Meanwhile, in the "war on drugs"

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jun/24/military-us-police-swat-teams-raids-aclu

At 3am on 28 May, Alecia Phonesavanh was asleep in the room she was temporarily occupying together with her husband and four children in the small town of Cornelia, Georgia. Her baby, 18-month-old Bou Bou, was sleeping peacefully in his cot.

Suddenly there was a loud bang and several strangers dressed in black burst into the room. A blinding flash burst out with a deafening roar from the direction of the cot. Amid the confusion, Phonesavanh could see her husband pinned down and handcuffed under one of the men in black, and while her son was being held by another. Everyone was yelling, screaming, crying. “I kept asking the officers to let me have my baby, but they said shut up and sit down,” she said.

As the pandemonium died down, it became clear that the strangers in black were a Swat team of police officers from the local Habersham County force – they had raided the house on the incorrect assumption that occupants were involved in drugs. It also became clear to Phonesavanh that something had happened to Bou Bou and that the officers had taken him away.

“They told me that they had taken my baby to the hospital. They said he was fine he had only lost a tooth, but they wanted him in for observation,” Phonesavanh said.

When she got to the hospital she was horrified by what she saw. Bou Bou was in a medically-induced coma in the intensive care unit of Brady Memorial hospital. “His face was blown open. He had a hole in his chest that left his rib-cage visible.”

The Swat team that burst into the Phonesavanh’s room looking for a drug dealer had deployed a tactic commonly used by the US military in warzones, and increasingly by domestic police forces across the US. They threw an explosive device called a flashbang that is designed to distract and temporarily blind suspects to allow officers to overpower and detain them. The device had landed in Bou Bou’s cot and detonated in the baby’s face.

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/24/a_swat_team_blew_a_hole_in_my_2_year_old_son/

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2014/jun/24/military-us-police-swat-teams-raids-aclu

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/24/a_swat_team_blew_a_hole_in_my_2_year_old_son/

The SWAT team didn't screw up here. The screw up was the Jack Ass who gave the okay with miniscule intelligence that this was the house. Sadly SWAT will be blamed while those who failed their jobs before hand will get no public grilling.

The SWAT team didn't screw up here.

"They told me that they had taken my baby to the hospital. They said he was fine he had only lost a tooth, but they wanted him in for observation."

Totally agree with you. I'm pretty sure that response is outlined in Book 9, Chapter 4, Verse 4 of What To Say When You Explode A Baby.

I'd say they did screw up, but it also goes to the bigger issue of the militarization of policing, and heavy handed tactics towards enforcing asinine drug laws that cause more harm than they purport to solve

The SWAT team screwed up as well. This is a supreme example of playing cops and robbers for real. Cops can be idiots with guns as well and this is a prime example of how not to conduct a raid. Remember Donald Rumsfeld and "Shock and Awe"? This is cop Shock and Awe. We don't care who we hurt; we are coming to get you. These are the type of people you don't want on a SWAT team.

:(

No one can ever explain this one away.

By exploding a baby and raiding a house they are somehow protecting the public from what? Some people that might want to smoke a joint or two?

I mean the whole point is the police is supposed to prevent this sort of thing from happening, not be the source of the damage.

No one can ever explain this one away.

was just coming back into this thread to post pretty much the same comment.

The SWAT team didn't screw up here. The screw up was the Jack Ass who gave the okay with miniscule intelligence that this was the house. Sadly SWAT will be blamed while those who failed their jobs before hand will get no public grilling.

'mil, the part I posted was just a clip from the beginning of the article. Follow the link and read the whole article. It's part of an ongoing pattern of using military-style force to enforce Draconian drug laws on pitifully small players.

And they got the right house in that case, btw, but the small-time nobody pot seller they were looking for wasn't there at the time.

The SWAT team didn't screw up here. The screw up was the Jack Ass who gave the okay with miniscule intelligence that this was the house. Sadly SWAT will be blamed while those who failed their jobs before hand will get no public grilling.

Even if the house did have drugs don't regular cops come and do a search?

I thought SWAT teams were for things like bomb threats, hostage situations and armed bank robberies…

Oh yeah and cue the next obvious comment that being a cop is really hard and dangerous and they don't want to leave their family with no father because they didn't blah blah blah

While I agree almost unanimously with what has been said so far, the articles seem to deviate from the local news accounts. For the record, this wasn't swept under the rug and is a continuing story. Not that it's an excuse, but the area where this happened is not the suburbs of Atlanta. This is a small town 60+ miles north, on the edge of the mountains. Small time drug dealers and meth manufacturing are probably the highlight of their busts. I am kinda of surprised that they have a SWAT program at all.

I am kinda of surprised that they have a SWAT program at all.

Ummmm … every dipshit hick town in America seems to have a SWAT team

Ogeden Utah (83,000), and Keene, New Hampshire (Pop 23,000) and Columbia, South Carolina (Pop 131,000) have these, which have a mount to take a .50 cal gun

Here is Warren County, NY (Pop 65,000)'s MRAP

There are even university campus security SWAT teams. You can argue that the militarization of the police in the US is a by-product of the weaponization of the American civilian. Which came first, the chicken or the egg, is debatable but it seems to be feeding back into an endless loop of violence..

There are even university campus security SWAT teams. You can argue that the militarization of the police in the US is a by-product of the weaponization of the American civilian. Which came first, the chicken or the egg, is debatable but it seems to be feeding back into an endless loop of violence..

It is also the by-product of the military industrial complex that builds more equipment than the military needs so Buttfuck, Idaho gets to pretend that the town in under siege.

At least they didn't also have a dog. Even if it is a Chihuahua, shooting it is step two after throwing a flash-bang at a sleeping family.