No, but I wouldn't raid a house either. I'm no police tactician, but it can't possibly be true that raiding a house is less dangerous than waiting for the suspect to leave his house and arresting him then. For anyone, including the cops. SWAT teams raiding homes should be reserved for active dangers, like hostage situations or shootouts. There's no need for this sort of urgency for apprehending a drug dealer especially given the collateral damage it's so likely to cause.

Edit: wording

Exactly. And that approach seems to work well in just about every other Western country.

Let's burn the village down to save it.

Their job is fundamentally to protect and serve the public. If they and, more appropriately, the organizations they are a part of myopically equate that to preventing meth dealing while avoiding even the slightest chance of police harm, even at the cost of innocent lives, that's a problem and can and should be held against them.

I'm surprised by the huge difference between those articles. Somehow i do find your article more believable. News outlets prefer to spin the story the other way because that kind of story is much more popular. It sheds light on a whole other side of what happened and i'm shocked to see how the posted article just lies about half of it.

Of course this is a sad story, no one should ever get hurt by drug violence, let alone a defenseless baby. But i think we should not rush our opinions on these things.

It's easy to get all emotional and be all upset when we read these things.

But we are supposed to be intellectuals right? We should not make judgements based on one sensationalist article. We can do better than that.

I think we should all just act a bit more rational. Don't make snap judgements. Read more about a subject before you condemn people.

In the end, i don't care what YOU think is the truth. Just make sure you know what you're talking about before you shout out your opinions.

PS: iambateman, this is not really meant for you of course ;)

People will probably misinterpret my post. In no way i mean to say that police and government don't share any blame. I'm definitely against the militarization of police. But i won't be sending money to that family either.

I'm of the opinion that just because someone is a drug dealer and has been known to carry a weapon, doesn't mean that person is going to get in a shoot out with the police. I'd be willing to bet (note: I've not seen any hard statistics on this matter) that 9 times out of 10 the criminal decides that it's in his/her better interest to just be arrested and fight it later, than it is to get in a gun battle with heavily armed cops. It's an interesting thing that typical police line of thinking goes something like: 1: person MAY be a criminal of some form 2: person MAY have a weapon 3: person MAY use said weapon in a futile attempt to avoid arrest or injury 4: let's get 10 cops, arm them to the teeth, storm their house in a disorienting and scary middle of the night raid, during which we will throw explosives, brandish military type weapons, and yell and act aggressively 5: there is less of a chance that during the raid a criminal will react violently than if the police do not break in in the middle of the night screaming and waving guns

I'm not trying to be "that condescending dick" and I sympathize with what you're saying, I'm just saying I disagree with "put yourself in their position".

It wasn't "we have to go in, better arm up." They could have watched the house and gathered more information. Since they have a warrant, are cops allowed to thermally image a house to get a headcount? Technical question: would that work or am I imagining something from TV?

Nah we don't have thermal imaging that precise yet, also, the thermal difference between outside the house and inside the house sort of washes away any lingering body heat you might be looking for in most cases.

Your question is why we have laws for how police can operate.

Yes, if I were in their shoes, I would not want to knock. Which is why we need to make it a legal requirement to. Don't give them a choice.

The police are playing an inherently rigged game. They operate with one hand tied behind their back, giving criminals an inherent advantage because criminals, by definition, don't worry about following the law. The only reason this works is because the police can bring to bear vastly greater resources and numbers, but their possible actions are much more limited.

And that's how it should be. The term for a place where the police have no limits on what they can do to bring in the bad guys is called a "police state".

I don't doubt that police really really want to handle situations like this with quick and decisive action. Which is exactly why they must not be allowed to.