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The problem is, the cops are wrong too often and too many times a innocent is MURDERED by the cops. Maybe there was someone selling drugs there at one time, how long ago ? a month, a year ? how many times have the cops raided a house because a druggie points to a house and says that one. If cops bought drugs there, then they should have gone in within minutes, not later.
In the Tucson example, they shot the homeowner 22 times, then lied and said he had fired at them, yet the facts showed he had never fired and his rifle had the safety engaged, on top of it, after they shot him, they let him bleed to death in his hallway and would not allow medical aid to enter for a hour. oh, and the cops fired 77 shots, the video showed a group of keystone cops with one reaching over the top of the other cops to fire his pistol without being able to see or aim where he was firing.
So we need to have people fire at police first? Are you saying it's okay to point a gun at LEO and not expect to be fired upon? If you pack deadly force you damn well better expect it in return. Not everything was perfect in this case, but he pointed a gun at officers, so you better expect to be fired upon.
So we need to have people fire at police first? Are you saying it's okay to point a gun at LEO and not expect to be fired upon? If you pack deadly force you damn well better expect it in return. Not everything was perfect in this case, but he pointed a gun at officers, so you better expect to be fired upon.
Better dead/injured cop gestapo thugs than innocent people being killed. I have a very low opinion on law enforcement, most of them are wannabe thugs looking for a reason to abuse their powers.
Case in point: Last year I was driving home from a friends house at 2 AM. A cop pulled me over and said I was swerving, I was being nice the whole time but he immediately asked in an angry tone "How much have you been drinking?" Even though I had not one drink at all. He then told me to get out of my car and without my permission his officer buddy started searching my car and he started SCREAMING in my face "What have you had to drink?" when I said again I had not had anything to drink he yelled RIGHT IN MY FACE "STOP LYING TO ME!!!" I said fine, give me a breathlyzer which he did, and of course I had 0.0 BAC. Then after the other cop got done searching my car he finally let me go without so much as an apology.
I am a 5'4 43 year old woman for christs sake!
Last edited by PeaceAndLove42; 06-01-2014 at 11:21 PM..
The point was your claim collateral damage is unacceptable when LEO's are at fault, but we as a society say it's acceptable by criminals? Do you not see a double standard here?
No. You're responding to my post. I was only talking about law enforcement, since that is the topic of the thread. I'm making no statement on the other subject.
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Bad choices, but not responsible for taking their children into a home of a know felon? Sorry, I will never agree. No knock is a tool used to make sure evidence is not flushed. Meth is a very bad drug and as long as it's illegal we need to enforce our laws. If busting this guy takes drugs away from someone who never does it again I would say it's worth it. We sensationalize a mistake without comprehending the global ideal.
Obviously the parents are responsible for taking their children into a home of a know felon. Does that mean they have any blame for the injured baby? Little or no.
We could better enforce the laws by regular home inspections by on whoever the police deem suspicious. But it would be a horrible idea I don't see how the no-knock SWAT team raids are worth it, they may be worse than the crimes themselves. No clue how they're part of a global ideal.
So we need to have people fire at police first? Are you saying it's okay to point a gun at LEO and not expect to be fired upon? If you pack deadly force you damn well better expect it in return. Not everything was perfect in this case, but he pointed a gun at officers, so you better expect to be fired upon.
He didn't know they were police officers. This is why unannounced SWAT team raids are a bad idea.
He didn't know they were police officers. This is why unannounced SWAT team raids are a bad idea.
Yeah, I guess 20 guys outside your house dressed like SWAT might be hard to recognize? Really! That was the excuse the lawyer used to get rich off taxpayer dollars, and people bought into the sensationalism.
Would you want a guy next door to you whacked out on meth and illegal firearms? Justification just seems silly to me. I'm all for rights and freedoms, and my right to live in an area free from criminals, so if a no knock warrant is required to bust this guy then so be it. Collateral damage should be just as acceptable for LEO's as it is for criminals. To afford criminals greater rights than people swore to protect and serve is insane.
Would you want a guy next door to you whacked out on meth and illegal firearms? Justification just seems silly to me. I'm all for rights and freedoms, and my right to live in an area free from criminals, so if a no knock warrant is required to bust this guy then so be it. Collateral damage should be just as acceptable for LEO's as it is for criminals. To afford criminals greater rights than people swore to protect and serve is insane.
Might be preferable to having a SWAT team barge into my house by mistake. How is this just criminal rights? From a link posted by another poster:
<snip> Collateral damage should be just as acceptable for LEO's as it is for criminals. To afford criminals greater rights than people swore to protect and serve is insane.
You keep saying this, as though it's acceptable to be killed by anyone. No one thinks it's acceptable to be killed by a criminal, and no one should think it's acceptable for the innocent to be maimed/killed by LEO, either.
The situation is tragic, sympathy goes out to all involved and the innocent baby. But a lot of the reactions on here are short sighted.
who on here would want to knock on that garage door and say' police, please come to the door' - knowing the guy has sold full auto weapons and is a meth dealer... you go do that, and when you don't come home for dinner, people will say you were dumb, should have done a no knock warrant, we're all experts , we've got people on here saying they should be fired, I guess because the news story fills them in to such a degree they must understand all the details, bc the news is always very accurate and complete.
So SWAT goes and tosses a flashbang into an area the guy used to operate out of, the house probably is not a multi family dwelling and there's probably no permit for that at city hall, but there is a family of 5 and a baby crammed in there...
SO it's the officers fault >? Sounds like it's the criminal's fault for doing business in a spot a family moves into later. You think there's no one in that entire property that didnt know the guy was doing drug sales and that he was a criminal?
lets blame the cops and use this as another chance to decry the 'militarization' of cops, even though even on this very forum you have people literally saying- hey if the cops come to your house, fortify it and use armor piercing rounds to get them... and that's also exactly what happened to Randy Simmons, SWAT LAPD, and how he died...and it's not even encompassing Cartel agents, hardened gang members, extreme sovereign citizens and others who will shoot at cops, all of who are a reality now.
tragic situation, but sometimes bad things happen to innocent people because bad people take advantage of people, like here, using a normal family's home to conduct sales. BLame the criminal not cops.
Here's the thing. Why do the choices have to be: 'either the police knock on the garage door of a known stash house not knowing that 5 heavily armed dealers are waiting for him' OR 'the SWAT team serves a 'No Knock Warrant' with the prospect of innocent people getting hurt'? What about better surveillance and gaining intelligence? If incarcerating these dealers is so important that they have to blindly throw flash bangs into people's houses, why can't they employ better surveillance strategies that would enable them to catch the actual criminals walking in or out of these houses btw I don't have the answer, I'm just posing the question]? Surely if this house was such a hotspot where deals were known to routinely happen there'd be some point during a given day in which the suspect they were actually trying to arrest would be entering or leaving the property. Heck, the guy that they were looking for in the OP's post wasn't even there at the time they tried to enter. Seems to me that would be a lot safer for all involved than blindly blasting your way through doors.
Of course nobody wants to see an uptick in drug activity in the neighborhoods that they live in. My issue is that by the time these No Knock Warrants are put through, the drug activity in the area has become so rampant and out in the open that they could've rounded up the targetted suspects long before the use of flash bang grenades and other such military tactics. Another thing is that many times they are relying on CI's that are basically criminals themselves. The information is bound to be outdated or missing some bits and pieces of important details [i.e. there may be children in the house]. I wouldn't trust these dudes to wash my car, but law enforcement will use this spotty info to bust someone's door down.
This is part of the reason why you hear more people warming up to the idea that some of these recreational drugs should made legal. I'm not totally sold on the idea myself. But the theory is that the war on drugs is pretty much a fight that is causing more collateral damage and ruined lives than the actual drugs the law is trying to stop people from getting their hands on. Any way you want to look at it, it's obvious that the war on drugs isn't actually working as far as keeping the drugs out of the hands of the consumers. I mean there are high school kids who can get their hands on these drugs at the snap of a finger. Granted, these last few points aren't directly tied to law enforcement per se, but their use of increasingly lethal tactics to fight the failing war on drugs is part of the sentiment.
Like I said, I don't necessarily feel this way but it's becoming increasingly hard to argue with the theory that legalization can do something that law enforcement can't seem to do...and that's take the drugs and profit away from the black market. There's going to eventually come a time where a different approach is going to be necessary. As law enforcement increases the use of their militarized tactics, it only serves to drive the criminals to become more innovative and take more risk. As the criminals take on more risk, it results in driving up the price for their products. So here's the question: If the profit margin for trafficking these illicit drugs continue to increase, do you think (a)this will shrink the black market thereby stemming the flow drugs in this country...or...do you think (b)that this will only serve to entice more criminals to try their hand at making fast money? Past history has shown that (b) is the answer which means that unless something changes, law enforcement will respond with even more force that will inevitably spill over into affecting the daily lives of innocent people [i.e. illegal searches, police intimidation, flash bangs thrown into houses, etc...]. When does the cycle stop?
It's called "collateral damage." As tragic as this incident is, it was executed at a known drug house where undercover officers had previously made buys and automatic weapons were known to be present.
The blame for this incident should not fall on the SWAT team and drug enforcement officers, but on the perps who put that child in harms way in the first place.
Two wrongs don't make a right. The drug dealer is wrong for dealing drugs. The SWAT officers are wrong for hurting an innocent toddler. The toddler is totally innocent. I have no sympathy for drug dealers. However for the cops, they deserve whatever psychological hell that will haunt them for the rest of their lives for hurting an innocent child. Sometimes there are no winners.
You keep saying this, as though it's acceptable to be killed by anyone. No one thinks it's acceptable to be killed by a criminal, and no one should think it's acceptable for the innocent to be maimed/killed by LEO, either.
The high rate of mass killings without any action speak otherwise. Our actions prove we have an acceptable level of collateral damage. While murder is illegal we do have sanctioned executions? Also, our high homicide rate compared with other industrialized nations without any action is even a louder voice that says we have an acceptable level. We speak loudly about these issues, but our actions allow a complete different result.
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