Tuesday, May 18, 2010

A 7 year old girl was killed by a Detroit cop at 12:40 am last Sunday. That's a fact. Some of what follows is spin and conjecture. Spin one:
Detroit Police shoot 7-year-old girl in house search

[...]
The shooting happened at 12:40 a.m., when the Special Response Team executed a no-knock search warrant on the duplex in the 4000 block of Lillibridge. Officers rushed in after throwing a stun grenade through the glass of a front window.

Family members said they were told by police the gun discharged when Mertilla Jones, 46, attempted to wrestle away the officer's weapon.
Knowing that wasn't going to work the cops walked it back:
Sunday, police spokesman John Roach said the weapon may have fired simply because Jones and the officer collided.
So we've gone to 'wrestled with' to merely 'collided'.

It didn't stop her grandmother from being hauled off to jail.
Mertilla Jones was held until Sunday afternoon, and it remained unclear if she will face charges. Police said she spent several hours hospitalized with what police described as medical issues.
Well of course she had 'medical issues' you shot her granddaughter in cold blood and then you arrested her!

It just gets worse:[Deputy Police Chief] Godbee said, calling Sunday "probably the worst day of my career."F**k you and your career, a 7 year old child died!

And there's more:
Godbee would not comment on reports that neighbors told officers that there were children in the house, and pointed out toys in the front yard.

Godbee didn't say if the suspect in Blake's slaying was arrested in the downstairs or upstairs apartment. Godbee said, "The suspect was within the scope of our search warrant." He added that the warrant allowed police to search both units.
As it turns out, the suspect did not live there, they killed a little girl and have already lied about it multiple times.

And it gets worse, maybe spin, but it was allegedly caught on tape that we haven't seen:
Lawyer: Video proves murder of 7-year-old by Detroit police was ‘not an accident’

An attorney for the family of a 7-year-old girl who was killed by a police officer's bullet during a weekend raid at their home said Monday that he saw video of the raid that contradicts the police department's version of what happened.

Attorney Geoffrey Fieger said he watched three or four minutes of video that showed police fired into the home after lobbing a flash grenade through the window.
So maybe we can find out the truth, partially because the pro-cop reality TV show 48 Hours were following these cops for their shoot.

Did the fact that 48 Hours was shooting affect the Detroit shooting?
While national experts say flash-bang grenades are useful tools in high-risk situations, Detroit police told the Free Press the devices are rarely used.

"In my entire career, we've only used these in barricaded-gunmen situations as a diversionary tactic," one police officer said, adding he was involved in hundreds of high-risk arrests and raids.
I've only quoted small parts of the articles, under fair use copyright.

But here's my take from reading all of them: The cops were showboating in front of cameras. Instead of waiting waiting for the alleged murderer to exit the UPSTAIRS apartment, they decided to toss a flash/bang grenade thru the window of the downstairs apartment which landed on a 7 year old girl and her grandmother. It set the little girl on fire and her grandma thought this was a bad thing. ergo, little girl dies, granma is hauled to jail, a guy upstairs in a different apartment is arrested, who might be the shooter from a couple of days before.

The cops claim they had the right to no-knock, flashbang, invade both apartments. If that is true, then the judge who signed the warrants needs to be charged with conspiracy to murder, just like the cops (yes, it's plural, just like felony murder) need to have a fair trial, and then be sentenced to LWOP.

But that's just MHO.

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