Saturday, May 17, 2014

This is pretty big

Police get a tip "He's got a BIG marijuana operation!  And stolen guns!", and instead of doing something sensible they set up a SWAT raid in the dark.  Didn't try to confirm the tip was good first, either.  Everything goes to hell and an officer gets killed.  The verdict:
28-year-old Henry Magee is no longer charged in the shooting death of Burleson County Sheriff’s Deputy Adam Sowders
A grand jury decided there wasn’t enough evidence for him to stand trial on the capital murder charge.
McGee admitted to shooting Sowders before sunrise on December 19th while the deputy and other investigators were serving a no knock search warrant for drugs at McGee’s mobile home near Snook.
Magee’s Defense Attorney Dick DeGuerin says his client thought someone was breaking into his home and fired to protect his pregnant girlfriend and himself.
Along with general "Why the hell are you doing it this way?", this is why this kind of raid should ONLY be done if there's actual good REASON for it; not "Because we can" or the 'attempt to excuse anything we do' of saying "Officer Safety".  Had this been done another way Sowders would still be alive, and this example wouldn't have been set.

Take it to further situation: someone has a grudge and makes a phony tip, they get all fired up in their ninja suits and invade someones' home and people get killed, and there's nothing illegal found; the officers SHOULD be liable for
Not making sure the tip was real,
Not confirming anything before suiting up,
Not making any other effort to serve their warrant.
Because homes get destroyed, people get killed, kids wind up terrified of the cops and will probably hate them for the rest of their lives.  And lots of citizens start looking on cops as heavy-handed jerks who think they can do ANYTHING and get away with it; and when they do, that makes it worse.

And, as Miguel notes, this is in Texas, which is not exactly 'hostile to the cops' territory.

4 comments:

Cormac said...

When this story first broke, I remember reading that a bunch of cops were pissed of, throwing "I told you so" around at the leadership.
They didn't blame the shooter, they blamed the guys in charge...

Anonymous said...

Leadership worried about loosing funds for cool toys authorized a raid to prove the "need"? Sounds very plausible.

Gerry N. said...

I'd be surprised if Texas doesn't become "Hostile to the Cops territory" with just a few more of these Gehime Staatspolezai "Gestapo" raids. Already in my little corner of heaven, the kids from about age 8 are calling the police "po-pos, and Gestapo. Way to go police dudes, what a PR coup. These kids are gonna be voters soon.

Gerry N. said...

Also why isn't everyone involved in this debacle either facing capital murder charges or the unemployment line? Or better yet festively dangling from a lamp post?