[quote]JD430 wrote:
Sometimes I regret doing this, but I hope a few of you guys will take my perspective on this with some maturity as I have been a police officer for over 10 years and I am also assigned as a trainer in the tactics field and am a member of a SWAT team.
Of course, there is very little information to go on here. If any of you think you can make a reasonable assessment of what happened, you are wrong. Much more needs to be known. Perhaps it will turn out that some of you guys “guessed” correctly when the smoke clears, but right now you are talking out of your ass if your mind is completely made up about how this whole shitstorm went down.
That said, these are the observations I have at this point.
-This was not a drug raid. They were there looking for a 34 year old suspect who is believed to have gunned down a 17 year old on a sidewalk in front of his girlfriend. I have stated in a previous thread that the over-abundance of military-style raids with the intent of finding drugs, often small quantities of marijuana, in private homes, is troubling. This is a much different ballgame and I hope that nobody thinks the police were unjustified in being there. Explain that to me if you feel that way.
-Is there not some culpability on the part of the family for harboring this person in the home with a 7 year old girl?(I realize that they may have had no idea he was wanted for a brutal murder but my experience with these things has been that the family knows full well what is going on. Just a personal observation).
-With the above stated, I can’t really figure why the SWAT team did not do a little more recon on the house and the occupants. Without giving away “trade secrets”, there is a philosophical movement in the tactical community that puts priority on “surround and call out”. That means the SWAT team would set up a perimeter around the home that nobody would be able to penetrate and then start negotiating with whoever is inside to arrange a surrender. That does a number of things. Hopefully, that would have allowed them to discover that there was a 7 year old inside and arrangements could have been made to get her out ASAP. Like I said, I am not going to discuss those procedures in depth but there are times when a dynamic hit on the residence would be called for, even in the eyes of the most conservative team. Without knowing all of the circumstances on the ground at this incident, I can’t say for sure. There are also different SOP’s and training methods to deal with. Detroit might be one of those teams that is taught to always “go,go,go” and if so, that mindset will need to be examined. Personally, I think surround and call-out is very viable and the safest way to get innocent people out of harm’s way. Bad things happen when heavily armed guys rush a house, jacked up on adrenaline because they are looking for a suspected murderer. Pushing hard like that should generally be a last resort or saved for very extreme, specific incidents when time is of the essence or people will die for sure.
-Flashbangs are a very necessary part of our arsenal. They just should probably be used with the same conservative mindset I described above as they are very dangerous. If you pick one up or are standing next to it when it goes off, say goodbye to your hand or foot. They also can cause fires if you are not careful. I have seen SOP’s that don’t allow for the use of a noise flash diversion device if a very elderly or very young child is in the house. That is why recon and slowing the situation down as much as possible is very important…so you know those things.
-I don’t know how the fatal shot was fired. I saw that article above in which that attorney is claiming there is a video showing an officer tossing a flashbang through a window and then firing a shot immediately after. That really doesn’t make sense and I consider it unlikely, but who knows. It could have happened I guess and that guy will have a lot of explaining to do. Let’s instead consider the scenario of one of the guys making entry and getting in a fight with one of the occupants which lead to a round being discharged and the girl being struck. A couple of posters have implied or flat-out stated that a gun could not have been discharged accidentally during a scuffle. Bullshit. I have seen (and heard of) all types of situations leading to fingers or something else getting in a trigger guard and causing a gun to discharge. It can happen. Good selection, good training and good SOP’s can minimize the risk but not eliminate it entirely, especially when we are dealing with someone actively fighting with you. Maybe I can comment on that more precisely if I get more details about the way the shot was fired but it is tough to do so with the very sparse information I have now.
-This discussion should not proceed at all into the territory of race unless some information comes to light that shows bias directly impacted the tragedy that occurred. I don’t know a lot about Detroit’s SWAT team but I do know that they have a very high proportion of minority officers, for what it is worth.
-At the end of the day, my somewhat educated guess(and nothing more, mind you) is that this incident was probably a failure of tactics. It is almost always better to slow these things down.
On a personal note, nothing breaks my heart more than seeing kids wrapped up in the affairs of bad adults. It has almost brought me to tears on a number of occasions and that is not an easy thing at this point in my life. As far removed as I am from this incident, it is still affecting me in a way and I am torn up about this little girl. Its our job as cops to adjust, throttle back and do everything in our power to stop these things from happening.
I hope the community where this happened takes the same attitude and rejects the type of person who initiated this whole thing. [/quote]
Great post, there seems to be a lot of speculation going on in this thread. I do believe that often times the police are heavy handed in their responses, but not enough is known at this juncture to pass judgment.
Geoffery Fieger, the attorney in this case, is a grandstanding douche of colossal proportions. The only good I have seen from him is in defending Jack Kevorkian.