A Roanoke Times editorial castigates the police force involved with the botched child porn raid that featured Shaquille O’Neal. In doing so, it mentions Overkill.

uthorities should count their blessings in that no one died during their guns-drawn assault of an innocent household. Such deaths occur all too frequently.

In July, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, released an alarming report about the rise nationwide of paramilitary-style police raids. Through case studies, the report detailed the risks for tragedy when armed officers terrorize wrongly targeted civilians. “And [such raids] have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of [non-violent] drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders and innocent suspects.”

Innocent victims have died because of raid-triggered heart attacks, house fires started by flash bang grenades, accidental shootings and other causes.

During Wednesday’s news conference, the Bedford County sheriff’s office apologized for “any inconvenience” caused by the errant raid. Inconvenience? It’s inconvenient when the corner store runs out of milk. It’s inconceivable when law enforcement officials conducting an investigation haven’t nailed down, in advance of a terror-inducing raid, the address of a target suspect.

This is what I’m hoping for with the paper — that it’ll be around for reporters to stumble upon each time one of these raids goes wrong.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 7:27 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.