Posted on 05/17/2007 6:11:09 AM PDT by Cagey
HENDERSONVILLE, NC (AP) - Hendersonville, North Carolina's police chief promises to discipline members of a SWAT team who raided the wrong house with guns drawn.
Chief Donnie Parks says the three officers entered the wrong residence while executing a search warrant. They were responding to complaints of illegal drug sales in the area.
Parks says the police department is obligated to make restitution and is prepared to do so.
The raid occurred around 1:30 Saturday morning. Sandra Braswell says officers threw two smoke grenades into the house while her 16-year-old grandson and several friends were having a party on the back porch.
She says officers got a call after about ten minutes telling them they were supposed to raid the house behind hers.
Braswell and her husband, Dennis, have filed a complaint.
Oops.
—at least they didn’t shoot anybody—
They should own the damn town after this outrage, and whoever led the cops into the wrong house needs to be fired and jailed. Throwing shock grenades into a teenager house party? Nice.
Party crashers.
We'd have... no crime at all!
Ever since the WOD began, our civilian cops have been undergoing MILITARY training. The “authorities” gentle it down with the prefix “Para” but those “dynamic entry” teams would be more at home in Baghdad than Boston. (Well, unless they hit John Kerry’s front door at 3 am, Boston might not be a good example.) Watch “Dallas SWAT” for a dose of how it works.
I have long thought that that sort of activity within the ranks of otherwise “civilian” law enforcement was a push by those with an agenda to bypass posse comitatus for purposes BEYOND the WOD and other currently criminal behavior.
That the mass of that shrinking minority – the American citizen (thank you Mr. Open Borders Bush!) – has NOT objected to this erosion of personal liberty does NOT bode well for the future if freedom here.
I wonder what sort of body count of innocent grandmothers and others it will take before folks begin to grasp that they might be more at risk from the cops than the criminals and bring the situation back under control?
My Uncle Bob (R.I.P.) would be horrified.
UNCLE BOB
My Uncle Bob was a 30 year veteran of a police force in suburban Cleveland. He was best man at my wedding 45 years ago. He served in an era when MOST cops embodied the now frequently hollow motto emblazoned on police units all over this country: “TO PROTECT AND SERVE.”
The last 10 years of his career were spent as the chief Juvenile Detective in his department. When he died, a number of the young men whose lives he had touched years before came forward to tell how his timely and sometimes tough-love intervention turned them around.
I know that many officers STILL try to live that creed today. I also know that there are officers out there who, despite the rulings by the Supremes that they have no obligation to specific, individual citizens (see Warren v. DC for some fascinating and frightening reading on that), would stand between one of us and a bullet – and have.
Having said that, I must also lament that SOME cops are “cowboys.” Too many are simply power driven megalomaniacs who would have dropped on the OTHER side of the law had their lives drifted a degree or two off the course they did take.
I believe this to be especially true of far too many federal law enforcement types who have allowed their egos and hubris to become as bloated as the bureaucratic federal behemoth they serve. (See footnote below). Their mandate is no longer to “…protect and serve” the citizens who pay their salaries: It is to crush any meaningful resistance to a growing body of procedures, regulations and policies – too frequently enforced under severely tortured interpretations of the underlying legislative enactments (if any) – and often put in place by executive fiat. The massively abused SEIZURE statutes – laws the author of which now seeks to RESCIND! — spring to mind.
And one cannot but help to wonder how the clear to anyone with half a brain criminality of the Clintons – and their subsequent avoidance of any penalty – has played into the problem? There now seems to be a bright line between the easy, highly flexible, slap-on-the-wrist law for the rich and powerful and the rigidly enforced law against even the tiniest victimless “crimes” committed by those of us further down the food chain. Does anyone in his right mind believe THAT will NOT engender added disrespect for ALL law?
Could those things be a large part of the problem in some of the highly disturbing – and DEADLY (on BOTH sides) – confrontations we have witnessed over the past decade or so? Gordon Kahl, Ruby Ridge, OK City, Waco, Beck… This list WILL lengthen and we’d all better pray that WE will be spared.
Roman historian Tacitus warned that one could tell the level of corruption in a society by the NUMBER of its laws. Anyone doubt the level of corruption here?
Am I the only one who thinks we’re long overdue a serious review of the NUMBERS of laws under which we are now forced to exist – and which are increasingly used not to assure our safety or well-being, but to COMMAND AND CONTROL us and KEEP US IN LINE.
Only the most tyrannical and power-crazed members of law enforcement could possibly object to that.
The modern counterparts of my uncle would not object.
It is THEY, after all, who are most likely to catch that bullet – probably fired by someone who has symbolically screamed to himself “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANY MORE” — referred to earlier when they sally forth to serve that flimsy warrant or make that bogus arrest.
Dick Bachert (1999) Updated 11/2006
FOOTNOTE:
At a cocktail party back in the late 80’s, I struck up a chat with a fellow — his name was Joe M. — whom I’d met on one or two previous events. After my first encounter, Joe’s neighbor and my boss at the time told me that Joe was an alcoholic who had just retired from 25 years with the IRS. Needless to say, I was guarded in expressing my political views to Joe as the IRS had helped my dad into an early grave in 1977 — at age 59 over an estate matter. Joe was pretty deep into his cups at the function in question and began telling IRS “war stories.” Most had to do with clear cases of criminal conduct by not very nice people. Joe — who was a few years short of 60 — sounded to me like someone who enjoyed helping getting really bad people off the street and I asked why he’d retired early. He told me that what he called “the service” had changed for the worse. Then I asked him about the new people coming in. He shook his head, actually teared up and said that many of them were “really bad.” I pressed. “Really bad” meant incompetent? “No — DANGEROUS,” he responded “they like to hurt people.”
It was then that I think I understood why Joe drank.
Well they have to use the grenades sometime, don’t they.
Just like all the other toys they were given. It’s a government illness, use em or lose em.
Maybe they should report it whenever they invade the right house. Of course, there wouldn’t be much in the news that way.
Incompetent cops raiding the wrong house and causing death and destruction to innocent people is so common these days that one wonders why it's news anymore.
How do these things happen over and over again?........
Some judge should make the person responsible for this SNAFU be the homeowner’s butler for the next three years.
Why yes! It would be far better that the power of the state be allowed to misbehave without any accountability. That way we could have a nice police state.
Great post.
My first thought, too...
You would prefer that every case have to go to trial first?
Nope.
Long ago when I was in high school our history teacher informed us that the USSR and Communist China had the two largest percentages of people in prisons in the world, and that fact was a representation of their corrupt Communist governments. Since then, the United States has earned the dubious distinction of having the most per capita population in prisons, by far. It's apparent that whenever governments force religion to take a back seat, or ban it outright from the public sphere, government corruption and crime increase for two reasons. One, the government needs to take the place of God, Whose laws they suppressed, and two, the people, now looking less to God and more to 'self' for preservation and happiness, become more corrupt and commit more crimes.
When the people, understanding this, begin to tell government that they are elected and appointed to be servants, not masters, and begin to take back their right to look to God in the public as well as in their private lives, America as we once knew it will return in her full power and glory. But until then, look for more and more government corruption, intrusion and oppression.
America didn't become great because we were a bunch of intellectuals, philosophers or scientists. America became great because we based the principles of our government upon the principles of the Christian faith, and because we, as a whole, worshipped God.
“How do these things happen over and over again?........”
Why do the put erasers on the other end of pencils?
Whoops! Sorry about that. I need some adjustment in the reading comprehension section of the old brain. Can I still plead that it is too early in the morning?
Here’s a new policy that may lead to more care:
“You raid the wrong house, even as a subordinate, you’re fired.”
I’m sure they could find something to charge them with even though it was the wrong house. It’d be a shame to gain nothing from the raid.
AMEN, Brother — AMEN!!
Be safe. There are many dangerous people abroad in the land today. And not all of them are with government.
It's still news because it isn't common.
There must not have been a dog in the house. Our SWAT heroes can't get their super secret ninja merit badges until they pop Fido.
This crap must end.
So I can clean electrical contacts and component leads before soldering..........
Not work friendly.
Just wait till they start doing this to evil smokers. Raiding houses, bars, businesses all in the name of your health.
Why are the raiders not in jail? This is a bunch of BS when they said they made a mistake and its ok because we are the law and have the authority to do anything we want without fear of being required to pay the price. The tax payers will pay, if they lose in court (may not lose), and the people who did it will continue on and raid another day.
Excellent post!
People, a mistake was made. It happens now and again. Back off on your conspiracy theories for a minute and see it for what it really is. Get over it!
This is happening quite often. There have been so many other cases of this I have stopped counting.
Post 3: An Epidemic of Isolated Incidents.
Go away troll! Blackbird.
Tell that to the families of the people who have been mistakenly killed in these stupid raids.
The inability to be able to read and go to the correct address is not a simple mistake. These "professionals" are paid to do their job correctly. Obviously they are in the wrong line of work. I don't subscribe to the omelet theory that a few eggs need to be broken.
These guys are trained (and presumed to be able to read, and get the proper address) and are armed with deadly weapons. It’s not a simple mistake. A simple mistake is not getting the right change back at the grocery store.
People don’t end up dead, or family pets dead, or permanently injured by a SWAT team, from a ‘simple mistake’.
If these people thought they were being home invaded and tried to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights they’d have been dead. You hear people busting into your house at 1:30 am and shouting (you may or may not have heard ‘police’ if you were sleeping).
Here's a good way to end it:
When the criminals decide to embarrass and/or put SWAT forces out of commission by sending them on "dynamic entries" into houses rigged with explosives. Bust the door open and KABLAM. All it takes is a "trusted informant" pointing them in the wrong direction towards certain death.
About a dozen of these incidents and watch the paramilitary wannabes behave a LOT more cautiously about no-knock raids.
Brave drug warriors!
/s
To be fair, religious beliefs have fueled the war on drugs which is the cause for so many americans to be imprisoned.
Theocracies have a horrible track record. As bad as communism.
Social-Conservatives have been among the staunchest supporters of the WOD - William Bennett, for example.
Check this piece of work out:
San Francisco Proposes New Gun Control Measures
May 16, 2007
-snip-
"Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn't mean that we're not going to walk into that home and check to see if you're being responsible and safe in the way that you conduct your affairs," District Attorney Kamala Harris said.
There should be a war on drugs, but fighting it with SWAT team storm troopers is like trying to nuke Satan, ---- it 'haint gonna' work. Only when people have a higher purpose in their lives once again, something more valuable to the human soul than how "success" is measured in our culture today, only when a system of morals and values that are higher than human ones returns, and only when an eternal Authority to answer to returns, instead of a SWAT team, will the drug problem be significantly reduced.
In the old Soviet Union, where religion was bannished from the public as in America today, crime, alcholism and drug addiction became rampant, out of control. Before our own socialists and corrupt government began bannishing God from public sight and promoting their philosophy that religion is a danger that needs to kept in quarantine from government, there was no drug problem in America so pervasive that needed a major 'war' against it. The war against God is the primary reason why there's a need for a war against drugs.
When God is bannished by government, soon after hedonism washes over the people, then government needs to take God's place with endless new laws and powers, as we saw in the USSR and today still in China. That's why we read so frequently about "para-military" SWAT teams kicking in doors of peoples' homes accross America, and often times the wrong doors at that. They are hopelessly trying to take the place of God in our culture.
If any brains were left existing in U.S. government and society in general, they'd realize that even if they kicked in every door of every house in America it wouldn't solve the drug problem; it would likely increase it.
"It's still news because it isn't common."
Yep, leave it to the media to only report 'uncommon' stories. You know, 'uncommon', as in a Hollywood actress marrying for the 3rd time, or as 'uncommon' as death in a war zone. Or did you mean as 'uncommon' as Rosie slamming a conservative?
Meanwhile, back to reality. SWAT teams kicking down the wrong door isn't so uncommon today, but it's usually not national news. Living in a large city I read this stuff too often. Sometimes they get the right address but the suspect isn't home and his/her kids get the grenade and the terror. Maybe just a wee little bit better planning might be in order; or maybe even a rethinking of the whole concept.
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