Comments on: SWAT team injures 12-year-old girl with flash grenade - no drugs found

By: acerplatanoides

acerplatanoides — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 17:11:00 +0000

I hope she doesn’t turn to drugs to soothe the anxiety

By: NoOneSpecific

NoOneSpecific — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:57:00 +0000

Really? Canadian Reg Force issue gear works pretty well for this with most residential housing. Not so great with a poured concrete wall but pretty decent with wooden framing.

By: That_Anonymous_Coward

That_Anonymous_Coward — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Just say drugs or terrorism and it happens all the time…

By: benher

benher — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 05:41:00 +0000

Scarring a young girl’s body, scarring her heart… another victim of the Drug War. When is the Drug Peace going to come?

By: Crissa

Crissa — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 23:14:00 +0000

Really? O-o

Bulls can be really dangerous, but… That’s just doofy.

By: Crissa

Crissa — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 23:12:00 +0000

Not exactly. Civil immunity, but not criminal. If a crime is committed because he did not do his diligence… He could be held accountable.

But that’s unlikely.

By: Crissa

Crissa — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 23:10:00 +0000

Pseudoephedrine, available to anyone with ID.

By: Crissa

Crissa — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 23:09:00 +0000

And delicate lab equipment and touchy chemicals wouldn’t be set off by dropping an explosive wave through the room at all…

By: Crissa

Crissa — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 23:07:00 +0000

Wait, didn’t they have a search warrant the first time?

You can’t just go fishing.

By: Crissa

Crissa — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 22:59:00 +0000

How do you get a warrant to drop grenades into a house but not to sniff around outside?

This world is sucky.

By: signsofrain

signsofrain — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:52:00 +0000

Saying, in reply to my post, that ending the drug war “requires non-stereotyped supporters” implies that the supporter I linked to, Prince EA, was a stereotype.

Since you didn’t see fit to actually reply to me, I’ll ask again. Did you watch the video? And if you did, just what exactly was stereotypical about it? The rap relates all the good arguments for legalization (possible economic benefit, Anslinger’s propaganda campaign, the cost of incarcerations, the medicinal benefits) and it does so in a very relatable manner, whether you’re a fan of rap or not.

I doubt you would have made your comment if you’d actually watched the video, so yeah, I’m calling you out on your knee-jerk reaction, since it was demonstrably not a considered opinion. (or if it was, please defend your statement)

By: CLamb

CLamb — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 17:36:00 +0000

Obviously this police department needs funding to buy a spy drone to ensure this won’t happen again.

By: Shawn Mcdonald

Shawn Mcdonald — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 16:10:00 +0000

This is the same police dept. that brought out their sniper to dispatch a rougue cow. It was running the streets. Hello, this is montana, no cowboys to round up one cow? Their chief is out of control.

By: Severian12

Severian12 — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:29:00 +0000

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. …See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” -Bastiat

By: acerplatanoides

acerplatanoides — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:14:00 +0000

@boingboing-35ae1151a8d9e8d22e60de3ac4c4d093:disqus – if there were a lab there they might have accidentally burned it down. I’m sure it’s the least of their concerns.

By: Adam Parisian

Adam Parisian — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 13:47:00 +0000

Judges do not have absolute immunity. I thought the same thing when I saw the story of a judge whose daughter videotaped him beating her with a belt, then I did some research, and found that the immunity of a judge, or enforcement officer are very limited depending on the relation of their actions to the case. Do the research there are probably multiple lawsuits to be brought up here, and if they have a warrant there are in fact thermal imaging devices that will read heat signatures through the wall that will pick up even the the family pets. They just can’t use them for evidence to get a warrant. Only on the wall devices are allowed for this type of surveillance, but if they had the warrant to conduct the raid they would have been able to use the technology to figure out exactly where everyone was and what they were probably doing. There is no reason that they should not have known that there were children present, and no reason the idiot with the flash grenade should not have known how to work it.

By: That_Anonymous_Coward

That_Anonymous_Coward — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 11:47:00 +0000

They claim it was an ongoing investigation, but given the fact their asses are on the line I put nothing past them.

By: knoxblox

knoxblox — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 09:23:00 +0000

Using the loose phrasing of “based on our intel” makes me wonder if the police might have been the intended recipients of a “swatting” call and are afraid to admit it.

By: knoxblox

knoxblox — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 09:16:00 +0000

“If we’re wrong or made a mistake, then we’re going to take care of it,” he said. “But if it determines we’re not, then we’ll go with that.”

Read: We don’t really care unless we have to pay.

By: That_Anonymous_Coward

That_Anonymous_Coward — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 07:39:00 +0000

Question that I’ve not been able to answer myself…
Does this SWAT team have a tank and did they roll it out to the scene?

It might explain the over the top response, they needed a giant PR show to justify their toy budget.

By: That_Anonymous_Coward

That_Anonymous_Coward — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 07:37:00 +0000

It was a nighttime raid of a civilian residence with absolutely no indication of armaments or tangible threats of any kind.

They couldn’t figure out there were kids in the house, so they could have totally missed weapons too. Better safe than sorry… and a badge means never having to say sorry.

By: That_Anonymous_Coward

That_Anonymous_Coward — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 07:35:00 +0000

You think these morons could even follow the meth shake n bake method?
They just took some out of the evidence locker.

By: eldritch

eldritch — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 05:10:00 +0000

To be fair, a flash grenade is NOT an incendiary device. It’s main purpose is NOT the starting of fires.

That said, they DO create quite a lot of heat, light, and sound, enough so that being in same room as one is very badly disorienting and even painful when it goes off. If you have the misfortune of being right next to one when it blows, you are indeed at significant risk of burns.

The problem lies entirely with the procedure of usage. A flash grenade is a weapon. More than that, a flash bang is an indiscriminate area-of-effect weapon. It’s intended role is as an anti-hostage-taking device, where breaching a room would place innocent lives in danger from a chaotic firefight. The flash grenade excels at incapacitating a roomful of people without killing any of them. But it CAN and WILL still harm those people, whether hostage or hostage-taker. The operative notion, of course, is that a burned and rattled hostage is preferable to a bullet-riddled one.

There is of course absolutely no reason for a flash grenade to have been employed in this scenario. It wasn’t an armed standoff against combat ready criminals holed up in a defensible area. It was a nighttime raid of a civilian residence with absolutely no indication of armaments or tangible threats of any kind.

By: John Maple

John Maple — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 03:51:00 +0000

This sort of screw-up is a direct result of the militarization of police departments in America.
This is one reason I never, ever watch these shows on TV that feature SWAT teams and the military. These sort of entertainment shows serve to normalize this sort of institutionalized violence and contribute to the degradation of our society.

By: cstatman

cstatman — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 03:38:00 +0000

read here a while back, still love “if there were GOOD cops? there would not be BAD cops”

By: technosean

technosean — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 02:13:00 +0000

Thermal imaging wouldn’t detect a typical meth lab unless they were in a specific phase of production. Better would be a sensitive chemical sniffer. Without some seriously advanced and expensive air handling (i.e. chemical scrubbing of fumes), it should be easy to detect chemical signatures while outside the building, even when not in production.

By: Meg Gandy

Meg Gandy — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:22:00 +0000

it really doesn’t. we remodeled our kitchen ourselves, and found a couple of the nails had popped out on their own about a year later. i could see that kind of force easily knocking a few out of the wall.

By: Robert Donald Nicholas

Robert Donald Nicholas — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:02:00 +0000

Time for a big law suit. fire the swat team Because you can’t fix stupid.
The gernades likely busted her Eardrums also

By: Terazilla

Terazilla — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:31:00 +0000

“Blew the nails out of the drywall”? What? Pulling nails out of the underlying frame and throwing them around would require way, way more force than making that little dent.

Don’t get me wrong, this is awful, but spare the hyperbole please.

By: knoxblox

knoxblox — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 22:42:00 +0000

I’m in favor of the girl paying a visit to the main precinct station once a month, so that all officers on the force are reminded often enough what “hunches” and lack of follow-through lead to.

Oh, never mind. She’d probably be arrested for harassment.