A similar situation happened in Modesto, CA some years ago. The cops entered a home in a low income area that supposedly had illegal drugs on the premises at like 6 a.m. The sleeping family was roused and a larger than average 12 year old boy emerged from his bedroom to be slammed to the floor and a boot placed on his neck. The officer, armed with a shotgun, pointed it at the youth and the gun was triggered by part of the officer's uniform, killing the young man. No drugs were found. To my knowledge, the officer was exonerated. I feel it was a miscarriage of justice.
I remember a case, in Ventura, from the 1990s.
A sheriff team launched a similar raid on the home of a man named Donald Scott. They had a warrant to search his ranch for marijuana plants, but they chose to serve this warrant by breaking into his house unannounced. He emerged from his bedroom, in response to the sound of his door being broken and his wife screaming, with a gun in his hand, and they shot him and killed him.
No marijuana or any other contraband was found anywhere on his property, and no credible explanation ever emerged as to what cause the police thought they had to suspect that they might find any such thing. The local sheriff department's conclusion cleared the officers of any wrongdoing, but the state attorney general issued a report of his own investigation, which found that the likely motive for the raid was to try to seize Mr. Scott's property under asset forfeiture procedures. One of the officers sued the attorney general for libel, but the suit was tossed out and that officer forced to pay the legal costs that it inflicted on the attorney general.
In general, I tend to be supportive of law enforcement, but power does tend to corrupt, and it is crucial that society exercise vigilance over any use of power by government. A quote popularly but incorrectly attributed to George Washington seems to very well express my attitude toward police, and toward government as a whole…
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
It seems to me that the all-too-common instances of such powers as no-knock warrants and asset forfeiture being abused to the harm of innocent citizens are exactly the sort of thing that this statement means to warn against. We need to delegate to government the powers that it needs to protect us from criminals, but we also need to be very strictly vigilant against instances of those in whom this power is entrusted acting themselves as criminals; and where it happens, we need to make sure that those who abuse such powers are very harshly held accountable. The death penalty is not in the least an inappropriate consequence for any public servant whose abuse of the powers with which he is entrusted results in the death of an innocent citizen.
I now find myself reminded of something I read a very long time ago. Most of the context is long forgotten, but the core point was to describe a society in which a judge sat on a bench upholstered with the skin of the last judge to have held his position, and to have been convicted of abusing the power of that position—a grim and constant reminder to the current judge of the seriousness with which any abuse of his position would be treated.
