Looks like there will be no accountability or apologies for one of this year's worst botched drug raids:
So police shooting innocent dogs downstairs became an excuse for police shooting innocent people upstairs. I'm never surprised to see a jury (an all-white jury, no less) ruling in favor of police in a case like this. Still, I canât get over the officer's admitted failure to even observe what he was shooting at. An officer who panics and fires at "a shadow coming from behind a partially open bedroom door" is incompetent at best, but clearly criminal if we're to hold police to anything approaching the same vicious standards applied to civilians in these raids.
I shudder to contemplate the sort of carnage it may require to get out the message that modern drug war police tactics are not a necessary precaution, but rather a genuine and growing threat to public safety.
A white police officer was acquitted Monday in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed black woman that set off protests about how police treat minorities in a city where one in four residents is black.
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Chavalia shot 26-year-old Tarika Wilson and her year-old son she was holding, killing her and hitting him in the shoulder and hand, during a Jan. 4 SWAT raid on her house. One of the child's fingers had to be amputated.
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Chavalia, an officer of 32-years, had testified that he thought his life was in danger when he fired the shots. He said he saw a shadow coming from behind a partially open bedroom door and heard gunshots that he thought were aimed at him. It turned out the gunfire he heard was coming from downstairs, where officers shot two charging pit bulls. [ABCNews]
So police shooting innocent dogs downstairs became an excuse for police shooting innocent people upstairs. I'm never surprised to see a jury (an all-white jury, no less) ruling in favor of police in a case like this. Still, I canât get over the officer's admitted failure to even observe what he was shooting at. An officer who panics and fires at "a shadow coming from behind a partially open bedroom door" is incompetent at best, but clearly criminal if we're to hold police to anything approaching the same vicious standards applied to civilians in these raids.
I shudder to contemplate the sort of carnage it may require to get out the message that modern drug war police tactics are not a necessary precaution, but rather a genuine and growing threat to public safety.
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