We Pay For Their Mistakes

OFF THE WIRE
There is a serious problem infecting our communities right now, as I type this. I speak of the needless killing of our family pets at the hands of police officers and the growing number of “wrong address” raids on innocent people. Now on the surface, for those who do not watch these incidents closely, these two problems may seem benign. The sad fact is that when you actually think of the ramifications of what is happening, you come to the conclusion that this creates, what the CIA calls “Blowback” which reaches generations to come.
We will start with a very hard topic to discuss: the shooting of a family pet. WFAA.com reported on a new 8-hour training course in Fort Worth, Texas, regarding dealing with dogs at homes where police are responding to a call. This was inspired by the shooting of Lily the Border Collie at the hands of a Fort Worth police officer. Trainer Jim Osorio asked the question, “How many people here think they can handle a dog encounter without lethal force?” He continued with,  “I think all of you can.” I have to agree 100%. He also stated that “there are dogs in about one in three households — nearly 80 million in all” and that “officers shoot about 250,000 dogs a year… often needlessly.” This is a problem, a BIG problem. Not just because of the heartache that ensues, but the “Blowback” that comes with it. We are now going to look at a few horrible stories.
WSBTV reported this disturbing statistic  from Atlanta:

A Channel 2 Action News investigation found nearly 100 cases of local officers shooting dogs within the past two years.
The investigation looked into the heartbreaking circumstances when a police officer kills a family pet — probably one of the most difficult scenarios for a pet owner and for police.
Nearly two years after Basil was shot and killed in an empty lot by Fulton County Marshals, Elizabeth and Carey Cullifer said they still feel every bit of the pain.
“She was a really kind and gentle dog,” said Elizabeth Cullifer.
She left their 45-pound dog outside alone for a moment. Marshals then came to their address with a civil lawsuit for someone who had not lived there in eight years.
Then Cullifer heard gunshots.
“I came out to see my dog in a pool of blood under the truck,” said Carey Cullifer.
It is a story Channel 2 Action News has heard over and over from pet owners whose dogs had been shot and killed by police.
A Channel 2 Action News investigation uncovered dozens of cases all over the metro area. Individual department records show since 2010, dogs were shot 25 times in Atlanta, 32 times in DeKalb county, 19 times in Gwinnett County, 10 times in Clayton County and eight times in Cobb County, including the most recent shooting this past September.

Now, lets go to Austin Texas for the sad story of Cisco. ABC News reports:

A Texas man claims that his beloved dog Cisco was shot point blank by a police officer who responded to a call at the wrong address. 
Michael Paxton, 40, said he and his Australian cattle dog Cisco were relaxing and playing Frisbee in his Austin backyard on Saturday afternoon when he decided to go get something from his truck in the driveway.
As he approached his truck, he said he saw something from the corner of his eye and looked up to see a police officer who immediately drew his weapon and told Paxton to put his hands up.
“He had a Taser. He had pepper spray. I don’t understand why, in broad daylight, he pulled a gun on me. I wasn’t running. I wasn’t hiding,” Paxton told ABCNews.com today. “I was just saying, ‘I live here.’ I was panicking. I was afraid for my life.”
Paxton said he heard Cisco, who weighed about 50 pounds, barking and coming towards him from the backyard.
“I said, ‘Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot my dog. He won’t bite you.’ But he shot him, just like that. It all happened in under 30 seconds,” Paxton said. “There was no attack on the officer other than barking and challenging him.”

This next story comes from DavyV.blogspot.com:
On August 15, 2012 Wayne County Sheriff’s deputies, along with Macedon, NY Police
broke into 75 year old Phyllis Loquasto’s Plank Road home in the town of Walworth, NY, forced her at gunpoint to lay on her bathroom floor, screamed at her to close her eyes and stay down, then executed her dog “Duke.”
Minutes earlier, Loquasto, who has had three strokes and a knee replacement, was on her computer when she heard loud smashing sounds, then saw what she described as several men dressed in black with masks on.
As she was laying on her bathroom floor Loquasto could hear the men talking in loud voices.”The dog hadn’t even barked, yet I heard one of them say, he’s aggressive, shoot him! I’ll never forget the sound of that gunshot and the blood flying everywhere. They did all this while forcing me to lay on the bathroom floor, screaming at me to stay down, and holding me at gunpoint. I couldn’t get up if I wanted to. I’m 75 years old, had three strokes and knee replacement, and can hardly walk.  There was nothing I could do to help my pet.”
Does anyone think that the actions taken by these cops do not have long reaching tentacles? Think for a minute of the long lasting effects that situations like these would have on our children. The hurt that a child would feel seeing or just being in the same house where their pet was murdered WILL dig deep into the child. There will be deep rooted disdain for law enforcement. Why? Because in their little minds, the police killed their dog. This angst toward the police can travel through generations and it will.
Now, we move on to another very serious problem that, like the killing of family pets at the hands of local law enforcement, can have devastating outcomes. We live in a society where Dominoes can get your address right more times than the police. Do neighborhood pizza joints have intel gathering software? Are they able to transfer important information such as a correct address, which is detrimental to them running a successful business? One cannot argue against the fact that a right address is extremely important when conducting a raid fully armed. I would like to think that most would not see it unrealistic to expect 100% accuracy when conducting such raids. NO EXCUSES! For some reason SWAT and local law enforcement just cannot seem to get the addresses right.
Delaware Online gives us our first example:

Steve Tuppeny was in the garage of his Middletown home having a smoke at 6:15 a.m., his wife and daughter asleep inside, when the Wilmington SWAT officers made their move. Dressed in black, several officers rushed Tuppeny, ordered him to lie face down on the ground and handcuffed him. Other SWAT officers smashed the storm door in the front of the Tuppenys’ two-story colonial-style home, then used a battering ram to break through the red front door.
Jennifer Tuppeny, a teacher at Marbrook Elementary School near Prices Corner, said she was asleep upstairs when officers threw open the door to her darkened bedroom and ordered her at gunpoint to get up.
The couple’s 8-year-old daughter was awakened out of a “dead sleep” by “men dressed in black with guns shining flashlights in her face,” Jennifer Tuppeny said.
Police carried out the early morning raid in search of a man whom they called a “person of interest” in a homicide. The man, in a Sept. 19 court appearance, had said he lived at the Tuppenys’ address in the 100 block of Willow Grove Mill Drive. Police had a search warrant authorizing them to obtain a DNA sample.
The man was located later Thursday in Smyrna, was given a DNA swab and released, said Wilmington police spokesman Officer Mark Ivey. Police did not release his name, and Ivey said late Thursday afternoon that the man is neither a defendant nor a suspect.
By that time, Steve Tuppeny said, his family had been terrorized.“I’m lying on the garage floor at gunpoint and they are invading my home terrorizing my family,” Tuppeny said. “This is America. We’re innocent people here.”

What kind of effect do you think this had on the Tuppeny’s 8-year-old daughter? Yes, they stopped searching when they realized they were at the wrong address, but the damage was done. They were terrorized – their words, not mine.
9wsyr.com tells of a 76-year-old man who gets a rude awakening during breakfast:

A 76-year-old Victory man was caught off-guard when police officers broke through his front door during a drug raid, only to find out they had the wrong house.
Fred Skinner was enjoying a piece of toast at his breakfast table when he says at least six police officers broke into his house on McNeely Road.
“I had no idea what to do,” Skinner said.
Skinner said he didn’t hear anybody coming up to the house. He said the first noise he heard was the police smashing through his porch door, and then his front door, busting it into pieces.
For five minutes, Skinner’s house was raided for drugs before police realized they had the wrong house by looking through his mail.
“They tried to put the handcuffs on me. They had my arm back here…then they said, ‘Wrong house,” took the handcuffs off me and just left,” Skinner said.
Auburn Police Chief Gary Giannotta says he only remembers police raiding a wrong house four times in the last 16 years.

Now, I will give credit where credit is due, getting the wrong house only four times in 16 years is not bad, but this is still in my opinion not good enough.
Why is it not good enough? ABC News reports on exactly why:

A 61-year-old man was shot to death by police while his wife was handcuffed in another room during a drug raid on the wrong house.
Police admitted their mistake, saying faulty information from a drug informant contributed to the death of John Adams Wednesday night. They intended to raid the home next door.
The two officers, 25-year-old Kyle Shedran and 24-year-old Greg Day, were placed on administrative leave with pay.
“They need to get rid of those men, boys with toys,” said Adams’ 70-year-old widow, Loraine.
John Adams was watching television when his wife heard pounding on the door. Police claim they identified themselves and wore police jackets. Loraine Adams said she had no indication the men were police.
“I thought it was a home invasion. I said ‘Baby, get your gun!,” she said, sitting amid friends and relatives gathered at her home to cook and prepare for Sunday’s funeral.
Resident Fired First
Police say her husband fired first with a sawed-off shotgun and they responded. He was shot at least three times and died later at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
Loraine Adams said she was handcuffed and thrown to her knees in another room when the shooting began.

Lebanon Police Chief Billy Weeks said the following “We did the best surveillance we could do, and a mistake was made, It’s a very severe mistake, a costly mistake. It makes us look at our own policies and procedures to make sure this never occurs again.”  That was the BEST surveillance you could do? Do you now understand why nothing shy of 100% accuracy is acceptable? Now some of you reading this may be saying to yourself “Curt, come on, they are just human. They are going to make mistakes sometimes.” This is very true. As the last story showed, one simple human error can needlessly cost the lives of innocent people. John Adams could be YOUR Grandfather. We should NOT have to pay for THEIR mistakes!