You're right, let me clarify:

I have no opinion on the Sheriff, there's no way I could know enough details to understand why he did it the way he did it. What I mean by "play with fire, get burned" is that this lady was clearly not stable if she's pulling guns on people on multiple occasions. I can understand not feeling safe, but she pulled a gun in situations where it APPEARS to be entirely uncalled for. A gun isn't a magic wand that gives you power, it's a double edged sword, if you forgive my bad analogy. It's an escalation to a certain point. This lady did not understand that, and unfortunately she got burned rather than being able to learn that lesson and live. That's what you're messing with when you mess with guns. The problem in america isn't guns, it's a lack of respect and understanding of what a gun means.

Yes because all police are honest, especially after butchering an innocent victim.



Crooks and thieves. And while there are good cops out there, they tend to cover for the bad ones which kinda makes them bad cops, right?

How much loss of life will it take? How many tens of millions of dollars of your money will it take before people stop defending this sort of wonton use of excessive force? There is no justification for it at all, and the "can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs" attitude of the police should not be ignored. These people are psychotic and they need to be stopped.

Geez up here its national news when more then 1 person is murderes. Heck its national news when 1 person is mudered.

No one who has a gun pointed at a cop is innocent. Never. You point a gun at a cop. you are taking your life into your own hands.

This is exactly what I said before: You just don't read threads before you post in them.

These SWAT teams aren't turning on the bedroom light buddy. They do not announce themselves as police, it is dark and they are wearing the same equipment you can buy at an army surplus store for a few hundred bucks. The people they attack have absolutely no way of knowing of knowing who is a cop and who isn't. All they know is that somebody is in their home when there shouldn't be. It's called a no-knock warrant and they're being issued more and more every day.

Read > Comprehend > Post.

You're right, man, I totally believe all the families of those killed regarding every single one of those instances. The police are never to be trusted. Can you please scour the internet for some more instances of accidental or unnecessary shootings? Please. We are truly living in an oppressive police state where the police can shoot whoever they want whenever for whatever reason. Sorry kid, the world ain't perfect, and sometimes bad things happen on both ends. Sometimes the police shoot the wrong guy, sometimes they don't shoot the right guy and end up getting shot themselves. I'm not saying they shouldn't be held accountable, but you make it sound as though the police are doing it intentionally.

Hyuk hyuk, 'ma gonna bag me a big 'un thissere.

It's a no-knock warrant. There really isn't a justification for using them other than for letting your cops pretend they're space marines. Bzaap bzaap. Kerpow.

They are legal but they are special kinds of warrants, specifically requested by the police and doled out on a case-by-case basis. The law was written so judges would have to be selective about their use but it rarely works that way in real life. And when it comes back to bite them, the judges are quick to defend the police because they're the ones who are responsible for the mistake too.

And personal responsibility is so passe.

Because most of them don't have anywhere near a large enough lobby group. Marijuana used to be a fairly common indulgence, even enjoyed by a couple of the founding fathers. It's exactly the same thing with tobacco. The key difference is that marijuana is also useful for other things: hemp. Textiles and paper products. The wood pulp, tobacco and cotton lobbies weren't too happy so they set out to get all hemp products banned.

Virtually every narcotic isn't prohibited outright, it's merely a controlled substance. Similar to prohibition, it is possible to get a prescription for things like cocaine but you probably wouldn't get away with it.

The site I quoted cites news articles and other evidence to corroborate the events they reported. If you do not feel my evidence is credible then the onus is on you to discredit it.

Strawman fallacy. This comment isn't worth additional response.

In the American legal system you are innocent until proven guilty. In virtually all of these cases there is absolutely no evidence that would make any rational person think using a paramilitary strike team is warranted. By taking these actions they are placing people who they have a social responsibility to treat as innocent individuals, and they are putting them in immediate and lethal danger. In this manner they are acting as the judge, since there is proof that the evidence they use to get these warrants is often falsified, the jury, since they are the only people to see what evidence of their guilt exists, and the executioner. For obvious reasons.

Secondly, I am not a child.

In essence, yes, that's exactly what you're saying.

They are.

Do you mean to tell me that SWAT teams are not trained adequately enough to understand that breaking into a person's home in the middle of the night might elicit a panicked response from its occupants? That is what you're saying, isn't it?

I fail to see any way that these actions are not premeditated. The police know what will happen. The police have already done it often enough that they know people die when they do this. But they do it anyway. Because they don't care.

They can manufacture phony witness testimonies to get no-knock warrants, they can break into your home, and if you do anything to defend yourself - even shielding your eyes from the glare of the flashbang they launched into your pitch black bedroom - you're in a bodybag.

You are cattle to them.

And your evidence is where?

Ohhh, yeah. Personal opinion -- that's it!

Uh. My personal opinion is that they acted in self defense, or is it my personal opinion that a SWAT team was ordered into her home?

Read the OP.

My use of flowery language does not change the fact that this is what actually happened.

I like how the article misses the point entirely and zeros in on the SWAT team. It's not their fault - when you enter a reported drug dealers home and he/she tries to shoot you with a shot gun, you have no choice. That's was a SWAT raid entails. The problem lies entirely with the idiot who scheduled the raid, based on the meager evidence, in the first place.

So a thug pretending to be an officer breaks into your house, shines a flashlight in your face so you can't see, yells, "Don't move! Police!" and you lie there docile as a lamb while he murders you and your whole family? How are you going to tell the difference?

And why exactly are these necessary?

Uh, the article didn't miss that point. It flat out says that policies aren't going to change, and use of unnecessary force will be used again.

And that's been documented as happening before, too.

Allow me to state my views on each of your articles:

Bellport, NY
You place particular emphasis on the fact that the gun discharged 3 times. They were almost certainly using automatic weapons, so it's not unreasonable that IF that is what happened, 3 bullets would be fired.
Another thing I'm seeing is that it's the word of 2 witnesses vs. the word of any number of police officers, and yet you take the side of the 2 other witnesses automatically.
Also, you make particular note of the fact that he wasn't the target of the raid. How is that relevant?

Travis County, TX
Again the mention of never being suspected of a crime, as if that is relevant, considering the warrent had nothing to do with him.
Looks like maybe that deputy was still jumpy after a friend of his was shot, I don't know how long ago that happened. Regardless, a grand jury declined to indict him. There's the key! Also, the mention of an erroneous raid was also not relevant. Expecting anything to be flawless is stupid, and so is including that in the story.

Modesto, CA
Once again it is mentioned that no drugs or weapons are found in the home, and once again it is totally irrelevant. Is this meant to imply that if there HAD been drugs or weapons it would have been more acceptable that an eleven year old boy was killed? No, of course not. Then why does it matter that there were none? It's just as bad, no better and no worse. Irrelevant. Of course it is really quite silly that an officer had his gun pointed at the boy's head, and doubly so that he let the gun go off. But hey, wait a second, there was a lawsuit! So what is the problem here? They had information which led them to believe that those whose houses they were raiding were armed and dangerous, so they chose to use tactical teams. An officer made a mistake, and was held responsible.

Denver, CO
This one bothers me a bit more, but the same problems are evident. Yet again, it is mentioned that he was not guilty and the raid was based on bad information as though that were relevant. As already explained, it's not. The man had killed another man in self defense before, so it's not hard to believe that he could have a gun and be willing to use it. That's not to say that he was going to in this case, but it is possible, and to believe the word of the family regarding the entry over the police, or the police over the family, is probably a bad idea without other evidence. And again, there was a lawsuit and those responsible seem to have been held accountable. The little mini-stories added on to the end there are without details so to include them as support is silly. Accidents happen, and people should be held accountable.

The baseball players thing disturbs me.

So here's the impression I'm getting from you based on these stories, from the constant mention of guilt or innocence of those who were killed You are against the drug laws. Well guess what? That's not the problem of the police. The police enforce the law, no matter what it is. That's their job. The work with the information they can to enforce the law. Sometimes they make mistakes, and it looks to me like in most of these cases, the law was also applied to the police and those responsible had to deal with it.



Apologies.



The usage of a strike team has nothing to do with guilt or innocence, as I have addressed. It is a precaution. It's not intended as an execution, and isn't unless something goes terribly wrong. To imply that they falsify evidence specifically in order to use a strike team with the intent to kill someone because they have decided on their own that they are guilty is absurd. Half of your stories support that since the person who was, unfortunately, killed was not even the person they were after!

I do not claim that all police are perfect, of course, but all I ask is that they enforce the law to the best of their ability and are held accountable for their actions, no matter what they are. If you have a problem with these stories, your problem seems to be directed more at the law than at its enforcement.



Sorry, I call everyone kid.




I have a hard time believing that the police would bust into a house and not announce themselves as police because it is the best way for them to avoid getting SHOT AT. Just because they do not announce themselves BEFORE they enter does not mean they don't do it at all. As long as the people in the house aren't sitting there with their gun trained on the door ready to shoot whoever walks through, I fail to see the issue. It's not an ideal situation, but it's not an ideal world, either.

And to address the issue of a thug breaking into your house and pretending to be a police officer: Yeah, if he wanted to do that, you'd be a dead person. But there's a million ways to kill someone if you really want to. Say he's on his roof with a rifle and he picks you off as you go to work in the morning. He cuts the brake lines in your car. I'm sorry, but you're not ever going to be 100% safe. Like I said, a gun isn't a magic wand that makes you more powerful than everyone else and safe from everything. NOTHING IS.

You're making things up to support your position. They are not all no knock warrants. They do not all happen at night and they do not always fail to announce themselves. You act as if a no knock warrant means they are sneaking into the house or something. That's not how it works. SWAT teams enter and announce themselves as police then begin giving very specific commands to people to get down on the ground and so on. They do not enter looking to shoot or attack people, as you so eloquently put it.

I said before in this thread that it was tragic that she as killed, but she took that risk when she picked up her gun and decided to point it at the cops. I have no doubt that she was confused by the situation, but people dressed in tactical gear with SMGs are not petty thugs. Frankly, if she had listened to the police, she wouldn't be dead.

There's still the fact that the team was forced to change their initial story when ballistics proved the police fired first, and there was no way for the shooting officer to determine she was about to fire her weapon from his point of view. If they can make up a story about her shooting first, why can't they create other details? Especially once they realized they ****ed up.

How can they tell she was shot before she fired? It wouldn't even have been a second between the first shot and the second. (This is a serious question, I'm not looking to get involved in the discussion)

Estimations of posture in relation to mapped projectile trajectories, and examining blood splattering.

No, seriously. The first thought that came to my mind when I read the story was: "Geez, if that woman hadn't been armed, the entire thing wouldn't have happened."

See, over here when the police run into someone who's armed with a gun, they can be 100% sure that this person has bad intentions, because firearms are illegal.

Over there, 'normal' people can have guns as well, and because of the procedures that the Police need to use, sometimes innocent people die.

Thanks for the strawman.

I don't see how that can give evidence of the chronology o such rapid events. Blood splattering? Would the blood not be in the same places had she fired first, only a half a second before? Would she not have falled in a very similair way, he she fired first?

If she was hit first, her aim would have been off. From mapping the trajectories, and determining where she was hit first, you can estimate how he body would have been knocked from the impacts. You compare this estimation of how her body fell to the mapped trajectories of the projectiles and you get a good estimation of what happened when (i.e. she was shot, started falling back, fired her weapon as she fell, etc).

I see. The assumption is that if she had fired into the ceiling, it was because she had been shot and was falling or otherwise being affected by the round striking her person.

I suppose that makes sense, but there are a lot of assumptions and estimates.

Yes, there are, but there was also a lot of assumptions and estimates that this woman was a drug dealer and was going to shoot an officer.

(It might not have been the ceiling, it could have easily been a wall due to a twisting action, or the floor due to collapsing legs)

I'm not trying to argue about the incident, I'm merely trying to understand how they come to certain conclusions.

I have nothing to say about the incident involving the home invasion and following death. I don't know any of the particulars of the story, the example in my post was entirely made up and hypothetical.

I realize that, I'm not trying to put you on one side of the fence or the other, merely pointing out that assumptions and estimates are the core of police operations.

Steven: yes, it's a very small time frame, but it can be analyzed to show the events in order.

And your problem over there is that if /you/ run into a criminal who's either bigger or better armed than you are, you're screwed.

I'll take my chances with my legally owned .45, thanks. I have yet to meet a police officer opposed to concealed carry - and I've met more than a couple.




This: they were ordered to break into a woman's home in the middle of the night, terrorize her with assault weapons and ransack her home. is pure speculation on your part.



Well put -- but for people who hate cops and the laws then enforce, I'm afraid nothing will change their opinion....until they're the ones dialing 911 pleading for help with something..

Uh, except this SWAT team entered her house in the early morning, armed with assault gear. I don't see where the speculation is, since the article says early morning, and SWAT teams operate with assault gear...

Dynamic entry != breaking into a house with the intent to ransack and terrorize.

Actually, the intent is to terrorize, or something damn near close. You should know just as well if not more than I that SWAT teams are trained to be forceful and intimidating. It makes inhabitants more likely to comply.

[edit: Forgot the ransack part. Which is also their intent; to search thoroughly for evidence.]

The worst that will happen is that I'll get robbed.

I live in about the shadiest neighbourhood of my city. I walk around unarmed and I never feel unsafe. Even if I would get robbed, I still wouldn't want a gun to protect myself.

See, that's the point. Robbers over here generally don't shoot people, hell most of the time all they have is a knife (which, by the way is illegal to carry as well) , and robbers generally don't kill people over here.

Bank robbers are the ones who use guns. And even those never shoot at people. Even cops are rarely shot at.

A murder is a national news item here.

Forceful and intimidating, yes. However, terrorizing and ransacking is too dramatic.



Heh. We've had two bank robberies in the past month -- and neither one involved a weapon. Violent crime in northern NH is almost unheard of -- and you can legally openly carry a loaded handgun. You can actually also do the same in Vermont..Maine..Arizona..Alaska..yet there's no widespread crime. Attitude & behavior 'regulates' crime, so to speak..not weapons.

It's illegal to carry a knife over there!? That's just retarded....is it illegal to own a screwdriver too?

I edited my post while you were writing this, so I'll add this again. They do ransack, the reason they enter the property is to search for evidence. To thoroughly search through something is a definition of "ransack."

Ignorance is bliss right?

I dont see why you feel the need to constantly make it seem like Americans are a bunch of gunslinging cowboys ready to do a duel in the middle of the road.

I assume it's because that's how you people seem to the rest of the world.

Probably because the rest of the world has never been here. All they know is from TV. They assume based on what they get from the news, and, as anyone knows, only bad news makes the news. They assume based on the action movies and TV shows we have. We propogate it, because we know it's not true, but those who have never encountered the culture in person wouldn't know that it's just for amusement.

We could use another good shootout. Them there cattle hustlers are a'causin trouble round these here parts

The difference is, we have a choice. If I want a gun to protect myself, if I feel it would be beneficial to me, I can have one. Ideally, I would understand all the implications and be alright with them. That INCLUDES how having a gun will further endanger my life.

Of course, most people, like you, don't want a gun. And guess what? They can do that, too. There's a girl I know who is deathly afraid of guns because she doesn't think she can be trusted with that kind of power. Having that power is a privilege we americans possess, granted by the constitution. Each citizen is allowed to have that power. However, as proven by this thread, mistakes involving guns have the possibility of being much more costly. That's the responsibility of owning a gun which counteracts the privilege. When there's an imbalance of the two, privilege and responsibility, is when the problems arise.

I believe strongly in the right to own guns. When I turn 21, the first two things I'm going to do are go have a beer with my birthday meal, and then begin the process to obtain my concealed carry license and a glock 19. When I get that license, you know what I'm going to do with my gun? Leave it safely locked in a case in my room at home, only to be taken out when I go out on the land or out to the range to target shoot. I enjoy having the right, and want to have the option as a matter of principle, but I recognize the responsibility and I don't accept the risks and hassles associated with carrying a loaded firearm on me at all times.

However, as an oklahoman, I believe I am required by law to shoot any and all cattle rustlers on site. It's in the constitution; article...uhmm...12. section 22. paragraph.....1. Yes I just made that up.