I stand corrected. Some courts apparently do award damages when dogs are shot during botched drug raids:

A California county will pay nearly $1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club after police shot and killed three guard dogs during raids of the group’s headquarters and suspected members’ homes.

By my research, this is really rare. But it’s good news.

It’s also odd, given the targets of the raid. This is the second case I’m aware of involving a botched drug raid on a Hell’s Angels’ hangout. In the other, police in notorious Maricopa County, Arizona (see here and here, for examples of notoriety), raided a Hell’s Angels joint on a no-knock and –surprise! — met armed resistance. A judge would later declare the raid an “attack,” and absolved the members of the club who fired back of all criminal culpability (police found no drugs). Of course, the judge also absolved the police officer who mistook the sound of a flashbang grenade for gunfire, noting that paramilitary drug raids are inherently volatile, dangerous, and ripe for confusion.

Which is true. But SWAT teams are supposed to be the parties to the raid who are trained to recognize, understand, and work around the commotion. After all, they created it. If these raids are so confusing that it’s understandable for a cop to mistake a flashbang for gunfire from the suspect, shouldn’t that tell us something about the utility of the raids themselves? And if a cop can’t tell the difference, and that’s understandable, how in the world is a suspect supposed to know what’s going on, and hold his fire?

In both of these cases, the Hell’s Angels got some justice. That’s great. But it’s sorta’ weird, too. Because the vast majority of victims of these raids aren’t so lucky.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 10th, 2006 at 10:05 pm 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.