No Knock Raid On Wrong House Goes Wrong
This time, the homeowner was not killed but a police officer was shot.
A Minneapolis police SWAT team kicked in the wrong door yesterday during an early morning raid, prompting the man of the house to grab his gun and open fire on the officers who entered the house.
“He took out his shotgun and he said if they are bad guys I’ll shoot, I’ll scare them away,” Dao Khang, the brother of the homeowner, Vang Khang, tells the Star Tribune. “He fired first, he told me it was two shots.”
Dao Khang says his brother was trying to protect his wife and six children. No one from the family was hit during the exchange of gunfire. Vang hit two officers, but the Pioneer Press says they were protected by ballistic vests and helmets.
“I must’ve heard over 20 or 30 shots, I swear, it was scary,” Ruth Hayes, the family’s next-door neighbor, tells WCCO-TV. “It was like 30 SWAT guys out here … it was crazy it was just like havoc.”
Well, police are not known to be the best of shots. I’m glad that no one in the family was killed. The police are, of course, covering their butts:
Minneapolis police say they are not to blame for a mistake that sent a SWAT team into the wrong house over the weekend.
And this: Police haven’t decided whether they’ll try to charge Khang with a crime. KMSP-TV says the Khang family is consulting with a civil attorney.
Try him for what? Defending himself against invaders who failed to identify themselves? And I hope the Khang family sues the crap out of them.
Really? I guess it must have been someone else who got the wrong address, kicked in the door, and got all Ninja on an innocent family!
“It was bad information that came on the informants end, not on the police end,” said Jesse Garcia, a Minneapolis Police spokesman.
Garcia said after the informant gave police three addresses they did their homework.
Well, I guess they had a one in three shot of not being wrong. Any way, the informant works for you. You guys failed to adequately investigate and you terrorized an innocent family.
Shame on you all.
Update: Radley has more.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:55 am
It came from the informants, not the police? What? Aren’t the informants working for the police? I could understand suing the informants if they had kicked in the wrong door, but that isn’t what happened, is it?
At least no one got hurt. I hope this gets settled amicably.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:08 am
The poor homeowner is VERY lucky the cops were not killed. If they had been, you could bet that this terrified, completely innocent citizen would now be looking at a capital murder charge.
All because some idiot keystoners couldn’t be bothered to do any actual police work. Much more fun to go busting down doors and terrorizing people.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:44 am
It’s amazing that government officials can break down your door in the middle of the night, be surprised when they get shot at and then claim “he/she should have known we were police.
Any moron can buy a fake badge and a uniform and yell “police” while doing so. I’m surprised non-government home invaders don’t do that.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
“This was the end of a chain of things, and there was no reason to question the credibility of the information.”
In my best Harvey Keitel voice…”How about now???”
December 18th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
“Any moron can buy a fake badge and a uniform and yell “police” while doing so. I’m surprised non-government home invaders don’t do that.”
Actually, they do. I’ve lost count of the number of news reports I’ve read over the years of thugs doing exactly that. Granted, one group was at least a little creative and yelled “FBI” instead one time, just to change things up.
December 18th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
The best quote is always left out:
“It’s unfortunate because we have officers that were hit by gunfire and this truly, truly could have been a much worse situation.”
Unfortunate that an officer got hit, no mention of how unfortunate shooting up an innocent man’s home and terrorizing his family was.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
guy Says:
December 18th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
The best quote is always left out:
“It’s unfortunate because we have officers that were hit by gunfire and this truly, truly could have been a much worse situation.”
Unfortunate that an officer got hit, no mention of how unfortunate shooting up an innocent man’s home and terrorizing his family was.”
I noticed that too. The cops didnt seem to be concerned AT ALL about the trauma they put that family through. They’re just interested in covering their asses, as usual.
“Garcia said after the informant gave police three addresses they did their homework”
Did they? It sure dont look that way to me. Had the cops done “their homework” they would’nt have hit the wrong house now would they?
“Police hit rates on shootings as low as 17.4 percent”
After reading that article I’m convinced that if you’re in the vicinity of a police shooting you’re safest if you’re the target.
December 18th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
“Police hit rates on shootings as low as 17.4 percent”
“After reading that article I’m convinced that if you’re in the vicinity of a police shooting you’re safest if you’re the target.”
LOL!!
December 19th, 2007 at 1:38 am
The only way to stop this and something I have been trying to popularize is a new law. Yep, that’s right. One more law. Only this time it works in our favor.
When any officer is killed or injured in a “no-knock” raid, right address or not, it is to be considered just a cost of doing business with no liability either criminal or civil accruing to the citizen. If, the raid is conducted against the wrong address criminal and civil penalties accrue against the individuals officers and their supervisors involved and the agencies for which they work.
Anybody want to bet on whether much more judgment would then be used before resorting to this, the last of all options?
December 19th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
And if this follows the usual pattern, we’ll read that “The officers were following standard procedure, so no action will be taken against them.”
God, I’m sick of this.