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Detroit police say 7-year-old girl shot dead in home search

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Oops!!! Where is everybody? talk about a woman stabbing a girl? waht about a police officeer shooting a girl sleeping? what is the difference? Blame it on undertrained police officer? Or a gun that shouldn't have been there?

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The worst of all possible accidents, but an accident none the less because no sane person could possibly imagine this police officer killed the child deliberately. As much as any of us might feel for the horrible loss that the family are now enduring I would hate to be in that police officers shoes, I cannot begin to imagine how bad he feels. So yes, I do feel sorry for him (her?) too. Keep something else in mind about this, the bad guy they were looking for was found in the same building and without some clear idea of the lay out of the building let’s not be too quick to judge the police. I might also add that the old lady might well be a granny but that does not mean she is some sweet old lady.

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Stupid cowboys. Can you imagine someone entering your home with a flash grenade? Kind of hard to see the search warrant after that! You can yell "Police!" all you like after that but some people are going to go into panic mode. Duh! I would probably freeze up myself, but I know a lot of people would do the same as the mother did.

What ever happened to surrounding the place? Knocking on the door?

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"some level of physical contact ensued"

I bet the woman was going crazy punching and/kicking the cop.

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Was Jarean a boy or a girl?

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It does sound like an accident, but a very stupid one that could have been avoided (especially if the apartment the original suspect was hiding in was INDEED the apartment ABOVE the one raided!). It also sounds like they went in a little gung-ho after ignoring the kids toys and what not. A nightmare indeed.

sarge: "I bet the woman was going crazy punching and/kicking the cop."

Perhaps she was, and you might, too, if a bunch of thugs stormed into your house with flash grenades and guns drawn, and you with the instinct of protecting your home and those little ones in it. If it's proven the police went to the wrong apartment then this woman is totally vindicated and the officer is in for a world of hurt (more so than now). If the woman was indeed harbouring the suspect and thus assaulting an officer, well, then the whole thing becomes more complicated. In any case, she has to suffer with the fact that her child is gone.

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I'm from Detroit and unless you have lived there it's difficult to imagine the level of danger faced by civilians and police officers alike. And I agree with Sarge; Detroit citizens are almost psychotic when dealing with the police. Obviously a full, transparent investigation is necessary but these tragic accidents occur on almost a daily basis. Detroit cops rarely go into anything with a "gungo ho" attitude. They know that will get them and others killed faster than anything.

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samwatters said: Detroit citizens are almost psychotic when dealing with the police.

Well when they don't even have the right apartment and they start dealing with unsuspecting people beginning with flash grenades, its no wonder why. The whole thing sounds like a scene from the movie Brazil.

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This story is all over the place: house ---> apartment---> apartment #2?

They need to make up their minds before they issue these search warrants. And coming into someones house firing at 12:40AM --> these cops are lucky they all didn't get shot. =Surround the house first and knock or ring the bell first please.

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@MistWizard The police had the right apartment building and were searching multiple units at the same time. Flash grenades are necessary when dealing with violent criminals. Based on the information from the above article, the police did nothing wrong.

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Blake, a student at Southeastern High School, was gunned down Friday by a liquor store in front of his girlfriend.

I'm thinking a boy.

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Horrible situation. It's true that mistakes happen but what level of physical contact could ensue from a 46 yo woman that could create a situation where an officer's gun would go off? Must have been a lot more than "some".

Poor kid! RIP little one.

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Keystones Cops at work in America, too. Bunch of incompetent idiots.

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How horrible... Poor little girl did not deserve to die. What were they doing pulling out a gun anyway?

Agh Detroit.

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What were they doing pulling out a gun anyway?

Going after a criminal with a gun.

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samwatters-- I understand that, but it just seems like it's just asking for the worst to happen when you go busting down multiple doors with your guns cocked. If they had been sure they had the exact right apartment that would be different. I suppose really I would just like more details about what the woman was doing, because despite the craziness, she shouldn't have been resisting them to the point where a gun would go off the way it did.

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@kokorocloud, I totally agree with you in sentiment but sometimes entering multiple rooms with weapons drawn is the least of all evils as far as tactics are concerned. Two more points; (1) criminals often hide in residential areas because they know the police are hesitant to open fire, something people should consider before labelling cops as "incompetent idiots" a la chotto, (2) the story of a child getting shot in the crossfire happens much more often than the news reports, I am sad to say.....

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Sad story, most likely a freak accident tho.

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but sometimes entering multiple rooms with weapons drawn is the least of all evils as far as tactics are concerned.

Yeah. At least they took down that dangerous 8 year-old. /sarcasm.

criminals often hide in residential areas because they know the police are hesitant to open fire,

They evidently aren't.

something people should consider before labelling cops as "incompetent idiots" a la chotto

If you mistake an 8 year-old girl for a 34 year old man, you are an incompetent idiot. Period.

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That's Detroit for you.

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If you mistake an 8 year-old girl for a 34 year old man, you are an incompetent idiot. Period.

The lead officer encountered a 46-year-old woman immediately inside the front room of the house and “some level of physical contact” ensued during which the officer’s gun went off, Godbee said. The officers had identified themselves as police, he said.

Hardly sounds like police mistook an 8-year old for a 34-year old man.

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46-year-old woman

Now they can't distinguish gender? It just gets worse, doesn't it?

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...the police were searching for a 34-year old man...they encountered (code word for "were attacked by") a 46-year old woman and the gun went off killing a 8-year old girl....

Good night, Chotto.

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They should have at least had the consideration to wait until the child reached adulthood and then she could have been convicted in the courts and humanely executed by lethal injection. The police really blew it this time.

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So, they come in, identifying themselves, and a woman decides to wrestle with one of the cops. That cops gun goes off, and a little girl dies because of it. On top of that, they were harboring a murderer. So, who is it at fault? The Cop who certainly didn't want to kill the child, much less anyone else. The woman who thought it a good idea to wrestle the Cop for their gun. The family for harboring a killer? Myself, I lean towards blaming both the woman who chose to wrestle the cop, and the family who decided to harbor a killer. Their fault the little girl is dead. I feel sorry for the little girl, I feel nothing but anger towards this family who caused her death.

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Ah Detroit, America's black eye. This is a shame but if they weren't living ghetto fabulous the cops wouldn't have been there in the first place. They were there looking for a murderer weren't they?

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This is horrible, indeed. Police officers invading your house at 12.40 am, throwing flash grenade, mistaken you with a criminal, and finally, shooting your daughter. This is totally wrong and i hope that the police officer will get punished, no matter if it was a mistake or not.

I guess their only crime was that they lived in a ghetto and not in a rich neighborhood where the police officers would have definitely "knocked" the door without the whole grenade thing.

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So, they come in, identifying themselves...

The fact is that before they identified themselves, they threw a flash grenade through the window of the family room where the woman, Mertilla Jones, was resting with her grand-daughter. The flash grenades are of the type used specifically to disorient and confuse potentially dangerous suspects. It might not register to a confused and disoriented person who has done nothing wrong that they are under attack from the police. They might initially react in pure self-defense -- with either fight or flee -- and, with a young child present, fighting off an intruder to save the child is an entirely reasonable response.

The family for harboring a killer?

Where is the proof of this? I know Detroit very, very well. The house is described in the Detroit Free Press as being "multi-story." Those types of split-level houses -- which are as common in Detroit as any other kind of house style -- are often owned by someone who doesn't live here, but subdivides and rents out the different levels. Even if the Jones family had rented the upper flat/apartment to the person the police were seeking, it is absurd in the extreme to presume that they should somehow be responsible for crimes committed by their tenants.

The decision to throw the flash grenade while disregarding the obvious evidence (i.e. childs' toys on the front lawn) that a child was present in the dwelling was the fateful decision.

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Ah Detroit, America's black eye.

If the eye is not sound....

Detroit was once a prosperous city and symbol of America's manufacturing might and ability to build things that people actually wanted to buy.

Detroit may well be where the rest of America is heading. A harbinger, if you will.

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This is a terrrible accident which need not have happened. How many people in these circumstances would actually resist police entering and searching? Without that they would have conducted their search and left.

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Police eventually found the 34-year-old slaying suspect they were looking for during a search of the building, Godbee said.

Officers arrested the suspect during the search, Godbee said. Jones said the suspect wasn’t in his apartment but one upstairs that officers raided at the same time.

So which is it, a house or an apartment. If its a house, then the family were harboring a killer, if its an apartment, then its a tragic accident that could have been prevented had the cops gotten the right apartment.

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So which is it, a house or an apartment.

Having seen the pictures of the building in the Detroit Free Press, it is one of those very typical 3-story homes built in Detroit in the 1910-1920s, and whose owners rent out the floors -- called "apartments" -- to different tenants.

(My first five years were spent living in an upper apartment in one of those types of homes in Detroit.)

then its a tragic accident

Let's take a completely innocent grandmother who had never had any problem with the law all of her life and launch an attack on her home while she's alone with her grand-daughter at 12:40 AM. Then pretend, after her room's been hit with a flash grenade, that she completely understands that it's the police who are the attackers, and blame her for trying to defend her home and the life of the child.

I consider those on this thread who have attacked the grandmother to be among the lowest form of human life.

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How many people in these circumstances would actually resist police entering and searching?

If a person was completely innocent, why would they ever suspect that it was the police who were launching at attack on them in their own home at 12:40 in the morning? Especially with abundant evidence that a child was present?

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yabits at 02:07 AM JST - 18th May "How many people in these circumstances would actually resist police entering and searching?" If a person was completely innocent, why would they ever suspect that it >was the police who were launching at attack on them in their own home at >12:40 in the morning? Especially with abundant evidence that a child was >present?

Because it's pretty hard to miss a bunch of guys yelling "POLICE!!!" outside your door at 12:40 in the morning. And it wasn't an "attack" it was a "search". They were seaerching for an armed suspect, not randomly attacking some house.

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Because it's pretty hard to miss a bunch of guys yelling "POLICE!!!" outside your door at 12:40 in the morning. And it wasn't an "attack" it was a "search".

When you are suddenly shaken from your sleep by a flash grenade that is meant to stun and disorient you, and find your home under attack, it is not difficult at ALL for every sound thereafter to become a blur once andrenelin takes over and your mind and body go into total self-defense mode.

Most people search for things with a flash-light -- not a flash-grenade.

They were seaerching for an armed suspect, not randomly attacking some house.

The grandmother could not read minds and therefore could not tell what the intention of the armed attackers was. In many high-crime areas, the person(s) busting into your house in the middle of the night is most likely not going to be one of the "good guys." You'd expect evil scum to disregard the toys in the front yard before they launched an attack -- not the "good guys."

Nobody said that house was attacked at "random."

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It has come to light that an A&E film crew was filming this raid as part of a documentary. According to the Detroit News, it is being reported that initial viewing of the film indicates that at least one policeman fired his weapon as the flash grenade was thrown in, before the police identified themselves and rushed into the house.

This coincides with the father's story that the sound of a gunshot accompanied the sound of the grenade.

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It does sound like an accident, but a very stupid one that could have been avoided (especially if the apartment the original suspect was hiding in was INDEED the apartment ABOVE the one raided!). It also sounds like they went in a little gung-ho after ignoring the kids toys and what not. A nightmare indeed.

It was the apartment he was hiding in, they captured the suspect in the house.

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Yabits: The decision to throw the flash grenade while disregarding the obvious evidence (i.e. childs' toys on the front lawn) that a child was present in the dwelling was the fateful decision.

You seem to be an expert on the most effective methods to extract a murder suspect from a dwelling. Why not just tell us exactly what the police should have done from beginning to end?

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Noliving said: It was the apartment he was hiding in, they captured the suspect in the house.

House? Apartment? Which? I think yabits has explained this all rather well. It does seem that it was a duplex/ divided house and they went and invaded the apartment of completely unrelated people. They led with a flash bang, which renders you about as blind as deaf. You hit someone with one and you better be ready to deal with a freshly created Helen Keller who is not going to see your badge or hear you yell "police". And on top of that they won't think "police" if they are not expecting them or don't know anything about police use of flash bangs, as most grandmas probably don't, and they will be freaked right the heck out.

That said, other reports said the "contact" was just the cop running into that newly minted Helen Keller.

Super, you can rest assured that whatever Yabits and I suggest, it won't have anything to do with throwing flash-bangs into the wrong apartment. It would more likely begin with a bull horn declaring the place surrounded. Flash-bangs come later.

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Oh, and Super, you said "most effective methods". I can say I will be happy with the methods that don't get kids killed or assault innocent people. The suspect could have gotten away to be caught another day. I will take that risk to protect the innocent. I doubt he was a James Bond carbon copy and a master of disguise though. Where was he going to go?

Further, if you go to the trouble to get a search warrant, how hard can it be to track down the owner of the duplex get details like who lives where and how many children are present?

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You seem to be an expert...

Only compared to people who consistently demonstrate how little they know about anything.

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yabits said: Only compared to people who consistently demonstrate how little they know about anything.

You noticed his lack of significant input too, huh? Anybody can ask a snide question...anybody.

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You noticed his lack of significant input too, huh?

It got to me that people were actually condemning the grandmother for acting as most grandmothers would in protecting their home and loved ones. Some accused her of "harboring" an accused murderer.

And so who does S_ choose to attack? Not the ignorant false-accusers but those whose intelligence so obviously intimidates him. And, of course, when intelligence compels people to question authority, the emasculated bootlick in him really comes out, as if to say: "How dare you question police tactics. These authorities are the experts; they can do no wrong."

The hell they can't.

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Come on, Yabits. Tell me what the cops should do. Give me the correct procedure. I'm not the one attacking or defending them, you are. So surely you have the background and experience to at least give us some details as to what the correct procedure should be.

You'll have to excuse me if I don't have a plan of my own. I have this feeling that I'm not really in a position to lecture the Detroit police department since I really have no data or statistics to back up what would have to be a complete analysis of their entry procedure taken over time. I'd hate to let one incident create a change that ends up killing more people in the future just because I was so emotional about the incident in front of me. But you didn't seem to have a problem getting up on your soapbox so I just assumed you knew what you were talking about.

Oh, and no cheating, for example:

"I can say I will be happy with the methods that don't get kids killed or assault innocent people."

That's what someone says when they don't know how to fix something, but wants to criticize someone else.

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This coincides with the father's story that the sound of a gunshot accompanied the sound of the grenade.

Strange how often discrepancies arise when the cops are being filmed.

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Yabits: And so who does S_ choose to attack? Not the ignorant false-accusers but those whose intelligence so obviously intimidates him

I simply asked you to tell us what the right thing to do would be. So far you have yet to answer, despite your vast advantage in intelligence. I guess the only thing we can do is end the discussion with the assumption that you know all the answers, but simply don't feel the need to give them.

Agreed?

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I guess the only thing we can do is end the discussion with the assumption that you know all the answers

That assumption is just as stupid as your assumption that the police handled this event wisely, or your assumption that it was the only way they could have handled it. Or that police departments all over the nation handle these types of events the same way.

It's safe to say that my method of handling it wouldn't have gotten that little girl killed by a police bullet. Effective policing requires, first and foremost, the trust and goodwill of the community. When you attack the home of innocent people because your intelligence is not sufficient to enable you to know the location of the person you're seeking, you've just taken goodwill and trust down another five notches. (Note that the intended target of the flash grenade was nowhere near it!)

As far as tactics go, it used to be that the police engaged in high-speed chases as S.O.P. It didn't take a braniac to figure out that those chases endangered the innocent public as much or more than they served law enforcement. This little stunt by the Detroit Police falls into that category. Once the Michigan State troopers are done with their investigation, you'll see some new "guidelines" for how to conduct these types of operations. Mark my words.

And most of those guidelines will seem like plain, ordinary common sense. I'm sorry you seem to feel that people have to be all-knowing to see that.

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I'm usually not one for blaming the cops, particularly based on a story as poorly written as this one:

Blake, a student at Southeastern High School, was gunned down Friday by a liquor store in front of his girlfriend.

He was gunned down by a liquor store? I didn't know they had appendages to do such a thing.

The story is sans a lot of crucial facts I think. But I can tell you as a parent (grandparent, doesn't matter) that if someone burst into my house at 12:30 a.m. by throwing in a flash-bang grenade and brandishing weapons, I would very hopefully instinctively throw myself at the nearest one to try and protect my children. Flash-bangs are designed to disorient and confuse - that is their purpose. To fault this woman for reacting as she did is wrong. What would have been wrong with surrounding the place with a SWAT team and using a bullhorn? Hostage situation? Possibly. But I should think far less dangerous than running in with safety catches off ready to blast whomever moves. I'm no cop but I should think that assessing the situation first would be SOP before charging in like Joe Commando. It doesn't take a tactical genius to know that good intelligence on what your heading into can save lives. By the story they didn't even seem to have a clue who else lived in the house nor where the suspect exactly was.

SuperLib I'm more often on your side in arguments, and too often I think the police are blamed by the 'innocent' populace who in fact are not. But in this case - even though I'm not a law enforcement officer nor in any way trained - I can think of far better options.

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Yabits: That assumption is just as stupid as your assumption that the police handled this event wisely, or your assumption that it was the only way they could have handled it. Or that police departments all over the nation handle these types of events the same way.

Where did I say any of those things? You have a very active imagination, perhaps because you're so emotional. And I'm forced to remind you again that you are the one making the accusations. Instead of backing up your claims you're just inventing claims that I never made and attacking them? Really strange.

It's safe to say that my method of handling it wouldn't have gotten that little girl killed by a police bullet.

Which method would that be? The one that exists only in your imagination where a perfect ending is reached every time? We're all dying to know the details....if only the Great One would choose to give us the specifics....

What I'm after is a sensible solution that looks at all of the information. I don't want a knee-jerk reaction from emotional people dictating policy that might get more people killed in the future just because of one case. We may find out that this was all about one police officer acting out of line. Or it could be a systemic problem where danger is needlessly inserted. The difference between you and me is that I don't think that this case is the first, last, and only situation where the police have to arrest a suspect. I don't want to read about dozens of future cases of suspects easily getting away and killing someone else or police officers getting shot in the head because the rules were changed over one incident. The situation needs to be looked at objectively, not emotionally, and I don't think you're in a state of mind to do that effectively.

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More information about this story:

From the lawyer after having viewed a video from the assault, on CNN:

The videotape vividly portrays the fact that a percussion grenade device was thrown through the front window and a shot was fired immediately from the outside from the porch.

Link to the article:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/05/16/michigan.police.child/index.html

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Where did I say any of those things?

Your statements are implicit in your defense of police methods and attacks on those who are critical of them. Posters have already mentioned the obvious better approaches to you.

I don't want to read about dozens of future cases of suspects ...

Who is being emotional here? No, I guess you'd rather read about innocent women and kids being killed by the police. And then read about the victims, in this case the grandmother, being falsely accused of "harboring murderers" and physically attacking the police -- as has been done in this forum. One can't help but note how you save your little attack for those who are critical of the perpetrators of this fiasco.

Maybe what you and others don't want to contemplate is the thought of a black murder suspect getting away and killing some white folks. In that sense, defending these police tactics, castigating the grandmother and her largely African-American community, and regarding Aiyana Jones (yes, that's a "female name") as collateral damage, with a "Tsk, Tsk, gee how tragic, let's cut the police some slack on this one," is more likely to hit the mark.

What I'm after is a sensible solution that looks at all of the information.

Surrrre you are. And you are living in fantasyland if you believe that "all of the information" will ever be available in situations like these. Any "sensible" solution has to put the safety of innocent people in a situation over the physical safety of the police force. The former trumps the latter. Police, like fire fighters, take an oath to protect and serve and put their lives in harm's way -- not to recklessly endanger the public in order to prevent something the person they are trying to apprehend might or might not do in the future.

There are dozens of procedures more "sensible" than firing a flash grenade into the wrong apartment and then shooting a 7-year-old child. Part of being a human being means being able to connect with the mindset of the neighbors and friends of the real victims of this tragedy. Many will rightfully ask the question if these kinds of tactics would be used to apprehend a murder suspect from a dwelling in a more affluent area. I see no need to apologize for showing some anger after reading the aspersions cast against a completely innocent grandmother.

But blaming the grandmother must have seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to posters like yourself -- otherwise you would might have directed even a small portion of your snide little attacks elsewhere.

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(hands in the air, slowly stepping away from yabits)

Ok buddy, whatever you say. Sorry, but I have to go now. No hard feelings, OK? Whatever you say is OK with me....

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After writing the above, it becomes abundantly obvious that the police, in this affair, put their lives above the lives of any who might have gotten in their way in the pursuit of their suspect.

Their treatment of the dwelling -- a very typical Detroit split-level home with two addresses -- as just "one house," as well as their disregard for the evidence that children were present, is very damning.

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More damning evidence: The Detroit News reports that the officer involved in the shooting, Joseph Weekly, was also involved in a 2009 federal lawsuit that accused him for his part in another raid where the family dogs were shot and killed, and guns pointed at children in the home, including an infant.

As more evidence comes in, those who have viewed the video attest that the shot (or shots) was(were) fired before police entered the house and, once it was discovered that an innocent person was mortally wounded, the police concocted a story to cover themselves, accusing the grandmother of "some level of physical contact" -- whatever the heck that means.

The police then handcuffed the mortified grandmother and took her to the station and tested her for drugs and suddenly released her without any explanation.

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Yabits, you are right to condemn Superlib on several points, but accussing him of racism is waaaaay over the line. Also, he said he wanted to see less innocent victims, clearly. The trouble is that while he values expert opinions on how to do that, he completely forgot about the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the fourth amendment.

For me, this is not so much about the death of the girl because I can't tell just how "accidental" that was yet. But clearly the police led off with a flash-bang and I can't see anything to justify that.

As for using different methods in different neighborhoods: This is the same as collecting intelligence before conducting a raid. If you don't behave differently in different neighborhoods then you are either totally paranoid or a total fool. But I still see no justification for leading off with a flash-bang in this case. No neighborhood is that bad. But a situation might be. This wasn't.

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Yabits, you are right to condemn Superlib on several points, but accussing him of racism is waaaaay over the line.

I was not accusing any individual of racism. If you completely review this entire thread, there are racist undertones in several of the posts. Racist might not be the right word in all cases, but there is definite contempt directed towards the grandmother (as the inferior human being, deserving of what happened to her) accompanied by not a trace of skepticism towards the cops' story.

Because of the use of a flash-bang on the wrong apartment and its aftermath, I could not fathom the reasons why the grandmother would be held in such contempt -- outside of someone's viewing her as someone undeserving of basic dignity and sympathy. Especially after seeing pictures of the house which, in typical Detroit split-level design, has two completely separate front entrances, on opposite sides of the front porch, to the upper and lower flats.

I can't fathom the attitude that would recklessly endanger an innocent family living in one of the flats -- or the attitude that would regard the two residences as equal targets -- aside from the police coming the conclusion that the entire house was filled with underclass low-lifes.

Those attitudes, and what they led to, enrages me. The concept that it's improper to criticize the police for a tactic unless one is a bona fide expert in all matters related to apprehending suspects further reinforces the attitude that the police are the superiors and their victims are hapless low-lifes who must accept everything that the police do without complaint. To use an analogy, a person shouldn't have to produce a detailed engineering drawing of a pedestrian overpass to claim that it's wrong to compel people to run across 8 lanes of high-speed traffic.

In other words, unless you're of the superior class, you have no right to express criticism. Superior means having "all the facts" and displaying no emotion over the suffering and loss of innocent victims.

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Thanks for the info, Yabits.

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What I find interesting is how a lot of you leapt to the police officer's defence. If a hunter fires a gun and it goes somewhere he didn't intend then he's still criminally liable, so why should police be any different?

The bottom line is that the police are there to enforce the law, not be above it. The police here lied to cover up for their buddy (as the video evidence shows), and so they're saying that they're above the law. None of these police officers are fit to be in service. New police officers can be trained, but bent police officers can't be straightened.

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not to state the obvious, but anyone rolling up on your block with a flash grenade is 99% probably police. Would it have hurt the grandmother (assuming the story is true) to simply let the officers come in and search? They find what they are looking for, he gets taken away quietly, and nobody dies. It's not rocket science.

Of course, if there is more to the story (and there always is), an investigation should be carried out.

Of course, Yabits is quoting the family's lawyer, who knows full well that if this goes to court, it will be decided by a bunch of locals, who will likely see him on the local news. The more he can do to prejudice his potential pool of jury members in advance, the better his chances of winning the case. That's not to say the police aren't doing the same thing (I'd put money on them also using this technique), only that lawyers can't be trusted either. Personally, I'm more willing to trust the police than I am a lawyer, because lawyers NEVER lie, right? Police do too, but lawyers get paid to do so. None of us on this board has seen the actual footage since it was confiscated by police and none of us was there that night to verify the incident happened as either party said, although the police did mention an independent witness in the CNN piece... draw your own conclusions.

Perhaps it is better to wait until the details and evidence come out (if/when this goes to court) and draw real conclusions then.

And Frungy, the police did have a "high-risk search warrant" for that house. When they entered the premises, they had reasonable suspicion that the suspect was there and would engage in violent confrontation. The difference is that one is in what is called "line of duty". It doesn't absolve the officer, but it does protect them. And if you have access to the video, please produce links, or something. Or you are just spouting off what the family's lawyer says is there, rather an actually knowing what went on.

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Of course, Yabits is quoting the family's lawyer, who knows full well that if this goes to court, it will be decided by a bunch of locals, who will likely see him on the local news.

tsurubushi is very good in dealing out total absurdities:

The only this won't go to court is if the City of Detroit wants to prevent the video evidence from seeing the light of day in a court of law. If the video isn't as conclusively damning as the family's lawyer claims, the City has little to worry about.

tsurubushi also adeptly plays the race card:

"it will be decided by a bunch of locals. Translation: African-Americans are incapable of looking at the evidence and making a fair decision. They will believe what a lawyer tells them about what a video shows, rather than being able to view the video and judge for themselves.

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tsurubushi, I don't think you have ever had the pleasure of being hit with a flash-bang have you? You sit there and want a grandmother after midnight to know what one is, know its effects, know who uses it, remain calm etc. Tell you what, why don't you give some grandmothers a pop quiz about flash-bangs and see how knowledgeable they are about the subject? Your own foolishness may surprise you yet.

Your reasons for trusting the police over lawyers is also pretty foolish. You seem to have forgotten that police butts are on the line here. A lawyer could take this case or leave it. The police are pretty well stuck with it. I don't trust either at all, but it would be a pretty bold lie to say the police fired into the house before they even entered it.

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There is a 7 year old child dead from this. Things can go wrong, but its apparant one of the police officers did not conduct themselves properly.

Not enough evidence presented to the public, and on top of that we'd better hope nobody lies. No mention of a stray bullet, or gun accidently going off nothing. But a flash grenade is definitely meant to stun, blind and panic the people inside. I can only imagine it was chaos.

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This is a tragic incident. A 7-year-old girl should not have die. There is no excuse whatsoever.

Excerpts from the article, Aiyana Jones, 7-Year-Old Shot And Killed By Detroit Police, Was Sleeping According To Family @http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/17/aiyana-jones-7-year-old-s_n_578246.html

But Fieger said the video shows an officer lobbing the grenade and then shooting into the home from the porch.

"There is no question about what happened because it's in the videotape," Fieger said. "It's not an accident. It's not a mistake. There was no altercation."

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