SWAT Team’s Stun Grenade Burns Child, Leaves Him in Coma

[Wilikon]

A 19-month-old toddler was critically injured after a police flash bang was tossed into his bed during a police raid at a Habersham County home on Wednesday.
“It’s my baby. He’s my only baby. He didn’t deserve any of this,” said Alecia Phonesavanh, the mother of the child.
“It landed in his playpen and exploded right in his face,” said Phonesavanh.
The child is now being treated at Grady hospital and has a 50 percent chance of survival.
“He’s in the burn unit. We got to see him and his whole face is ripped open. He has a big cut on his chest,” said Phonesavanh. “He’s only 19 months old, he didn’t do anything.”
The sheriff’s department said they had no idea there were children in the house.
“There was no clothes, no toys, nothing to indicate that there was children present in the home. If there had been then we’d have done something different,” said Cornelia police chief Rick Darby.
The child’s parents have contacted the GBI but were told no further investigation was needed.

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/05/30/toddler-critically-injured-during-police-raid/


http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/swat-throws-grenade-in-playpen/

[Ekaros]

I have to say it's getting more and more amazing to hear how that police state develops.

[Spendulus]

A 19-month-old toddler was critically injured after a police flash bang was tossed into his bed during a police raid at a Habersham County home on Wednesday.
“It’s my baby. He’s my only baby. He didn’t deserve any of this,” said Alecia Phonesavanh, the mother of the child.
“It landed in his playpen and exploded right in his face,” said Phonesavanh.
The child is now being treated at Grady hospital and has a 50 percent chance of survival.
“He’s in the burn unit. We got to see him and his whole face is ripped open. He has a big cut on his chest,” said Phonesavanh. “He’s only 19 months old, he didn’t do anything.”
The sheriff’s department said they had no idea there were children in the house.
“There was no clothes, no toys, nothing to indicate that there was children present in the home. If there had been then we’d have done something different,” said Cornelia police chief Rick Darby.
The child’s parents have contacted the GBI but were told no further investigation was needed.

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/05/30/toddler-critically-injured-during-police-raid/


http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/swat-throws-grenade-in-playpen/

Hey, now that's some bang up work for some Johnnie-Soldier-Wanna-Bes.  It's so efficient, cost effective and practical that we ought to give these guys more toys, like armored tanks and armed drones.....

Uh....wait......

[Spendulus]

I have to say it's getting more and more amazing to hear how that police state develops.

You don't exactly mean "police state".

You mean "Stupid State".

[Ekaros]

I have to say it's getting more and more amazing to hear how that police state develops.

You don't exactly mean "police state".

You mean "Stupid State".

Police states are often stupid states. I do think USA is a police state or going to that direction and will be there sometime if it goes like it have done recently.

[Spendulus]

I have to say it's getting more and more amazing to hear how that police state develops.

You don't exactly mean "police state".

You mean "Stupid State".

Police states are often stupid states. I do think USA is a police state or going to that direction and will be there sometime if it goes like it have done recently.

Well, partner, you know what they say:

If you're gonna be stupid, don't pull up short. Saddle up and ride it all the way in.

[Chef Ramsay]

I was going to add this to my police state thread but to bury these instances in one thread seems pointless. Mind you, no drugs were found and now the baby will likely have issues all life long because of this.
But to add on to this: This bunch has a checkered past

Drug task force that burned a toddler this week also killed an innocent pastor in 2009

But this same task force has a history. In February, I posted about a settlement in the death of Jonathan Ayers, an innocent pastor that this same drug task force killed in a drug operation in 2009.

In September 2009, the young pastor Ayers was ministering to a young woman whom a Georgia drug task force was investigating on drug charges. (She had allegedly sold an undercover officer $50 worth of cocaine.) When task force members saw Ayers alone in the car with the woman, they switched their focus to him. According to Ayers’s lawsuit, the woman was about to be evicted from the motel at which she was staying. Ayers gave her the $23 in his pocket to help cover her rent.

The task force followed Ayers to a convenience store, where he went in to get money from an ATM. When he returned and got into his car they pounced. They pulled up behind him in an unmarked black SUV. Armed agents dressed in street clothes then rushed Ayers’s car. He put his car in reverse and attempted to escape. In the process, he nicked one agent. Another then opened fire, killing him. Ayers told hospital staff was that he thought he was being robbed. His reported last words were, “Who shot me?”

Ayers had no drugs in his car or in his system, and there was no evidence he was using or distributing anything illegal. Still, local law enforcement officials tried to smear him. They first said he was part of their drug investigation all along, then retracted. The woman the police were following initially said in an interview that Ayers was counseling her and helping her kick her drug habit. Later, while facing criminal charges for a separate incident, she changed her story and claimed that Ayers had been paying her for sex.

In the end, Ayers was innocent, and a federal jury awarded his widow a $2 million settlement.

In the burned toddler raid, Terrell told the paper that District Attorney Brian Rickman had already cleared the task force of any wrongdoing. That’s a remarkably fast investigation given that the raid happened less than two days ago. Rickman also cleared the cops in the Ayers case. So did the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Rickman would tell a local paper that the investigations went “to extraordinary lengths,” and, “I do not see how anybody could say the process was unfair based on the lengths that they went to.”

Here’s what happened next:

Ayers left behind a wife, Abigail, who at the time of his death was pregnant with her first child. She filed a lawsuit and hired her own investigator to look into the shooting. What he found is astonishing. As it turns out, Officer Billy Shane Harrison, the cop who shot Ayers, hadn’t taken the series of firearms training classes required for his certification as a police officer. It gets worse. It turns out that Harrison also had received zero training in the use of lethal force.

He wasn’t authorized to make arrests or to carry a gun. Yet somehow he had been given a position on a narcotics task force, a position that not only gave him a gun but put him in volatile, high-stakes situations where he might be tempted to use it. Abigail Ayers’s lawsuit also alleged that Harrison and Officer Chance Oxner, who initially bought the drugs from the woman Ayers was counseling, had a history of disciplinary problems, including use of illicit drugs.

So those “fair” investigations that went to “extraordinary lengths” failed to discover that the cop who shot Ayers not only had prior disciplinary problems, but also he wasn’t even legally authorized to be a cop, much less carry a gun. It was later revealed that Rickman had appointed the head of the task force at the time of the Ayers shooting, and was a close personal friend with the officer (who is now deceased).

So maybe we should take Rickman’s quick assessment of this week’s raid with a grain of salt.

In my post on Ayers, I noted how little professional accountability there had been for the death of Jonathan Ayers. The cop who killed him was fired, but only after it was revealed that he lacked the training. One other law enforcement official was fired for lying about the training. No one was disciplined for the actual killing of Ayers. Rickman, Terrell, and the other sheriff who oversees the task force were all reelected.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be all that surprised that a sheriff who sees drug suspects as “terrorists” also oversees a drug task force that has now killed an innocent pastor and burned a two-year-old child.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/05/30/drug-task-force-that-burned-a-toddler-this-week-also-killed-an-innocent-pastor-in-2009/
It's amazing these guys can freak out so much over plant matter and then use tactics on the home front that troops might not even use in Falujah.

Police commentary on OP raid

"Our team went by the book. Given the same scenario, we’ll do the same thing again. I stand behind what our team did.” - Joey Terrell, Habersham County Brute Squad - http://www.accessnorthga.com/detail.php?n=275516

"There was no clothes, there was no toys, there was nothing to indicate that there was children present in the home. If there had a been, then we woulda done something different." - Joey Terrell, Habersham County Brute Squad - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3d8_zcFRVY

Damage report

 

[Ron~Popeil]

That is disturbing. Our police playing soldier boy is becoming a real problem in the US. I live in a town of 2500 people and our police department has the equivalent of an armored personnel carrier.

[bryant.coleman]

This is exactly the problem with the American police. They have no balls to fight it out with the Mexican drug traffickers. Instead, they devote all their energy to take out the end-chain users (and in this case, it was found out that their target had no drug connections at all). Treat the disease, not the symptoms.

[Spendulus]

This is exactly the problem with the American police. They have no balls to fight it out with the Mexican drug traffickers. Instead, they devote all their energy to take out the end-chain users (and in this case, it was found out that their target had no drug connections at all). Treat the disease, not the symptoms.

Well, what happened was a couple of decades ago, SWAT teams looked like a good idea.  So there came to be more and more of them.  But there weren't crimes enough to send them out on, so they started commonly being used in drug cases.  Sure, most druggies are little wimps, but hey you never know....

Then there was the money, the cash.  Busting in in the middle of the night unannounced might get a team a pile of cash.  And the department got to keep that.  Yeah, you might knock down the wrong door ever now and then, but hey mistakes happen.  Sometimes behind that wrong door's a guy that shoots back, well tough.

Hey look, ain't SWAT team more glamorous than giving out speeding tickets?  Ain't it?

<<sarcasm>>

[bryant.coleman]

Then there was the money, the cash.  Busting in in the middle of the night unannounced might get a team a pile of cash.  And the department got to keep that.  Yeah, you might knock down the wrong door ever now and then, but hey mistakes happen.  Sometimes behind that wrong door's a guy that shoots back, well tough.

Hmm.. so right now the major purpose of the SWAT teams seems to be to waste the taxpayer money. If there are no crimes, then they should be sent to the US-Mexico border to deal with the illegal migration and drug trafficking. There is no point in attacking civilians at midnight and charging them with fake drug possession charges. 

[Swordsoffreedom]

Wait so the grenade landed in the babys carriage
Oh man If I were that SWAT person I think I would reconsider my job after seeing that.

That comment in the comments on the link summed it up very well

Your house burns down so you go to stay with a friend. You're preparing your child a sandwich for lunch, when you hear a window shatter, followed quickly by a startling BANG. The next thing you know, your child is screaming frantically, and bleeding profusely, while a storm of troops kick down the front door with assault weapons directed at you yelling for you to get on the ground. Your child continues to scream and bleed profusely while the troops continue to have you drawn and quartered. Doubtless, the immediate medical attention needed by the child was the least of their concerns as they continue to surge and search the house for someone that's not even home.

Real bang up job boys. We sure showed that 2 year old the strong arm of the law.

[Spendulus]

Wait so the grenade landed in the babys carriage
Oh man If I were that SWAT person I think I would reconsider my job after seeing that.
.....

Not only that, but there are real problems with overly zealous cops and various sorts of sub-lethal munitions they possess.

Think for a moment.  Here's a bunch of johnny-soldier-wanna-bes in body armor, with weapons fixing to break and enter a home.  Now why would they decide to toss in a flash bang?  Well, it's an explosive device intended to (mostly) create intense light and noise, stunning and incapacitating the enemy so that they can't produce a response, whether that would be to shoot back or hide their cash or flush their drugs down the toilet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stun_grenade

Like any device that goes boom, the intensity of the effects would be related to the cube factor of proximity to the detonation.  This being said, serious injury would be simply a function of the statistical frequency of a flash-bang winding up within the critical distance parameter, which might be 3 or 4 feet.  In turn this tells you that proper training for use would be to insure placement >10 feet from humans when possible, not just to toss in window and run.  In turn this means interior surveillance would be mandated before placing the grenade.

I wouldn't want cops using such a device excepting against a seriously bad dude say armed and with hostages, where loss of life was a near term probability and the benefits outweighed the risks.

So there are several questions that present as a cascade.

Why the raid?
What was the supposed benefit of a surprise break and enter style of raid?
What was the supposed benefit of incapacitating the targets before breaking and entering?

Keep in mind that these really are situations where old-style cops would simply go to the door, and knock on the door, and politely ask to talk to someone, or serve a warrant, or whatever.   Whatever societal, governmental, or technical factors have led to the old time "peace officer" and his methods being replaced with these kinds of pieces of shit is really something to ponder.  I don't care how you label it, "police state" or otherwise.

[bryant.coleman]

Wanis Thonetheva, a relative of the victims mother was later arrested, for alleged possession of methamphetamine. Still, they didn't recovered any meth from him, or from the residential premises.

[vokain]

wtf, are they trying to condition us into fear now? This is like the xx'th story I heard this year about police brutality and getting away with it

how Orwellian

it's like a 'battered wife' approach in keeping the masses yoked

[bryant.coleman]

wtf, are they trying to condition us into fear now? This is like the xx'th story I heard this year about police brutality and getting away with it

In Russia, they had something similar. The policemen beat up some youngsters without any reason. The kids were beaten up so bad that some of them were not breathing any more. They were left to die. But this time, the victims decided to take out revenge on the cops.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primorsky_Partisans

[negafen]

This is exactly the problem with the American police. They have no balls to fight it out with the Mexican drug traffickers. Instead, they devote all their energy to take out the end-chain users (and in this case, it was found out that their target had no drug connections at all). Treat the disease, not the symptoms.

Safer to go after civilian than mafia.


Nice to dress up like a soldier and played an authoritative figure and demand respect and handout.

[Spendulus]

...If there are no crimes, then they should be sent to the US-Mexico border to deal with the illegal migration and drug trafficking. There is no point in attacking civilians at midnight and charging them with fake drug possession charges. 

No, police departments are branches of a city, or a county.  Both of these are arms of the state governments.  The police employees live locally, and they cannot, even within the same state, be ordered to go work 200 miles away.

We do see analogous situations though after something like a hurricane.  Hundreds of counties will send their electrical service trucks down to an area that is devastated, and the men go with it.  That's how thousands or tens of thousands of telephone poles are put back up and electricity restored.  Most likely the cost transfer occurs from federal handouts after declaration of a disaster.

The US Mexican border is a very different situation.  The best way to defuse the armed gangs there would be to legalize mariquana in more states, taking away the drug traffic income at least for that segment.

[vokain]

"CNN has updates on the story of the Georgia SWAT team that threw a flash bang while executing a no-knock warrant that severely burned a nineteen-month-old baby. Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell says the deputies involved are "devastated" and that they've been called "baby killers" and received threats. "All I can say is pray for the baby, his family and for us," the sheriff told CNN."

praying for justice

[Spendulus]

"CNN has updates on the story of the Georgia SWAT team that threw a flash bang while executing a no-knock warrant that severely burned a nineteen-month-old baby. Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell says the deputies involved are "devastated" and that they've been called "baby killers" and received threats. "All I can say is pray for the baby, his family and for us," the sheriff told CNN."

praying for justice

I wonder how much cash they thought they'd find...

taking the cash has always seemed to me the primary motivation behind the "no knock" raid in the "drug wars"

If the deputies are "devastated" I suggest they read my post above suggesting statistical CERTAINTY of serious injury or death when blindly tossing flash-bang...

Wait....you say they can't read?