…another paramilitary drug raid ending in death.

It looks as if this guy was indeed pretty substantially into the meth trade. But two passages from the article stand out. First:

Asked how the officers gained entry to the house, and if officers’ clothing identified them as law enforcement, DEA spokesman Jeffrey Eig said, “We’re not going to be able to comment on that issue right now.”

Which is a pretty good indication this was a no-knock raid. Which means the man’s “failure to comply with orders” could have been because he was a rat bastard hellbent on murdering drug cops, or could have been because he thought his home was being invaded.

And then there is this:

There were other people in the home, including children, but no one else was hurt, said Skagit County sheriff’s Chief Criminal Deputy Will Reichardt.

Can we all agree that it’s a bad idea to apprehend a suspected violent drug dealer with overwhelming weaponry while there are children in the home?

If you disagree, run a Google search on Alberto Sepulveda, or Xavier Bennet. Better yet, just watch an episode of Dallas SWAT. Jeff Haught explains:

I caught a minute of Dallas Swat on TV the other night. They were planning an assault on a house where a couple of people were cooking and selling rock (I love to use some drug slang). It looked like a pretty peaceful slightly lower middle class neighborhood until the flash grenades went off inside the house and 20 paramilitary troopers ran through the front door. The very next scene showed one of these SWAT guys deriding the drug dealer for grabbing his son and “using him as a shield”. SWAT dude said that the raidee was shouting “I’m protecting my boy, I’m protecting my boy.” To which the SWAT guy in all seriousness, in his retelling of the story, said “If he wanted to protect his boy he should have stood in the doorway with his hands up telling the SWAT team where his boy is.”

When exactly was he supposed to do this? After they threw in the stun grenade he was probably stunned. There were 20 SWAT guys in his living room by the time he could react rationally (assuming rational is standing in a doorway with your hands up after somebody has thrown a grenade through your window). The drug dealer’s instinct was to grab his boy and protect him. I would have done the same thing, so would any member of that SWAT team.

Thanks to John Bryan for the tip.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 11:22 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.