Last December, we wrote about a botched SWAT raid on an innocent Minnesota family. Acting on bad information from an informant, the police threw flash grenades though the family’s windows, then exchanged gunfire with Vang Khang, who mistook the police for criminal intruders. Seven months later, no one in the police department has been held accountable for the mistakes leading up to the raid.

However, this week Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan and Mayor R.T. Rybak did give the raiding officers medals and commendations for their bravery in nearly killing Vang Khang, his wife, and their six children.

Said Chief Dolan while handing out the hardware:

"The easy decision would have been to retreat under covering fire. The team did not take the easy way out," Dolan told the crowd. "This is a perfect example of a situation that could have gone horribly wrong, but did not because of the professionalism with which it was handled."

This is really beyond outrage. The city of Minneapolis is commending and rewarding its police officers for firing their weapons at innocent people. A family of eight was terrorized, assaulted, and nearly killed, and it’s the "perfect example" of a situation that could have gone wrong?

It’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened, either. In November 2006, a Baltimore County, Maryland police officer was given an award for shooting Cheryl Lynn Noel, a mother of two gunned down in her nightgown when she grabbed a gun after mistaking the raiding police officers for criminal intruders. The officer then shot Noel a second time from point blank range. That award came shortly after the Noel family filed a civil suit against Baltimore County.

Onward and upward,
airforce

At this point in time, the way I look at it, is this problem can only and will only be solved by Peoples Justice administered by Night Riders or by the Victims themselves or their loved ones. What the people need is our own version of the Star Chamber with vigilantes administering justice to cops and others that the official justice system refuses to.

Law Suits will not correct this problem, since for one thing the Guilty Parties, meaning the Cops and Police Departments never have to pay up and it is only the Taxpayers who get stuck with paying any judgment.

Someday very soon someone will get personal payback and then the fun will begin.

According to a recently filed lawsuit, police in Milwaukee launched a 2006 SWAT raid based on a tip from an estranged, grudge-nursing sister who hadn’t seen her sibling in four years. The other woman’s husband house grabbed his gun to defend his home as the SWAT team entered, and was shot by police in the shoulder.

News story here.

Onward and upward,
airforce

This one is in Buffalo :

Buffalo police then raided the “correct” house, but found no illicit drugs, and made no arrests.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Right in my backyard, but not a peep here about it in the media (other than this newspaper article). In fact, I don't recall hearing about the raid when it initially happened, either.

Things are heating up.

Back in June, police in St. Louis broke in to the home of an 86-year-old woman, Mary Valentine, deployed a "smoke bomb," and turned her place upside down in what looks to be a mistaken drug raid. A clergyman from the woman’s church has been trying to get an apology and compensation, but thus far has been rebuffed by city officials.

Police tore down Valentine’s door, ripped up her walls, sliced open her mattress, and seized a safe containing stationery. They found no drugs, made no arrests, and, three months later, have made no offer to compensate her for the damage done to her home.

News story here.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Some of you have told me you're tired of reading about these incidents, that they only make you frustrated and angry.

I don't blame you. I'm getting pretty damn tired writing about them. But, I don't know of any way of stopping them, unless we publicize them first.

So, bear with me. And, if you can, tell your friends about these incidents. And write your congressmen about them. And write letters to your local papers about them. And call in to radio talk shows about them.

Realistically, that's all I know how to do.

Here\'s another one.

Police in Canton, Ohio shot and killed a man during a SWAT-style drug raid last week. He was in the shower at the time of the raid, and apparently brandished a gun at the raiding officers. He is a convicted felon, though his last crime was 13 years ago.

Police say the raid was conducted based on tips that there was drug dealing at the man’s home. So far, I haven’t read an account of the raid that mentions if the police found any illicit drugs.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Yesterday, I posted above the case of Darryl P. Ross, a man shot and killed during a drug raid on his home. Curiously, there’s been no mention of what, if any, illicit drugs police found in Ross’s home. His family is calling his death a murder, and trying to raise money for a private investigation.

That may now prove difficult.

A judge has ordered all police documents in the case–including the search warrant, police affidavit, and evidence return sheet–sealed. The given justification was to protect the identity of the confidential informant in the case.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I tire of the incidents themselves. However, please don't let any of this discourage you from doing what you have been doing.

I, for one, appreciate the work you are doing. These incidents need to be exposed to the light. Keep up the good work!

As I have said before to others.
The Police, Prosecuttor and the Judges are in collusion on these type of cases. Their informant is probably a paid liar that they do not want to be found out.

They all need to be put in a pine box!! Hell naw, just a big hole with plenty of lime!!!!!!!!!

In this one, a tip from a bounty hunter led to a terrifying raid on an innocent family.

I think the Fourth Amendment requires a little more than that.

Onward and upward,
airforce

This one comes from Orlando, Florida.

Police storm the house of a a grandfather, who was watching his infant grandson at the time–-complete with full SWAT attire, guns to the head, and “smoke bombs” (likely concussion grenades).

They were investigating the robbery of a cell phone store. The man’s 20-year-old grandson had apparently made a call from one of the phones.

Provided the police did the proper investigation beforehand to be sure they had the right guy and the right house, apprehending someone suspected of armed robbery would be a legitimate use of a SWAT team.

But since I’m writing about the story, you can guess what happened. They invaded first, and asked questions later. The grandson (a) hadn’t lived in the home for six years, and (b) apparently was guilty of little more than unknowingly purchasing a hot phone. He handed the phone over, and the cops left.

In the meantime, a man who did nothing wrong had his home ransacked, his privacy violated, and was generally terrorized. If he’d had a gun in his home for self-protection, he’d likely be dead.

It’s not that SWAT tactics are always wrong. It’s that they’re too often the first resort with the police departments that have them.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Here's another wrong door drug raid. Except this time, the intruders were criminals:

Now, consider this: The people who got raided by these criminals were actually treated better than most of the people wrongly raided by the police.

Consider:

1) No one was shot or killed. And no dead dogs.

2) The intruders actually apologized when they realized they had the wrong house.

3) And, now that they’ve been caught, the intruders will actually be punished for terrorizing a home full of innocent people.

News story here.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Wow. Novel idea.

In Lawrenceville, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta:

Seems like we’ve reached a troubling new comfortableness with wrong-door raids when the police department’s defense is, “well, at least it wasn’t deliberate.” I’d hope that raiding the wrong house would never be deliberate.

Video of a local news report here.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Not a drug raid. A prostitution raid.

You’d think that after the police figured out they had the wrong house, they’d apologize, and possibly even compensate the girl and her family, wouldn't you? But according to the lawsuit, you’d be wrong:

We have a call into the Galveston district attorney and with Dymond Milburn’s lawyer. We’re going on a press account of one side of a lawsuit, here. So it’s possible—and I would hope--that there are some important details missing.

Otherwise, a police mistake leads to an innocent 12-year-old getting violently snatched up and roughed up by a group of plainclothes cops jumping out of a van . . . and they charge her for resisting?

UPDATE:

Onward and upward,
airforce

Damn they're not even trying to look like they're doing their jobs anymore, the bastards are just going after whoever... whoever ain't connected or under some cop's protection.

They'll never, ever stop on their own. You know that don't you?

I've been outraged by every single one of these incidents I've reported. But some of them are so outrageous, they take my breath away. This is one of them.

To be fair, though, I've only heard one side of the story. I really hope there's more to this. If there is, I'll post it here.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I think most members know how I feel about the evil that cops do and get away with but I will post this just because this case of police evil is worse then a lot of other instances that have happened.

************************

The day of Reckoning is fast approaching.

If I had a daughter and those Pig Dung Eaters did that to her I would get payback and they would never do that to anyone else’s child. And someday very soon cops will do something to the wrong person and then they will finally start to pay for the evil that they do.

Cops are pushing their luck. It is a truth that if a person pushes their luck once too often they will pay the price for their arrogance. It is like that Bear Man who lived among wild Bears and even touched and kissed them. He pushed his luck once too often and became Bear Food and Bear Scat and took his stupid lady friend with him.

The same fate will befall these arrogant cops who believe they are gods.

There are many types of people in this world and Country, some of them are total wimps and cowards and others are real Men who love their Family more then they fear death, and one day some evil cops will harm the family of such a Man and these cops will feel the Man’s wrath and they will die.

I personally know this type of man and I know that if those cops did that to his daughter those cops would die or wish they were dead. And this man has not only the disposition but the skills and capabilities to get his vengeance and take a large number of the law enforcers who will try to kill him with him.

And I believe that most of us know at least one man like this, one who will not cower in fear but will get his own justice for harm done to someone he loves.

There are many men who were Army Special Forces, Navy SEALS, Marine Snipers or Marine Recon like some of my friends. And some of these men will be willing to use their skills in defense of their loved ones or to get justice for their loved ones. And when, not if this happens it will be the SHTF big time for some police officers.

And like in Unintended Consequences Men doing this will get other Men off their asses to take similar action against any cops and others like Bureaucrats who have violated their Rights, and then the WAR WILL BE ON.

As has been posted by another Patriotic Member or two.

Making a list and checking it twice got to find out who is Naughty or Nice.

And it will not be Santa Claus who will be coming to town.

Ho Ho Ho!



Santa Clause is Coming to TOWN, bitches!

I agree. If that was my daughter, there would've been no struggle, there would've been dead cops. Period. Dead. Cops. No argument, those cops would be dead, and I would've strung their bodies from a tree with a sign, "CORRUPT COPS, BE YE WARNED", and left their asses there.

There’s been quite a bit of discussion around the Internet on the Dymond Milburn case since we posted on this Houston Press story this afternoon. Even I thopught it seemed a little improbable. Which is why more than a few commenters at various sites have raised the possibility that the whole thing is a hoax. If it is, it’s quite a hoax. Like, on a Tawana Brawley scale.

So let’s clarify some misconceptions…


It’s all a hoax.


The lawsuit is very real. It was filed in August of this year.

Here’s a write-up from the Courthouse News Service from the day it was filed. Here’s a copy (pdf) of the complaint.

If this is a hoax, Milburn, her family, and her attorney are going to great lengths to pull it off. Yes, her complaint likely paints what happened in a light quite favorable to her, and unfavorable to the police. But I’d be very surprised if the major components of the complaint weren’t true.


This happened two years ago. Why are you posting about it now?


The incident happened in August 2006. The lawsuit was filed in August of this year. Milburn’s attorney tipped off Houston Press reporter Chris Vogel, who wrote about the case yesterday. We saw Vogel’s story, and blogged about the case today.


This is just one version of events, from Milburn’s lawyer.


Yes, and I made that clear in the post. After I put up the post and talked to Vogel on the phone, he posted a response from the police officers’ lawyer, William Helfand. You can read that here.

Here’s what isn’t in dispute: Milburn was wrongly targeted during a prostitution raid. The police were looking for white prostitutes. Milburn is black. She was apprehended by plain-clothes narcotics officers who emerged from a van as she stood outside her home. She resisted. The police have acknowledged they targeted the wrong house.

Three weeks later, Milburn was arrested at her school, in front of her classmates, for “assaulting a public official.” At some point, her father was arrested on a similar charge. The judge declared a mistrial on the first day of Milburn’s trial. According to Vogel, she’s scheduled to be tried again in February.

Milburn and her family are now suing the police officers who apprehended her. They claim she was severely beaten during the raid. According to the compliant, two hours after the raid, Milburn’s parents took her to a hospital, where doctors documented a host of nasty injuries.

I haven’t seen documentation of the hospital stay or the injuries, but if that’s all included in the complaint, I would assume it exists.

I called the Galveston police department and the Galveston district attorney’s office for comment. I haven’t yet heard back from either.


Milburn has profiles on social networking sites that say she’s 17. That means she would have been 15 at the time of the raid, not 12.


I won't link to a minor’s social networking page, particularly a minor who may have been the victim of abuse. She doesn’t need a bunch of crazies trying to contact her. Use Google, or check the comments if you’re interested, but yes, she does state in one of her profiles that she’s 17.

My guess is that Milburn exaggerated her age, as teenage girls sometimes do on the Internet. This high school track and field results page says she was born in 1993. If her birthday falls later in the year than August, she would have been 12 at the time of the raid, as indicated in the complaint.


If it’s true, why hasn’t an outrageous story like this been picked up by the national media?


Why don’t 90 percent of the abuses of power we look at on this site get covered by the national media? The lawsuit was filed in August of an election year. A single instance of police misconduct in Galveston at that time would have quite a few other stories to compete with. As to why the story wasn’t covered in 2006, Vogel tells me the raid took place in a low-income neighborhood. I would guess that after a traumatic experience like that, and after the seemingly retributive arrest, the family was either too frightened to take their story to the media, or couldn’t get anyone to listen when they did.

I’ll post more information on this case as we learn of it.

Onward and upward,
airforce

"I've been outraged by every single one of these incidents I've reported. But some of them are so outrageous, they take my breath away. This is one of them.

To be fair, though, I've only heard one side of the story. I really hope there's more to this. If there is, I'll post it here.

Onward and upward,
airforce"


I hope their side is a Drastic difference!
It has to stop, and people have to be held accountable for their action no matter what position they hold.

I have always believed that all Law Enforcement, Government Agency, and our Military should be held to a much higher standard. A code of Morals & Ethics should be burned into the back of their heads so the guy behind them in line has something to read!

"Setting a good example is s far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms"

I have received nothing yet from the Galveston district attorney or or police department. However, the attorney for the officers involved in this incident, William helfland, sent me an email reiterating what he said earlier:

I won't comment on this response. It's not because I don't have a comment, but because I make it a policy not to use profanity here at AWRM.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Appropriate actions by the punks!! Sounds about right to me!! SOP at it's best!! They just haven't hit the right one YET!!!!!!!!

News and video here.

The vicious beast was a 2-year-old Dalmatian.

It’s the second time in 10 days that cops in Gwinnett County have forced their way into the wrong home.

Ironically, that\'s not the only story about a murdered dog in Gwinnett, Georgia, today.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Patriot

Yes they have not hit the right one YET but they WILL if they don’t change their attitude toward the People they supposedly serve, yea right serve. And at the rate these Incidents are occurring it will not be that long before they do hit someone who will hit back.

airforce

You know how I feel about dogs and what I stated above also goes for the dog murdering Cops.

Anyone who kills one of my loved ones or my dog and I do not get justice via the System will receive my Justice.

These murdering cops are pushing their luck, the odds are not on their side and every time they do this they are rolling the dice and someday they will lose big time.

It is stated that the Square parasail type Parachutes have a Failure Rate of 1 in 300 deployments. So every time you jump out of a perfectly good aircraft the odds are 1/300 and keep getting worse that your main chute will fail. The thing with these raids is we don’t know what the odds are but considering what I know about people it should not be very much longer before cops do hit the wrong person and pay the price.

And it is a sure thing that the cops will blame everyone but themselves for this happening and call the person getting revenge a rotten cop killer.

Cop shoots dog in drug raid. Bullet goes through dog, hits DEA agent.

Dog and agent are expected to recover. No charges have been filed against the homeowner.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Wow! A dog and a pig with one round! I need me some of them bullets.

It's always good to hear that one of our faithful, loyal public servants are able to heroically pull through a gunshot wound.


What?


No, I mean the DOG. He was the only public servant there!

Here's three more.

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.

And in one we 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 j...oting 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:

For all of the “wrong-house” raids we write about, 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.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Another one from Gwinnett County, Georgia:

It’s the second wrong-door raid in Gwinnett County in two months.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Police in Howard County, Maryland c... two police cars burglarized last month.

They found nothing, but they did shoot and kill Hasenei’s Australian cattle dog. The police say the no-knock raid and tactical entry were necessary because Hasenei is a (legal) gun-owner.

Sounds like they need more training.

He wasn’t arrested.

So the police say they used a no-knock and a tactical team to secure the place quickly because they knew Hasenei was a gun owner. Yet Hasenei was able to get up from bed, walk out from his bedroom, and enter his living room before making his first contact with the tactical team. Which shows that all they really succeeded in doing was to provoke a potentially violent confrontation with a guy who at the moment looks to be innocent of any crime.

It’s a good thing he didn’t grab one of his guns on his way out of the bedroom.

Onward and upward,
airforce

I am repeating myself but If anyone kills my dog they will die, No Ifs, Ands or Buts.

I will state this anyone who feels that after the Civil War there should Not Be A Purge of our Enemies is NO PATRIOT.

Every Cop who has ever abused his power, or enforced Unconstitutional Laws, or violated the Rights of the People in anyway or has fought against the People in the Civil War needs to be Purged, with no mercy. And the same goes for everyone up their chain of command.

We just had a cop killed when he stepped out in traffic...

I had met him he seemed like a decent guy... that said every since all I have heard is how thankful we all should be to have LEO's to protect us and how hard and dangerous their job is.

Then I hear how we should always give them the benefit of any doubt.

When this hero worship starts in the media,and I begin to feel for the rest of these clowns.

I come back to this thread and reread all of it. I am sorry that some good guys get killed but sorry LEO's thats your job.

Your no hero's, real hero's never want the recognition. They just do what they should to the best of their ability.


What you see in these 5 pages is thugs hiding behind badges... No hero's here.

See reading this works, I'm pissed again.


P.S. What ever happened to Billy Miller the gulf war Vet

I stay pissed Greywolf!! Too much going on i guess!! I got to go with Snipe on his last post!! He's got it right!! It would have been nice to have had a full auto M60 when he walked into the living room!! I'll bet no one would have knocked him anywhere!!!

From Toledo, Ohio:

Onward and upward,
airforce

Kansas City, police and FBI use flashbangs with two children inside the house[/b]. Gee, what can go wrong?

Onward and upward,
airforce

and the raids just keep coming!!!!

The Dakota County Attorney has conc...ion of a man who had done nothing wrong.

Onward and upward,
airforce