members have long histories of violent crime, we won't do it for any old meth lab. Mind you, we don't have anywhere near the number of officers killed in service each year.


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biccat wrote:I think you're right on the overkill, but wrong on the reason. SWAT teams in major metropolitan areas may be necessary in a few circumstances, but the rest of the time they would just sit around and play cards. So to justify the expense to the taxpayer, they do periodic raids on low-priority targets. Throw in some allegations of weapons or drugs, an anonymous tip and you've got some juicy bits to feed to the evening news and the taxpayers don't start thinking "why the hell do we spend so much on a SWAT team that never does anything?"

I don't think the general public would be particularly aware of the cost of police operations in total, let alone the cost of the SWAT team. Nor are SWAT team members sitting around unused when they're not on SWAT operations, they're regular policemen as well, and when they're not tasked to SWAT they're doing

I think the better explanation is bureaucratic risk adversity. Officers tasked with organising raids police will not be penalised for using SWAT where SWAT wasn't necessary, but if they just send a couple of regular officers, and those guys stumble into a situation where they're outmanned and outgunned, then the officer organising the raid will face considerable sanction and carry the personal burden of having sent fellow officers to their deaths. So they take the risk adverse position, and keep sending in SWAT even when there's little chance it was needed.


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Melissia wrote:Besides, robbers can easily dress as police anyway. So can rapists and other scumbags.

I think that's a really fantastical line of thinking, and likely to produce far more harm than good.


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Kanluwen wrote:There's two other houses involved in that the police asked to enter the premises to ensure nobody was hurt by rifle rounds being used(which strikes me as odd and makes me wonder if the Marine didn't have a rifle, because SWAT is supposed to be using H&K MP5s for the majority of situations like this in built-up areas specifically to ensure that rifle rounds don't travel from house-to-house and injure anyone else).

I suspect that's justa product of crappy media reporting, and the reporter being unaware that a rifle round doesn't come out of a MP5.


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Karon wrote:I am still wondering why the feth the deputy shot a bullet into the wall that the article says prompted the 70 bullets.

That's not what the article says. It says deputies entered, alleged the man said "I've got something for you" and was wielding an AR-15. Deputies opened fire in response to that.

The point about one deputy's round striking the door is that is caused other members to think he'd been shot, adding confusion to the events. It was not what prompted the shooting.

Wow. I'm completely in agreement with Biccat and TheGreenGit. Nice one.

Classy... this is actually the pima swat team...

http://pimasheriff.org/about-us/organization-charts/operations-bureau/support-operations-division/tactical-response-section/s-w-a-t/

I don't think the general public would be particularly aware of the cost of police operations in total, let alone the cost of the SWAT team.

If they did, they would should be angry at the cost of militarizing them. I really would like to know just how often cops are actually engaged in firefight with drugs to justify the need for a SWAT team. SWAT teams were originally created to handle situations like the SLA shoot out in LA. Now they are used to bust in pot smokers homes and shoot dogs. One can say such excessive force is successful because the firefights are avoided. But I don't buy that for most situations.

That's not what the article says. It says deputies entered, alleged the man said "I've got something for you" and was wielding an AR-15. Deputies opened fire in response to that.

Yes. But that's just one side of the story. The cops version. May be true, but it also works in their best interest to distract from the embarrassment that they went into a house and found no drugs. Seventy rounds is a lot of rounds to shoot against a guy who did not fire back. I'd be interested to know how many bullets the coroner found in his body.

I think the increase in SWAT is because they get all the sweet toys and firearms. PEW PEW PEW

So we have a 26 year old male subject with service in the marine corps, clean record. We suspect that there is a drug infraction here serious enough to warrant searching his home. This I don't find shocking, people with clean records occasionally do wrong by the law and the law decides to change that behavior. I don't think the war on drugs has much to stand on, but it is the law currently.

But why in the name of GOD was a team deployed?! Instead of having a pair of plainclothes quietly detain the man going to/from work during the search, send the detectives and uniforms in to rummage through things and then call it a day...they bring out the freaking entry team? On a no knock?!?! In an area where the amount of home invasions by multiple people, sometimes wearing body armor and carrying long arms is on the increase?!

What kind of moron gave this the thumbs up?! Did some <Censored> beancounter behind a desk finally slam his fist on the table and start yelling about "We spend X tens of thousands a year to keep this team operational SO USE THEM!" or what?!

To give the police their credit, it's certainly possible he did yell a challenge to the people smashing his front door down. Any marine I have ever ran into would have with a smile on his face. A two tour veteran, who between the time the door came down and the officers seeing him had gotten out of bed, to his rifle, and took up position covering the door pretty clearly in a position to drop hammers? I think he meant business.

I think that it's also quite likely he saw the word "POLICE" in big white letters across the chest of a goomba, and decided in that opening split second "Hey, I probably shouldn't shoot. Those are supposed to be the good guys." I also wouldn't find it surprising at all if the sight of someone actually prepared for the police wakeup prank spooked one of the lead entrymen enough that he had a negligent discharge. Nor would that event causing the rest of the team to go into "OH GOD, GUNSHOTS, I AM IN DOUBT AND THEREFORE I SHOULD EMPTY MY MAGAZINE!" mode surprise me one single iota.

....And sadly, I am starting to smell that thin blue line on this story..that doesn't surprise me either. Does kinda make me sick though.

But we can't have it both ways, speculating that he was too groggy to detect police lights and in a right state of mind to make a life and death decision over home defence.

Well, lets speculate: Let's assume that the mans bedroom is on the interior of the house, perhaps on the opposite side from the roadway. (To my mind this is a reasonable assumption, it has been this way in every home I have lived in with the exception of a single apartment.)
I am going to also assume that this no-knock was played out like it "should" have: A nondescript van turned the corner, rolled up to the house in question at typical road speed for the area, and then the doors opened to let the police stack up at whatever their entrypoint was and enter. There will be no yelling, no talking and no butt-grabbery as to what people should be doing in the plan. What each person was going to do will have been gone over for several hours previous to this. It will be silent until the ram hits the door. Or the vehicle pulls the bar off the screening door, depending. Whatever.

You will not know that these people are coming. That is the entire point, and as noted, they are good at this.

What you will, however, know is that your front door just came in. You will know that a raping, thieving, murdering scumbag and his buddies wearing kevlar, rifles and masks look a lot like policemen wearing kevlar, rifles and masks until you get a Real close look. And whether you just woke up or not, you get to decide to fight and maybe die, or surrender, and maybe die. Before or after getting robbed and your wife raped, depending on the tender mercies of whoever you just surrendered to, and if you IDed them correctly. In the real world this is called "A <Censored>y situation."

Groggy or not, in this situation as the man of the household you ARE making decisions that are potentially life and death. Yours or theirs. Whether you "Should" be making this decision is irrelevant, you are going to make it. You cannot simply abstain from this and everything will be A-OK. You cannot surrender and automatically be given quarter. If you make the wrong ID on who entered your home, your choice here may very well Kill You And The People You Love. To boot, not only is this forced decision brought on by the doing of other people, but people who don't deal with the particulars about this kind of thing expect you to have this magic, omnipresent awareness of your entire home and property, walls and the laws of physics be <Censored>. They may also be on the jury in your coming court appearance. Ain't that a <Censored>?

This whole mess is one I thoroughly feel could have been avoided with a modicum of effort, and should have been. But as long as no one could theoretically flush the bag of pot, it's all ok.

Ahtman wrote:I think the increase in SWAT is because they get all the sweet toys and firearms. PEW PEW PEW

Except for SWAT medics.

They guy had a rifle pointed at them and apparantly one of the other officers had a, itchy trigger finger and fired. The SWAT members thought it was the suspect so they fired at him. You can't really hit them with murder if they thought the guy was shooting at them so they shot him. Now you could probably fire the officer outside who fired first and hit the door frame, but he didn't actually hit the suspect either so you can't hit him for murder.

Again, nobody on Dakkadakka was in the situation described so we can't really tell what happened.