TheAgitator.com
Yer’ Raid Update Post
Monday, January 12th, 2009Derrick Foster was sentenced last week to five years in prison. With good behavior, he’ll be out in four. He ended up pleading guilty to two counts of felonious assault.
Meanwhile, the military-style drug raids continue. A 19-year-old Missouri woman could get 30 years after shooting at police on a marijuana raid (her parents were apparently dealers) last month. She too says she thought the home was being robbed. In one I missed from last November, police in Woodhaven, Michigan raided and trashed the wrong home while looking for a narcotics suspect, finding instead a 25-year-old woman who had just gotten out of the shower. And in Las Vegas, 32-year-old Emmanuel Dozier is in jail and faces felony charges after shooting and wounding three police officers, also during a narcotics raid. Dozier also says he thought his home was being robbed. His girlfriend, Belinda Saavedra, was on the phone with 911 at the time of the raid.
Police insist they had the right house (Dozier has a prior arrest record in California), but found no drugs in the home. They did, however, find Saavedra’s children. The Las Vegas Review-Journal ran a spot-on editorial about the last raid:
Does a raid timed for 9:30 Sunday evening — more than four hours after nightfall, at this time of year — make it more likely residents will understand the men at the door are police? Police say the raid was staged by SWAT officers: Does that mean they did not display standard, easily recognizable uniforms and chest badges? Were they, in fact, dressed in black to make them less visible?
Pardon us if we doubt the officers waited even two or three minutes for residents to pull on clothes (if necessary), come to the door, ascertain who was there and ask to read the officers’ warrant.
For that matter, wouldn’t the chance of violence have been reduced — in a home where police should have known young children were present — if someone had simply telephoned the home, explaining police were approaching the door with a warrant … preferably during daylight hours?
Some will say such a procedure would be naive — drug dealers could use the time to flush their product down the toilet.
But no cocaine was found — and a dealer who can eliminate all his product in one toilet flush isn’t really very big-time, is he?
If Mr. Dozier is prosecuted on drug-trafficking charges it will be based on the testimony of the undercover officers who say they bought from him in the past.
The drug war has taught us to accept as “normal” police procedures — even in the case of a man alleged to have dealt quantities of drugs worth only a few hundred dollars — which increase the risk of violence and death in our neighborhoods.
Just as in cases where some jurisdictions have found overall fatalities could be reduced by having ambulances obey stoplights, it is those “standard” procedures that are in need of a serious new review.
For all of the “wrong-house” raids I write about on this site, even when police get the right house, these raids force a volatile confrontation with a high potential for error. There have been about a half dozen cases of police officers getting killed or wounded on drug raids in just the last few months. These tactics make warrant service more dangerous for everyone, including cops.
The acronym for the SWAT team in the Michagan case is just beautiful:
Down River Area Narcotics Organization.
With a name like that, the headline for that story should be much better.
All joking aside, I’m not sure how the cops still had probably cause to search this woman’s apartment.
Bah! Kill ‘em all…God will know his own.
I notice Mr. Dozier managed to sustain quite a facial injury during his surrender.
Technicalities are wonderful.
How is ‘we got the right house but found no drugs’ any better than ‘we got the wrong house’?
Essentially the defence is that it wasn’t their map reading that was faulty it was their evidence gathering.
Very reassuring.
FUCK. THE. PO. LICE.
There have been about a half dozen cases of police officers getting killed or wounded on drug raids in just the last few months.
Of course the police just use this as evidence that they need more of this kind of raid, because of the danger.
Dumb-asses.
Law Enforcement is the biggest threat to our civil liberties right now.
I expect the response to any rise in cops getting injured during raids will be to give them more force to use, not a reduction in raids.
I think if you cracked open a drug cop and looked inside, you’d see an ego drowning in testosterone.
Looks like Dozier good some of that old-fashioned Street Justice the cops used to mete out in the Good Ole days when citizens knew their place in the social order. Good for them.
Police in America are the model for the action in Gaza.
Expect the learning curve to flow back to America when Israel finishes.
[...] More ‘isolated’ incidents. [...]
my heart goes out to Derrick Foster and his family.
in a just world, a pox of misery would rain down on the fuckers who did this to him.
Somehow I don’t think that was the real Lew Rockwell, unless it was sarcasm. :-/
“Some will say such a procedure would be naive — drug dealers could use the time to flush their product down the toilet.”
My water line has a cutoff at the curb. I understand they turn off the water before a prison contraband check or sometimes in Chicago when they are hunting someone in a big apartment complex — the same technique would work for a home contraband search.
The police have used this behavour for 100 years, and it is escalating, wait until it’s the United Nations troops at your door.
I’m sorry but when cops are behaving illegally they deserve to be killed. We have laws, that a Search Warrent be issued and served requesting the owner of the home submit to the search. Busting down the door is just more I’M the law and you are automatically guilty, until proven innocent. #59 plus # 63, 64 and 65 on my website covers this in detail. Terrorist organizations in the USA, YES they are called the IRS, who invade without warrents, and there again, you are guilty until you prove innocence.
We have many small town police with no training except ready to bust heads to prove HE is protecting the town his way. Judges that go along with this behavour, and a totally screwed up police system in most of America, and it’s going to get worse.
DonCordellforPresident.com is still active until we throw Obama out of office and elect a real patriot that is a citizen, not an illegal alien as Obama is. How much do your police confiscate from citizens who dare carry any cash with them. Goes to the police fund. I’ll defund them.