Horn Lake, Mississippi:

An unidentified elderly Horn Lake couple were hospitalized today after police burst into their home thinking it housed a methamphetamine laboratory.

The incident occurred Wednesday about 4 a.m., said police Capt. Shannon Beshears.

Beshears said it was the right address but the wrong house.

Beshears said a heavily armed Tactical Apprehension Containment Team stormed the house.

“We had good information from a reliable source that had been backed up by a purchase of narcotics linked to the address. However, when we arrived at the designated address, there were two houses on the lot. We hit the larger of the two houses.

“It was the wrong house,” Beshears said. “The house was totally dark and the TACT members went through to the bedroom looking for the suspects.”

A man and a woman–both in their 80s –were injured as TACT team members secured the house although no drugs were found.

[...]

Beshears said the woman received a dislocated shoulder and the man received bruised ribs. Both were taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto, but both asked police not to identify them.

Certainly, the police chief is livid, right? Certainly he’s promising dramatic reforms to make sure something like this never happens again?

Nope.

“Obviously, a mistake was made and it was regrettable,” he said. “But, I stand by my officers. I think they acted properly.”

Sure they did. They almost killed two people.

By the way, Horn Lake’s population: 14,099.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 2:57 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.