Columbia Mo SWAT Raid 2/11/2010. Cops Shoot Pets With Children Present

[goldmonkey]

http://www.memeorandum.com/100505/p103#a100505p103


This video shows a search warrant served by the Columbia Mo. police department. The cops bust in this guys house in the middle of the night and shoot his two dogs (one a pit bull that was caged in the kitchen and the other a Corgi) with children in the home. it turns out that rather than a big time drug dealer, this guy had a small pipe with some resin in it, a grinder, and what the cops here call "a small amount of marijuana" (meaning less than a few grams). We here in Columbia want everyone to know what kind of police department we have here, check out our "finest" in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbwSwvUaRqc

[I am me, I am free]

Those sick bastards. Shooting a caged dog and also shooting a dog with the sweetest disposition you can imagine.

This is a Welsh Corgi (note the extremely dangerous bite on a Corgi, it can really get a mouthful...of ankle) -

http://www.edog.net/breeds/imgs/PembrokeLucy2.jpg

Brought to you by the War on Drugs.

Just say 'NO!' to the brutality of the corporate state - use deadly force if and when appropriate.

[General of Darkness]

And people ask me why I have a 1911 by side at literally all times when I'm in my OWN DAMN HOUSE, for reason such as these, and I'm squeaky clean. :redfc

[Celtic Rogue]

G.D. Mother F ers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thats it I shoot anyone that breaks into my house. All those PIGS should be thrown in a pit with about 15 wolf dog hybrids!!!!! If they shoot a caged dog whats next children in bed? There should NEVER be allowed this type of entry for a non violent crime!!!!! F them till they die. /rant

[willie pete]

Damn,...shooting a dog in cage? what kind of sick mind would do that?


Found this Map of "Botched" raids by various agencies around the country...there's a lot of 'em

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

[MetalsMan]

JESUS CHRIST MAN! F#CKING PSYCHO!!! :o

[Olmstein]

Brought to you by the War on Drugs.

Just say 'NO!' to the brutality of the corporate state - use deadly force if and when appropriate.


Where is our resident LEO to defend the war on drugs?

[Ifyouseekay]

-

[ximmy]

TO PROTECT AND SERVE...

[RJB]

Those dogs weren't even making threatening noises.

[Heimdhal]

they just wanted to shoto something and by the near universal action of shooting dogs in swat teams around the countries, it seems like thats their SOP and excuse. Its a dog, shoot it.


Maybe my wife (fanta) will chime in and she went through an almost identical situation when she was 10, though she didnt have a dog at the time to get shot, she was still the victim of a men with guns in the night "swat" raid over some bullshit marijuana.

[cigarlover]

These dogs were killed because of a small amount of resin in a pipe? How did they even get a search warrant for a small amount of resin? The only way things will change is if the citizens get together and surround the police stations or the mayors office.

[Black Blade]

It is a known fact that most serial murderers started out torturing and killing small animals. Some prime examples are Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, etc. These three murderers are also connected by the fact that each of them tortured and/or killed animals during their childhoods. "Researchers as well as FBI and other law enforcement agencies nationwide have linked animal cruelty to domestic violence, child abuse, serial killings and sexual abuse of children. It is no wonder then that today's law enforcement community and especially the home invasion specialists (SWAT, DEA, BATF, IRS, etc.) attract mentally defective individuals who otherwise would probably be wandering serial murderers and sexual deviants.

Future serial killers usually torture animals purely for their own enjoyment. Animal abuse is a recognized sign of a mental disorder. If a child hurts animals it should be a red flag and immediate action should be taken. While there are many factors that contribute to someone becoming a serial killer, the one constant they share is animal abuse.

Jeffrey Dahmer showed an intense interest in dismembering animals as a child. As an adult he was charged with murdering and dismembering at least sixteen people. Dahmer is just one example of this. As a matter of fact, most people who are on death row for murder admit to abusing animals as children. A study done by North Eastern University and the Massachusetts SPCA found that people who abuse animals are five times more likely to abuse humans than people who do not. Albert Schweitzer said it best when the wrote that "Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives". These are not isolated incidents, as I said earlier almost every serial killer has a history of animal abuse. This is a fact, not a coincidence.

A partial list of serial killers and animal abuse:

Albert Disalvo (better known as the Boston Strangler) used to trap dogs and cats as a child and then shoot them with arrows.

Edward Emil Kemper lll was convicted of killing eight women, one of which was his own mother. When he was thirteen yrs. old he would kill neighborhood cats and put their heads on poles. Kemper killed his own cat, decapitated it and then cut it into small pieces. This is the same thing he did to his own mother!

David Berkowitz was convicted of thirteen murders and attempted murders. He used to abuse the neighborhood dogs. He shot one neighbors dog because according to him, the dog was an "evil force" that compelled him to kill.

Ted Bundy was convicted of two murders though he was suspected of at least forty! Bundy used to watch as his own father tortured animals. Eventually, Bundy did the same.

Andrew Cunanan was the man who killed designer Versace and was suspected in the murders of five other people. Cunanan used to gather crabs and then burn their eyes out with a lighted match. He would watch their eyes sizzle then turn them loose.

I guess what I am saying is that there is a very fine line between mentally defective deviant serial murders, child molesters and law enforcement people who specialize in home invasions. It's just the nature of the beast. Some careers attract these kinds of people and those in the government alphabet soup agencies and government sponsored paramilitary home invasion specialists could just as easily have been serial killers and sexual deviants except that they have found a home in law enforcement where they can ply their trade with impunity and the blessing of their superiors, the courts and government leaders. In fact there is very little difference between many serial deviants and law enforcers.

[Quantum]

There are servants of the Devil, and then there are policemen.

Increasingly, the two groups are merging.

[I am me, I am free]

There are servants of the Devil, and then there are policemen.

Increasingly, the two groups are merging.


"ARE" merging???

The enablers have always been onboard with the sociopaths. There is no such thing as a 'good cop' because anyone who cannot put up with that nonsense quits being a cop - all that's left is the thugs and their enablers.

[Brent]

The "War" on (Some) Drugs is very one sided.

Is it really a "War" when only one side is fighting?

[Large Sarge]

they will probably never get criminal charges on these cops

but I could see a HUGE civil case, imagine showing the jury pictures of your lil corgi.

That guy could break the bank on that city.

just takes the right jury.

that would be the last dog that was ever shot

swat teams would not be deployed on simple drug warrants

etc

I mean really folks, we got over a dozen states with medical marijuana, and probably a dozen more joining them in November

plus California going fully legal

Why are we shooting anyones pets over this?

in a number of states his big offense was "I forgot to renew my prescription, and you shot my dogs"

[Awoke]

Unbelievable!!

>:(

[Heimdhal]

Unbelievable!!

>:(


unfortunatley, not anymore it isnt..... :-\

[Awoke]

You're right, Heimdhal.

:(

[Gaillo]

Ah yes... more casualties of the "war on drugs". I feel safer now, don't all of you? :sarc:

[StackerKen]

Man...I wish I could be on the jury in the case against these cops. >:(

And the stupid cops that shot that baby deer too. >:(

[nunaem]

Stories like these are why I feel happy whenever I hear of a cop getting killed, unless he is killed fighting REAL(victimful) crime.

[BoatingAccident]

The first shot must have been at the Corgi, which was uncaged. As soon as they entered they fired that shot, yet when the cameraman entered the Corgi was not to be found in the main room. It's possible, they shot near the dog, to scare it away. It sounded more scared, than injured.

That dog yelped, but didn't make a peep after that. Since it wasn't in the main room, it wasn't instantly killed. Hopefully it is still alive.

The other dog was definitely shot. You can tell by the noises it made. If it was caged, this is very sad. One of the saddest things I've ever seen was a shot dog.

What a horrible video to watch.

[willie pete]

The Family should be thankful they didn't shoot the children, and really, who knows what goes on when there's no video?, what's up with MO? wasn't it MO that put out a warning about Ron Paul supporters last year? how if a car had a Ron Paul bumper sticker the occupants could be domestic terrorists?

[bonaparte]

Damn,...shooting a dog in cage? what kind of sick mind would do that?


Found this Map of "Botched" raids by various agencies around the country...there's a lot of 'em

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/


What is scary about that map is the number of times the officer got away with murder (literally) and the number of times a homeowner shot at an unannounced raid thinking their house was getting broken into and then had to go to court to defend themselves.

If police want to enter unannounced they need to expect people to shoot and ask questions later.

[goldmonkey]

A Drug Raid Goes Viral
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/11/a-drug-raid-goes-viral/


A violent drug raid posted to YouTube catches fire online. But the only thing unusual about the raid is that it was caught on video.

Radley Balko | May 11, 2010

Last week, a Columbia, Missouri, drug raid captured on video went viral. As of this morning, the video had garnered 950,000 views on YouTube. It has lit up message boards, blogs, and discussion groups around the Web, unleashing anger, resentment and even, regrettably, calls for violence against the police officers who conducted the raid. I've been writing about and researching these raids for about five years, including raids that claimed the lives of innocent children, grandmothers, college students, and bystanders. Innocent families have been terrorized by cops who raided on bad information, or who raided the wrong home due to some careless mistake. There's never been a reaction like this one.

But despite all the anger the raid has inspired, the only thing unusual thing here is that the raid was captured on video, and that the video was subsequently released to the press. Everything else was routine. Save for the outrage coming from Columbia residents themselves, therefore, the mass anger directed at the Columbia Police Department over the last week is misdirected. Raids just like the one captured in the video happen 100-150 times every day in America. Those angered by that video should probably look to their own communities. Odds are pretty good that your local police department is doing the same thing.

First, some background on the raid depicted in the video: On February 11, the Columbia, Missouri, police department's SWAT team served a drug warrant at the home of Jonathan Whitworth and Brittany Montgomery. Police say that eight days earlier they had received a tip from a confidential informant that Whitworth had a large supply of marijuana in his home. They say they first conducted a trash pull, and found marijuana residue in the family's garbage. During the raid, police shot and killed the family's pit bull. At least one bullet ricocheted, injuring the family's pet corgi. Whitworth, Montgomery, and their 7-year-old son were at home at the time. The incident was written up in the Columbia Daily Tribune, noted on a few blogs that cover drug policy (including a post I put up here at Reason), and then largely forgotten for several weeks.

On April 28, I received an email from Montgomery. She had seen my post at Reason and read an account of some of my reporting on SWAT teams published in Reader's Digest. She said she was reading to her son in his bedroom at the time of the raid. Her husband had just returned home from work. Police fired on their pets within seconds of entering the home.

"I've never felt so violated or more victimized in my life," Montgomery wrote. "It's absolutely the most helpless and hopeless feeling I could ever imagine. I can't sleep right ... and I am constantly paranoid. It's a horrible feeling ... to lose the safety and security I thought I was entitled to in my own home. Nobody protected us that night, my son and I were locked in the back of a police car for nearly four hours on a school night while they destroyed my home."

According to Montgomery, when the couple's neighbors inquired about the raid, they were told that the SWAT team had merely conducted a drill, and no shots were fired. When neighbors learned from the family that this was a lie, they began writing to the department and the Daily Tribune to demand answers. When the couple discovered the police had videotaped the raid, they requested a copy of the video. Montgomery said in her email that the copy they were initially given had no audio, and the incriminating (to the police) portions of the video had been removed.

On February 23, the Daily Tribune published its first story on the raid. The paper made its own request for the SWAT video, which the police department initially denied. On April 20, Jonathan Whitworth pleaded guilty to a single charge of possession of drug paraphernalia. He wasn't even charged for the minor amount of marijuana in his home (marijuana for personal use has been decriminalized in Columbia). He was issued a $300 fine. On April 27, the Daily Tribune made a formal request for the video, which it received on April 30, with full audio and with no visuals removed. The paper posted the video with an accompanying article on May 3. On May 5, I posted it here at Reason, and the video went viral.

The police department has since conceded it was unaware that there were pets or a child in the home at the time of the raid. A spokesman for the Columbia Police Department initially said police had to conduct the raid immediately before the drug supply could be moved, a statement later shown to be false when police revealed the raid was conducted more than a week after the initial tip.

According to surveys of police departments conducted by University of Eastern Kentucky criminologist Peter Kraska, we've seen about a 1,500 percent increase in SWAT deployments in this country since the early 1980s. The vast majority of that increase has been to serve search warrants on people suspected of nonviolent drug crimes. SWAT teams are inherently violent. In some ways they're an infliction of punishment before conviction. This is why they should only be used in situations where the suspect presents an immediate threat to others. In that case, SWAT teams use violence to defuse an already violent situation. When they're used to serve drug warrants for consensual crimes, however, SWAT tactics create violence where no violence was present before. Even when everything goes right in such a raid, breaking into the home of someone merely suspected of a nonviolent, consensual crime is an inappropriate use of force in a free society.

The overwhelmingly negative reaction to the video is interesting. Clearly, a very large majority of the people who have seen it are disturbed by it. But this has been going on for 30 years. We've reached the point where police have no qualms about a using heavily armed police force trained in military tactics to serve a search warrant on a suspected nonviolent marijuana offender. And we didn't get here by accident. The war on drugs has been escalating and militarizing for a generation. What's most disturbing about that video isn't the violence depicted in it, but that such violence has become routine.

As horrifying as the video from Columbia, Missouri, is, no human beings were killed. The police got the correct address, and they found the man they were looking for. In many other cases, such raids transpire based on little more than a tip from an anonymous or confidential informant. Nor is it unusual for raids just as violent as the one depicted in the video to turn up little in the way of drugs or weapons. (Whitworth wasn't exactly an outstanding citizen—he had a prior drug and DWI conviction. But he had no history of violence, and there were no weapons in the home.) Surveys conducted by newspapers around the country after one of these raids goes bad have found that police only find weapons of any kind somewhere between 10-20 percent of the time. The percentage of raids that turn up a significant amount of drugs tends to vary, but a large percentage only result in misdemeanor charges at worst.

Shooting the family's dogs isn't unusual, either. To be fair, that's in part because some drug dealers do in fact obtain vicious dogs to guard their supply. But there are other, safer ways to deal with these dogs than shooting them. In the Columbia case, a bullet fired at one dog ricocheted and struck another dog. The bullet could just as easily have struck a person. In the case of Tarika Wilson, a Lima, Ohio, SWAT officer mistook the sounds of a colleague shooting a drug dealer's dogs for hostile gunfire. He then opened fire into a bedroom, killing a 23-year-old mother and shooting the hand off of the one-year-old child in her arms.

The Columbia raid wasn't even a "no-knock" raid. The police clearly announced themselves before entering. The Supreme Court has ruled that police must knock and announce themselves before entering a home to serve a search warrant. If they want to enter without knocking, they have to show specific evidence that the suspect could be dangerous or is likely to dispose of contraband if police abide by the knock-and-announce rule. As is evident in the Columbia video, from the perspective of the people inside the home that requirement is largely ceremonial. If you were in a backroom of that house, or asleep, it isn't at all difficult to see how you'd have no idea if the armed men in your home were police officers. The first sounds you heard would have been gunfire.

But because this was a knock-and-announce raid, the police didn't need to show that Whitworth had a violent background or may have had guns in the home to use the violent tactics in the video. They didn't need to show that Whitworth posed any sort of threat at all, other than the fact he was suspected of dealing marijuana. Though SWAT teams are frequently defended as necessary tools reserved for the most dangerous of drug offenders, the reality is that in many communities, all search warrants are served with forced entry and paramilitary tactics.

The militarization of America's police departments has taken place over a generation, due to a number of bad policy decisions from politicians and government officials, ranging from federal grants for drug fighting to a Pentagon giveaway program that makes military equipment available to local police departments for free or at steep discounts. Mostly, though, it's due to the ill-considered "war" imagery our politicians continue to invoke when they refer to drug prohibition. Repeat the mantra that we're at war with illicit drugs often enough, and the cops on the front lines of that war will naturally begin to think of themselves as soldiers. And that's particularly true when you outfit them in war equipment, weaponry, and armor. This is dangerous, because the objectives of cops and soldiers are very different. One is charged with annihilating a foreign enemy. The other is charged with keeping the peace.

Soon enough, our police officers begin to see drug suspects not as American citizens with constitutional rights, but as enemy combatants. Pets, bystanders, and innocents caught in the crossfire can be dismissed as regrettable but inevitable collateral damage, just as we do with collateral damage in actual wars. This is how we get images like those depicted in the video.

It's heartening that nearly a million people have now seen the Columbia video. But it needs some context. The officers in that video aren't rogue cops. They're no different than other SWAT teams across the country. The raid itself is no different from the tens of thousands of drug raids carried out each year in the U.S. If the video is going to effect any change, the Internet anger directed at the Columbia Police Department needs to be redirected to America's drug policy in general. Calling for the heads of the Columbia SWAT team isn't going to stop these raids. Calling for the heads of the politicians who defend these tactics and promote a "war on drugs" that's become all too literal—that just might.