There's a new disturbing case in Florida. Police and federal marshals did a warrantless sweep of an apartment complex. While, they were looking for a child molester, there was no child involved and the danger was not imminent for any innocents.
Its long, so I will only post the first of four pages and a link to the rest.
"Lyons: Police raid felt like home invasion
After leaving her operating room scrub nurse duties at Sarasota's Doctors Hospital on Wednesday, Louise Goldsberry went to her Hidden Lake Village apartment.
Her boyfriend came over, and after dinner — about 8 p.m. — Goldsberry went to her kitchen sink to wash some dishes.
That's when her boyfriend, Craig Dorris — a manager for a security alarm company — heard her scream and saw her drop to the floor.
Goldsberry, 59, said she had looked up from the sink to see a man “wearing a hunting vest.”
He was aiming a gun at her face, with a red light pinpointing her.
“I screamed and screamed,” she said.
But she also scrambled across the floor to her bedroom and grabbed her gun, a five-shot .38-caliber revolver. Goldsberry has a concealed weapons permit and says the gun has made her feel safer living alone. But she felt anything but safe when she heard a man yelling to open the door.
He was claiming to be a police officer, but the man she had seen looked to her more like an armed thug. Her boyfriend, Dorris, was calmer, and yelled back that he wanted to see some ID.
But the man just demanded they open the door. The actual words, the couple say, were, “We're the f------ police; open the f------ door.”
Dorris said he moved away from the door, afraid bullets were about to rip through.
Goldsberry was terrified but thinking it just might really be the police. Except, she says she wondered, would police talk that way? She had never been arrested or even come close. She couldn't imagine why police would be there or want to come in. But even if they did, why would they act like that at her apartment? It didn't seem right."
Goldsberry wasn't arrested or shot despite pointing a gun at a cop, so Wiggins said, “She sure shouldn't be going to the press.”
Federal marshals are supposed to be the cream of the crop, next to FBI agents. First, they and the local police, after securing the apartment complex, use SWAT team tactics and gear to violently enter apartments. They shout obscenities and insults to innocent people in an unprofessional manner and expect to be obeyed without question. I understand being hyper and adrenalin flowing in such situations. Which is why the situation should never have happened. Local police, in regular uniforms (with bullet resistant vests), should have knocked and explained the situation. Most reasonable people would allow the police entrance if treated in a decent manner. SWAT should be kept in reserve, not as the first tool used.
Worse, the federal marshal was clueless, just as the Virginian officer was. The only method to teach the police is a lawsuit -- preferably by all the apartment dwellers. The marshal's comment alone should be worth several thousand dollars in reparations..