This time it's in Lima, Ohio, resulting in the death of a mother of six, and injuring one of the children. They were looking for the mother's boyfriend, who was being investigated for - you guessed it - selling drugs (as opposed to violent crimes like murder, rape or armed robbery), and had reason to believe there were children in the house, but that didn't stop them from shooting the place up.
On the bright side, they did catch the bad guy. The charge - you guessed it again - possession of narcotics.
This was considered a "high risk" warrant, and that makes the use of military-style entry and rules of engagement de rigeur for law enforcement.
Long gone are the days of "Just the facts ma'am" and "Why don't you come down to the station to answer some questions." Nowadays it's more likely to be a guy with a machine gun and a ski mask threatening to blow your fucking head off if you move an inch, or shoot all your fucking kids' heads off if they move an inch, or some other use of four-letter words and the threat of lethal force, that's serving a warrant on you.
This is, after all, the "post-9/11 world," which generally used as an excuse for anything. Sorry to disappoint you Clara, even more so than global warming.
As Balko points out, what's troubling is that the police aren't specifying what happened. Normally, if the suspect or someone else in the home shoots first, presents with a weapon or attacks an officer, and they have to fire in self-defense, they'll immediately say that. The fact that they have instead gone down the "No Comment" road speaks volumes: It's quite likely that the police fired first, and were not doing so to defend against an imminent threat. It's too early to draw conclusions, but this should be enough to give you pause.
I hate to be overly cynical, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they try to cover this up or falsify documents to support their position, like APD did with the Kathryn Johnston case (which I posted on this blog a while back).
You see, this is what happens when the job of policing is transmogrified into a first-person-shoot-em-up game like Quake. Dressing up in paramilitary gear is fun, and those automatic weapons just kick so much ass, don't they? Especially when we disregard the Second Amendment so most civilians (especially those of the law-abiding persuasion) are disarmed. Collateral damage (a euphemism for "killing innocent people") sucks, but hey, it's part of the job.
Now, please don't confuse me for Al Sharpton. I'm as big a supporter of law enforcement as anybody, and appreciate the dangerous, heroic and thankless jobs that our police officers perform every single day. I myself work in EMS, and have worked side by side with police officers, and when I need their assistance on a call, boy am I glad when they show up.
But let's inject some sanity here.
What ever happened to the good old days where, if you were looking for a suspect, particularly if you believed there were children in the house, you'd stake out the residence, and when the guy came outside, you'd nab him as he's getting into his car?
Or, send the "Prize Patrol" to tell him he's won a brand new plasma HDTV, and to show up at _____ to claim his prize. When he does so, make the collar.
The officers in this case were thrust into this by their superiors and were following their orders, and their orders were to conduct a military-style raid.
Well, in military encounters mistakes are made. That is simply the nature of the beast.
Shots are fired by accident. And when one shot is fired, often many more follow in the confused aftermath. Who just shot at who? Is someone shooting at me? Did one of my partners get hit by that shot?
Split-second decisions need to be made. Sometimes those life-or-death snap decisions don't stand up to the cold calculating light of day or the aseptic courtroom analysis of a prosecutor or defense attorney. But that is the nature of split-second decisions.
Sometimes body language, particularly in the heat of combat, is confusing and an act of surrender is interpreted as an act of aggression.
Maybe the occupants don't know that the masked men in head-to-toe black pointing machine guns at them and saying they're going to "blow off your fucking head" are actually police, and act to defend themselves against what they believe to be an imminent threat by armed criminal intruders.
This is why it is key that such military-style encounters be used rarely, if at all, in favor of less aggressive methods that are less likely to turn into bloodbaths, particularly for innocent victims (like the examples I gave above).
And we must wait for the results of the investigation before we place blame on any individual officers. They may have simply had to make the best of a bad situation, one that they were thrust into for reasons beyond their control. Maybe they did have a legitimate reason to shoot the woman.
But excessive use of these methods is, however, is demonstrably a most impeachable strategy.
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