A Florida man has become the latest victim of a botched no knock raid by police. An innocent man was shot and killed in Lake County, Florida by police looking for a murder suspect. Awakened in the middle of the night by an unknown presence on his property, Andrew Scott answered his door while carrying a gun, police immediately and without warning, gunned him down.
This is far from the first incident of this type. Far to often the police show up at the wrong home in the middle of the night and break down doors looking for criminals that aren't there. Many times innocent people pay with their lives, sometimes police are injured or killed. This map shows incidents all over America where this has happened.
How many times do innocent people need to be injured or killed and property damaged before we stop this no knock nonsense? In this case, the police said they didn't announce their presence because they didn't want the suspect to escape. Simply surrounding the home wouldn't have prevented the suspects escape?
In cases of drug raids police contend that no knock raids are a necessity to prevent drug dealers from flushing the evidence down the toilet. Is the no knock raid worth it when you get the wrong address and shoot/kill an innocent person? What do you tell their families when that happens? Oops?
In nearly every case the victims and their families are not even awarded the decency of an apology. What happened to accepting responsibility for your mistakes and apologizing for them? Far to often our public officials think that kind of decency doesn't apply to them. Far to often the police use the excuse, "We were just doing our jobs." Well you damn sure weren't doing them good enough if you just shot/killed an innocent.
When does it end? When do we as citizens stand up and say enough is enough! We can make this an issue with our State, Local and Federal representatives with phone calls, email, snail mail and with our most potent tool of all, our votes. Until thousands of us do just that, innocents will continue to die needlessly in no knock raids.
In the case of Andrew Scott it took police an hour and a half to realize their mistake. Once they did, they found the real suspect in the building next door and arrested him without incident.
RIP Mr. Scott.
You know you would think that a long time ago there would have been measures put into place in order to reduce and or eliminate this kind of unnecessary nonsense. There needs to be stiffer penalties imposed upon the people who authorize this kind of stuff and the people that execute it. It should not be any different in my opinion than how military are treated when they make a mistake that costs innocent lives.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised a lot more police aren't killed in these situations
ReplyDelete