Another damn police shooting

[Hamstray]

Maybe, just maybe, people should just obey the orders of the goddamn police and not do something that makes it look like they're waiting in ambush for the police with a weapon.

Or since this is Utah (no weapon registration) maybe he should have just acquired an assault rifle, that'd actually have augmented his chance of survival. He'd also have gotten away with gunning them down because of them not actually having a search warrant with them.
Now the root of the problem might actually be not having gun registration and allowing civilians to have assault weapons in the first place (so the police don't know what they are up against) but try imposing more restrictive gun laws and the people will complain, but how can you blame them when things like this happen?

[weemadando]

...especially when the standard for opening fire is "well it looked like he might have had a weapon and was within eyesight of me"?

The guy has a weapon raised and is clearly in a position where he's trying to conceal himself either to evade police or ambush them.

The police fucked up a lot of stuff on this raid, and the officer coming out after the fact stating that he didn't feel threatened is an indictment of events. But the fact remains that on hearing police raiding his property his first response was not

a: immediately throw yourself on the ground out of the possibility it might be the police
Or
c: freeze in place and turn to face the source of the noise out of confusion.

It wasn't even

b: turn and attack

Unless he was standing in a hallway with a golfclub when the raid happened, then he established himself in this position with intent to do ... something. Even when it was completely obvious that it was goddamn SWAT.

If I'm woken in the middle of the night by my door being kicked in, you can bet your arse that the first thing I'm doing is moving to protect my family. But unlike some paranoid loons (or internet tough guys) when I hear someone shouting "POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT!" or similar, my reaction isn't going to be: "IT MUST BE A PLOY BY CRIMINALS! CASTLE DOCTRINE! CASTLE DOCTRINE!" Instead it's likely a more profanity filled version of: "well this is probably some kind of mistake, which we can all sort out later." And anyhow - it's not like taking a swing at a cop is going to help me out in either case.

But hey, I guess that makes me some kind of soft liberal pinko.

[MKSheppard]

If I'm woken in the middle of the night by my door being kicked in, you can bet your arse that the first thing I'm doing is moving to protect my family. But unlike some paranoid loons (or internet tough guys) when I hear someone shouting "POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT!" or similar, my reaction isn't going to be: "IT MUST BE A PLOY BY CRIMINALS! CASTLE DOCTRINE! CASTLE DOCTRINE!"

Considering I can't even make out speech without seeing someone's lips -- all I'm going to hear is a bunch of unintelligible shouting.

[Hamstray]

If I'm woken in the middle of the night by my door being kicked in, you can bet your arse that the first thing I'm doing is moving to protect my family. But unlike some paranoid loons (or internet tough guys) when I hear someone shouting "POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT!" or similar, my reaction isn't going to be: "IT MUST BE A PLOY BY CRIMINALS! CASTLE DOCTRINE! CASTLE DOCTRINE!" Instead it's likely a more profanity filled version of: "well this is probably some kind of mistake, which we can all sort out later." And anyhow - it's not like taking a swing at a cop is going to help me out in either case.

Then obviously he mustn't have heard them shouting "POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT!" clear enough. Otherwise what was he thinking trying to go up against the police with a golf club?

[weemadando]

If I'm woken in the middle of the night by my door being kicked in, you can bet your arse that the first thing I'm doing is moving to protect my family. But unlike some paranoid loons (or internet tough guys) when I hear someone shouting "POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT!" or similar, my reaction isn't going to be: "IT MUST BE A PLOY BY CRIMINALS! CASTLE DOCTRINE! CASTLE DOCTRINE!"

Considering I can't even make out speech without seeing someone's lips -- all I'm going to hear is a bunch of unintelligible shouting.

Indeed, but your case can be described as uncommon - and also you don't really need to see lips to establish that it's a fucking group of SWAT officers in your living room and not two guys dressed like hamburglar.

[MKSheppard]

Indeed, but your case can be described as uncommon - and also you don't really need to see lips to establish that it's a fucking group of SWAT officers in your living room and not two guys dressed like hamburglar.

Wrong. There's an increasing rise of counterfeit cops -- there was recently a case in the DC area where some grot actually acquired an actual police cruiser and used it to shake down people on the road with fake tickets -- the officer in question who the cruiser belonged to actually believed the other guy was a cop in his jurisdiction.

And because my brother is training to become a guard, he gets a lot of police/SWAT uniform outfitting store literature in the mail -- I could for a few hundred or so, put together a fake uniform using the actual supplier(s) that police departments use.

[MKSheppard]

And holy shit, here's another idea to reduce the risk to cops in warrants against high risk suspects prone to violence:

1.) Surround the house with police cruisers with their lights off.
2.) Send a little robot to the front door and have it knock on the door with a copy of the warrant taped to the knocker.
3.) Before you knock at the front door, turn on the blue and reds.

Guy hears knocking, sees a line of red and blues flashing all around his house, looks down, sees a robot with a warrant taped to it.

From there on, if he does anything skeevy, you can then send in the robot to chase him out.

It's not like we see this demonstrated every day in Vietraq or Afghanistan by the US Military's increasing use of UGVs. Hell, give the robot a beanbag gun for added deterrence factor.

Because after all, if your police department can afford a V-150 Commando armored car with drug bust proceedings, you can buy a few cheap robots from the same people who make them for the Army.

Also, since a ten man SWAT team can easily cost $100k a YEAR; I'm not seeing the argument of the poor cash strapped police being unable to buy this technology.

[Uraniun235]

The guy has a weapon raised and is clearly in a position where he's trying to conceal himself either to evade police or ambush them.

You call that concealment? How much more out in the open could he be? And he's wielding a fucking club against a team of heavily armored men equipped with firearms. You really think instantly pulling the trigger is the right response? It's not like "nuhh he could move really fast before they pulled their guns" is relevant because the goddamn guns were already drawn and trained on him before he'd even fucking moved in their direction. They couldn't wait one second to try and talk him down? Oops he wasn't instantly totally submissive, I guess he's a scaaaary lethal threat to everyone's safety.

This isn't about "castle doctrine", this is about policies that result in needless bloodshed. How do you expect this behavior to stop? Do you have some sort of magic plan to get people to alter their behavior on being surprised - yeah, surprised, the whole fucking point of these operations - by a sudden crashing of the door by a bunch of scary dudes? Maybe you've got a PSA campaign in mind? Because if not, then the behavior that has to be altered has to be that of the police.

Military Police are becoming even more militarized than they were in the 1980s when they actually had to deal with Soviet Spetsnaz Saboteurs; due to the huge influx of moron cops who want to be tacticool, since the majority of MP units in the Army are National Guard now, and thus are filled with SWAT team morons.

I recall reading a letter from an American serviceman who noted that he and his comrades in Afghanistan (or was it Iraq... I can't quite remember now) actually had far tighter restrictions on when they were permitted to conduct a violent raid on a home or other building than American police generally are. A raid like that had to get passed up pretty high for approval. Their standard procedure was generally to surround the house at night, wait until dawn, then call out with a bullhorn and demand that the people inside surrender.

And according to this guy, the people they were after usually surrendered without a fight.

Yeah, that's right, we're literally less forgiving of suspected drug dealers on our own soil than of suspected insurgents and terrorists.

[ShadowDragon8685]

...especially when the standard for opening fire is "well it looked like he might have had a weapon and was within eyesight of me"?

The guy has a weapon raised and is clearly in a position where he's trying to conceal himself either to evade police or ambush them.

The police fucked up a lot of stuff on this raid, and the officer coming out after the fact stating that he didn't feel threatened is an indictment of events. But the fact remains that on hearing police raiding his property his first response was not

a: immediately throw yourself on the ground out of the possibility it might be the police
Or
c: freeze in place and turn to face the source of the noise out of confusion.

It wasn't even

b: turn and attack

Unless he was standing in a hallway with a golfclub when the raid happened, then he established himself in this position with intent to do ... something. Even when it was completely obvious that it was goddamn SWAT.

If I'm woken in the middle of the night by my door being kicked in, you can bet your arse that the first thing I'm doing is moving to protect my family. But unlike some paranoid loons (or internet tough guys) when I hear someone shouting "POLICE! SEARCH WARRANT!" or similar, my reaction isn't going to be: "IT MUST BE A PLOY BY CRIMINALS! CASTLE DOCTRINE! CASTLE DOCTRINE!" Instead it's likely a more profanity filled version of: "well this is probably some kind of mistake, which we can all sort out later." And anyhow - it's not like taking a swing at a cop is going to help me out in either case.

But hey, I guess that makes me some kind of soft liberal pinko.

You know what I see when I look at that video again?

I see a bunch of guys approaching a house in the dead of night, armed and armored like they're soldiers. I see them knocking, then a bunch of shouting that, even knowing what they are saying, sounds a lot like "polllaaa! Nuhhhh unnnent! Polllaaa! Nuhhh unnnent!"

And we've got the audio at the camera. They shout their gobbeldygook twice in rapid succession and bust in the door.

Now, you know what I see? A guy, in his underwear, startled in the middle of the night, grabbing a golf club because sports equipment is the de facto home defense tool when a firearm isn't to hand, getting busted in upon and shot dead while he is trying to evaluate the situation.

I'll be frank, there's an old ax sitting behind me at my computer. If I hear loud yelling at the door and the sound of someone trying to break it down, my first instinct is going to be to grab that ax if I'm at my PC.

Here's the sequence of events from the inside of the house.

[*] BANG! BANG!
[*] Unintelligible shouting that could be "Police! Search Warrant! Police! Search Warrant!," or it could be the rallying cries of a bunch of tough guys about to break in my house and rob me blind.
[*] Door smashing in
[*] More shouting, pop out to see what the fuck is going on.
[*] Gunfire, now the guy's dead.

Frankly, from the perspective of the person being raided, with these tactics there's no way to tell a police raid from a home invasion until after the police have had their raid and pacified the place.

It also makes me wonder - do the police really consider the possibility that the meager amount of drugs that could be flushed in the time it takes for them to be quite certain that the occupants know they're the police to be worth the risk of a violent confrontation that ends with someone being shot? If it's such a big deal, why not turn off the water?! If the amount of drugs on-premesis is enough that it can be disposed of with a single flush, they're not worth fucking raiding in the first place.

[Edi]

ShadowDragon has much more of a point than most idiots in this thread even acknowledge. I watched the video and it looks very much like the cops busting down the door, the suspect walking into the hall from the living room only to instantly go down in a hail of bullets. He's not even fully into the hallway and presenting what looks like a side profile to the police when the first shots are heard.

If this were Finland, the cop would go on trial for murder in the second degree and most likely would be convicted.

Since this is the US, I expect that the family's federal lawsuit is going to go nowhere.

[Winston Blake]

I see them knocking, then a bunch of shouting that, even knowing what they are saying, sounds a lot like "polllaaa! Nuhhhh unnnent! Polllaaa! Nuhhh unnnent!"

To me it sounded like 'FOR LEE, SEARCH FOR IT'. Anyone can try listening to it again, imagining those words instead. It only sounds like 'POLICE SEARCH WARRANT' if you already know what it's meant to be, like listening to songs backwards. Further, this is recorded from a microphone right next to the guys shouting. I can't make out voices through one wall at my place - is this kind of warning supposed to alert a whole house?

They really need some kind of giant vehicle-mounted megaphone - a GIGAPHONE, if you will - to get the message across. Slow and clear. Shep's body armoured guy + massed cruiser lights flashing + giant megaphone = damn near foolproof method.

And we've got the audio at the camera. They shout their gobbeldygook twice in rapid succession and bust in the door.

I counted three different voices, all shouting twice. The extra voices actually obscure the first voice and make it sound like a rabble.

As for people saying he couldn't take a swing in a cramped hallway - the doorway is more than big enough, and it leads into an open room. It makes no real difference though.

One thing I didn't see anyone else mention is that, if you watch again closely, he actually must have jumped out from the left, not the right, as his stance would suggest. No shadow crosses into the doorway from the right - that's why he seems to appear out of nowhere. If you actually WANTED to clobber someone by lying in wait, you would prepare to swing around the corner, not jump out like a madman and try to scare them out with an intimidating pose. This is exactly how I'd expect a pissed-off man with a golf club to act if he's expecting punks. Not trying to cleverly ambush a SWAT team.

---

The first article gives me an internal server error (found vid on Youtube). Another article.

Investigators gathered evidence that it was Blair’s roommate, Melanie Chournos, buying and selling meth — a factor in the no-knock search that would precede Blair’s death.

Detectives later saw Blair leaving for short, nighttime trips, which suggested drug trades, they wrote. Two tipsters claimed that they had seen Blair — not just Chournos — handing drugs to customers.

Investigators, however, didn’t report seeing Blair make a transaction.

Two of Blair’s friends claimed they never saw him even use drugs, but others told police he had caved in to his meth addiction.

“He was paranoid,” Candice Coburn — Blair’s on-again, off-again girlfriend — is quoted as saying in a police interview. “His brain was fried. He would punch and yell at invisible people and me.”

On the one hand, this kind of behaviour makes him more dangerous. OTOH, it counters the idea he was lying in wait.

I find it very hard to believe that he was about to attack the police, and although I can understand the officers shooting him because he looks intimidating, these are pretty terrible tactics/procedures to use.

[Kamakazie Sith]

Here's a solution which doesn't require super high level brainpower -- have the lead cop go in with a Level III Ballistic Shield and wearing Level III armor. It's not like he's going to be trying to run a marathon with the gear. Whack the guy into the wall with the shield repeatedly, knocking him unconscious. If the suspect wants to wave a rifle around, then you just need to have the lead cop duck down to open up a line of fire for Guy 2 with a firearm.

Level III ballistic shields are expensive ($5,000 - $9,000) and not as easy to utilize (weight is around 65lbs) which is why they come with wheels. Doesn't mean it couldn't be used in the manner you suggest just that it would come with challenges that need to be addressed.

BTW, yes they could buy one for the SWAT team. However, just so you know there are SWAT teams in Utah that do not have any level III personnel body armor due to budget issues or perhaps poor priorities by the city/PD administration.

That should be within the tactical brainpower of typical Police Departments around the country.

Oh who the hell am I kidding?

Military Police are becoming even more militarized than they were in the 1980s when they actually had to deal with Soviet Spetsnaz Saboteurs; due to the huge influx of moron cops who want to be tacticool, since the majority of MP units in the Army are National Guard now, and thus are filled with SWAT team morons.

The police in this video are not military police but a SWAT team composed of city and county officers/deputies. They handle SWAT operations in Weber County. Ballistic shields are making their way into police departments but there's more to their purchase than "hey this will be useful". In many cases you need approval from the city and before you can get that approval you must justify it and then there needs to be money available.

Also, are you claiming that the majority of cops that joined the national guard are SWAT team members and are morons?

[Kamakazie Sith]

It also makes me wonder - do the police really consider the possibility that the meager amount of drugs that could be flushed in the time it takes for them to be quite certain that the occupants know they're the police to be worth the risk of a violent confrontation that ends with someone being shot? If it's such a big deal, why not turn off the water?! If the amount of drugs on-premesis is enough that it can be disposed of with a single flush, they're not worth fucking raiding in the first place.

I don't know. It's hard to estimate the amount of drugs in a household. Usually operations are conducted to verify that the house is selling drugs, however, it is a lot more difficult to obtain information on the total quantity inside the house even if you have an undercover informant. It's not like they are going to give someone a grand tour "And here is our storage area where we keep approximately 10lbs of heroin."

Basically, if a house is a identified as selling narcotics and a search warrant is authorized the SWAT team usually carries out the protective sweep portion. They're just trying to avoid having a bunch of dead cops if they happen to serve a warrant on a house where someone has actually planned to fight back. My department hits homes all the time which have makeshift traps built into the home. Whether those traps are for police or for intruders is a question that rarely gets answered.

However, regardless of those reasons due care should be exercised to ensure that suspects get their day in court. Did that due care happen here? Given the words of the officer and the video it doesn't appear that way.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah. Basically, while it's all very well and reasonable for SWAT teams to be trying to gain the element of surprise so that criminals can't fort up or destroy masses of evidence in their houses, they do need to at least give the suspect a realistic amount of time to see what is going on, react to the situation, and surrender. That's likely to be as much an issue of how you go about entering the house as it is your rules of when it's OK to shoot.

For example, if you knock on the door, give the suspect ten seconds to open it, then break it down and charge in like assault troops storming a building, there's a hidden problem: what if it took someone more than ten seconds to get to the door? That's hardly unlikely in the middle of the night; at my house it would be a minor miracle if anyone could get to the door late at night within ten seconds after someone started pounding on it.

But in that case, the point man sees someone rushing towards the door (to answer it before the cops break it down); what happens if he decides that this person is charging him, and shoots them? The same goes when the police announce themselves in a garbled, unclear fashion that someone on the other side of the house who just woke up won't understand.

That mental jump from "What? Some loud-ass at the door!" to "Holy crap! Men in my house!" to "Holy crap! Policemen in my house!" takes a certain amount of time. For a commando raid that's fine, because a team of commandoes in a war zone isn't under much obligation to be cautious. Police are held to a higher standard.

[MKSheppard]

Level III ballistic shields are expensive ($5,000 - $9,000) and not as easy to utilize (weight is around 65lbs) which is why they come with wheels.

$5000 actually, and they weigh 41-46 pounds.

Considering that right the fuck now, we have US Army troops walking up and down fucking MOUNTAINS in Afghanistan lugging a basic load of 36+ pounds for their weapon alone (M249 SAW and basic load of ammunition); plus about 16 pounds of body armor, then even more weight in food and water...

...you're telling me a bunch of steroid freaks in SWAT can't walk the 20 meters from the street to the house, and then about a further 20 meters in various search patterns once in the house; wearing or holding the same weight as a US Army Machinegunner as he walks up and down fucking MOUNTAINS in Afghanistan?

However, just so you know there are SWAT teams in Utah that do not have any level III personnel body armor due to budget issues or perhaps poor priorities by the city/PD administration.

Considering that level III plates are about $700-800 bucks and the base armor itself about $2300+ or so...

...plus police departments already spend quite a lot of money on lighter armor for their patrol officers, laptop computers for cruisers, replacement of cruisers themselves....buying a pair of Level III armor and Ballistic Shields is going to cost only $16,000.

Considering that a Dodge Charger Police Sedan costs $29,999 MSRP...no I'm not buying the "poor police!" argument, particularly since in Utah; the police can fund it with seized property sales/auctions.

The police in this video are not military police but a SWAT team composed of city and county officers/deputies.

I think you missed my fucking point.

Over the last decade or two, the quality of MP units in the military has gone severely downhill, because due to the military shifting a lot of support functions from the active duty force onto the National Guard, the majority of MP units are now Guardsmen.

Said Guardsmen are more often than not policemen in civilian life; and they bring over the mindset of their civilian jobs to their duties as MPs.

Also, are you claiming that the majority of cops that joined the national guard are SWAT team members and are morons?

Considering that you'll find a significantly elevated number of roid heads and juicers in SWAT, well, yeah.

[MKSheppard]

Oh, since this is the SWAT shooting thread; here's a recent case in my area which was decided with a $2 million judgement against the police:

LINK

Tl;dr: Fairfax County, VA detective overhears someone betting on a Skins game; proceeds to 'befriend' the guy and then entrap him until the bets he's making on the game are over the limit that Fairfax county considers gambling.

They then send a SWAT team to take the guy down. He gets shot and killed by a cop who accidentally fires his gun.

Cop who misfired gets only three weeks without pay for manslaughter.

[MKSheppard]

Oh, and something like 46% of Fairfax County Warrants are served via SWAT team for added gravy.

[Sea Skimmer]

And holy shit, here's another idea to reduce the risk to cops in warrants against high risk suspects prone to violence:

1.) Surround the house with police cruisers with their lights off.
2.) Send a little robot to the front door and have it knock on the door with a copy of the warrant taped to the knocker.
3.) Before you knock at the front door, turn on the blue and reds.

You missed the DRUG RAID part. The Cops are always desperate the storm the place before the guy inside can flush whatever bullshit amount of nothing he had down the toilet. Combined that we military style training that does NOT even normally include use of flash bangs, we have a big difference in training in the US between proper hostage rescue SWAT teams and the gangs of armed idiots we use for typical drug raids, and people are just going to fucking die. That’s why I completely oppose the war on drugs; this shit is the natural result.

[Darksider]

Considering that you'll find a significantly elevated number of roid heads and juicers in SWAT, well, yeah.

Wait just a goddamn minute. You mean they don't regularly test the individuals who are going into potentially lethal high-risk situations for substances that are known to cause elevated levels of aggression?

[Psychic_Sandwich]

You missed the DRUG RAID part. The Cops are always desperate the storm the place before the guy inside can flush whatever bullshit amount of nothing he had down the toilet. Combined that we military style training that does NOT even normally include use of flash bangs, we have a big difference in training in the US between proper hostage rescue SWAT teams and the gangs of armed idiots we use for typical drug raids, and people are just going to fucking die. That’s why I completely oppose the war on drugs; this shit is the natural result.

If there's such a minute quantity of drugs on the premises that it can be feasibly flushed down the bog if the police took an extra, oh, ten or twenty seconds to actually make themselves understood and let somebody inside answer the door (or, hell, even properly wake up; is being a heavy sleeper a death sentence now?), then they shouldn't be raiding the house in the first place.

[Kamakazie Sith]

You missed the DRUG RAID part. The Cops are always desperate the storm the place before the guy inside can flush whatever bullshit amount of nothing he had down the toilet. Combined that we military style training that does NOT even normally include use of flash bangs, we have a big difference in training in the US between proper hostage rescue SWAT teams and the gangs of armed idiots we use for typical drug raids, and people are just going to fucking die. That’s why I completely oppose the war on drugs; this shit is the natural result.

If there's such a minute quantity of drugs on the premises that it can be feasibly flushed down the bog if the police took an extra, oh, ten or twenty seconds to actually make themselves understood and let somebody inside answer the door (or, hell, even properly wake up; is being a heavy sleeper a death sentence now?), then they shouldn't be raiding the house in the first place.

Usually, all that is established is that drugs are being sold from the house. This is established by watching the house and observing multiple short stay visitors coming daily. In addition, they establish this using drug buy operations for several weeks. However, even if they had a confidential informant on the inside it is highly unlikely the drug dealers are going to give this man a tour of the house and then provide the CI with an inventory of how much drugs they have.

[Kamakazie Sith]

$5000 actually, and they weigh 41-46 pounds.

I've seen different models and they go from 5000 - 9000 and do weigh up to 65lbs. Though to be fair they probably would choose the cheapest model...lowest bidder and all.

Considering that right the fuck now, we have US Army troops walking up and down fucking MOUNTAINS in Afghanistan lugging a basic load of 36+ pounds for their weapon alone (M249 SAW and basic load of ammunition); plus about 16 pounds of body armor, then even more weight in food and water...

During a drug raid the strategy is to get in quickly and obtain control of all property and persons in the room so evidence can't be destroyed. While I think it might still be doable with a Level III ballistic shield it would seriously slow things down.

...you're telling me a bunch of steroid freaks in SWAT can't walk the 20 meters from the street to the house, and then about a further 20 meters in various search patterns once in the house; wearing or holding the same weight as a US Army Machinegunner as he walks up and down fucking MOUNTAINS in Afghanistan?

I didn't say they can't. We ran into this problem in another drug raid thread involving dogs. You need to be quick in order to ensure that you secure the evidence. Hell, even if they threw it out the window that would be enough to bring in a reasonable doubt that the product was theirs.

Considering that level III plates are about $700-800 bucks and the base armor itself about $2300+ or so...

...plus police departments already spend quite a lot of money on lighter armor for their patrol officers, laptop computers for cruisers, replacement of cruisers themselves....buying a pair of Level III armor and Ballistic Shields is going to cost only $16,000.

Considering that a Dodge Charger Police Sedan costs $29,999 MSRP...no I'm not buying the "poor police!" argument, particularly since in Utah; the police can fund it with seized property sales/auctions.

I don't give a fuck whether you buy it or not. I'm telling you that in Utah there are SWAT teams that do not have ANY level III body armor. It's not debatable. It's a fact.

Furthermore, I pointed out that them not having it could be something other than budget issues. Like an administrative issue. There are Captains on my department that feel that patrol shouldn't have rifles in their cars. If one of these Captains becomes chief then it would become a reality.

I think you missed my fucking point.

Over the last decade or two, the quality of MP units in the military has gone severely downhill, because due to the military shifting a lot of support functions from the active duty force onto the National Guard, the majority of MP units are now Guardsmen.

Said Guardsmen are more often than not policemen in civilian life; and they bring over the mindset of their civilian jobs to their duties as MPs.

Oh, so your point is to slander an entire group of people just because you don't like them?

Considering that you'll find a significantly elevated number of roid heads and juicers in SWAT, well, yeah.

I would like to see that number...provide it or concede.

[Kamakazie Sith]

And holy shit, here's another idea to reduce the risk to cops in warrants against high risk suspects prone to violence:

1.) Surround the house with police cruisers with their lights off.
2.) Send a little robot to the front door and have it knock on the door with a copy of the warrant taped to the knocker.
3.) Before you knock at the front door, turn on the blue and reds.

You missed the DRUG RAID part. The Cops are always desperate the storm the place before the guy inside can flush whatever bullshit amount of nothing he had down the toilet. Combined that we military style training that does NOT even normally include use of flash bangs, we have a big difference in training in the US between proper hostage rescue SWAT teams and the gangs of armed idiots we use for typical drug raids, and people are just going to fucking die. That’s why I completely oppose the war on drugs; this shit is the natural result.

They're the same people, Sea Skimmer. The tactics used are just different...

I agree with you on the war on drugs. It's waste of time and not worth the risk posed to people and officers.

[Simon_Jester]

If there's such a minute quantity of drugs on the premises that it can be feasibly flushed down the bog if the police took an extra, oh, ten or twenty seconds to actually make themselves understood and let somebody inside answer the door (or, hell, even properly wake up; is being a heavy sleeper a death sentence now?), then they shouldn't be raiding the house in the first place.

Usually, all that is established is that drugs are being sold from the house. This is established by watching the house and observing multiple short stay visitors coming daily. In addition, they establish this using drug buy operations for several weeks. However, even if they had a confidential informant on the inside it is highly unlikely the drug dealers are going to give this man a tour of the house and then provide the CI with an inventory of how much drugs they have.

Do you have a response to the question of how long it takes people to answer the door when someone bangs on the door at night?

Among other things, if official policy is to storm the house before the occupants can answer the door, you might as well not bother knocking at all, since there's no likelihood of the occupant being able to answer the door, discuss matters with the police peacefully, surrender peacefully, or avoid having his door smashed in.

Even if, as happens once in a while, and will no doubt always happen because people are only human, the SWAT team hit the wrong house.

Now, this strikes me as being at the very least a problem that merits some discussion.

[Gurachn]

This frame is taken just as the first shot is fired.

It doesn't look like a golf club to me.
More like he is holding a gun.
Definitely a threatening move in either case.
Obviously a grainy film frame isn't as clear as the eyes of the on-site officer, but it does happen rather fast.

Much as I hate to say it, from what I can see I can't consider the action entirely unjustified.