The stoners over at Reason have themselves worked up into a lather over this story from Georgia.
Members of a northeast Georgia SWAT team are “devastated” after a drug raid in which a flash-bang grenade landed in a 1-year-old’s playpen, seriously injuring the child, the Habersham County sheriff said Friday.
The police officers involved have been called baby killers and received threats following the incident, Sheriff Joey Terrell said.
“All I can say is pray for the baby, his family and for us,” he told CNN.
The SWAT team, made up of six or seven officers from the sheriff’s department and the Cornelia Police Department, entered the Cornelia residence Wednesday before 3 a.m.
A confidential informant hours earlier had purchased methamphetamine at the house, the sheriff says. The informant told police that there were men standing guard outside the home, and it was unclear whether they were armed, according to CNN affiliate WGCL.
Because the suspected drug dealer, Wanis Thonetheva, had a previous weapons charge, officers were issued a “no-knock warrant” for the residence, Terrell said.
Wanis Thonetheva is being held without bond.
When the SWAT team hit the home’s front door with a battering ram, it resisted as if something was up against it, the sheriff said, so one of the officers threw the flash-bang grenade inside the residence.
Once inside the house, the SWAT team realized it was a portable playpen blocking the door, and the flash-bang grenade had landed inside where the 19-month-old was sleeping, the sheriff said.
A medic on the scene rushed the baby outside to administer first aid, and a nearby ambulance was summoned. Authorities wanted to transport the baby via Life Flight to Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital, 75 miles southwest of Cornelia, but weather conditions wouldn’t allow it. The baby was driven to the hospital.
Just in case you were wondering what someone named Wanis Thonetheva looks like, cause you’re one of those lookists or noticers, here is his mugshot.
Here’s his
Facebook page where you can see him flashing gang signs.
The stoners at Reason are in a lather because the story involves drugs and that’s pretty much the sole cause of libertarianism.
Terrell has insisted his officers and those of the local police department did nothing wrong and blamed the target of the warrant (not found at the house that was invaded) on the attack on the toddler. A chief assistant district attorney for the county, J. Edward Staples, says the target of the warrant could in fact be charged for the injuries the sheriff’s deputies caused the toddler. In an obvious attempt to immunize himself and his office from liability, the sheriff has claimed the situation was unavoidable even as he attempted to offer reassurances that his SWAT team would be more diligent in the future. He told CNN that his officers “obviously would have done things different” (IF they knew there was a child in the home), like go in through a side door or not use a flash bang. Until using violence to crack down on non-violent “crimes” becomes politically untenable for “public servants,” it won’t matter how much ass-covering law enforcement does after the fact, these kinds of incidents will continue to happen.
Of course, the elephant in the room is the fact we have a story about Laotian drug dealers in Georgia. Was there ever a time that the people of Georgia were longing for Laotian drug dealer to move into their neighborhoods? I doubt it. Wanis may be a fine man and perfectly innocent, but he has no business in America. He should be back in his own lands where he will fit in with his people.
Then we have the paramilitary units we comically call law enforcement. We refuse to enforce the basics of the law like keeping foreign invaders out of the country. Instead, they blast down doors and play army man at the expense of the citizenry. Whatever the circumstance that brought a bunch of boat people to Georgia, it does not justify having armed gangs terrorizing the people with authority of the state.
It is the epitome of anarcho-tyranny.
Horse hockey.
“He should be back in his own lands where he will fit in with his people.”
Let me fix it for you:
‘[He]{insert whatever flavor of folk I don’t favor} should be back in [his] {their} own lands where {they}[he] will fit in with his people.’
I presume in that last sentence you meant to write that “… it does [*NOT*] justify armed gangs …..”
Sorry but if they were allied with us and we lacked the will and the guts and the ruthlessness to win and have had to withdraw after promising we would protect our in country allies….. and if, as it always does, this means that those allies — good, bad, ugly — are in danger of reprisal…. well then they get to come along if they wish.
This is also a reminder that we need to stop bringing our defeated allies home from all our wars.