Enough is enough

The Detroit Police Department’s SRT conducted a dynamic entry to serve a search warrant intended to locate a homicide suspect. Now a seven year old girl won’t get any older. The bullet came from a police officers weapon. The officer apparently discharged the weapon during a struggle with an older female resident of the apartment. The police regret the unfortunate incident. The little girl is dead because the police chose flash bangs and “dynamic entry” over other methods to apprehend their suspect. I don’t blame the officers carrying out the raid although having their booger hooks on the fucking triggers was no doubt a contributing factor to the officer pulling the trigger. I blame the department’s administration that allows the use of their SRT for the service of search warrants when other alternatives are available like maybe securing the perimeter and making sure you know which side of the duplex the bad guy is in before you take action. Now I’d like to know what action is going to be taken to insure this doesn’t happen again. I’m not looking to the police because they’ll do bupkis. It was an unfortunate accident. The State Legislature needs to look at how and under what circumstances special response teams are used and make changes. Enough is enough.

Tam has some commentary on the use of SWAT teams for everything but for what they were originally organized. Go read it.

Here's Radley Balko's take on it.