Retired Military Translator's Home Reportedly Raided in DEA Mix-Up

myfoxdetroit.com ^ | July 31, 2011 | myFoxDetroit.com

[Psalm_2]

"As soon as I opened the door, somebody grabbed me and took me outside and put me on the grass," Tossa said. "The first thing I thought was they were terrorists who want to kill me because I served in Iraq."

The DEA agents were executing a search warrant.

“I kept asking, what’s going on?” he said. “And they held my neck to the ground so I can’t talk.”

According to the report, the DEA was executing a search warrant for Tossa’s landlord’s son, who apparently uses Tossa’s one-story house’s address for mailing.

“Before they raid any house, they should have more information,” Tossa said. “Not rumors.”

[Psalm_2]

the America we are living in has become a police state.

[rabscuttle385]

Donut watch ping!

[fini]

How do these guys get search warrants? Though I hate the idea that taxpayers should pay for police mistakes, I do think that unless they get sued, they will continue.

[tpmintx]

the America we are living in has become a police state.

...and the so-called "war on drugs" gives them every opportunity.

[Loyal Sedition]

Pre-signed blank warrants?

I’ve always believed that a warrant is required to clearly state, Who, Why, and Where, and What, also to clearly articulate a REASONABLE suspicion.

Too many reports nowadays clearly fail any reasonable standard for issuing the warrant.
If they really are bad guys, do a little more investigating, maybe arrest them away from home, or are the “Dynamic Entries” just too much fun to miss out on?

[Frank_2001]

Something must have gotten lost in translation;)

[fireman15]

12 years ago our home was raided by the King County SWAT Team. They said it was because a person convicted of having sex with an underage girl had attempted to contact her when he was released. Apparently he had given the authorities the phone number that our house had had several years before we moved in.

I was at work at the time. They were just getting ready to use a battering ram on our front door when my wife was able to hobble down to it. Her leg was in a cast at the time. They held her at gun point while they ran all around the house with their assault rifles out in full swat gear and made a mess. My wife was very worried they were going to shoot our wiener dogs.

I have never understood how they got a search warrant on such skimpy and faulty information. We didn't get any kind of apology.

[brent13a]

I still can’t understand how the sophisticated DEA, ATF, and FBI can still f*ck up a raid.

To many chiefs and hardly no indians. That's how. How many secret appointments to senior positions have there been in the past 10 years we'll never know about?

Secondly, affirmative action based on race, religion, and sexuality and not on intelligence or abilities.

Thirdly, none of the agencies can interact properly or exchange information or rely on each other, etc. There is still no such thing as an inter-agency relationship, that's all bogus.

My point being, how large and how fast has the federal government (employee-wise) grown in the past 10 years and no one is retiring, everyone gets pushed up to senior positions because there is too much money to be made.

[Ken H]

The first thing I thought was they were terrorists who want to kill me because I served in Iraq."

Sorry this happened to you, Mr. Tossa.

You put yourself on the line for our freedom, only to be pissed on by low-life drug warriors.

[brent13a]

12 years ago our home was raided by the King County SWAT Team.....I have never understood how they got a search warrant on such skimpy and faulty information. We didn't get any kind of apology.

As a police officer these stories enrage and sadden me. There is no excuse. The only thing I can say is, that most of the blame for that should be placed on the States Attorney and the investigative officer(s). The SWAT, while somewhat culpable, is in the end just a tool. SWAT is a blunt object that is thrown hard at a paper wall usually.

I personally believe things like SWAT need to be greatly scaled back. And this is coming from a Marine Infantryman who is now a cop. I love guns, I love the job but too much is too much.

Someday, a SWAT or ERT team is going to be blindly sent into the wrong home wherein there is going to be a highly trained person (like a neighboring agency's police officer) and there is going to be a lot of of unnecessary bloodshed on both ends. It hasn't really happened yet, but it's only a matter of time.

[onona]

Problem 1: He Lives in Detroit

Problem 2: He opened the door

[Psalm_2]

"They have all kinds of databanks to go to in order to find out who lives where - electric and gas bills, water bills, trash bills, real estate taxes records, phone bills, etc"

exactly.

any bounty hunter or auto repossessor worth their salt would say the same. yet here a gov.t agency apparently fails at skip tracing. this is very poor investigative work. are they doing this out of imcompetency or to condition the citizenry ?

seems to me its both, & it is rotting our trust in the feds & local leo's.

read another story recently where the FBI made a similar mistake which induced a young child into fearing leo's.

[Terry Mross]

Hey, at least the dog survived. Apparently they were up on their target practice.

[TigersEye]

...the DEA was executing a search warrant for Tossa’s landlord’s son, who apparently uses Tossa’s one-story house’s address for mailing.

Barney Fife could do better pre-op intel than that. Heck! Floyd the barber could do better than that.

[Terry Mross]

Did a little bounty hunting. We’d call the place and ask them if the perp was there. They’d ask “why” and we’d tell them we had a ups package to delivery.

“Yeah, I’m here. What’s in the package?”

“We’re not allow to open the packages. We need an address where we can deliver it and a time you’ll be there to sign.”

“Heck far, I’m home right now.”

“I’ll be right there”. Then we’d go over and arrest the guy.

Another good ruse is tell the neighbors the guy is wanted for second degree murder. They’ll all give up a murderer. Hell, they thought he was just selling dope. He WAS just selling dope.

But feds have to go IN guns blazin’. We hardly ever went in with a gun loaded. When your mark hears the rack of that shotgun he’ll know the wrath of the Lord is near and he will surrender. Of course we knew he wasn’t armed or our guns would be loaded.

I didn’t do this line of work much. I felt like it could get addictive.

[The KG9 Kid]

"Whoops... Sorry, citizen. We thought you were someone else" PING

Click the link to be added to the "Whoops. Sorry, citizen. We thought you were someone else" PING list.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Something could be spelled out better here. If police traced back to a return address put on a piece of mail by the person they intended to find, what tells them the person isn’t holed up there with the tenant? Unless due diligence, of course, finds multiple pointers to the person at some different address, and I would fault police for not exercising that kind of due diligence if such records were within the detectives’ scope. It’s for a reason they’re called detectives. They’re supposed to detect things, not go wild.

[noinfringers2]

What bugs me about these stories is that the guys doing this are supposedly also USA citizens. For the life of me with WWII infantry service(to young and late for battle) I have to wonder where/when does this lopsided aggression get started. Have we as a Nation lost human concept that as individuals we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us or the similar admonition of let your conscience be your guide.

[XHogPilot]

bump