re: Police go to wrong address, kill homeowner in the middle of the night

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Isn't it incumbent upon the police to confirm the information is correct before rushing in guns blazing.

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Again they were outside...they didn't enter a house. They are outside when the victim encountered them.

They have to respond to a 911 call of a shooting. What do you expect them to do when the caller can't give an exact location....tell them to call back when they figure out the house #?

Again, its possible they were at the correct residence but encountered the neighbor outside both houses.

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I don't see how anyone could argue that at BEST the cop is criminally negligent.

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No, what crime were they intent on committing?

They are civilly liable in this but its pretty apparent this was a mistake by the police.

Its unfortunate it happened but seems like this falls more into the police getting nailed civilly for making a big error.

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They are civilly liable in this but its pretty apparent this was a mistake by the police

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An inexcusable mistake that has become all to commonplace in this age of militarized police who think (know) they are above the law.

This will continue to happen all over the country until they are held accountable for their "mistakes".

Every cop involved should be fired at the least

GED with a badge is a scary combination. Knowing these reckless assholes are all over the place. Hopefully that entire department get sued, and at the very least those motherfrickers involved loose their jobs and get charged.

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This is a 911 call relying on the caller to explain what house it is. Isn't it possible the caller screwed up the address description.

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Brief aside for a personal story I may have told before.

Many years ago while still living in a tiny studio apartment in Lafayette just after my wife and I were first married, I got a call from the front desk of the apartment one day and they asked me to come down to talk to them. I got there, and was greeted by a Lafayette City Officer who began to question me. Seems they had gotten a call from a neighbor that I had been "dancing naked" in front of my open window. When I started laughing at the suggestion, no one laughed with me...

I explained the physics of how that would have been virtually impossible given the layout of my apartment (fence covering front window, large bed being in front of the side window) aside from the fact that I'd simply never do that. They were insistent...so I told them they could come and take a look for themselves and see if they could manage doing what they were accusing me of. No, they said. I asked from which apartment the accusation had come...they refused to tell me. I looked at the LEO and asked if he was seriously going to accuse me of this without even bothering to see if I could have actually done it...and he responded, "Why should I believe you?" "You shouldn't," I said, "but you ought to believe the evidence which would be pretty clear if you'd bother to come look at it." Didn't budge. Eventually, since they refused to file any charges they said I could go, but I immediately told the apartment complex to go frick themselves and contacted their corporate office and got them to allow me to break my lease.

Footnote to the story...about 6 months later after having had to move since the apartment complex clearly thought I was some kind of sex offender or some shite, I got a call from the same apartment manager telling me that they had gotten a complaint from the same woman again...which meant it could not have been me. Turns out, this woman had seen something, but she misidentified the apartment number and this time rather than simply take her fricking word that she said given them the correct number, they asked her to describe where the apartment was. It was three doors down from where I had been. This apartment bitch wasn't even calling to apologize to me, but to tell my wife in case she hadn't actually believed me! Seriously...frick her still.

Point to this story is that all this cost me was some money, some time and some embarrassment. But if the police had been just as cavalier about their lack of making sure they were getting the right person/apartment and it had been a situation like the one in this Georgia story, then I could have found myself dead...all because they did not bother to make sure they were going to the right house.

So to answer your question...who fricking cares if the caller screwed up the address? It's not the caller's responsibility to ensure the police don't shoot innocent people with bad info. Maybe...just maybe the police could double check their information BEFORE doing stuff like this.

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So to answer your question...who fricking cares if the caller screwed up the address? It's not the caller's responsibility to ensure the police don't shoot innocent people with bad info. Maybe...just maybe the police could double check their information BEFORE doing stuff like this.

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+1. Common sense isn't so common anymore...

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However, this is not the same thing at all. Unless you don't want to have police at all, then you want them responding to calls for help and the sound of gunfire. If you expect them to do that, it would be illogical and unreasonable to expect there never to be any honest mistakes.

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I disagree only that their job should have been to assess the situation and make themselves clearly known to the neighborhood- Bright lights, loudspeaker, etc. If someone did call it makes it much easier to figure out rather than shining flashlights into people's windows at midnight then hiding when they come out.

The tragic part is that these tactics won't change until someone is held accountable and gets jailtime after one of these negligent incidents happens again.

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GED with a badge is a scary combination

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I agree fully with this. The guys I work with are all a lot better educated than a GED. A lot of departments are hurting right now trying to get officers and they are hiring some people that should not be hired.

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So you want the officers to make themselves big shiny targets for a potential gunman?

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If nothing else it helps the caller know that they are there, and hopefully identify where the incident took place.

Of course the other option is sneaking around looking through random citizens windows with flashlights like a thief in the night. How did that strategy work out?

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So you want the officers to make themselves big shiny targets for a potential gunman?

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Not to sound callous, but if the choice you're offering is between a LEO who has chosen this line of work being more at risk by clearly identifying themselves in most situations or an innocent civilian potentially being killed because an officer has done a poor job identifying themselves and the civilian acts in a way that most normal people would and the LEO fears for his life and kills him, than yeah...I'm ALWAYS going to side with option #1.