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Wrong Door Drug Raid Disrupts Family Dinner

Submitted by smorgan on
Q: What's more annoying than solicitors ringing your doorbell during dinner?

A: Cops busting your door down, pointing guns at you, and then realizing they're in the wrong place.
Diana El-Bynum says both she and her husband were handcuffed and were humiliated in front of their neighbors. She says she can't believe the police could have made a mistake like this. Inspector Horne says this type of mistake doesn't happen often and accounts for a small percentage of the thousands of operations they do a year. In this case, he says surveillance officers didn't give an address of the home they were targeting. [FOX Philadelphia]
What kind of excuse is that? If you don’t have an address, don't do the raid, silly.
"They gave a physical description, house with a black storm door, in front of the residence was a pick up truck. Unfortunately there was a house 5 doors away that had a black storm door with pick up in front. The officers didn't have time to determine which house was which," said Inspector Horne.
Considering how many people die in these raids, maybe they should make time. But at least they made a half-assed apology:
Inspector Horne said "On behalf of the Philadelphia Police Department and the Narcotics Strike Force, I'm totally willing to apologize for the efforts, the mistake. The overall intent was to eradicate drugs from the neighborhood."
So because the intent was to eradicate drugs, should we be tolerant of this sort of incompetence? Is that what he's saying? Again, people get killed when police raid the wrong house, so it's actually a really big deal. I just don't know what else to say about this. They didn't even have an address this time.

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