The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week

...are the Temecula, California Police Department's Street Enforcement Team.

This group of crack "operators" managed to serve a "no knock" warrant on the wrong house on August 24, and ultimately terrorized an innocent family in the process (items in bold were highlighted by me):

"That all changed at 9:35 p.m. she said, when Temecula police officers ---- four or five, she's not sure ----- carrying rifles charged though the unlocked front screen door and ordered the couple to the floor."Two of them came over and put handcuffs on the two of us," Lillian Scott said. "We asked what we had done wrong and didn't get an answer."Elsewhere in the house other officers handcuffed their daughter and her two friends."(The officers) told them to get down on the f---ing floor," she said. Her 16-year-old son, who was feeding the baby, was also ordered to the floor and handcuffed, Scott said. From the other room, Scott heard her infant crying."I asked if my baby was OK and the officer told me if I moved he was going to put a bullet in my head," Scott said."

After the family was handcuffed, the rampage continued:

"Scott later found the hinges off her bedroom door and a hole in the door leading to the daughter's room."

The family was ultimately released after the cops realized that they had the wrong house:

"'Then I heard one of the officers on the radio say the second floor was clear," Scott said. "Another officer on the radio then said they were supposed to be at a one-story house.'"

I hate it when that happens. Of course, taking 5 minutes or so to verify one's info before charging in like the Gestapo might have prevented this, but who has the time?

To their credit, the officers apologized before they left, unlike what some other SWAT teams have done after botching raids. The police chief and the mayor have also delivered personal apologies to the family, although some of that goodwill is most likely intended to head off the massive lawsuit that is surely coming. The team has been disbanded, and the officers are now under internal affairs investigation, although they have not been suspended and seem to still be working on the street. The police chief is also vowing to start up another team as soon as he can, as he has not apparently learned his lesson.

"No knock" raids should be done only in the most dire and serious of circumstances, and only after thorough investigation and justification for the extreme measures. Garden variety warrant services and routine drug raids aren't worth the 4th Amendment violations and terrorizing of innocent citizens that seems to happen on a disturbingly regular basis. Radley Balko has the details of far too many of them on his blog.