Archive for the 'Police' Category

WFLA:

LAKELAND, FL (WFLA) – A 2-year-old child was burned by a flash-distraction device when Lakeland Police Department SWAT team members executed a search warrant on a home known for continuous drug activity on Thursday.

According to police, members of the SWAT team executed a high-risk search warrant at 1103 West 9th Street.

Once at the home, SWAT officers knocked and verbally announced that they were executing a search warrant, as per protocol.

Officers entered the home and cleared the room, not seeing anyone inside.

The small room was cluttered with clothing and furniture items, including old mattresses leaning against a wall.

With no one in sight, a less lethal distraction device was deployed by an officer.

Officers used a noise-flash diversion product.

As the officer was backing out of the room, a 2-year-old child, who is believed to have been hiding in the mattresses, began walking toward the device as it was activated.

The officer immediately grabbed the child and took him outside to the SWAT team medic.

The child suffered third-degree burns and was taken to Lakeland Regional Health, then Tampa General Hospital.

There is a very small set of circumstances in which I believe that a military raid is warranted.  One such example would be a hostage situation, but even then I prefer to see men employ their wits and negotiate their way to a peaceful resolution.  And any team that ever attempts to do something like this should be a professional team who has trained day and night with the other team members in shoot houses for a couple of years.

My own son told me that he spent so much time with his own unit – living with them, eating with them, shooting with them, room clearing with them – that they didn’t even have to speak to each other and they all knew what the other team members were going to do next.  His NCO told them all if one of the Marines in a fire team gets into some kind of trouble then the whole team had better be in trouble because the fire team had better not be split up.  Ever.  If you’re not trained to that level of proficiency, then you shouldn’t be doing this sort of thing – ever, under any circumstances.

Finally, I am a Christian libertarian.  I don’t believe in a militaristic police state or SWAT raids or the so-called “war on drugs.”  Evidence gathering and taking people into custody isn’t a good enough reason to breach the doors and force your way into property that doesn’t belong to you.  Old fashioned police work with detectives is good enough to gather evidence the classic way and also to ascertain whether children or the person of interest is in the domicile, when they come and go, and when is the best time to effect arrest.

This wasn’t it.  As for the Lakeland police SWAT team, it’s my hope that you see the toddler every day for the rest of your lives in your mind, and in your dark dreams during sleepless nights.  I hope not a day goes by in your miserable lives that you don’t hear the screams of a burning child.

Via reader Ned, Fox31:

DENVER — An FBI agent allegedly dropped his gun at a bar and another patron was shot in the leg early Saturday. Investigators said it appeared to be an accidental shooting.

Denver police said they were called to a report of a shooting at 2201 Lawrence Street at 12:45 a.m.

A woman who said she witnessed and recorded the shooting with her cell phone said it happened at Mile High Spirits Distillery and Tasting Bar.

In the video, a man can be seen doing a back flip, during which a gun falls out of the back of his waistband. The gun appears to fire when the man picks up the weapon.

“It appears an off-duty Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) agent was dancing at a night club when his firearm became dislodged from its waistband holster and fell onto the floor.  When the agent retrieved his handgun an unintended discharge occurred, another patron was struck by a bullet in the lower leg,” a statement from Denver police said.

The woman who recorded the video, who wanted to only be identified as Julie, said she smelled gun powder and saw a person bleeding.

“Everyone was kind of shocked after it happened because [the agent] kind of put his gun back away and then he walked away,” Julie said.

The video is remarkable.

I hate it when that happens to me.  I remember once I was dancing at a bar, all liquored up with a loose, unholstered gun stuck in my drawers, and I was creating a new dance called “Herschel’s Grabastic Getdown.”  Well, as the story goes, I jumped way up in the air to Van Halen’s “Jump,” grabbing my ass on the way down every time.

When I did it the last time I shot some dude.  I say it was the last time because I didn’t dance anymore after that.  I just walked away.

Sadly, the dance never hit it big.

We’ve discussed many times how Warren v. D.C. and Castle Rock v. Gonzalez clearly and in no uncertain terms both find that, excepting some special deal where police agree to provide witness protection, for instance, the police are under absolutely no legal obligation to defend you or to come to your rescue during distress.

David Codrea mentions another recent case bearing on the subject.

In his lawsuit, Robert Sanchez Turner alleged that local and state police commanders, led by then-city Police Chief Al Thomas and then-VSP Superintendent Col. W. Steven Flaherty, violated his and others’ civil rights on Aug. 12 by failing to prevent the violence that day.

Turner alleged that he was the victim of violence that was witnessed by officers who did nothing to stop the fracas that ensued for nearly an hour before authorities declared the event to be an unlawful assembly and ordered everyone in and around Emancipation Park to disperse.

The judge understated the case.  It isn’t just that the duty isn’t clearly established, it just isn’t there except in the imagination of the progressives.

Anyone who still believes that is a fool.

The Courier-Tribune:

An off-duty deputy was bowling when his pistol accidentally discharged, grazing a child with shrapnel on Friday night, the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office said.

The pistol discharged shortly before 8 p.m. at George Pappas’ Victory Lanes on Morlake Drive in Mooresville , according to a sheriff’s office news release. Pappas is a retired Hall of Fame bowler from Charlotte.

The shrapnel grazed the back of a 10-year-old boy, Observer news partner WBTV reported.

The child was not seriously injured and wasn’t taken to a hospital, according to the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office said it will investigate the incident internally, while the Mooresville Police Department determines if any laws were broken.

The deputy has been placed on leave pending the investigations, the sheriff’s office said.

The headline reads “goes off,” while the article says “accidentally discharged.”  Don’t you love how they never say “negligent discharge” when it comes to cops?

But remember boys and girls, only cops can be trusted with firearms.

CNN:

Armed with a federal search warrant, weapons, body armor and flash-bang grenades, DEA agents and members of the Bradley County SWAT team crept up to a house in Cleveland, Tennessee, before dawn Tuesday and then burst inside.

As they swept the entryway, they detonated the grenades and smoke filled the first floor.

Then they opened the basement door and found a man with a gun. They tackled him and told him he was under arrest, wanted for murder.

Except… it was the wrong house and the wrong man.

Spencer Renck says his alarm had just gone off and he was getting up to go to work when he heard the noises upstairs. He grabbed his gun “to protect (his) family from whatever was happening.”

“I thought someone had broke in,” he said in a post on Facebook, recounting the incident. His wife and four children were also in the house.

He went up the basement stairs to see what was going on.

As soon as they open the door I turned around, seen all those guns to pointed at me,” Renck told CNN affiliate WDEF.

That’s when he was tackled, he said, and it took a few minutes before the agents and SWAT team realized they had the wrong address.

“They destroyed my door, door frame, carpet on my stairs blew my ceiling out and burned my living room floor and hallway. All because someone got the wrong house,” Renck wrote on the Facebook post.

He said after they realized their mistake, the agents went to his neighbor’s house.

Renck said that during the raid, one flash-bang grenade went through the open doorway of his young son’s bedroom, and it “blinded and deafened” him.

Now, Renck told WDEF, his son is “worried about how he’s going to sleep at night and he’s wondering if he’s going to have nightmares when he had guns drawn in his room, waking up to a big bang.”

“This operation was a part of a larger ongoing investigation. Unfortunately, this search warrant was initially served on the wrong residence… situations such as these are tragic and DEA takes them very seriously. We intend to look into this matter further and take steps to ensure situations such as this never occur again.”

Hey, I have an idea that will prevent this from ever happening again.  Get rid of your dumb ass SWAT team because it violates the fourth amendment.  How’d I do?

St. Louis American:

Sgt. Heather Taylor, a homicide detective in St. Louis and leader of the city’s police association for black officers, considers herself well-informed on crime-related issues. But she hadn’t heard about House Bill 1936 – the “guns everywhere” bill – which would allow concealed guns into places that are currently designated gun-free zones, including churches, college campuses, bars and government buildings.

“What?!” said Taylor, president of the Ethical Society of Police. “You are talking about introducing guns in places where they shouldn’t be. You will see an increase in gun violence in public places.”

Despite the renewed focus on gun laws around the country, many people have not heard about this bill. Even people who are tracking it don’t understand the extent of the legislation.

The EYE asked the bill’s sponsor state Rep. Jered Taylor (R-Nixa) to explain what changes HB 1936 would bring. He said if the bill passes “law-abiding citizens” would be able to conceal carry with or without a permit into the following 10 locations: churches, amusement parks, stadiums, hospitals, casinos, bars, child care facilities, polling locations, local government buildings and state government buildings. The law also lists private schools. These locations were previously considered gun-free zones for civilian concealed carry.

Individuals would have to have a concealed carry weapons (CCW) permit in order to carry into college campuses and the Capitol, Taylor said. And colleges and other institutions don’t have a choice in the matter. The bill states that state, political subdivisions and public institutions of higher learning cannot impose any policies or contractual requirements that would prohibit employees or students from carrying concealed firearms.

“Again I want to reiterate, the locations that are private property locations would have the ability to choose whether or not to allow guns on their property,” Taylor told The St. Louis American. “If they do not want weapons in their establishment, they would simply post a sign, exactly what all other private property owners have to do under current statute.”

Is it dead?

Speaker of the House Todd Richardson (R-Poplar Bluff) has not yet put the bill on the legislative calendar. With the legislative session ending on Friday, May 18, some believe that the bill is dead. The full House would have to perfect the bill, have a third reading and then take a final vote to pass it. Then it would have to pass in the Senate, which is where similar legislation stalled last year.

“It wouldn’t have enough time to even make it through the House at this point,” said state Rep. Michael Butler (D-St. Louis). “It is important to note that the Speaker of the House has held on to the bill and not put it on the calendar since March 29.”

It’s too bad for Missouri that this won’t pass this year, and maybe not ever.  I was going to make a prediction for the sake of comparison with Sgt. Taylor’s prediction.  She said that “You will see an increase in gun violence in public places.”  She further said that “people pushing legislation to make gun laws even more lax and permissive are people who don’t have black and brown kids, relatives or family or haven’t been affected by gun violence at all.”

I was going to predict that the main increase in violence would have been innocent armed men and women (of all skin colors) shooting back at mainly black and brown kids who were trying to perpetrate violence on innocent folk.  Since statistics and data don’t lie.

The “Ethical Society of Police.”  Now isn’t that a hoot.

News from Florida:

Meanwhile, the Broward Sheriff’s Office has made 47 “red flag” requests and removed guns in 22 cases, including an arsenal from a home in Deerfield Beach.

Hell, the only thing they won’t do is put themselves in danger to stop an active shooter.

Buzzfeed:

The Broward County Sheriff’s deputy who waited outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School as a gunman opened fire on students and teachers, killing 17 people, is being paid more than $8,000 a month from his state pension.

Scot Peterson, who was the school resource officer at the Parkland, Florida, high school, was heavily criticized for taking cover as the massacre unfolded on February, 14. The 55-year-old retired a week after the shooting, explaining that he remained outside school because he didn’t know where the gunfire were coming from.

Radio transmissions from the day of the shooting have since contradicted Peterson’s defense, showing that he not only knew that the shots were coming from inside the freshman building, but that he directed his fellow officers to stay away from that location.

Last month, Peterson received his first monthly pension check of $8,702.35, the Florida Department of Management Services (DMS) confirmed Wednesday morning. That amounts to $104,428.20 annually, which is about $2,550 more than he made during his last year with the department, according to the Sun Sentinel, which first reported his pension payment Tuesday night.

That’s good scratch for doing absolutely nothing, yes?  How long do you reckon states will be able to keep that sort of thing up before going bankrupt?

“To protect and serve.”  Remember boys and girls, only cops can be trusted with guns.

It’s a video and I don’t want to embed it, so go watch.  It’s short.

He shot down the stairway of his home when he thought someone had broken in.  Someone did break in – a SWAT team.  The report doesn’t say why they were there.

He says he stopped shooting when he realized they were police officers.  The good news is that a jury can actually find that a man has a right to defend his home regardless of the identity of the invaders.

The bad news: they did find him guilty of aggravated assault on a police officer.  They can’t just let a man shoot a “hero of the community” and get away with it, can they?

And now for more bad news.  Prosecutors are out there everywhere who want you to lay down and let home invaders ransack your home, rape your women and kill you.  Just in case the home invaders happen to be cops, we need to consider their health and safety above yours.  So, capital murder.

Prosecutors.  I’m beginning to think that what @WRSA told me was true.  The evil starts and ends with prosecutors.

News from Detroit:

FOWLERVILLE, Mich. – A gunshot rang out at Fowlerville High School during a wrestling tournament Saturday.

Police said an off-duty police officer was at the school to watch his son wrestle when his weapon accidentally discharged about 12:40 p.m. The bullet struck the gymnasium floor.

One person was treated for a twisted ankle they suffered while fleeing the scene, police said, but no one was hurt as a result of the shooting.

His weapon accidentally discharged.  It took on a mind of it’s own and decided, without aid or interaction with any human, to discharge a round.

Don’t you just love how the media puts it when it happens to a cop?  It’s always the gun’s fault.  It’s never a negligent discharge.