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

There used to be, and it was every bit as idiotic.

This reminds me a lot of a case in New York. A cop killer was on the loose, cops were keyed up, one of them thought they saw the guy, and shot an unarmed man six times in the back. And then refused to allow an ambulance to go out to him even though he was still alive for some time.

Ironically, the man shot had also just returned from service overseas and was out 4wheeling.

Despite the crime scene teams testimony and the testimony of witnesses, the officer was allowed to return to duty. Miraculously, all the radio transcripts, logs, and the car dashboard cam had all just happened to malfunction, get lost, or be destroyed. Ooops.

To Serve And Protect Ourselves.

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

This is very, very true. We are all going on speculation here, however there is no law against speculation, and it does not mean that the discussion should end. One -should- question the actions of the powers that be PARTICULARLY when they start shooting people. In that vein....

They guy had a rifle pointed at them and apparantly one of the other officers had a, itchy trigger finger and fired.

Things that can be described as an "Itchy trigger finger" situation can also generally be described as a "Bad shoot." in almost all non-outright warfare situations. An entry team is the very, Very last place anybody with an itchy finger should be. This is not the same as saying "He should have let the homeowner fire at him before shooting!" but a third party who WASN'T getting the rifle pointed at him entering the fray and starting the shooting puts the whole issue into questionable territory with a fair few folks. So is the idea that the rest of the team apparently started shooting too, when they did not 100% know who was being shot at or doing the shooting will rankle too.

Police are not military. You need to know who is shooting at you, and IF they are shooting at you, before you make them die. Even in the military, you will catch crap if you take a couple of rounds and empty a belt into a shopping mall.

The psychology involved wasn't even "wrong" or without reason however, and that's what makes the situation a giant crap sandwich. If I was an officer on that team, and someone aimed a rifle at one of my teammates I would certainly have putting holes in the person high up in my mind...quite frankly I probably like my teammate more than I like them. This is not abnormal or wrong thinking. Would I drop the hammer? Ask me again if I am ever there.

The catch is, you take the same people mimicing my above statement, or saying similar...and then put them in the homeowners position? That "Right of self defense" comes right back, and that team of armored invaders? Suddenly there's a lot of people wanting to protect their homes and families at the point of a gunbarrel, particularly when the good guys appear to be clothed quite similar to the bad guys. This is not wrong or abnormal thinking either,particularly when literally everything is riding on the next few seconds of their life.

Brushfire wrote:If they did, they would should be angry at the cost of militarizing them.

Which is fine, and a point I agree with. Not only is there the cost of all that gear and weapons training, when SWAT is used you're deploying twenty or more men to a location, that if the arrest and search was made by regular policeman you'd likely have no more than three or four guys. The cost in labour for this militarised raids is immense.

As you can see, I'm not disagreeing on the point that SWAT is a huge drain on resources and unecessary in many cases, I was just pointing out that biccat's argument that SWAT is overused because otherwise all those guys would be doing nothing didn't make a lot of sense.

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.

I think it's become pretty clear that the use of SWAT has steadily increased way beyond it's original, limited uses, and that this is a significant problem. Both in terms of the cost of running large numbers of guys in paramilitary raids, and in people sometimes getting shot for no good reason.

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.

That part of the story isn't a he said, she said part. No-one is suggesting the policeman discharging into the door caused officers to open fire.

Thing is, if cops enter and there's a guy with a gun pointing at them, then the correct response is to open, not to wait until the guy opens fire and just hope he misses.

And the number of bullets don't really indicate anything either. There's a lot of guys with guns, and each of them should be firing controlled rounds until the target is down.

The point in actual dispute, that really matters, is if the police properly identified themselves before entering, according to their warrant.

Oh, and also a greater point about the number of these types of raids making tragic circumstances more likely, but that point holds whether this raid was properly conducted or not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SOFDC wrote: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?!

As I already pointed out, it's preferred to take all member of a suspected drug ring at once, to avoid tipping off the others, who might then go about destroying evidence while the police wait for a perfect time to catch them.

And the police are saying that it was not a 'no knock warrant'. It's the wife of the victim that's claiming they entered without identifying themselves.

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 misread the article, police are stating it was not a no-knock warrant, so any hypothetical that assumes it was no-knock is going to have serious problems.

Again, my only point in commenting on his apparent state of grogginess was that it was a poor defence to explain any theoretical unawareness of police lights and declarations of 'police!'. My point was that if he was so groggy then he would have been in a terrible state to make any judgement about people coming through his door, and should not have been engaging at all.

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're assuming the only way to ensure the safety of your family is to move immediately to the front door for a shoot out. Which a completely ludicrous assumption. If nothing

And again, this just speculating about what might be true if this man was 'groggy', which given the effect of adrenaline in a life and death situation, is a very fanciful speculation in the first place.

halonachos wrote:

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.

Other than most of them having basic first aid training, is their such a thing? I don't recall swat having a combat Medic. The rest didn't address the fact that SWAT has much cooler gear than a patrolmen so I ignored it.

It's not just the wife saying it was a no-knock warrant, there is a testimony from a neighbour (who is a Vietnam veteran) that he did not hear sirens or shouts of police until after he had heard gunfire.

You're assuming the only way to ensure the safety of your family is to move immediately to the front door for a shoot out. Which a completely ludicrous assumption.

In a home invasion? Well, quite frankly, the assertion that you should advance on an unknown number of people with unknown intentions and equipment, without some good reason (IE: The breach is between you and your childs room, for example.) IS ludicrous. It's also a bit more blood hungry than grabbing ones rifle, if possible locking the door, and having whoever you were in bed with call the cops. The latter option seems more sane as well...and likely what the marine was intending to do.

What I said was, if people break down your door, and are advancing to the room you are currently inside...your time and options are rapidly becoming limited. You can fight, or you can not. And either way risks your skin. "GET YER BELT FED AND GIT SUM!" and "Yeaaa...You don't have much in the way of choices anymore." Are not. The same. Thing.

As I already pointed out, it's preferred to take all member of a suspected drug ring at once, to avoid tipping off the others, who might then go about destroying evidence while the police wait for a perfect time to catch them.

You did point that out. It just leaves the fact that their preference places conservation of evidence over the increased risk to human life on all sides.

Thing is, if cops enter and there's a guy with a gun pointing at them, then the correct response is to open, not to wait until the guy opens fire and just hope he misses.

So, let me see if I am following your argument here: If I, as a policeman, enter a room (Say a bedroom, which most only have one way in or out.) and see a man with a rifle pointed in the direction of the door as if expecting death itself to come through it..There should be no "Drop it!" or similar offers for surrender, as one might expect from a policeman rather than a hit squad or military unit, I should simply shoot him. No matter that he may genuinely be expecting someone other than a policeman to be breaking in his door (As I suspect most people would in this circumstance.) or even worse, that he may be innocent, he should simply be shot.

I am hoping that there was more to your line of thinking than was in the above quote. Perhaps "With a gun pointing at them after the officer has been screaming his head off trying to identify himself" might be closer to the truth.

It's the wife of the victim that's claiming they entered without identifying themselves.

As one might expect of a new widow. Or of a witness telling the truth. Take your pick on which you believe more.

Myself, since the mans rifle was still set to "SAFE" and never fired it at the officers, I figure he realized who they were regardless. From what I've gathered from several places on this, the SWAT team continued shooting for 7 seconds. 7 seconds and he doesn't so much as put three pounds of thumb pressure on the safety to flip it to the "FIRE" setting? Doesn't fire a single shot in defense of himself? That to me is not the mark of someone who knew the police were coming and were going to make them pay, that strikes me as someone whose first inkling that it WAS the police was visual ID. Whether it was because the man had a full blown adrenaline rush complete with auditory exclusion (That thing that excited hunters get? The one where they didn't hear the -gunshot-? It drowns out yelling real good too.) or because the police saw the wife freak out and decided to rush through things and did not announce themselves, because the jig is now up? Doesn't matter in the end.

For all we know, both sides could be right. He may very well have aimed his weapon at something, visually IDed it as a no-shoot, and was shot before he could empty his hands. Frankly I think it's quite likely.

In any case, SWAT being used for high-risk search warrants on people who have no history of crime, let alone VIOLENT crime? This does not fly with me. At all. You are absolutely right that SWAT overstepping it's original intent is a problem. It's getting worse over the years. I am hoping that the people who are signing the warrants, giving go-aheads to team deployments, get smacked hard enough to make them think real hard about busting down doors willy-nilly.

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).

"Even a 9mm" shot from a pistol can rather easily exit a house and penetrate a nearby house. An MP5, while using the same cartridge, has a longer barrel increasing muzzle velocity and penetration capabilities. If you think walls built with modern materials (even exterior ones) pose a barrier to even the smallest caliber round, you've watched too much tv. For your perusal:

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot1.htm

SOFDC wrote:In a home invasion? Well, quite frankly, the assertion that you should advance on an unknown number of people with unknown intentions and equipment, without some good reason (IE: The breach is between you and your childs room, for example.) IS ludicrous. It's also a bit more blood hungry than grabbing ones rifle, if possible locking the door, and having whoever you were in bed with call the cops. The latter option seems more sane as well...and likely what the marine was intending to do.

This is entirely speculation on your part.

You did point that out. It just leaves the fact that their preference places conservation of evidence over the increased risk to human life on all sides.

It does increase the risk, true, but there's a clear gain. Whether one is worth the other is a big question, and maybe in the wake of this tragedy it might be reviewed.

So, let me see if I am following your argument here: If I, as a policeman, enter a room (Say a bedroom, which most only have one way in or out.) and see a man with a rifle pointed in the direction of the door as if expecting death itself to come through it..There should be no "Drop it!" or similar offers for surrender, as one might expect from a policeman rather than a hit squad or military unit, I should simply shoot him. No matter that he may genuinely be expecting someone other than a policeman to be breaking in his door (As I suspect most people would in this circumstance.) or even worse, that he may be innocent, he should simply be shot.

If you've identified yourself as police before entering the front door, and see a man there waiting with a gun pointed at you and you believe him likely to open fire, then shooting is the necessary thing.

It'd be nice if it wasn't, but breaching is a highly vulnerable moment.

As one might expect of a new widow. Or of a witness telling the truth. Take your pick on which you believe more.

I don't believe one or the other. What could I base such a belief on other than personal bias?

Instead I figure it's a point of contention, and wait for the courts to try and make some sense of it.

Doesn't matter in the end.

That's true. Whatever happened in this case, the tragedy is done. Whether some officers get fired over it doesn't mean that man is coming back from the dead.

The point is to make sure it is less likely to happen again, and I'm not sure assuming that SWAT fethed up here will help in that aim. It seems likely to me that SWAT acted as they should have, but even when they do ultimately they're guys with automatic weapons kicking down the door, every so often it's going to go wrong and an innocent person is going to get wasted.

What needs to change, as I think most people have rightly pointed out, is the amount of use of SWAT.

For all we know, both sides could be right. He may very well have aimed his weapon at something, visually IDed it as a no-shoot, and was shot before he could empty his hands. Frankly I think it's quite likely.

It does make sense.

In any case, SWAT being used for high-risk search warrants on people who have no history of crime, let alone VIOLENT crime? This does not fly with me. At all. You are absolutely right that SWAT overstepping it's original intent is a problem. It's getting worse over the years. I am hoping that the people who are signing the warrants, giving go-aheads to team deployments, get smacked hard enough to make them think real hard about busting down doors willy-nilly.

Yeah, definitely.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ChrisWWII wrote:It's not just the wife saying it was a no-knock warrant, there is a testimony from a neighbour (who is a Vietnam veteran) that he did not hear sirens or shouts of police until after he had heard gunfire.

Which makes it a point of contention, not a given.

It may be the case that the police went in without giving warning, in breach of their no-knock warrant, in which case I reckon we can sack some policemen, reform the unit and all go to bed feeling that we can avoid this kind of ugly event next time.

But I really doubt it's that simple. It may be part of the ugly truth that even when SWAT does everything the way it should, storming houses is risky and sooner or later an innocent person is going to get killed.

If you've identified yourself as police before entering the front door, and see a man there waiting with a gun pointed at you and you believe him likely to open fire, then shooting is the necessary thing.

Hence the mini-paragraph I wrote after the quoted bit. Never did I say that if you've done all you can to let people know you're the good guys, and you still have guns pointed at you, should you not fire. But that obligation to ID yourself exists. It's extremely important, particularly in situations like this. If the other guy doesn't hear you for whatever reason and is still treating you like a hostile invader...well, one can only do what they must to continue breathing. Not faulting the police for that.

What I WILL fault the police for, assuming that this is how the situation went down: Someone having an ND. Everyone else going to Default - Empty magazine behavior. Outright crooked behavior such as an active coverup (That they kept medical teams away from him while he bled out could easily fit here. So could one guy shooting when he should not and deciding to go for broke and kill the homeowner so that dead men tell no tales would also fit here. "Itchy trigger finger" people go here too.) are things I am trying hard to stay away from talking about.

My two issues provided new information does not come out are at worst training issues that got someone killed. I really wish that helmetcam footage existed. It would clear up quite a bit. If that's not how it went down and the police were 100% as above board as they could be, great! Then it's only the people giving them orders that need to be caned.

This is entirely speculation on your part.

As has been pointed out already, a good part of this thread is speculation. Some educated speculation, some not.

BaronIveagh wrote:

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

There used to be, and it was every bit as idiotic.

To be fair, the "War on Alcohol" didn't come close to what we have now before it was shut down for being too insane and unacceptable.

Karon wrote: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?

Slow down.

I said that pointing a gun at someone is, itself, a threatening act. Blame continues to play no part in what I'm saying.

SOFDC:

Well said.

Monster Rain wrote:

Karon wrote: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?

Slow down.

I said that pointing a gun at someone is, itself, a threatening act. Blame continues to play no part in what I'm saying.

Indeed, and I don't think the man was worried about the potential burglars feelings on being threatened either.

I see the situation like this. SWAT team is deployed to take a house by surprise, therefore, no sirens are going, etc.

The man wakes up, hearing something outside, tells his family to get into the closet.

Rifle in hand, he heads to the front door, rifle at the ready, and crouches down.

SWAT team busts in, the man clearly recognized them as Police as he didn't shoot them, but got a face full of lead because of a trigger-happy cop who shot a bullet into the wall, or possibly he meant to shoot the man, and missed, which caused the entire SWAT team to open fire.

Man dies, no drugs are found in the house, SWAT team is backed up by their superiors.

Karon wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:

Karon wrote: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?

Slow down.

I said that pointing a gun at someone is, itself, a threatening act. Blame continues to play no part in what I'm saying.

Indeed, and I don't think the man was worried about the potential burglars feelings on being threatened either.

I see the situation like this. SWAT team is deployed to take a house by surprise, therefore, no sirens are going, etc.

The man wakes up, hearing something outside, tells his family to get into the closet.

Rifle in hand, he heads to the front door, rifle at the ready, and crouches down.

SWAT team busts in, the man clearly recognized them as Police as he didn't shoot them, but got a face full of lead because of a trigger-happy cop who shot a bullet into the wall, or possibly he meant to shoot the man, and missed, which caused the entire SWAT team to open fire.

Man dies, no drugs are found in the house, SWAT team is backed up by their superiors.

That's how it usually rolls. Sadly, the laws that were meant to protect officers from unreasonable suits in this case also will prevent reasonable ones.

The reason there is a war on drugs and not on alcohol is that we realized a long time ago that scotch (and I guess other types of whiskey) make you a dead hard bastard, whereas most if not all illegal drugs tend to make you pretty much useless. Now, I am of the opinion that since we showed the commies the back of our hand and have no real threats in the world, we can allow people who want to use drugs to do so.

Karon wrote:Indeed, and I don't think the man was worried about the potential burglars feelings on being threatened either.

I wouldn't be either.

This is why if it is proven that the SWAT Team didn't clearly identify themselves I imagine that they will be in seriously deep gak.

Quick, blame the victim!

AvatarForm wrote:Quick, blame the victim!

HE SHOULDN'T HAVE DEFENDED HIMSELF LOOK WHERE THAT GOT HIM

There are 2 possibilities:

A.) The local police decided to kill a man for virtually no reason at all, in the most dramatic, public way human possible, in a way that guarantees litigation at best and prosecution at worse,

or

B.) There was a tragic accident, with possibly some incompetence but likely no malice, and the details of which are overlooked or obscured because sensational stories you can publish now or more valuable the rational, well-researched stories you need a day or two to develop.

Pick whichever seems more likely to you.

Ouze wrote:There are 2 possibilities:

A.) The local police decided to kill a man for virtually no reason at all, in the most dramatic, public way human possible, in a way that guarantees litigation at best and prosecution at worse,

or

B.) There was a tragic accident, with possibly some incompetence but likely no malice, and the details of which are overlooked or obscured because sensational stories you can publish now or more valuable the rational, well-researched stories you need a day or two to develop.

Pick whichever seems more likely to you.

Not really, there are quite a few laws on the books to protect officers from litigation in the pursuance of their duties. Which is why you hear about the city or the department being sued rather then the officer in question personally, on most occasions.

And, I hate to say this, officers in some places have more then once been used as hitmen by the mob.

Lincoln Sternn, you stand here accused of 12 counts of murder in the first degree, 14 counts of armed theft of Federation property, 22 counts of piracy in high space, 18 counts of fraud, 37 counts of rape ... and one moving violation.

Completely off topic, but wasn't that from Heavy Metal?

daedalus wrote:

Lincoln Sternn, you stand here accused of 12 counts of murder in the first degree, 14 counts of armed theft of Federation property, 22 counts of piracy in high space, 18 counts of fraud, 37 counts of rape ... and one moving violation.

Completely off topic, but wasn't that from Heavy Metal?

Yup. And I re-used it, with some alterations, in my Rogue Trader campaign. The party's actions required the numbers to be revised upwards....

BaronIveagh wrote:

Ouze wrote:There are 2 possibilities:

A.) The local police decided to kill a man for virtually no reason at all, in the most dramatic, public way human possible, in a way that guarantees litigation at best and prosecution at worse,

or

B.) There was a tragic accident, with possibly some incompetence but likely no malice, and the details of which are overlooked or obscured because sensational stories you can publish now or more valuable the rational, well-researched stories you need a day or two to develop.

Pick whichever seems more likely to you.

Not really, there are quite a few laws on the books to protect officers from litigation in the pursuance of their duties. Which is why you hear about the city or the department being sued rather then the officer in question personally, on most occasions.

Yes, with the codicil being that protection vanishes if you are committing a crime yourself, under color of law. It's qualified immunity, not unlimited immunity. A police officer could be, and has been, charged with homicide for a line-of-duty shooting.

Ouze wrote:
Yes, with the codicil being that protection vanishes if you are committing a crime yourself, under color of law. It's qualified immunity, not unlimited immunity. A police officer could be, and has been, charged with homicide for a line-of-duty shooting.

Not a very good example considering the outcome of that. Then there's things like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucky_Phillips_manhunt_controversy

The item on wikipedia downplays, slightly, the level of animosity the police generated locally with this one. There's a reason they went on TV and exclaimed that 'they did not want Bucky Phillips made into some sort of folk hero'. In the course of the pursuit, the police successfully broke more laws then the man they were pursuing. Several State officers were actually arrested by their 'colleagues' from the local, sheriff, and Marshall's offices for various infractions and then released without charges.

My personal favorites were the 'got Bucky?' tshirts.

At the risk of necroposting:

http://www.kgun9.com/story/14736691/raw-video-pcsd-helmet-cam-clip-shows-swat-raid-and-firefight?

Well, it appears that the helmetcam footage was not nearly as revealing as I had hoped, though I do have more questions now.

Why are the sirens only on for a few seconds, and people off screen (presumably officers) seem to be trying to get it turned off again?

It occurs to me, why is there no mention of Guerena`s rifle being struck by gunfire? One would think that with 71 rounds being fired, and even assuming tenth of them hitting the target...a rifle held across the chest or a rifle aimed at the shooter would be struck.

On top of it all, I have seen airsofters breach a door better than this group. The kicker is the man who simply stands there in the middle of the funnel instead of getting the hell out of the doorway by going in or out...or even hitting the deck! He just stands there! Then his "buddy" runs up behind him so he CAN'T go backwards, after hes hesitated long enough that going forward is probably not the best of ideas! Friends like this! Jesus!

If this is the average operation for this team, it reeks of a bunch of rednecks with too much look-cool gear.

Why would the SWAT kill him?

biccat wrote:

ChrisWWII wrote:Some more information.
...
While I can understand the police's actions, if you're raiding a house you think might house a violent drug dealer, and you see a guy aiming an assault rifle at you, it makes sense to open fire. However, I'm much more concerned with the apparent statement that there were no announcements.

Exactly. There's a reason why no-knock warrants are extremely rare, the police should identify themselves before they enter for their own safety and the safety of others. I'm generally inclined to give cops the benefit of the doubt, they're professional evidence-gatherers after all, but in this case it looks like someone seriously f'd up in the PD.

If the facts are as the cops say, then taking the guy out was legit.

If the cops never identified themselves before forcing their way in, whoever killed this guy should be sent to prison for at least second degree murder.

Nah, I wouldn't say Murder, but Manslaughter at the very least. It was a pretty stupid thing to go in unannounced, but if I came around the corner and some guy was pointing an AR-15 at me, I would probably shoot him too.

<even in the OT, we let dead threads stay dead>