From a lawsuit recently filed in federal court:

Chicago police terrorized six children in the wrong apartment, demanding at gunpoint that an 11-month-old show his hands, and telling one child, "This is what happens when your grandma sells crack," the family claims in court.

Lead plaintiffs Charlene and Samuel Holly sued Chicago, police Officer Patrick Kinney and eight John Does in Federal Court, on their own behalves and for their children and children.

The six children were 11 months to 13 years old at the time. Plaintiffs Connie and Michelle Robinson are Charlene Holly's daughters.

The complaint states: "On November 29, 2012 in the early evening hours Charlene Holly was in the first floor apartment at 10640 S. Prairie in the front room helping minor Child #1, Child #2, Child #4, and Child #5 rehearse songs for their church choir. Charlene was also caring for Child #3, who was 11 months old. Child #6 was in the upstairs apartment alone.

"Charlene and the children heard a loud boom outside and a voice cry out 'Across the street!'

"Defendant Officers John Doe 1-8 burst through the door to the first floor apartment dressed in army fatigues and pointing guns at Charlene and the children. The officers yelled at Charlene and the children to 'Get on the ground!' The officers referred to Charlene and the children as 'm---f---ers' numerous times . . .

"Charlene continually asked what the purpose of the detention was," the complaint states. "Finally, an officer produced a warrant and handed it to Charlene. The warrant was for an individual named 'Sedgwick M. Reavers' and the premises listed was 'The second floor apartment located at 10640 S. Prairie Ave. A yellow brick two flat building with the numbers 10640 on the front of the building.' In other words, the warrant clearly identified the proper location as the second floor apartment. Charlene, Samuel, and the children were in the first floor apartment . . .

The family claims that "the following day Charlene discovered the family dog, Samson, not in the basement where the family kept him, but in an upstairs laundry room. Samson could not have reached the laundry room without human assistance. On information and belief, defendant

Officers dragged and choked Samson from the basement with the dog pole and left him in the upstairs laundry room unattended, where he died."

Samuel Holly also went to the police station the day after the warrantless search to complain, but "despite his numerous calls the night before, was told that he could not make a complaint and he 'should have made a complaint last night," the family says.

It's always worth noting that Courthouse News stories are usually accounts drawn from one half of a lawsuit. So gauge your outrage with that in mind.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Vice recently did a short interview with me about police militarization. You can now read it here.

Here's one of the questions, and my answer:

Deborah Blum has written that we refer to oleoresin capsicum as "pepper spray" because "that makes it sound so much more benign than it really is, like something just a grade or so above what we might mix up in a home kitchen." How did the use of these kinds of weapons become so commonplace?

I think part of the reason is that it has happened gradually. We got here by way of a number of political decisions and policies passed over 40 years. There was never a single law or policy that militarized our police departments -- so there was never really a public debate over whether this was a good or bad thing.

But there were other contributors. For about a generation, politicians from both parties were tripping over themselves to see who could come up with the tougher anti-crime policies. We're finally seeing some push-back on issues like incarceration, the drug war, and over-criminalization. But not on police. No politician wants to look anti-cop. Conservatives want to look tough on crime. Liberals love to throw money at police departments. So for now, rolling back police militarization is still a non-starter in Congress and state legislatures.

October 12, 1995: At around 3 am, college student Stephen Shively woke up to the sound of police battering down the door to his apartment in Topeka, Kansas. He quickly called 911, and told the operator he he was being burglarized.

As the battering continued, cracks appeared in the paneling around the door frame. Shively retrieved a gun, and fired at the figures he saw through one of the openings. His bullet hit Officer Tony Patterson, killing him.

Despite Shively's 911 call -- which would seem to suggest he didn't know the intruders were police -- the local prosecutor threw a capital murder charge at Shively, alleging he intentionally killed Patterson to protect the 12 ounces of marijuana that the police found in Shively's apartment.

At trial, the jury passed on the capital murder charge, but did convict Shively of aggravated assault, along with drug charges for the marijuana. The trial judge sentenced him to three-and-a-half years in prison, explaining that he didn't fit the description of “a drug lord with horns and fangs.” In 1998, another state judge released Shively eight months early.

The following year, the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled that the search warrant authorizing the raid on Shively's apartment was illegal. From the opinion: "Regrettably, the loss of an officer's life might have been prevented if the affidavit had been candid and not designed to mislead the magistrate into issuing the search warrant."

The six police officers who took part in the raid were awarded the Topeka Police Department's Medal of Merit.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Sources: Tim Carpenter, "Broken Hearts, Broken Lives," Topeka Capital-Journal, October 9, 2005; "Man not guilty of murder Police officer was shot while raiding Topeka home on drug warrant," Associated Press, April 25, 1996.

In July 2002, police in South Memphis raided the home of 41-year-old Jeffery Robinson, a gravedigger who lived in a small building near the cemetery that employed him. The police had received a tip that someone was selling marijuana near the cemetery.

Seconds after kicking down Robinson's door, the raid team shot Robinson in the neck. They later claimed he had charged at them with a box cutter. While he lay in intensive care fighting for his life, Robinson was charged with possession for the small amount of pot the cops found near a camper in the yard behind his home. He died six weeks later.

An internal police review and a review by the Tennessee Attorney General's Office found no wrongdoing on the part of the raiding police officers, and for the next two-and-a-half years, they remained on the force. But a 2004 lawsuit filed by Robinson's family cast doubt on the raid and the credibility of the cops who carried it out. The alleged box cutter Robinson was holding was never fingerprinted. A federal jury later determined it was planted. The shirts worn by Robinson and the officer who shot him vanished after the raid. Trial testimony revealed that police bought a new polo shirt, still in its wrapper, and filed it into evidence as the shirt Robinson wore the night he was shot. A medical examiner and blood spatter expert also testified that the shooting couldn't possibly have happened the way the police claimed it did.

The federal jury concluded that the officers shot Robinson without justification, then tampered with the evidence to cover up their mistakes. The jury didn't believe the investigation conducted by the police department's internal affairs division. The following February, the eight officers involved in the raid were suspended, more than two years after the raid. Robinson's family won $2.85 million in damages against the officers, and negotiated a $1 million settlement from the city.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Sources: Eight Memphis officers finally suspended in botched drug raid," Associated Press, February 5, 2005; Jacinthia Jones, "8 officers suspended in '02 drug raid--Until now, they remained on force even after jury finding," Memphis Commercial Appeal, February 5, 2005.

Mr. Kinzer thinks we must protect sexting teenagers from ruining their lives . . . by ruining their lives.

As the head of the DA's computer crime unit, which includes several state troopers, Kinzer cited "kids, young adults, even adults who think it is a good idea to take nude or semi-nude photos of themselves on their cellphones and send them to other people via text message."

Youngsters who are under 18 fail to realize that they have created and manufactured child pornography, Kinzer warned a group of parents during an informational session at Lenox Memorial Middle and High School this past week.

"When you send that text message, you have disseminated child pornography" and when it is shared and shown to others, they are in possession of child pornography, he pointed out.

"We do not have any exceptions in our law for kids who are really in love, for girls who wanted to do it and for guys who promised they wouldn't share it, or for two kids who are dating," Kinzer said. "A nude photo of [a minor's] exposed genitalia is child pornography."

The prosecutor explained that he has spread the word at schools throughout Berkshire County.

"I'm done telling what the law is," Kinzer said. "When they start sharing photos like this, we are going to start charging people with the manufacturing, dissemination and possession of child pornography, and they're going to go to court.

"They're going to face [prosecution], probably not jail time unless they've got bad records. But that's OK. They'll just be put on probation and they'll get to register as a sex offender, and that's a great box to check off on any job application," he continued. "You're going to lose jobs and relationships, and you'll spend the rest of your life as a registered sex offender."

Teenagers, sex, and computers are three topics that always seem to send elected officials into fits of panic. Combine all three into one story, and you get reactions like Kinzer's. He certainly isn't the first prosecutor to make this argument. In 2007, even a Florida appeals court upheld a conviction based on the same twisted logic -- that ruining the lives of sexting teens is the only way to save them.

Kinzer also cites "hook-up" applications for smart phones and Facebook, and, like the judge who wrote the opinion in the Florida case, brings up the argument that the Internet is full of strangers looking to prey on children. But this too is nonsense. In 2009, 49 state attorneys general asked a task force to look at the problem of predators using the Internet to find underage victims. The committee's conclusion? Internet predation of kids isn't really a problem at all. There's no real evidence that use of the Internet and social networking makes kids more susceptible to sexual exploitation.

The criminal justice system is far too blunt an instrument to deal with this sort of thing. Young people are going to make mistakes. It's part of growing up. Of course, older people sometimes send "sext messages" they later regret, too. But the mere fact that teens are young ought to be a reason to cut them some slack. Instead, in this context, their age and inexperience are precisely why their mistakes become a crime.

If you were to give Kinzer the benefit of the doubt here, you could argue that he doesn't appear to have actually prosecuted anyone for this yet. So maybe his warning is just that -- an attempt to scare kids away from sexting that he has no real intention of carrying out. Perhaps. But this isn't an issue in which the criminal justice system should be meddling at all. A prosecutors isn't a ministers, parents, doctor, or therapist -- all of whom are far more appropriate people to handle a problem like this. If you're promising to ruin a teen's life for a mistake that's really just a modern twist on something teens have been doing since -- well, forever -- then maybe it's time to reevaluate your priorities.

And maybe it's time for voters, or your boss, to reevaluate your fitness for office.

I was surprised to see that the Democrats chose Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn to champion their cause at today's gun control hearings in Washington. I'm generally in favor of gun rights, and oppose most gun control. But I also think the gun rights movement can get overheated and paranoid with its rhetoric.

That said, of all the people gun control advocates could have asked to testify today, Flynn was a really poor choice. It certainly won't do much to assuage fears among gun owners that Democrats and the White House are about to wage war on them. A few years ago, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen affirmed that Wisconsin residents were legally permitted to openly carry in public. Here's how Flynn responded:

"My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we'll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it."

It was a pretty astonishing thing for a police chief to say. Police chiefs don't make the laws, nor do they interpret laws. They enforce laws, whether they agree with them or not. A chief has discretion to prioritize some laws over others. But he does not have the option to make an activity illegal when it is legal. Flynn was openly boasting that he had instructed Milwaukee police officers to harass, assault, and willfully violate the rights of Milwaukee citizens when Flynn knew they weren't violating any laws. Were we talking about just about anything other than guns, there would have been calls for Flynn to be investigated for conspiring to violate civil rights. That he was never really held accountable for his comments is bad enough. That he's now being put forward as a spokesman for gun control is really pretty awful.

One other thing about Chief Flynn's comment. Police officers are not "troops." They're civil servants. Peace officers. There are important differences between cops and soldiers. That Flynn doesn't appear to appreciate those difference speaks volumes about why he would instruct his cops to assault and detain the citizens they serve first, then determine whether or not those citizens have actually broken any laws.

In September 1991, 85 agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Forest Service, and the New Mexico National Guard conducted a massive early morning raid on the rural farm owned by retired florist Leland Elder and his wife Mary Schultz. Guard troops, cops, and federal agents wore camouflage face paint and steel helmets, and brought a tank and a helicopter as they stormed the property, the couple were eventually surrounded in their home by six heavily armed men, handcuffed, and thrown to the ground. The couple told Scripps-Howard that the government officials kept screaming, "Tell us where the drugs are!" Tell us where the drugs are!"

The raid also hit a trailer that the couple rented to Sina Brush and her 15-year-old daughter. The two women were rousted from bed and tossed to the floor at gunpoint.

Schultz, who was treated for depression and anxiety after the raid, told Scripps-Howard, ""We are innocent victims in the war on drugs. As law enforcement changes from a 'Lets talk about it' philosophy to a Delta force, invade first program there will be many more innocent people swept up in these raids."

Customs had flown over the couple's property with thermal energy detecting equipment and found "above average" heat emanating from buildings on the farm. But the agents didn't note that other houses in the area were giving off the same sort of heat. The agents described hoses the family used to water olive trees as a marijuana irrigation system. They also mistook sunflowers, geraniums and marigolds for "marijuana-like plants."

The raid turned up nothing illegal. In the ensuing months, the couple sent out letters to all the agencies involved asking not for compensation, but only for an apology. Mary Schultz told Scripps-Howard, "We just wanted the government to admit it was wrong--to understand that care must be used before armed troops are sent into the homes of its citizens."

They never got one. So they filed a lawsuit. It was tossed out of court because the agencies were protected by sovereign immunity. The couldn't sue any of the agents individually, because they all refused to give the couple their name. When the couple appealed, the New Mexico National Guard finally paid them $5,000 to drop the suit in 1995.

Said Schultz, after the settlement: "We're still angry as hell and hurt that our government can do this, but after what happened at Ruby Ridge and in Waco, I quess we should be glad to be alive."

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Source: Andrew Schneider, "New Mexico Couple 'Still Angry' Over Bogus Raid, Lack of Apology," Scripps-Howard News Service, September 14, 1995..

This video warms my cold libertarian heart.

For a primer on these and related issues, I suggest you check out the good folks at Flex Your Rights.

On Monday, the Miami Herald posted an article about rising support for legalized medical marijuana in the state of Florida. The article mentioned an pro-pot activist named Cathy Jordan, who uses the drug to mitigate the symptoms of Lou Gehrig's disease. The article mentioned Sen. Jeff Clemens (D-Lake worth), who is sponsoring a bill to legalize the drug. That bill is named after Jordan.

The Bradeton Herald now reports that just hours after that article ran, a team of ski-mask-clad deputies from the Manatee County Sheriff's Department staged a guns-drawn raid on Robert and Cathy Jordan's home. According to Robert Jordan, the cops seized 23 marijuana plants, including the two mature plants his wife uses to treat her illness. They made no arrests.

The raid is a stark example of the troubling trend of using paramilitary police tactics to send a political message. Set aside for a moment the sheer cruelty of sending government agents to separate a suffering, terminally ill woman from the medication that gives her some relief. (And yes, that's a major thing to set aside.) Why ski masks? Why come in with guns drawn? Did the Manatee County Sheriff's Department really think that wheelchair-bound Cathy Jordan and her 64-year-old husband were a threat?

No, of course they didn't. This was about making an example of someone. Cathy Jordan's name is on a bill to legalize medical pot in Florida. So it was up to Florida law enforcement to bring the boot down upon Cathy Jordan's neck.

The police will say they were merely enforcing the law. Nonsense. First, Manatee County Sheriff Brad Steube has discretion about which laws he enforces, and to what degree. He doesn't have the resources to enforce every law, all the time. He has to prioritize. And how he prioritizes -- how he uses the resources available to him -- is certainly something the public should consider when evaluating how well he's doing his job. Cathy Jordan's pot plants weren't harming anyone. I suppose it's now up to Manatee County residents to decide if sending a team of cops to take pot plants away from a sick woman was an appropriate use of public resources.

Second, even if we were to concede that Jordan was breaking the law, and that the Manatee County Sheriff's Department has an obligation to enforce that law, how it's enforced is also a matter of policy -- and something for which Manatee County residents can hold Sheriff Steube accountable.

In the end, it's a pretty safe bet that these deputies won't be disciplined or reprimanded, and that Sheriff Steube won't suffer any political consequence for the way this action was carried out.

And that's where all of this begins to get scary. It's one thing for a few bad cops or a power-tripping sheriff to use excessive force to make an example of someone because of a disagreement over politics or public policy. There will always be bad actors. It's how we react that matters. Whether or not the public supports medical marijuana itself isn't really the point, here. You can shut down a pot shop or take plants away from a sick person without pointing guns and donning a ski mask.

Here is the point: If we've reached the point where we're okay with -- or at best complacent about -- the government using violence to make an example of someone because of their political activism, then we've lost our grip on the principles that make free societies free. That these excessive, militarized raids on medical marijuana grows, clinics, and activists have been going on since the 1990s is a strong -- and sad -- indication that we let go of those values a long time ago.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

This morning, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor scolded a federal prosecutor for a racist comment he made during a drug trial. While questioning the defendant, the prosecutor asked, "You've got African-Americans, you've got Hispanics, you've got a bag full of money. Does that tell you -- a light bulb doesn't go off in your head and say, This is a drug deal?"

This struck Sotomayor as a wholly inappropriate thing for an Assistant U.S. Attorney to even be thinking, let alone blurting out in open court, in front of a jury. And rightly so. More troubling, as both Sotomayor and United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Catharina Hayes point out, is the Justice Department's nonchalance about the comment. From Hayes' concurring opinion last June:

Finally, perhaps the most troubling of all is how the United States Attorney's Office has handled this matter thereafter. While I do not fault the determination to argue in favor of sustaining the verdict, I am dismayed by the cavalier approach to this situation. The Government's brief calls the question "impolitic" and states: "even assuming the question crossed the line," as if that is in doubt. Let me clear up any confusion - the question crossed the line. An apology is in order, and I do not see it in the briefing. Indeed, it should trouble the Assistant United States Attorney in question and all those in his office not just that he said such a thing, but that he thought it. The title "prosecutor" -- indeed, the title "lawyer" - demands better. I hope I will not have to say this again.

But the courts contribute to this problem, too. Even in chastising the AUSA, neither Sotomayor nor Hayes actually name him. It's bad enough that state bars the Justice Department, and state attorneys general are so reticent about hitting misbehaving prosecutors with professional sanctions. But by not naming prosecutors who commit misconduct, even in opinions in which they find it to be egregious, the courts make it more difficult for the public to know when these public servants are out of line.

Over at the Popehat blog, Ken -- a former prosecutor -- pulled the case in question up on PACER and was able to identify the offending prosecutor as Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam L. Ponder.

And yes, Ponder does still work as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas.

Distasteful as Ponder's question was, prosecutors frequently get away with far more damaging misconduct -- withholding or even manufacturing evidence, for example -- and thanks to this habit of not naming them in appellate opinions, they not only escape professional sanction, but public accountability. It's also virtually impossible to sue them, even if, say, they've wrongly convicted you, causing you to spend several decades in prison.

Ken at Popehat is right -- those of us who cover these issues need to do a better job of identifying prosecutors who cross the line. But this is also information that should be readily and publicly available. These are public officials. They work for us. And they have incredible power -- the power to ruin lives. There's really no good reason why their misconduct should be obscured.

To that end, I'm going to start a recurring feature at this blog that will -- as Popehat puts it -- "name and shame" misbehaving prosecutors. We've sorta' been doing that here at The Agitator already with the annual "Worst Prosecutor of the Year" poll I've done in years past. (Which, alas, I didn't have time to get to for last year.) But this will be more regular -- and tagged.

But I also think that compiling and posting online comprehensive, searchable records of prosecutorial misconduct would be a great project for some public interest, criminal justice advocacy, voter information, or transparency organization. At the state level, prosecutors are elected. Knowing if an incumbent has had any verdicts thrown out due to misconduct would seem like the sort of information voters might want to know, and should be able to access rather easily. Federal prosecutors are appointed, but public pressure can still be effective, as we've seen from reaction to the death of Aaron Swartz. A U.S. Attorney position is also often a springboard to elected office. So again, any incidence of misconduct would certainly be of value to voters deciding whether an ambitious prosecutor deserves a promotion.

There's also at least a chance that once such a project was up and running, the knowledge that going forward, any findings of misconduct will be more readily available to voters, the media, activist groups, and any potential future political opponents would also serve as a deterrent, and help push back on some of the perverse incentives the job currently carries.

Perhaps someday the state bars, the courts, or the politicians will come around, and do something to hold prosecutors more accountable. But this is something that could be done soon. The information is out there. It just needs to be made more usable and accessible.

A reader writes:

My apartment was raided by the swat team serving a search warrant for an embezzlement issue (re: nonviolent). It wasn't for me or my family of course. It was the for someone who moved out three months before. I was lucky; I leave for work work at 5:20am and was not there. My wife was traumatized but not mistreated (she was hustled out when she opened the door but not pinned to the ground or anything . . . our daughter was left in her bed while they swept the apartment for the person on the warrant). Still, it was a ridiculous and unnecessary risk* considering the crime in question. A couple of normal deputies, with guns in the holsters, could have served a warrant of this kind (and that's exactly how I think it would have been done 15 years ago) and ushered in the detectives and postal inspector looking for evidence. Really, a Judge's oversight is obviously no longer enough.

(* my wife and I both, legally, own firearms...)

The reader asked that I not use his name. But he did send and give me permission to post the search warrant, which you can view here. This is far from the most disastrous raid we've covered here. But it's another data point illustrating just how routine this sort of thing has become. Why is it necessary to wake people before dawn and point guns at them for an embezzlement warrant? And of course, even assuming that this suspect was some sort of violent mobster, and embezzlement was only one of his many suspected crimes, if you are going to serve the warrant this way, at least do enough homework to know your suspect has moved out -- and an innocent family has moved in -- three months prior to the raid.

The firearms addendum is not an irrelevant point. There have been numerous instances where the fact that a suspect was a legal, registered gun owner was indicated by police as a reason why SWAT tactics were necessary. That's absurd, and should at the very least suggest that maybe they have the wrong person -- hardened criminals tend not to register their weapons with the government. But it should also be a red flag for the gun rights community. Additionally, as these tactics continue to spread to enforce increasingly petty and nonviolent crimes, we're almost certain to see more wrong-door raids on legal gun owners. It isn't difficult to see a lot of tragic outcomes, there.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

The great Shovels & Rope. Just as you get to stomping your foot to this one, you'll realize it's a song about carnage and war. Devious of them.

On January 3, 2001, Jerome County, Idaho sheriff's deputies James Moulson and Phillip Anderson conducted a drug raid on the Eden home of George Timothy Williams, a man described by an informant as one of the leading suppliers of marijuana in the county. Jerome County Sheriff Jim Weaver and Undersheriff Jocelyne Nunnally also went on the raid. It's unclear if they announced themselves before entering--the surviving officers say they did, Williams' neighbors said they heard no announcement. But when Anderson and Mouslon forced their way inside, Williams met them with a gun. The three men exchanged gunfire. All three of them died.

A subsequent search of the home turned up less than four grams of marijuana. Lawsuits brought by the families of the slain deputies and by Williams' family revealed that the informant whose tip led to the raid was a woman who lived with Williams, and alleged that the sheriff's department threatened to take the woman's child away from her if she didn't give them incriminating information about Williams.

The county settled with the families of the slain deputies. The lawsuit brought by Williams' family was dismissed in federal court. A subsequent investigation by the Idaho State Police found no criminal wrongdoing on the part of the sheriff's department or the deputies who conducted the raid.

Sheriff Jim Weaver's aggressive anti-drug policing later made him the subject to a recall campaign (it was unsuccessful). The shootout also become a central issue in his 2004 reelection campaign. In 2007, Moulson, Anderson, and Nunnally were awarded Idaho's Medal of Honor for their actions on the night of the raid.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Sources: Fatal shootout at core of re-election campaign," Associated Press, March 29, 2004; "Recall effort against Weaver falls short," Associated Press, June 13, 2001; Patrick Orr, "Eden raid used most standard practices; Officers wore armor, called out, then force dentry," Idaho Statesman, March 10, 2001; "County's insurance not enough for tort claims," Associated Press, July 15, 2001; "Judge: Sheriff's department didn't act recklessly," Associated Press, February 24, 2004; "2007 Idaho Medal of Honor Recipients," Idaho Medal of Honor Commission.

In March 1992, police in Snohomish County, Washington conducted six simultaneous raids on members of the same extended family. An informant had implicated the targets of the raids for the robbery of an armored car and the murder of its driver a year earlier.

One of the raids was on the home of Larry and Robin Pratt. The informant had implicated Larry Platt. Though police knew there were likely to be innocent people and possibly children in the house, they decided on the pre-dawn, no-knock raid instead of confronting Pratt as he was coming or going to work. The police had also obtained a key to the apartment from a landlord, but decided instead to enter the residence by slamming a 50-pound battering ram through a sliding glass door.

As they executed the raid, shards of glass flew out toward the Pratts' six-year-old daughter and five-year-old niece sleeping nearby. The police confronted 28-year-old Robin Pratt as she came out of her bedroom to see what was wrong. She immediately dropped to her knees. She briefly raised her head, looked at Dep. Anthony Aston, and said, "Please don't hurt my children." Aston then fired a single bullet into Pratt's neck. She bled out and died in front of her daughter.

The police then went to the bedroom, where they confronted Larry Pratt and put a gun to his temple. When he asked if he could move, the officer said if he did, he'd blow Pratt's head off.

Police later learned that the informant had been lying -- he admitted as much. Every one of the raids conducted that morning were waged against innocent families. The police never bothered to check the informant's statements with the accused before confronting them and their families with violence. If they had, they'd have found that every one of the people he had implicated -- including Larry Pratt -- had solid alibis disproving the informant's story.

There were other signs that should have tipped police off about the informant's credibility -- or at least made them reluctant to put enough faith in his tips to wage full blown SWAT raids. Other parts of his story -- a getaway car dumped in a lake that was never found, for example -- hadn't checked out, either. An FBI agent involved in the case had also warned local investigators that the informant's tips were often unreliable. The informant had also told police that the people involved in the robbery had simply deposited the stolen money into their bank accounts. The police never checked the accounts for any large deposits.

Det. Aston would later say he couldn't remember how or why he shot Robin Pratt. There is no dispute that she was on her knees, and posed no threat when Aston shot her. A coroner's inquest would later find the shooting "unjustified," but the jurors split on whether there was evidence Aston committed a crime. The Washington State Attorney General's Office declined to press criminal charges against him.

In 1994, the Pratt family settled with the town of Lynnwood and with Snohomish County for about $4.5 million.

(The "Raid of the Day" features accounts of police raids I've found, researched, and reported while writing my forthcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. It's due out in July, but you can pre-order it here.)

Sources: Jolayne Houtz, "Suit Filed Against City, County In Swat Death -- Officers Also Named In Everett Shooting," Seattle Times, October 16, 1992; Jolayne Houtz, "26 Case," Seattle Times, March 26, 1994; "City Settles Suit Over Woman's Deat," Associated Press, April 27, 1994; "State Will Not Charge Deputy in Fatal Shooting of Woman," Associated Press, August 8, 1992.