Another day, more overzealous heavily armed cops hurting innocents in the failed war on drugs:
New Hampshire woman was shot and wounded last month when she reached for her infant granddaughter during a DEA raid, her son said.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration executed a search warrant Aug. 27 at the third-floor apartment of Lilian Alonzo as part of an investigation into an oxycodone distribution ring.
Police had confiscated about 1,600 tablets, $58,000 in cash, and an unspecified number of firearms as part of the investigation at other locations in the Manchester area.
Two of Alonzo’s daughters, Johanna Nunez and Jennifer Nunez, were among nine people arrested in those previous raids.
According to an affidavit, Jennifer Nunez told an accomplice June 18 that she stashed her drug proceeds “at mom’s,” and a confidential informant told police he saw $50,000 in cash at Alonzo’s apartment.
Her son told the New Hampshire Union Leader his 10-year-old sister opened the door to Alonzo’s home and federal agents burst into the apartment.
“She went to pick up the baby,” said Daniel Nunez. “They thought she was reaching for something, and they shot her.”
The bullet ripped through her arm and entered her torso, the newspaper reported.
No drugs, weapons, or large amounts of cash were found at Alonzo’s home, Daniel Nunez said.
Three children were present at the time of the shooting in the apartment where Alonzo had lived for about six years – including the 10-year-old girl and a 4-year-old child and 1-year-old baby.
It’s all there- a complete checklist of everything wrong in the war on drugs and modern policing.
Wanna be soldier cops brandishing way too many firearms- check.
Charging into a domicile rather than waiting until the home is empty- check.
Itchy trigger finger- check.
A raid based on a confidential informant making shit up (probably for money or for leniency in their own crimes)- check
Bullshit excuses after the shooting- check.
The only thing missing so far is the cops charging Alonzo with child endangerment. We’ll give it some time.
West of the Cascades
And what struck me first was that this should be one of the better-trained policing forces. If DEA and other federal agencies are doing this on a regular basis, what hope is there that state and local cops can ever be stopped from this sort of terror?
David in NY
Nice little check list, there.
@West of the Cascades: Also, this. But I must say, the cultures of different federal units (even of the same agency) in different parts of the country vary widely. And even in the same area, you get the cautious guys (cf. Louis CK in American Hustle) and the wild ones (the Bradley Cooper character). You do have to admire the way the Secret Service handled the crazy guy at the White House, though.
big ole hound
@David in NY: Yeah, nobody was shredded by Secret Service weapons. Some body is supposed to let loose the dogs though. Maybe they were part of the budget cut. Congress is upset because no one died. Maybe George Zimmerman should apply for an instructor’s position. Rambling, sorry.
Belafon
I think the only thing I would strike from that list is the itchy trigger finger, but that’s a minor thing because all the other stuff set up the condition for worrying that she might be grabbing for a gun.
mai naem mobile
The cop must have noticed melon sized calves on the ten year old girl. Hell, their last name is Nunez after all.
David in NY
Same old story by the way. Cops seem to think they can fire anytime a suspect moves. Amadou Diallo reaches for the ID in his wallet and 41 shots later, he’s very dead. Something is wrong here.
Tommy
Are there not any sane people at the DEA, FBI, or large police forces? Somebody, just anybody that says OK we have to arrest these people. That they have to protect their officers but arrest people in the most least violent manner.
retr2327
While I’m basically horrified at the general aggressive attitude of police and the over-militarization of same, I’d only have put the over-reactive trigger finger on my personal list here. The rest of it seems like more or less standard-issue policing: the daughters were actually involved in drug selling, the police had fair reason to believe proceeds were in the house, etc. I don’t really see waiting until the house is empty as a viable plan, nor do I see a good way around the use of confidential informants (with all their faults). But yes, pulling the trigger on a grandmother who makes an unexpected move is over the top; you’d hope the office would at least wait to see what she was reaching for before firing . . .
CONGRATULATIONS!
Use of informants is a huge problem. But the thing is, with our police these days, every “huge problem” is a drop in a ocean of huge problems. I honestly have no idea how to deal with the cops at this point. I don’t want them to go away and turn this into the libertarian paradise depicted in Mad Max, but I sure as shit am not willing for them to continue as they have been.
Tommy
@David in NY: I am not an expert on police policy but I thought (1) you shot for center mass (the chest) and not what happened with Michael Brown. (2) You don’t discharge your firearm when you don’t need to.
In the Diallo case. Or Brown. Or the person shot just a town over a few days later the police just seemed to unload their entire gun into people. I thought the use of force was to stop a threat. Isn’t one or two bullets enough?
burnspbesq
@West of the Cascades:
I don’t suppose you’ve got any actual data to back up that assumption.
Cole:
Bullshit. Do you even bother to read the things you copy and paste? Or do you not understand the significance of the fact that the agents were executing a search warrant? Or are you just willfully ignorant of the meaning of “probable cause?”
kc
Note that these are federal agents, not local cops.
Amir Khalid
There seems to be a crying need for the DoJ to step in and investigate police practices around the US, with a view to instituting safeguards against, among other things, over-aggressive tactics, excessive use of force and failure to respect people’s civil rights.
Tommy
@burnspbesq: I have never had a search warrant served on me but I like to think if it wasn’t for using a handgun and I had no history of using a gun against somebody else this level of force would not be used.
Mike in NC
It’s just a matter of time before we see a story about cops driving their military surplus armored car straight through somebody’s front door, with the 20mm cannon blazing away. Family of six shot dead while police were answering a barking dog complaint.
Roger Moore
@Tommy:
It might well be, but it seems that American police are generally not well trained in that area. It sounds as if they have a tendency to just rapid fire through their whole magazine rather than slowing down to aim carefully and observe the effect of their previous shot.
Pen
@burnspbesq: so you’re say I couldn’t, every week, pull up a new news article about a new hyper aggressive police drug raid where someone (other than the police or agents) was injured or shot needlessly? Funny, and here I thought you worked in the legal system.
Tommy
@Roger Moore: And that is a huge problem isn’t it? My brother married into this family. One of the family members is one of the top shots with a rifle in the nation. 16 now. I like the guy a lot because he is kind of a black sheep. Having been maybe not the most popular person in the family I think I can relate to the guy. So I talk to him. Ask questions. I am not a gun owner but would think it would take a lot of training and then future practice to be good with a gun. He spends hours and hours working each week on a range. How does a police officer do that?
lol
@burnspbesq:
Yes, probable cause that appears to be entirely based on a dealer looking for leniency.
Rafer Janders
@retr2327:
Why not?
Or, you know, simply walking up to the door, ringing the bell, and saying “it’s the police, we have a warrant, please open up.” Why wouldn’t that work?
It’s not like the movies, you know. There aren’t usually gangs of well-armed thugs with automatic weapons and “Born to Lose” tattoos on their backs who are itching to get into a gunfight with the cops. Most of the time you can just…knock.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Tommy: There was an incident in Florida back in 1986 involving two felons and eight FBI agents. The felons were former military. No drugs involved. One took six rounds, the other 12, before dying, killing two of the agents in the process. The surviving agents were all seriously injured save one. This lead cops around the country to two unfortunate conclusions:
1. 9mm rounds weren’t big enough for a one-shot stop.
2. If you wanted to live, better empty the magazine.
Ever since then, cops have taken these findings as gospel, and the results are very obvious.
C.V. Danes
Well, at least they didn’t toss a flash grenade at the little girl…
Rafer Janders
@Roger Moore:
By contrast, this is how its done in countries that have professional police forces:
German police officers fired a total of 85 bullets in 2011, 49 of which were warning shots, the German publication Der Spiegel reported. Officers fired 36 times at people, killing six and injuring 15. This is a slight decline from 2010, when seven people were killed and 17 injured. Ninety-six shots were fired in 2010. Meanwhile, in the United States, The Atlantic reported that in April, 84 shots were fired at one murder suspect in Harlem, and another 90 at an unarmed man in Los Angeles. “Our police officers are no thugs in uniform,” Lorenz Caffier, interior minister of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, said at a press conference Tuesday.
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/11/11662345-german-police-fired-just-85-bullets-total-in-2011
skerry
Not a police-involved shooting, but 3 dead (including gunman) at UPS facility near Birmingham, Alabama today.
Tommy
@Rafer Janders:
I almost wrote that. Just ring the door bell. I have had the police come to my house once for something I didn’t do. They just knocked on the front door and when I opened it said they wanted to talk to me. I was like fine. Now I guess I knew I didn’t break the law. It was an accused hit and run a day after the fact. The police talked to me. I showed them my car where there was no damage. Went to the police station and wrote out a report.
Maybe you do more for a search warrant for drugs. But not so sure.
jonas
@Rafer Janders:
I would guess that politely knocking gives suspects time to dispose of incriminating evidence, yelling “just a sec, I’m in the shower,” as they dump all the dope down the toilet.
Rafer Janders
@burnspbesq:
Ah, once again this hysterical over-reaction. Let me explain slowly, so’s you can understand:
1. Sometimes, confidential informatants make things up. Simply put, they lie. The cops then tell that same lie to the judge, who rubber-stamps a search warrant. That’s your “probable cause” right there.
2. Now that they’ve got the search warrant, the cops have two options: they can (a) walk up to the house, knock on the door, enter politely without drawn guns, and search, or (b) dress up in fancy-dress combat gear, put on helmets, burst into the house with guns drawn and fingers on the trigger,and generally play-act a ten-year old boy’s fantasy of cop life. Guess which one they choose?
Rafer Janders
@jonas:
It’s usually not possible to do that, despite what we see on TV. They were also supposedly looking for cash and weapons, and again, you can’t really flush those down the toilet.
And even if you enter quickly, there’s usually no need to enter with guns drawn and fingers on the triggger. They knew they were searching the apartment of a grandmother with little children in the house, not the Pablo Escobar compound.
Calouste
@Rafer Janders: With the emphasis on professional police forces. From what I have seen, I have no reason to believe that the police in the United States is significantly fitter than the general population, i.e. 3/4 of them are overweight or obese. And if you’re too fat to move, reaching for your gun is a far more attractive option than getting into a potential physical alteration. In at least some European police forces, fitness training is part of the job.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Tommy: Sadly, you’d be wrong. Weed or kid pr0n, to think of two non-violent offenses off the top of my head, will earn you the full treatment by the local SWAT team.
David in NY
@burnspbesq: Odd, how even with probable cause, officers frequently enter places or arrest people who are not actually involved in crime. It’s not certain, it’s only “probable,” which as our expert must know, doesn’t even mean “more likely than not.” So entering with itchy trigger fingers based only on “probable cause” is a recipe for hurting innocent people, which, as you seem to be forgetting, is what happened here.
And stop being so goddamned snotty.
retr2327
@Tommy: Yes, I think you can safely assume that police treat searching a suspected drug house for evidence differently than they treat coming to check on a hit and run . . . . A bit less likelihood that you’re going to reach for a gun in reaction, for one.
And since Jonas has already answered Rafer’s comment, I’ll let that one go.
As for the comment that shouldn’t one or two shots be enough, I’d note that police in this case at least did limit themselves to two shots, so I suppose we could chalk that up to the better training received by the4 feds; no doubt the locals would have shot everyone in sight.
But on a more serious note, it seems like there are two different issues here: 1) increasing departures from what the U.S. recognizes as “acceptable” police practices (e.g., breaking down the wrong door, and shooting innocents inside); and 2) whether those practices should be deemed acceptable, as exemplified by the German statistics on shots fired.
They are both serious issues, but raise very different questions. The New Hampshire incident, aside from a — perhaps — overly quick reaction, seems pretty much par for the course as far as “accepted” U.S. police procedure. Much of what’s in the news right now (such as the Ferguson riot suppression techniques, or the Walmart shooting) is clearly not.
David in NY
@jonas: Federal officers are required to knock and announce their presence before breaking into a house (unless the warrant excuses them of that obligation).
Roger Moore
@jonas:
Or, if they are armed, to get in position and fire first. I assume that’s the real worry and the reason for most no-knock raids. That’s especially true because, as Rafer Janders points out, flushing evidence down the toilet is only going to work in a small minority of cases, but a shootout is a risk any time guns are involved.
Tommy
@Calouste: I like the police in my town. I think they act differently then police I’ve read about. They are people I trust. I know their names because they often are bored I guess and at the local 7/11 type store and I introduce myself. I’ve not timed them in the mile but they are all really fit looking. Folks that if they told me to do this or that because I was breaking the law I don’t think I’d pick a fight, and I am a pretty fit male.
skerry
@Rafer Janders: They might have rung the bell.
The little girl was an obvious threat. She was probably brown.
Schlemazel
True or not (and given the country I live in I tend to lean to believing it myself) LEOs think everyone is strapped and more likely with something particularly nasty. This is not an excuse to forgive them but a suggestion you try to view the assault from their POV. Granny could easily had a TEK9 with cop-killer ammo. The cop (or anyone really) is always going to think to protect themselves and their team before collateral damage enters their mind.
Now there are a lot of things they could have done before going in hot like that. Did they stake the place out? Did they know who was in there & where they would most likely be? Could they have executed the search while people were out of the house? They had options. But the sad fact is most Americans have no problem with what happened. They want the bad guys & the drugs removed & don’t see these sorts of raids as having any chance of affecting them personally so its just a oops in the drug war.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mike in NC: Already done.
Marc
And seizing her house through asset forfeiture.
Botsplainer
The effects of Citizens United on hyperdrive:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/marriott-fires-florida-dem-after-learning-shes-running-against-company-backed-goper/comments/#disqus
Marriott employee engages in the process to run for a county commission seat in Osceola county, Florida. Trouble is, Marriott has spurted some cash at her opponent.
They fired her.
Schlemazel
@Rafer Janders:
Burns lives to gainsay anything JC posts. He goes out of his way to build strawmen or misconstrue statements or to intentionally conflate posts with irrelevant data in order to refute it. Given my reading of his posts its the ONLY thing he does here. Perhaps he really is a lawyer & gets bored sitting around the office waiting to hear the ambulance go by & this is his attempt to stay sharp. But if he really is a lawyer & he pulled this BS in court I’d believe he would get eaten alive by opposing counsel and/or the judge.
Schlemazel
@Botsplainer:
Well of course they fired her! She obviously didn’t know her place and needed to be brought down a peg. She now has free time to campaign though so they should have waited until after the election.
I’m trying to picture why the good brothers at MArriott would be so threatened by one county commissioner.
Roger Moore
@Schlemazel:
But not to back up his criticism with evidence.
Tommy
@Marc: I am going to say something more honest than maybe I should in a public space. I stopped doing drugs (pot mostly, but some mushrooms) years ago because I was scared the government might come take away my things. The pot thing, I used to buy small amounts. Then I started making money I bought larger amounts. I was worried they’d think I was dealing. Take my car or house. I think our drug laws are bizarre and wrong. But I have to think the forfeiture of assets has to be the top why to deal with drugs.
cckids
@retr2327:
This. I mean, the officer was obviously not that far from her (in the same room), and the body motions involved in reaching for a baby are pretty different from going for a gun.
scav
@cckids: loaded diaper. danger of. clearly.
Botsplainer
@Schlemazel:
Zoning, utilities, road construction and redesign, gray water handling and processing expansions.
This can be valuable not only for constructing new facilities, but also for blocking competitors, and makes Citizens United far more destructive on a local level, particularly in a place like Florida because of the leverage of piddling amounts of money in a local race.
Feeling even worse about Citizens United yet?
skerry
OT: President Obama to speak at UN Climate Summit at 12:50
livestream
Trollhattan
@big ole hound:
Better would be George Zimmerman jumping the WH fence (I know, I know) and making a run for the front door while POTUS is in residence. Put it on pay-per-view.
skerry
In Florida, this happened
I have a teenage nephew who is deaf. I worry about him all the time. He’s not driving yet, but it won’t be long.
Paul in KY
@David in NY: The cops are weenies. They won’t (don’t want to) wait that extra 1/2 second to determine what it is. There have been officers shot who maybe should have fired sooner (but that is hindsight). IMO, part of the job is ensuring you don’t shoot an unarmed person (even if that means you are less likely to get the drop on someone who is pulling a gun out).
gvg
I think we have read so much about really bad policing that we are overreacting to this. It would seem likely to me before the search turned up nothing, that the grandma was involved since her 2 daughters were with physical evidence. That is a pretty profitable illegal business there and people have shot other people including cops over such matters. I haven’t got much sympathy for an oxycontin ring. It’s not like MJ. If the grandma had been involved, then I would consider her as putting those kids at risk actually. Not so much for the warrent raid, though that is something, but dealing with other criminals with kids around is not ok in my view. It appears grandma is innocent so far but before hand I don’t see how the police could know. It’s not good that she was shot, but this is not the kind of thing I am upset about.
You do realize that although we should probably legalize marijuana, most other drugs are too dangerous medically to do that? Most of these recreational drugs have such risky side effects that they will rightly never get FDA approval. I don’t mean that everybody has side effects. When you read the labels of legal drugs it goes into scarey warnings about rare 1 in a million side effects like death from heart attacks etc. Many medical drugs don’t get approved or get pulled when they turn out to kill what we think are too high a part of a %. Letting random non medically trained people self medicate on all the recreational drugs out there is just not going to happen. Liability and lawsuits mean docs aren’t going to touch prescribing recreational stuff. So really these street created drugs are just not going to be legal. Oxycontin is a real medical drug with real uses but a high risk of abuse. It’s another problem.
Some drugs, specifically marijuana just aren’t the danger they were hyped and need to be legalized. Others need to remain illegal but with getting caught not leading to jail but counseling or treatment as appropriate. Many many variables here that I can’t even count. The war on drugs mentality needs to be stopped cold. Confiscation of property before conviction needs to be ended. I have always viewed that as actually illegal and unconstitutional but the public opinion was so against seeing that that there was no hope of getting that acknowledged by the courts. More treatment needs to be available including underlying causes. Incentives for police to make themselves look good by lots of confiscation of lots of bulky MJ needs to be corrected. There are a lot of more dangerous drugs to worry about and the total problem is just so overhyped. Not to mention the racial effect-using drug “wars” as proxy war on minorities.
The public wanted this drug war. they aren’t really over it yet. The cops have mostly been doing what was wanted. I don’t think we can improve things with out a lot of detailed planning about what ending the drug wars really entails. I guess first step is talking a lot about the over hype of the “danger” and getting specific about which drugs do what. then there is the fact that having drug dealing of any type in your vicinity is dangerous. Sellers can be dangerous, other criminals can be dangerous and cops can be dangerous…..it’s not entirely a drug problem, its an illegal profit problem. Of course the manufacture can also be physically dangerous to those nearby.
kindness
It was the baby that was armed and dangerous. Everyone knows baby’s are always packing a load.
NorthLeft12
@Tommy: Uhh, why would anyone pick a fight with a cop?
That is really not a fight that you will ever win, even if you “win” it.
Do most Americans think like this? Sizing up their local police force and thinking….yeah, I can take that guy or gal. Sheeeeesh.
Cacti
Okay, I’m loathe to find myself speaking up for the foot soldiers in the drug war…
But reaching for anything while the cops are executing a search warrant, without first explaining yourself is a terrible idea. I’m sure she was probably just acting instinctively.
Tragic.
Tommy
@skerry: I used to live on Capital Hill. Gallaudet University was a few blocks way. A hearing impaired college. At Red River Grill (not sure that bar is still there) on Tuesday Gallaudet students would go. Walking into a huge bar and not hearing a voice was strange. People talking with their hands. I went there often because I felt it was a nice experience. That notebook I carried with me I gave over to other people so we could communicate.
Trollhattan
@gvg:
Are you fucking kidding me? Shorter you: Why have courts? If somebody did something wronig then it seems reasonable everybody related to them and acquainted with them has benefited, so let’s fucking shoot them.
catclub
@skerry:
How can you drive if you are deaf? Is that legal? Aren’t there laws about wearing headphones while driving?
Dave
@Paul in KY: @Paul in KY: I agree with this. Part of taking the job is accepting that there is risk involved. I get it I’ve been under fire quite a bit but it’s really not that dangerous and you protect innocents if you aren’t willing to accept heightened immediate risk to do that then frankly you shouldn’t be doing the job. I get it I’ve seen some of the training using one incident in fifty years where an officer was killed by a 90+ man to somehow justify being paranoid about the elderly is ludicrous but that what was being preached. It’s heightened fear and aggression and poor decision making follows fear.
Paul in KY
@Rafer Janders: I think they would say that they are afraid of the ‘perps’ flushing evidence down the commode.
skerry
@catclub: In most states, deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals are allowed to possess a non-commercial driver’s license. I say “most” because I just don’t know all state laws. I do know that in my state and in his, he qualifies to take the driver’s test.
Rafer Janders
@Roger Moore:
Well, that’s a pretext reason. That’s the lie we tell ourselves. But in most cases, this isn’t a real danger. Most criminals aren’t all that interested in dying in gunfights with the cops, despite what we see on TV.
Or, in other words, according to research by the criminologist Peter Kraska, there were about 3,000 no-knock raids in 1980, and 50,000 by 2005, a percetage increase of 1,566.7%. Has the US gotten 1,566.7% more violent over those years? I’d say no, and yet our police are treating it as if it has.
Trollhattan
@catclub:
Yes, the deaf may drive, at least they can in California. The blind, not so much (although, never presume that Buick driver can see).
Rafer Janders
@Cacti:
Except it’s not a terrible idea in Germany, or the UK, or Canada, or Australia, etc. etc. In most other countries the police, even when executing search warrants, manage not to be trigger-happy paranoids.
Mike J
@Rafer Janders:
The beautiful thing is it doesn’t matter what the stats say. More officer deaths means that obviously things are more dangerous and tougher tactics are needed. Fewer officer deaths proves that tougher tactics have worked and need to continue. There is literally nothing you can say that will convince cops that shooting first and asking questions later isn’t the best plan.
For the record, 206 killed in 1980, 100 in 2013. http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.html
qwerty42
They didn’t shoot a dog? Are we sure this was really the DEA?
John Cole +0
Fer fuck’s sake, why not just wait until they go outside? Or knock on the fucking door.
skerry
Breaking: Judge sentences conservative author Dinesh D’Souza to 8 months in community confinement center for campaign finance violation
Woodrowfan
it was not just a jailhouse-snitch, the daughter was caught with pills and said she hid them at her Mom’s. that does not change the rest of the facts though.
FormerSwingVoter
Until police start being the victims of vigilante justice when these things happen, nothing will ever change. Ever.
Police respect violence, and nothing else. The reason conservative protests aren’t broken up by police while liberal protests are is that they show up armed and we don’t. The reason they shoot unarmed people is that they are completely safe from repurcussions afterwards. This is not hard.
Rafer Janders
@John Cole +0:
Because they might come out with guns blazing, John! WITH GUNS BLAZING!!!!!
jl
Not sure what to say. Maybe, thank goodness they did not bring the tank.
Rafer Janders
@John Cole +0:
Not as much for the cops that way, though, is it? Why let two guys in poorly-ftting sports coats do something like serve a warrant when ten ‘roided up meatheads in body armor are perfectly capable of doing the same thing?
Mike J
@John Cole +0:
Cops in North Dakota did that with two guys who had already pulled a gun on a cop. You wet your pants because the cops used a droooooooooone to watch and see when they left the house.
Schlemazel
@Botsplainer:
I could not feel worse about Shitezens United if I tried.
The question though really boiled down to why worry about 1 commish? There must a several others & they only need to own the majority.
Schlemazel
@Tommy:
I dated a deaf girl for a short time a couple of hundred years ago. I learned ASL well enough that she could tolerate my using it with her. I regret not keeping in practice, it occurred to me way too late I should have taught my kids when they were little. They might have thought it was great fun to hold ‘secret’ conversations, it would have kept me in practice and it is never a bad thing to be able to communicate in more than one language.
Roger Moore
@FormerSwingVoter:
No. If police start being victims of vigilante justice for this kind of thing, matters will rapidly get worse, especially for the vigilantes. What’s needed to make things better is for police to be convicted by the ordinary criminal justice system for this kind of thing. I realize that seems a lot less likely, but it would actually improve matters rather than making them worse.
Paul in KY
@Botsplainer: You think they would like to have an actual employee on that board. Guess they feel she is too honest.
scav
As a grace-note to the professionalism and dedication to the law of (some) cops, there’s this from Seattle: Prosecutor To Drop All Seattle Marijuana Tickets
Ain’t the law till the bad boy in blue sez so, so there y’all! They got this guy temporarily reassigned though, so, hell if I know. Maybe they are scared of city prosecutors all in all. A crack in the blue line or just a left coast thing?
Kropadope
Now I’m being marked as spam. Remarkable.Save me from FYWP.
Paul in KY
@NorthLeft12: Generally, you don’t want to bring a fist to a gun fight.
Paul in KY
@Dave: E-2s in the military have much more fire control than a local cop does. The E-2 is paid about 1/4 of what they make.
Villago Delenda Est
@CONGRATULATIONS!: The problem with “confidential informants” is basically that the untrustworthy are being trusted, and their “information” is being acted on with alacrity.
Also, the impulse to “do something” about “drugs” is so overwhelming, in part because of the fact that arrests and the property seizures that follow are a cash cow for law enforcement. The incentive system is whack. It distorts the mission. Couple this with the “thin blue line” mentality, which results in massive ass covering every time there is a fuckup (and the “confidential informants” increase the odds of a fuckup greatly) and you’ve got all the ingredients for what we see now…a terrorism force with the color of law behind it.
Trollhattan
@skerry:
Community confinement? What, he has to sit in an Olive Garden?
Damn, he needed prison.
Paul in KY
@Rafer Janders: A lot of cops don’t want to test those odds (small as they may be). All they have to do is ‘fear for my life’ and they are home free (in about 95% of cases).
FormerSwingVoter
@Roger Moore:
This is 100% accurate. I also see no possible way that this happens at any point in my life.
Villago Delenda Est
@Trollhattan: He might prefer prison.
Cacti
@Rafer Janders:
In Germany, UK, Canada, Australia, etc., there aren’t an average of 90 guns per 100 citizens.
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
Which is because that E-2 has actually been trained to have fire control. It’s not something that happens by accident. If the police were trained to make every round count, there would be many fewer cases of them shooting through whole magazines.
RAught
@Woodrowfan: Actually, it was just a jailhouse snitch. Supposedly the daughter told an accomplice that she hid her drug proceeds, that’s money not drugs, at her mom’s house. There is no reason to believe the accomplice, who is presumably being charged and looking for a lighter plea by “cooperating”.
skerry
@Trollhattan: My sentiments.
Guess that it means some kind of halfway house. Also read that he has 5 years probation.
He got off way too easy.
Schlemazel
Exactly my earlier point. The NRA has created a perfect storm you need guns because everyone has guns, everyone has guns because you need guns. Its worse for the cops because they have to assume an even higher percentage of the people they deal with not only have them but are more willing to use them. As with the NRA they can always point to serious anecdotes to “prove” their belief is justified.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: Second this. I don’t want a gang war with police being on one side. There will be no winners in that battle. We could also improve hiring practices. maybe increase pay so we get some higher quality candidates.
Schlemazel
@Roger Moore:
From my time as a firefighter I learned a couple of things about cops.
The ones I worked with were trained to fire multiple shots. They understood it was not always possible to hit with every round & that a single round was not going to stop the bad guy from returning fire. The conclusion was that if you felt you needed to shoot the target you needed to make sure you hit him & probably more than once.
The other thing I got was that cops divide the world into 3 groups, crooks, sheep and cops. Everyone fell into one of those three and the default for all non-cops was crook, or at least a liar (since sheep are as likely to lie as a crook in their mind). It is a sad environment & it was depressing to see that even the ones I thought of as nice guys still handled people using this concept. Part of it is the culture of hanging out with cops & part of it comes from being lied to a billion times by crooks and sheep I guess.
jl
@burnspbesq:
Praise the jot and the tittle
However so brittle
And based on so little.
We need our jot-and-tittle men, they come in handy to justify all sorts of unfortunate things that happen to other people.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: Good points, Roger. I was more talking about controlling the urge not to fire & only firing under a very specific set of circumstances. Once again, due to training & to specific orders & oversight from above.
I had some awkward wording in my post.
Rafer Janders
To be fair, it’s very hard to tell the difference between a baby and a weapon.
Rafer Janders
@Schlemazel:
Now let’s go back to those German police stats I cited above:
German police officers fired a total of 85 bullets in 2011, 49 of which were warning shots, the German publication Der Spiegel reported. Officers fired 36 times at people, killing six and injuring 15.
Note that: though they fired 85 bullets total in one year, most of those were warning shots. Only 36 bullets were actually fired at people, and 21 separate people were hit by those 36 bullets. It’s a remarkable rate of accuracy and really shows up American cops’ “spray and pray” fire indiscipline.
David in NY
@skerry: I thought D’Souza would, and should, get jail, though, as a defense lawyer I tend to question the use of imprisonment to punish people when there is a very low likelihood they will commit further crimes. I was persuaded in part by the government’s submission indicating that it was common to give up to two years’ imprisonment for violation of this statute (though I didn’t check to see if those cases were comparable). And by the fact that D’Souza so totally lacked remorse.
On the other hand, what I hear from clients is that the “community correction” centers are no picnic. Many of them hate them worse than the prison they came from. They are often privately-run, ill-controlled, and arbitrary in their treatment of people. On the third hand, a guy like D’Souza is likely to sail through because he’ll appeal to the staff (unless his true personality shows and he tries to get special favors, pull rank, or the like).
David in NY
@Rafer Janders:
This seems to me to be the most telling observation.
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
To be absolutely fair to the police, it makes sense for them to get less training on that kind of thing. Soldiers spend a lot more of their time training and a lot less of it doing than police do, and a soldier’s training is much more heavily centered on weapons and rules of engagement than a police officer’s. That said, if we’re going to send our police out there heavily armed, we owe it to ourselves to make sure that they receive adequate ongoing training to make sure they’re using their weapons appropriately. That goes double for police organizations like SWAT teams that are especially likely to use their weapons.
gvg
@Trollhattan: 2 daughters in the same family involved (physical evidence from what I read) would suggest maybe not for certain. Another snitch saying daughter hid money there. I would say that constitutes reason that she MIGHT be involved. That is a reason for a search. Not a reason to do away with courts, a reason to investigate. A reason to be suspicious does not equal certainty.
Investigators can’t read minds or souls. They have to go out and check out leads. They don’t know ahead of time what they will actually find.
Don’t read things into what I wrote that I didn’t. Warrants involve reason to suspect……they don’t get reserved for just certainty. I think the police had reason to suspect. That is all.
Some families are all involved, some have a few bad sheep. Some otherwise good would cover up for family.
Another Holocene Human
@West of the Cascades:
Hahaha, why would they be better trained when they face less consequences for fucking up?
Even if they went through training once it’s not reinforced by practice because, again, the agents and their supervisors never face the kind of heat local cops face for these kinds of fuck-ups.
I deal with public transit bus operators. They’ve all gone through DOT inspection training and refreshers. But basically only the ones who had experience driving commercial for private industry actually take that seriously because they know what it’s like to get pulled over by staties. Transit bus operators only get pulled over for moving violations, usually. And the cops will go ahead and wait to talk to their supervisor. Also, it’s the mechanics, not the drivers, who get in trouble when a bus leaves the yard without adequate diesel or fluids, or other defects unless it’s stupid obvious shit like a headlight or has something to do with ADA which IS on drivers by law and only to a lesser degree on the agency or the mechanics.
To the degree that local police forces have to face public pressure (and obviously in many communities, like Ferguson, this fails), they are going to inhibit their behavior and act more thoughtfully and cautiously than a national force that answers to DOJ, IOW a bunch of fucking prosecutors.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: Given the finality of shooting a person, I would wish they had about the same level of training. Also, the ‘Command Emphasis’ portion of this cannot be underestimated.
If your leaders & people who can fire you want this discipline, they will get it. If they don’t really care…
Villago Delenda Est
@Rafer Janders: Weaponized babies are one of the most used tools in the drug dealer’s arsenal.
Or so a “confidential informant” has told me.
Another Holocene Human
@burnspbesq: You’re executing a search warrant on a residence with an abuela and three small children inside. Why not just knock on the door and hold up the goods and then do your crap after you turn the residents out onto the curb?
Like the fucking cops did when one of my bros was accused of threatening to bomb his school. They turned our house upside down looking for the weapons.
(In funny cop stories they took the computer but it was an old Mac and they couldn’t figure out how to turn it on, never mind search the HD, AND they totally missed my brother’s bottle rockets in the garage, not that he ever took them to school, dad used to drive him to Millenium Park in Boston, no it’s not like the one in Chicago, it’s actually a capped dump, trufax, but it had a big open grassy field area (over the dump) and they’d shoot them off there.)
Oh wait … we’re white. (And Anglo. And had an Irish surname in a place with heavily (white, anglo) Catholic cops.)
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: I found out this is a first for Florida. Apparently in the past the peasants already knew not to run against their bosses. Interesting times.
Grumpy Code Monkey
And this is why the DEA went in hot. Having already found firearms and large wads of cash in other raids, they’re not going to just ring the bell and wait; that would be stupid and dangerous. Cops and federal agents have been shot in these kinds of situations, enough to where they aren’t going to take any chances.
Having said all that, I’m absolutely on board with better trigger discipline, please. It’s a miracle the baby wasn’t shot.
Another Holocene Human
@Schlemazel: And sometimes when you’re really dumb, you think you’re being lied to when you’re not.
ETA: think ICP’s Mysteries or your average wingnut relating to science news: “Fuck you books, I don’t need your tricks!”
Many departments selectively hire the dumbest people that they can get away with. And by ‘dumb’ of course I mean IQ which is kind of tied into verbal skills, you know the skillset that detectives need (but who needs detectives, just let the “animals” kill each other, they’re happy that way, amirite? spend the money on beat cops, narcs, and more ammo — think this is old thinking, just look at Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago and weep). We know their emotional intelligence is severely lacking already.
Another Holocene Human
@David in NY: Ah, so it relies D’Souza knowing he has to bribe the right people and in the right way, might be tough for an arrogant and cheap bastitch like himself. Just copping an arrogant attitude is not going to cut it. Lol.
Another Holocene Human
@gvg: Unless she has the cash to hire some really good lawyers all her ‘defending’ of family members will come to naught, so why the paranoia?
Dave
@Paul in KY: I know I’m an E-6 if I can be in daily firefights and still show greater discipline and a bunch of 19-20 year old Cav Troopers in the 82nd can then police damned well can learn to!
Dave
@Paul in KY: Absolutely the difference is astounding, Fire discipline is a hard sell when you are under it regularly but if leaders consistently enforce it well it happens. The problem is to many of the police are convinced that they are under unusual risk and that any perp is not really human. You go down that road you end up shooting a woman who reaches for her grandchild out of instinct. It’s not acceptable and not forgivable to me.
Rafer Janders
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Well, thank god nothing stupid and dangerous happened.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Rafer Janders:
Which is why I also said better trigger discipline, please, and that it’s a miracle the baby wasn’t shot. If you are going to go in hot, you had damned well better not have an itchy trigger finger at the same time.
I’m not excusing the shooting at all; I’m only saying I understood why they didn’t just ring the doorbell and wait.
Trollhattan
@gvg:
If by “Don’t read things into what I wrote that I didn’t” you actually mean “Don’t quote me and then disagree with what I wrote.” then yeah, I must have misunderstood when you wrote these word things.
About which there is not one “likely” thing. Somebody needs to kick the judge who signed the warrant in the balls/ovaries (unless the warrant contained lies, which I’m sure never happens)..
David in NY
@Another Holocene Human: I don’t think I’d say “bribe” even. Just be willing to be respectful (may require eating shit) and don’t make waves. I see it’s 8 months — that’s not nothing, and it should test D’Souza’s self-control.
Calouste
@Cacti:
Germany and Canada have about 30 firearms per 100 residents (as do France, Austria, Norway and Sweden). Not US levels obviously, but clearly non-negligible. The UK has about 6, Australia about 15.
MattR
@Schlemazel: There are quite a few people who promote teaching your baby sign language. The theory is that infants understand some desires (ie. being hungry, wanting their favorite blanket/toy) before they have the ability to vocalize them. So teaching them some basic signs allows them to communicate with their parents at an earlier age (and therefore reduces the screaming and crying associated with an infnat that is unhappy for an unknown reason)
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Trollhattan:
From the quoted article:
The affadavit is why the warrant got signed. We can argue over whether the affadavit should have been trusted, but the presence of it was enough to convince the judge to sign.
Ned Ludd
@Rafer Janders: Hey, kudos to German cops for showing restraint and all, but this “warning shot” business is bullshit. Warning shots don’t just evaporate into the ether– they continue on their trajectory until they hit something. You’d hope that that something is inanimate, like the bare ground, but who knows?
MattR
@Ned Ludd:
You mean like a nearby soccer field where it strikes a player in the head. Craziest part of that story is that the player, the goalie, had no idea he was shot and finished the match thinking his headache was the result of banging it into the goalpost.
Ruckus
@Ned Ludd:
They fired what 85 shots and about half of them were warning shots? And you are worried about where the 40-50 warning shots went? In one incident in NY they fired 90 shots. How many times did they hit what they aimed at? Where did all those missed shots go?
So, warning shots may not be the best idea, but seeing as how all the cops in Germany fired fewer shots in an entire year than one incident in NY, I’d like my chances as a bystander with those stats.
Rafer Janders
@Ruckus:
Well, in this incident in NY, two cops managed to hit nine — yes, nine — bystanders while they were shooting one suspect. Which is nine more bystanders than were hit by German police in an entire year.
New York (CNN) — On a busy Friday morning in Manhattan, nine pedestrians suffered bullet or fragment wounds after police unleashed a hail of gunfire at a man wielding a .45 caliber pistol who had just killed a former co-worker. The officers unloaded 16 rounds in the shadow of the Empire State Building at a disgruntled former apparel designer, killing him after he engaged in a gunbattle with police, authorities said.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/25/justice/new-york-empire-state-shooting/
Paul in KY
@Dave: Glad to hear this from an NCO.