A tragedy too common

In the wake of the recent Hudson decision (SCOTUS decision not to disallow evidence obtained by officers who violated the "knock and announce" rule when serving a search warrant), I expect situations like this to become much more common:

Officers allegedly shoot man at wrong address
CAPSHAW -- When 11-year-old Aaliyah McCoy heard crunching gravel Tuesday morning that indicated vehicles were driving toward her home, she peeked out a window and saw vans and "a bunch of cop cars coming."

She heard voices yell next door, "Open up! Police!" and then she heard "boom, boom."

"When they started shooting, I got scared and got down on the floor," Aaliyah said. "I was scared they would come in on me."
...
The noises she heard were federal and local officers serving a search warrant -- apparently at the wrong home, and without advance notice to the Limestone County Sheriff's Department -- on Honey Way.

A couple of caveats are in order:

First, it appears the task force did, in fact, knock and announce. As Robyn Blumner pointed out last week, the "problem" isn't the failure to announce as much as it is the prevalencence of paramilitary SWAT teams serving search warrants. In the highly charged atmosphere, people (both law enforcement and civilians) get itchy trigger fingers.

Second, it's not clear from the stories I've read on this raid whether Kenneth Jamar brandished a weapon. Many claim that pulling a weapon is a common-sense reaction to a bunch of black-clad, armed men bursting into your house, but it's understandable that law enforcement might respond with force if a weapon is drawn on them. In this case, though, the chain of events is not yet clear. Jamar's family claims he is "a man with gout who can't even get up to make himself a ham sandwich." Huntsville police (understandably) aren't saying much yet:

Reynolds [HSV Chief of Police] said officers "neutralized that threat" but would not comment further, saying the Limestone County Sheriff's Department was investigating.

Of course it's too early to tell what really happened in this case, but Radley Balko, a CATO analyst, has been beating this drum for a long time. While I don't agree with the full-blown libertarian view of law enforcement, some of his posts do frighten me. Balko blames the problem on the aforementioned proliferation of SWAT teams being used to do things like serve search warrants -- even when the threat of violence is minimal. Evidently most every little dot on the map now has a SWAT team and most of them don't have much SWAT-type business to keep them occupied. As a result, they branch out. Again according to Balko, the problem is exacerbated by the Pentagon's various "give away" programs in which old military gear is disbursed to local law enforcement. Balko notes one small town in Florida that has more than "twice as many M-16s (seven) as it does traffic stoplights (three)."

I'm generally a big law and order fan. For the most part I admire the work they do and I'd darn sure never want to do it myself. Still, as these reports get more and more common, one has to wonder how far is too far. Further, when these raids "go wrong" law enforcement officers almost never seem to be held accountable (there's an internal investigation, but no charges are filed), yet an "innocent" civilian is not treated with the same deference. See Balko's long and well-documented efforts on behalf of Cory Maye sentenced to death in MS for killing an officer in a middle of the night raid. There are different accounts of just what happened, but it's hard to believe everything is on the up-and-up. For a slightly more objective (compared to Balko) background, here's a Jackson Clarion Ledger story on the case.