Link. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Inexcusably sloppy.
Don't these guys have any professional pride? Don't they care?
What status quo notions of accountability enable such a fuck up? Two law enforcement jurisdictions finger pointing at each other? Come on. Show a better image or be held to the image you propagate.
UPDATE: The situation was so outrageous that it got national coverage, Raw Story reporting - it is all true and yet it is hard to believe careless incompetence:
According
to KARE 11, a no-knock SWAT raid in Minneapolis went horribly wrong
when the tactical team got the wrong address and terrorized a mother and
child.
Bianca Mathias, who said of the incident, "I thought we
were being robbed at first," had a gun pointed at her head and her doors
attacked with a battering ram during the raid that caused extensive
property damage — all of which could have been avoided had police looked
up public address records.
"In a matter of seconds, the Anoka
County Sheriff's Office SWAT Team - which does not wear body cameras -
had achieved their goal of securing the home," reported A. J. Lagoe and
Steve Eckert. "The problem? Records show authorities raided the wrong
address. What's more, a KARE 11 investigation has uncovered evidence
that the correct address was easily available in public records. But
Minneapolis authorities who requested the raid apparently failed to
check them."
According to the report, the real armed suspect they
were looking for would have been easy to find. "KARE 11 quickly
discovered a current address in St. Paul listed right on the state
court's public website," said the report. "What's more, the man is on
probation for a prior conviction and is required to keep his address
updated with Anoka Community Corrections."
The report also noted the police didn't even keep a record of this incident after it happened.
"MPD
would not have any reports related to this incident as it did not occur
in Minneapolis," a city official told reporters. And "Except for the
copy left with Bianca, there is no public record of the search warrant's
existence."
This comes after a number of other high-profile policing problems in Minneapolis, including the murder of George Floyd and the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright after a veteran officer who heads the local police union allegedly mixed up her gun with her taser.
It also comes as the entire practice of no-knock warrants, which are
used disproportionately in communities of color, come under heavy
scrutiny — they have led to multiple tragedies, including the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.
Precedent.
FURTHER: Executing a no-knock no-brains warrant, where the only copy in existence allegedly was the one served on the poor two women at their "wrong address." Rubber-stamp judges are only a part of such error, but a major part, given they are the "unbiased" intermediaries, set to assess probable cause that the search site is not erroneously reported by officials who, themselves, are held to some standard of care absent in this instance.
It deserves nationwide reporting.
Will things change? That is the most troubling dimension of the farce. The answer "Likely not," disturbingly comes to mind.
