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The city of Minneapolis (meaning the taxpayers thereof) just paid $1 million dollars to a woman burned by a 'flash-bang' grenade during a (you guessed it) 'no-knock raid.' Interestingly enough, authorities had been denied a 'no-knock' warrant... read on...
The payout to Rickia Russell, who suffered permanent injuries, was the third largest payout for alleged Minneapolis police misconduct on record.
Flash grenades are intended to distract and intimidate, not to injure people, but during the raid the device rolled under the legs of Russell, who was seated on a sofa, and exploded. The police were looking that day for a drug dealer, narcotics and a firearm, but found nothing.
"What happened in this case was an accident," Minneapolis city attorney Susan Segal said in a statement. "It's very unfortunate that Ms. Russell suffered serious injuries, however, accidents like this are rare."
Yet incidents of fires, injuries and even deaths caused by the devices have led to costly settlements and policy changes in cities nationwide, including Minneapolis, where a 1989 fire started by a police grenade killed two people....
On the night of Feb. 16, 2010, 18 officers were executing a search warrant ... based on a tip that narcotics were being sold at the address by someone named David Conley.
In what Bennett called "a cascading series of errors," a Minneapolis police SWAT team smashed down the door with a battering ram without warning, when the search warrant police had obtained required officers to announce themselves before entering. Police had applied for a "no-knock" warrant but did not get it, Bennett said.
Then there's this part:
Russell was arrested on a misdemeanor for having a "disorderly house" but never charged. She sued the city in federal court last year.
No discipline was imposed on the officers, Minneapolis spokesman Matt Laible said.
Russel was a VISITOR in SOMEBODY ELSE's house, according to the article. So how could she have been arrested for "a disorderly house???" Meanwhile, no discipline was imposed on the police officers who -- based solely on a "tip" -- went through with a form of search they'd been denied authorization to conduct, in the process permanently injuring a citizen and costing the entire city a million dollars (plus legal fees, etc).
Will somebody please tell me where my country went, so I can get back to it?
2 comments:
The Los Angeles Times reports: Armed with a search warrant, Nelson County Sheriff Kelly Janke went looking for six missing cows on the Brossart family farm in the early evening of June 23. Three men brandishing rifles chased him off, he said.
Janke knew the gunmen could be anywhere on the 3,000-acre spread in eastern North Dakota. Fearful of an armed standoff, he called in reinforcements from the state Highway Patrol, a regional SWAT team, a bomb squad, ambulances and deputy sheriffs from three other counties.
He also called in a Predator B drone.
As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.
But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.
“We don’t use [drones] on every call out,” said Bill Macki, head of the police SWAT team in Grand Forks. “If we have something in town like an apartment complex, we don’t call them.”
The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country’s northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211,0,72624,full.story
Yeah, I'd seen that story posted several places. Is it really any surprise?
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