TheAgitator.com
Another Isolated Incident
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008Last Thursday, narcotics cops in Troy, New York shot the locks off a door, tossed a flash grenade through a window, and stormed a house as part of an early-morning drug raid. They found only a single mother inside, not the drugs or weapons described in the warrant. The raid seems to have stemmed from a bad tip from a confidential informant. But Troy authorities don’t seem particularly repentant. Here’s District Attorney Richard McNally:
"The checks and balances were in place. We checked and double-checked the information in this case. All the checks and double-checks were done. Unfortunately, it didn’t work as planned."
Obviously the checks and balances weren’t in place, or the police wouldn’t have terrorized an innocent woman (fortunately, her five-year-old daughter wasn’t home at the time).
One local TV reporter spoke with a police sergeant related to the case, who said the police have no intention of repairing the damage they did to the woman’s home.
Sgt. Dean: "We did not hit the wrong house, we hit the house that the search warrant directed us to hit."
Anya: "But was that information that led up to that right?"
Sgt. Dean: "My bosses are going through this whole investigative process to make sure that we were as thorough as possible."
Anya: "What was the level of threat that you assessed prior to coming into the home?"
Sgt. Dean: "That there were weapons in the house, or that the drugs were stored in that manor."
Anya: "In this house, you found no drugs?" Sgt. Dean: "We are not publicly speaking on that issue at this point."
Anya: "Do you think this will hurt your credibility?"
Sgt. Dean: "The last thing we want to do is enter an innocent person’s home – it doesn’t get us anywhere, and it doesn’t hamper the drug trade."
Anya: "Will you be going back to clean-up the damage to the house?"
Sgt. Dean: "We just have to enter lawfully with our search warrant, that is our only obligation."
Anya: "And you can leave it in any state that you left it?"
Sgt. Dean: "Yes. We had probable cause that led us to believe there was drug activity."
Which apparently means they feel no obligation to clean up the mess they made.
Well, Geez! They’re immune from most other rules of civilized society. Why make an exception by holding them accountable for their own mistakes? Making them behave like us would take away their specialness and specialness is very important for cops. It’s what elevates them above the nameless masses.
The only thing that I’d say in fairness to the cop here is that the intensity of the legal system precludes any public displays of remorse from normal people for mistakes of theirs. If you publically display remorse on a personal level you can easily find a lawsuit being filed and your words being taken as an admission of accountability for the entire organisation in a $10m suit.
With that in mind it’s always hard to tell from public interviews whether he’s really as much of an arsehole as he appears or whether this is the department’s legal strategy in expectation of a suit (the latter is still unpleasant, but a general public rather than a personal to this cop or to the police force issue).
There is a very, VERY good reason that police do not have to pay for a mess like this. An unfortunate, but very GOOD reason:
As soon as we make them financially or criminally responsible, we provide a powerful motivation for them to plant drugs or other evidence.
So, I ask you… what would make this story even worse? Easy… it would have been a lot worse if the police had falsely found “evidence” that the raid was justified.
Yes, the police were buffoons in this case. Yes, there should be consequences of some sort — but for the informant, not the police. The lying informant should be subject to prison time in a case like this.
Hey, she should be HAPPY that they didn’t trump up some charges, or get the throwdown and try to frame her up to cover their bad tip. I mean, really, her address wouldn’t have been brought up by the CI if she was really not doing anything, and hell, she’s probably broken a few laws in the past, so this just makes up for not being caught those times.
*above is sarcastic, by the way*
What’s the difference between cops like this and a heavily armed gang of thugs that goes around busting people’s property, terrorizing people, and sometimes injuring or killing them?
Yeah, I can’t think of one either.
Bernard, that’s what SHOULD happen. They ARE at fault, and should pay, a lot, to make this woman whole. Hold some damn people accountable. Cost your department some money.
There’s a point, and they reached it long ago, where it doesn’t matter if it’s a guy being an asshole, or a guy covering his (and his department’s) ass to not admit culpability for potential lawsuits. Really, what’s the difference in a case like this? I don’t think it matters to that woman that it’s the official department stance that they did nothing wrong. They obviously DID do something wrong. And what ways do we, as people living in towns like this, around police forces like this, have to STOP these thug clowns from doing this to whomever they want? It’s really looking thin on that front. Maybe a few multi-million-dollar lawsuits would make some headway on that front.
Sgt. Dean: “The last thing we want to do is enter an innocent person’s home – it doesn’t get us anywhere, and it doesn’t hamper the drug trade.”
If he thought that entering an innocent person’s home did hamper the drug trade, then it would be totally cool to do so? This guy sucks.
Someone needs to get them to give their working definition of “probable cause”. If a disreputable person whose freedom was based on keeping me busy (ie, “tips”) told me “there is X in Y”, I hope I would at least do some basic follow-up to verify the claim before charging in tossing grenades. Then again, I have an IQ over 95 and a moral foundation, so what I would do probably doesn’t apply to our monopoly protection agency.
Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it “probable cause,” I will. I got spare time.
This is why police should never whine about not having the support or respect of the community. When you have no competence, honesty, integrity or character, how much respect do you think you deserve?
Cops want respect because they have a gun, and power over you, and they aren’t afraid to use it…the exact same way criminals get respect.
I’m still trying to figure out how, in ALL these raids, that somehow the police and the judicial system ARE NOT responsible for damage they cause busting into either the WRONG house or a house that might be the RIGHT house but the occupants were not involved in what they were suspected of being involved in. How?
That comes close to saying we can’t make bad cops pay for their screw-ups because if we did, they would “show us who’s boss”. Seems like a form of extortion.
Dave ,ending the drug war would solve the problem with lawsuits.It’s too dependent on informants looking for a deal and officers trying to make a case by breaking the very same laws(undercover buying and selling).
I agree with Dave Krueger in response to Dave. If we’re considering how we’re ‘lucky’ the cops aren’t breaking MORE laws and terrorizing us, how is it any different from some wise guy coming into your store or your home, saying “sure is a nice place here, be a shame if sumthin’ happened to it…”
Like I said the other day: we’re in a position where the organizations and authorities that are charged with protecting people objectively under the law are actively working against those people for their own interests. How can anyone trust anything the government says or does if this is the case?
I’m glad the police are refusing to pay for the damage. How many of these wrong door raids go unreported because the cops buy silence with a new door?
Also, the police shouldn’t be able to buy their way out of these things with taxpayer money… someone, or several someones, should lose their job every time the wrong door is knocked down.
Bingo! Well said. A lot of this crap simply disappears if the drug war were ended.
I’ve never liked the idea that you can destroy someone’s life simply by planting drugs on them or their property. And there’s no way of knowing how often it happens. After all, who believes the guy who says, “Officer, I don’t know how those drugs got there.”
I won’t change the subject, but the same potential exists with possession laws that cover other materials besides drugs. Being old fashioned, I believe a crime requires an identifiable injured victim. Simple possession (of anything) doesn’t pass that test.
Dave said: “There is a very, VERY good reason that police do not have to pay for a mess like this. An unfortunate, but very GOOD reason:
As soon as we make them financially or criminally responsible, we provide a powerful motivation for them to plant drugs or other evidence.”
While it seems true that they wouldn’t be criminally responsible for executing a valid search warrant. I think they should ALWAYS be finanicially responsible for fixing the damage done. Even if they find 10 kilos of cocaine in the apartment they should still be fixing the door they broke down when executing the warrant and even fixing any personal belongings damaged inside the apartment.
Damaging a door or perhaps the framed copy of my mothers photograph certainly sounds like ‘unusual’ punishment to be handed out for any crime if I were to be found guilty of a crime.
Sgt. Dean: “We just have to enter lawfully with our search warrant, that is our only obligation.”
Anytime they start talking about “lawfully”, means only one thing, they screwed up and they are lying.
Nice sentiment, but if they find some chemicals not allowed by our government, the invading agency gets to confiscate the citizen’s property.
Remember, they hate us because we’re free.
#16 Dave Krueger,I say this as the son and grandson of former bootleggers.Yep,Prohibition,the American experiment in sobriety that increased the murder and crime rate just as the ‘War on Drugs’ has. (Disclaimer,I tried pot when young but didn’t like the taste,I prefer cigars.Stouts and good red wine are my drinks of choice and my wife tried everything from cocaine and pot to acid when young but you would be hard pressed to find a more upstanding person.We both have an affection to good gin and lime on a hot night.)
# Anya: “What was the level of threat that you assessed prior to coming into the home?”
# Sgt. Dean: “That there were weapons in the house, or that the drugs were stored in that manor.”
The meaning here is not totally clear (manor or manner?), but does he really mean “or” — that drugs alone, even with no weapons, justify a military style raid?
He more clearly says that when they serve a warrant on people who are gun owners, they can expect grenades being thrown into their homes.
With cops like that, and the prosecutors that enable them, who needs criminals. Seriously, just disband the courts, the police department and we’ll take our chances with the thugs, rapists and murderers. We at least know exactly where we stand with them.
The individual officers need to pay compensation out of their own pockets. Otherwise, “accountability” just means you and I are footing the bill.
And
As I’ve said several times before:
cops ≡ criminals.
#23, exactly. If Joe Taxpayer foots the bill, then it changes nothing other than pissing us Citizen Nothings off even more. If John Police Officers (note the plural, there are many involved in checking the facts) and Jane Judge (for the warrant, for not asking enough questions) were held accountable, then they would think about doing their job better because it financially hurts THEM, not Joe Taxpayer.
Of course there has to be limits, because sometimes mistakes will be made no matter how much double checking everyone does.
I think the whole “the last thing we want to do is [punish] an innocent person” needs to be confronted head on. You hear this all the time from prosecutors and “law and order” morons who want to assure you that victims like the one in this case are abberations.
But just because you don’t want to intentionally and specifically see an innocent person put in jail (congrats! you’re not a raging fascist!) doesn’t mean you’re taking the appropriate steps to ensure that they don’t OR that you are, ya know, following the law. It’s a bit like saying “The last thing i wanted to do was shoot my buddy in the stomach – he’s my friend- but I just spun around in circles with my eyes closed firing my uzi, so I don’t see why that’s a crime.”
Besides as I think we all know, many wrong-door victims or worngfully convicted victims became such because somone “just knew” they were guilty.
If this was 1856, and a snitch said,”I know where a bunch of slaves are hiding”,or it was 1939, and a snitch said,”I know where a family of jews are hiding”,what would be the difference from what we have now? Probable cause now means “I think I have a hunch”.Tyranny is tyranny ,and what ever happened to the 4th ammendment? The only thing that will stop the monster is “kill the monster”. And yeah, I’m saying that these swathugs are facist nazi’s.
It’s obvious to me, Radley: you don’t understand “due process”.
This thing was duly processed. Just ask ‘em.
Move along, citizen. Show’s over, nothin’ to see here.
I would like to add, that for all the punishments people have thought up for cops who eff up like this, we should recognize that even in an agitator-perfect world, good cops will still make mistakes along these lines (in terms of the result).
Of course I’m not saying these particulr cops are justified. But rather the most important thing, in a way, is to examine WHY this mistake occurred and see what shortcuts were used or where things could be improved. Obviously the police here don’t seem to want to get into any sort of self-evaluation and they are stonewalling to prevent any outside evals which is the biggest problem of all. But there is, conceptually, the possibility of a thoroughly investigated, and duelly executed search warrant that turns up nothing, and it’s just an honest mistkae or one piece of wrong information that could not be double-checked. We shouldn’t be so quick to punish the cops who crossed every T, but rather the lazy, stupid cops who failed to do even a reasonable amount of investigating (not unlike a negligence standard).
What’s the difference between cops like this and a heavily armed gang of thugs that goes around busting people’s property, terrorizing people, and sometimes injuring or killing them?
Yeah, I can’t think of one either.
Oh, this is an easy one. Your average gang of thugs doesn’t enjoy the protection of the DAs office.
Well, our thugs in blue aren’t average, they’re ‘Special’. They even tell us so, “Special Weapons and Tactics,” L.A.’s Special Investigative Service,” etc.
The folks who foot the bill? Not special. Now shut up and pay your taxes and if they throw granades in your house you probably did something to deserve it.
I would like to add, that for all the punishments people have thought up for cops who eff up like this, we should recognize that even in an agitator-perfect world, good cops will still make mistakes along these lines (in terms of the result).
No-knock raids are extremely dangerous to everyone involved. They are only reasonable in cases where no practical safer alternative exists, and even then only when performed by real SWAT teams–not by pseudo-SWAT wannabes.
I doubt that even 1% of the raids which are designed to prevent the target from being able to determine that their raiders are police are even remotely justifiable. If a cop deliberately acts in such a fashion that a person could reasonably believe that he is a (1) not a cop and (2) poses an immediate threat of bodily harm, that cop is entirely to blame if he is mistaken for a criminal and forfeits all claim of self-defense against such a mistake. Of course, the government routinely rigs cases involving defense against cops, probably because they don’t want to lose.
While everyone is busy (rightfully) castigating the police, nobody’s asking a question that ought to be asked: did this woman ever support the War on Drugs?
Support doesn’t have to be active; acquiescing to the steady erosion of rights that silent acceptance of the DrugWar produces is the same as being a foaming, wild-eyed rah-rah cheerleader for it. Degree doesn’t matter in this case, results do. If she never spoke out against it, if she never gave any thought as to why it was inherently wrong in punishing people for choosing to put something in their bodies without The State’s seal of approval, then just how much of a ‘victim’ is she when she finds herself ground under Juggernaut’s treads?
I am reminded of what Goethe said about people getting the governments that they deserve. I am also reminded of something I read long ago, about the governors inevitably become contemptuous of the governed – for having let themselves be led about by those no better than themselves.
The people of this country have forgotten that they were supposed to be masters of The State, not the other way around. And this is what happens when that lesson is forgotten…and the governors become dismissive of the governed…
Even if the warrant is entirely correct and everything they are looking for is found at the address, why are the cops justified in totally trashing anyone’s property? I don’t know how often it really happens, maybe its just TV, but it seems like they take a search warrant as an excuse to trash someone’s house. Couldn’t they perform a more effective search by carefully and deliberately looking through everything rather than tearing everything apart and making a big mess?
I’d say just as much as if you were. The fact that she was out agitating against this doesn’t mean she should be ground up by the juggernaut anymore than you should be. Recall our rights are considered to be inalienable, not conveyed only if you happen to have the right ideas and agitate in support of those ideas.
And I’d also caution you about showing your contempt for people such as this. Stepping up and offering support might turn such people into valuable allies. Turning your back after scoffing at them is likely to have exactly the opposite effect.
In short, don’t be a dick.
Evidently, I wasn’t clear enough. My fault; I’ll try again.
Anyone aware enough to have a sense of history knows that government tends to gather power to itself, at the expense of the people. The Founders made that quite clear. iThey knew that rights had to be guarded jealously against continual, amoeba-like encroachment by government.
That’s why the Bill of Rights might as well have had the international “NO” sign attached to it; in its’ entirety, the point is made that NO, the government may not do this, and NO the government may not do that. Allow it to encroach upon one right, and all are endangered. As we have seen it do, particularly since the first two decades of the last century.
Because of that encroachment, ostensibly for their own good, the people have become inured to that encroachment, and proof of that is seen in the DrugWar. Most people couldn’t give a rat’s @$$ should their neighbor be the recipient of one of The State’s idea of a ‘Welcome Wagon’ visitation, as this woman was. After all, it’s only the ‘bad people’ who are supposed to suffer when that happens, right? Not the law-abidin’, church-goin’, Bible-collectin’ ‘good people’…so they must have ‘deserved it’.
Or so many of these (either tacit or vocal) supporters of the DrugWar think…until they are on the short, sharp and sh*tty end of the stick held by their putative ‘servants’.
And when those servants show no remorse for their actions? When they are contemptuous of the very idea that they should show remorse for terrorizing one of the ‘good’ people? Who is to blame, then? The ‘druggie’? Or the ‘upstanding citizens’ who’ve allowed their rights – and everyone else’s! – to be ground up beneath the Juggernaut they supported?
I point the finger where nobody wants to look, for the fact remains that the DrugWar, and its’ bastard son, the War on Terror, which are stripping us of our rights, are being tacitly supported by no small number of ‘good Americans’. And all too often, those who try to sound the alarm are castigated as ‘dicks’.
Well, to paraphrase Aristotle, I’d rather be an aware ‘dick’ than a somnolent sheep, grazing placidly until The State shows up with a SWAT van. Pity there aren’t enough of us left…
You’ll never ever win then nemo, for two reasons.
1. You’ll piss off those who probably would be on your side. Usually not a winning strategy.
2. You aren’t smart enough to see this isn’t an either/or situation.
I’ll explain that last one to you. It isn’t that you are either just a,
1. an aware ‘dick’,
2. a somnolent sheep, grazing placidly until The State shows up with a SWAT van.
You can be aware and not be a dick. Then when that somnomlent sheep wakes up, it will realize it isn’t alone and can help in changing things.
Oh, and you were quite clear nemo. I understood your meaning. Your view is that these people are not “pure” or are “less than you” because they were not aware of the problem. You are an elitist and a snob. I reject your view, utterly. I reject because it is counter productive. So spare me any more clarifying posts. You’ve made your unpleasant position quite clear.
P.T. Barnum once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” In this case, it went all the way up to the judge and the ringmaster was the “confidential informant.” We all know “confidential informant” only means one thing: the guy that got caught dealing drugs who wants the revolving door of justice to spin for him. He gets a free ride, some innocent victim gets his/her door busted down, flash-banged, roughed up and raked over the coals, because somebody along the way didn’t do his/her homework.
Really, what does it take for a cop to dress up like a door-to-door salesman, walk up to the door (with the vice squad in place in case the tip was true), ring the doorbell and wait for someone to answer the door? With that, he could surveille the domicile and assess the threat level, find out if the “man-of-the-house” was home and take it from there? They should find this “confidential informant,” take away his plea deal for the bad tip and throw his ass in jail, like they should have done in the first place. And make him pay for the woman’s misery.
The War on Drugs is a joke that’s costing us billions of dollars every year. If they just legalized it, they could tax it. It’s a win-win situation for the users and the government. The users will find a way to get it anyway, regardless of whether or not it’s legal. Legalizing drugs would also reduce, if not outright eliminate, the wars over turf proliferated by gangs on which to sell their drugs. Sometimes, the solution is so simple that people can’t even see it.
I’m afraid you still don’t get it, Mr. Verdon. First off, you don’t know me well enough to make the suppositions that you have regarding me. If my remarks have incensed you, perhaps you should perform some introspection as to why, instead of making unfounded accusations.
My remarks are not originating from a sense of elitism, snobbery, etc. It’s about realizing that rights are something that require continual protection, lest they become casualties of fads…or pogroms. And that if the citizens don’t defend those rights from encroachment, then a signal is given for government to further erode those rights, until nothing is left. I see that you do not dispute that.
And if the majority of citizens not only fail to defend those rights, but acquiesce in their further erosion, then who is to blame? The object of the official pogrom (i.e. ‘druggies’)…or the citizens, themselves?
The entire DrugWar from its’ inception, can be proven to be a product of ‘elitism’, ‘snobbery’ etc. From the get-go it has followed Professor Whitebread’s ‘Iron Law of Prohibition’, in which a substance prohibition is created by an identifiable “Us” to attack and identifiable “Them”.
And if by doing so, basic freedoms are savaged and rights endangered? I ask again: who is more at fault? The target of the laws, or the supposed ‘upstanding citizens’ who’ve allowed those laws to stand, when they cause that very damage to basic freedoms our great-grandparents took for granted as being inviolable?
In the end, the one person responsible for maintaining those freedoms is none other than the one who stares back at you from the bathroom mirror each morning. Abrogate that responsibility, and no one can stand in for you.
But in abrogating that responsibility, then you also place the rights of others in danger. If ‘silence = assent’, then the majority of Americans have assented to the erosion of their rights by not speaking out against this insanity…but they are not only assenting to just the erosion of their rights, but those of their neighbors, as well. And it is that which I object to most strenuously.