heres a good one:
On November 7, 1995, police in North Minneapolis, Minnesota raid the home of Andre Madison. After local media merely rehashes the police version of events, the City Pages, a Minneapolis alternative weekly, conducts its own in-depth investigation.
According to the paper's stunning account of the raid, police obtained a no-knock warrant on Madison's home after a confidential informant allegedly purchased some marijuana at the residence. At about 8 p.m., the Minneapolis paramilitary police unit, called ERU, deployed flashbang grenades at the front of Madison's home. At the same time, police from the city's housing unit were entering the home from the rear. Reports at the time say police began firing when Madison fired his shotgun at them. But a forensics team later determined that Madison's gun was never fired the night of the raid. Instead, an investigation conducted by the police chief from a nearby county concluded that the housing unit officers mistook the flashbang grenades deployed by the ERU unit for gunfire from the suspect, and so opened fire themselves.
The two police units then mistook one another for assailants, and began to fire upon one another. When Officer Mark Lanasa went down, shot in the neck by a colleague, the commanding officer called for "suppressive fire," giving officers carte blanche to shoot at will.
Upon hearing that a fellow officer had gone down, more police soon arrived at the scene. They too joined in the shooting. Hundreds of rounds were fired into the building. There were bullet holes found in neighboring buildings a half-block away.
Madison, the suspect, was shot in the neck and the arm. Miraculously, no one was killed.
Police found only a small amount of marijuana in Madison's home. He was never charged with a drug crime. He was charged with four felony counts of second-degree assault with a firearm: Not for shooting, but for pointing his shotgun at police. He could have been sentenced to 12 years in prison. Madison insists he thought the police were intruders.
But prosecutors then offered to let Madison plea to a misdemeanor count of reckless use of a firearm, which carries a sentence of just 90 days. The hitch was that a guilty plea to the lesser charge would prevent Madison from suing the city for the botched raid.
The subsequent investigation and report from the outside police chief also concluded that Minneapolis's ERU unit "executes too many warrants and relies too heavily on dynamic (door-ramming) raids," explaining that "There are other alternative tactics that ERU is aware of. However when so many raids are conducted using dynamic entry, other tactics may be forgotten."
LOL... smooth operators.
after further review of the CATO map... im disgusted. Why does it seem that the vast majority of these SWAT raids are for small time pot dealing (and some for even possesion?!?!)... If your gonna send a swat team in to subdue evil potheads, you may want to gather the local national gaurd and maybe a squad of Delta to serve the real victim-causing crime warrants out there.
