But minutes after a SWAT team entered the house about 12:30 a.m., things went awry. The homeowner, a father of six, thinking the intruders were burglars, fired at them through a bedroom wall. He hit two officers, one in the back and one in the head, but both were uninjured because they were wearing protective armor. Police shot back, but did not hit him.
Hours later, police officials were apologizing to the homeowner, Vang Khang, admitting that they had erred based on bad information from an informant.
Sound familiar?After police interviewed Khang's family, it became clear they had no connection to the case, Huffman said. But the address listed on the warrant was the one police had gotten from the informant.
"This house was part of a package of very credible information that resulted in other successful enforcement actions," she said. "This was the end of a chain of things, and there was no reason to question the credibility of the information."
Gee, an informant giving a wrong address. Who'da thunk it?
It's been said before: when you do no-knock warrants, there is no room for error. Not in a wrong address, not in failing to check what an informant says. An honest citizen hearing his door smashed in in the night is going to assume it's bad guys and react accordingly, and the police will have no room to say "Well, he shouldn't have shot at us/failed to roll over and wet himself/scared us, then we wouldn't have killed him!" They will anyway, with great indignation, but it's bullshit. Especially when things like this turn up:
. . . . well, it's finally gone public: when the MPD SWAT cops kicked in the door of the house, owned by Vang Khang, lived in by Vang Khang, his equally Hmong wife, and their six little kids, they thought that they were raiding a black street gang.
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