TheAgitator.com
Man Mistakenly Shoots Through Door During Police Raid. Kills Another Man. Won’t Be Charged.
Friday, March 7th, 2008Unfortunately, I’m not talking about Ryan Frederick.
More than a year after a law enforcement officer’s mistake left a teen dead and a family in grief, Peyton Strickland’s parents finally have found closure.
That closure came on Tuesday evening with a settlement of $2.45 million and a public apology from New Hanover County [North Carolina] Sheriff Sid Causey. Additionally, Causey agreed to an independent review of the heavily armed team responsible for Strickland’s death.
[...]
Strickland’s parents, Durham lawyer Don Strickland and his wife, Kathy, had two years from the time of their son’s death on Dec. 1, 2006, to file suit. Former New Hanover County Sheriff’s Cpl. Christopher M. Long was not charged with a crime, leaving Strickland’s family without closure.
[...]
Long shot Strickland to death in the process of a raid. The sheriff’s Emergency Response Team was in the process of arresting Strickland for armed robbery. Long mistook the sound of a battering ram for gunshots.
His gear included a hood, earpiece and helmet that he said muffled his hearing.
I don’t think Long should have been charged, either, though it’s good that he’s no longer part of the police force. I just wish prosecutors and grand juries would show the same sort of deference to the people targeted by these raids that they show to police officers. After all, unlike the police (allegedly), the targets of these raids aren’t well-trained. They don’t have the advantage of knowing the raid is about to take place. And the raids use tactics whose specific aim is to disorient and confuse the people they’re raiding. Yet Ryan Frederick, Cory Maye, and others sit in jail cells. Long merely lost his job.
Of course, the better solution would be to only use home invasion police tactics against people who present an immediate threat to others.
When you’re busting down someone’s door, there is no way to predict how someone on the other side might react, so you’re naturally sensitized to anything that might appear threatening. It’s reasonable that a loud noise could easily be mistaken for a gunshot.
On the other hand, the police training manual might include a paragraph on the importance of realizing in advance that battering rams make a loud noise.
No doubt the citizen got a pass here as it wasn’t a cop he killed.
Bets on where he would be right now had it been a cop that died?
scott,
I’m not sure who you are referring to as “the citizen”, but the shooter was a cop and the victim was a civilian. If you are referring to the crime that the victim of this shooting committed, he didn’t kill anybody. He did, however, beat up somebody and steal their playstation video game(s?)- and I should say allegedly, because he never got a chance to go to court.
This was not the first time that this particular cop was involved in shooting that was investigated, IIRC from the earlier news articles about it.
I actually feel for the officer too. Most of the time the victim in Radley’s stories is really not a threat. But the story here is that the police were serving a warrant for ARMED robbery. I would think that a raid on the home of an purported armed robber would have some legitimate risk potential. And that Long was concerned about himself or partners.
Not these ridiculous and unfortunate Ryan Frederick style weed busts. That’s just sad. Was he gonna hit ‘em with a grow light?
dsmallwood,
The ARMED robbery bit still bothers me as every news article I have read stated that the robbery victim was “beaten” and “suffered minor injuries”. It may well have been that Mr. Strickland and company had bats or sticks or something but I have yet to find an article that details what “armed” meant.
This article says that it was a blunt object. I seem to remember seeing it stated somewhere that it was a bat, but I’m not sure.
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20080228/NEWS/802280368/-1/xml
Ah, more proof of the link between video games and violence.
ARMED robbery implies the thrreat of grievous bodly injury or death. In Oklahoma where I live, armed robbery carries with it the very real possibility of a life sentence. At the very least, an armed robber will spend a substantial portion of his life behind bars, as well he should. It’s reasonable to assume an armed robber is willing to use force to avoid arrest.
With that being said, it’s difficult to see how a WELL-TRAINED officer could mistake the sound of a battering ram for gunshots. I suspect there’s something wrong with the training program this officer went through.
Radley’s too easy on the cop. By his own accounts he fired 3 to 5 rounds through a door at an unidentified person. From an earlier news item on the case:
“In a statement presented to the grand jury, Long said Strickland and another man sought in connection with the PlayStation robbery, Ryan Mills, ‘were expected to be armed with firearms and dangerous,’ a conclusion drawn from photographs on a Web site showing Mills and others armed with firearms. The photos were discounted by Strickland’s friends as a joke.
‘I believed that the ERT and I were about to encounter a severely dangerous environment including heavily armed subjects with histories of intentional physical violence causing injuries to persons,’ Long wrote in the statement.
Long was wearing a Kevlar ballistic helmet that ‘inhibits hearing,’ he wrote. After another deputy knocked on the door, a man inside approached but didn’t open it. He saw the man ‘dart suspiciously to his left’ at the same time Long heard a loud bang made by the battering ram and fired a burst of three to five bullets through the door.
Based on information he received at a briefing prior to the detail and the movement of the person behind the door in conjunction with the loud bang, ‘I believed the subject had fired a weapon at the team and me,’ wrote the veteran deputy, who shot and wounded two teenagers in 2001 after he attempted to stop their car. Long was cleared of wrongdoing in that case. ”
If his hearing was so muffled that he could mistake the thud of a ram for the crack of the gunshot, how could he be certain where the “shot” was coming from? Firing his weapon in this situation was extremely reckless.
There’s no evidence that Strickland was suspected of using a gun to commit a crime. Long’s suggestion is that anyone who has posed for a photo holding a gun can be considered a danger to the public.
It seems to me that many persons have been convicted of manslaughter or some form of negligent homicide in cases that were more clearly accidents (as opposed to negligence) than this case.
In response to Kwix and others… Their belief that he was armed came from a posted picture on the internet in which one of Peyton’s friends was posing with a handgun. Why this would be more than a passing concern, I don’t know. It wasn’t his, present in his house, and might have even been legal. As far as I know you aren’t required to register handguns in NC.
His father said that he counted 5 gunshot wounds in the body when he was able to view it.
The bottom line seems to be something that Radley and many others have mentioned several times: Hostile SWAT style entry into a residence only increases the liklihood that somebody is going to get hurt or killed.
So what if he beat some kid up with a pipe for his playstation? How does assaulting his home help this? They knew where he lived. they knew where he worked and where he went to school. Send a couple of uniforms or a detective to wait in the parkinglot and approach him openly in broad daylight for questioning.
“Not these ridiculous and unfortunate Ryan Frederick style weed busts. That’s just sad. Was he gonna hit ‘em with a grow light?”
No…He was gonna hit ‘em with gunfire. You know, just like he actually did.
please don’t try to out gun the police, you can’t win and what they want is a fight.
Instead out smart the police, much much easier to do. Off the top of my head an easy solution that may help you sleep better at night if your worried about this sort of thing follows:
1. remove door handle from front door and lock door.(to protect the innocent)
2. cut large rectangular hole in floor directly behind front door, and cover with thin rug;-)
3. place a large box of donuts in basement under hole in floor.(to entice any no knockers who aren’t initially caught in trap)
4. remove all light bulbs and top three steps from basement stairs.(why take chances right?)
5.(optional but encouraged). install night vision cameras….post footage on topix.com
–this is a joke,,,please please don’t take it as anything but what it was intended for, an attempt at humor.