Welcome to the police state

A 12-year-old girl suffered burns to one side of her body when a flash grenade went off next to her as a police SWAT team raided a West End home Tuesday morning.
"She has first- and second-degree burns down the left side of her body and on her arms," said the girl's mother, Jackie Fasching. "She's got severe pain. Every time I think about it, it brings tears to my eyes."
Medical staff at the scene tended to the girl afterward and then her mother drove her to the hospital, where she was treated and released later that day.
A photo of the girl provided by Fasching to The Gazette shows red and black burns on her side.
Police Chief Rich St. John said the 6 a.m. raid at 2128 Custer Ave., was to execute a search warrant as part of an ongoing narcotics investigation by the City-County Special Investigations Unit.
The grenade is commonly called a "flash-bang" and is used to disorient people with a bright flash, a loud bang and a concussive blast. It went off on the floor where the girl was sleeping. She was in her sister's bedroom near the window the grenade came through, Fasching said.
A SWAT member attached it to a boomstick, a metal pole that detonates the grenade, and stuck it through the bedroom window. St. John said the grenade normally stays on the boomstick so it goes off in a controlled manner at a higher level.
However, the officer didn't realize that there was a delay on the grenade when he tried to detonate it. He dropped it to move onto a new device, St. John said. The grenade fell to the floor and went off near the girl.
"It was totally unforeseen, totally unplanned and extremely regrettable," St. John said. "We certainly did not want a juvenile, or anyone else for that matter, to get injured."
On Thursday, Fasching took her daughter back to the hospital to have her wounds treated.
She questioned why police would take such actions with children in the home and why it needed a SWAT team.
"A simple knock on the door and I would've let them in," she said. "They said their intel told them there was a meth lab at our house. If they would've checked, they would've known there's not."
She and her two daughters and her husband were home at the time of the raid. She said her husband, who suffers from congenital heart disease and liver failure, told officers he would open the front door as the raid began and was opening it as they knocked it down.
When the grenade went off in the room, it left a large bowl-shaped dent in the wall and "blew the nails out of the drywall," Fasching said.
St. John said investigators did plenty of homework on the residence before deciding to launch the raid but didn't know children were inside.
"The information that we had did not have any juveniles in the house and did not have any juveniles in the room," he said. "We generally do not introduce these disorienting devices when they're present."
The decision to use a SWAT team was based on a detailed checklist the department uses when serving warrants.
Investigators consider dozens of items such as residents' past criminal convictions, other criminal history, mental illness and previous interactions with law enforcement.
Each item is assigned a point value and if the total exceeds a certain threshold, SWAT is requested. Then a commander approves or rejects the request.
In Tuesday's raid, the points exceeded the threshold and investigators called in SWAT.
"Every bit of information and intelligence that we have comes together and we determine what kind of risk is there," St. John said. "The warrant was based on some hard evidence and everything we knew at the time."
But Fasching said the risk wasn't there and the entry created, for her and her daughters, a sense of fear they can't shake.
"I'm going to have to take them to counseling," she said. "They're never going to get over that."
A claims process has already been started with the city. St. John said it's not an overnight process, but it does determine if the Police Department needs to make restitution.
"If we're wrong or made a mistake, then we're going to take care of it," he said. "But if it determines we're not, then we'll go with that. When we do this, we want to ensure the safety of not only the officers, but the residents inside."
No arrests were made during the raid and no charges have been filed, although a police spokesman said afterward that some evidence was recovered during the search. St. John declined to release specifics of the drug case, citing the active investigation, but did say that "activity was significant enough where our drug unit requested a search warrant."
Fasching said she's considering legal action but, for now, is more concerned about her daughters.
"I would like to see whoever threw those grenades in my daughter's room be reprimanded," she said. "If anybody else did that it would be aggravated assault. I just want to see that the city is held accountable for what they did to my children."

Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/grenade-burns-sleeping-girl-as-swat-team-raids-home/article_8bc67054-464d-5951-a5a1-003d4ed02d99.html#ixzz298rCSYuW

Ok, first and foremost: Who the BLOODY FUCK thought it would be a good idea to let a CLEARLY untrained asshole operate the distraction devices?  He "didn't know" there was a delay on the fucking grenade?  So, his plan was to shuck the fucking thing off the end of the pole into the room, and load another?
Hey, how about this? How about, instead of dropping the fucking UNEXPLODED ORDINANCE inside what is SUPPOSED to be a fucking meth lab, how about throwing it out into the street for  later disposal?

Another thing, this was supposed to be a raid on a METH LAB. SO WHY THE FUCK WERE THEY USING FLASHBANGS?!?!?!?

This department should be made to pay, both for the damage to the house and the injuries to the little girl.

This bullshit is going too far.  Enough already.

So much for "The Only Ones well trained enough"

20-year-old fleeing robbers is shot dead by police officer

'The tragedy here, of course, is that Mr. Cuevas was shot ... but I see nothing wrong with the procedure,' police commissioner says

By N. R. KLEINFIELD

updated

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In the early hush of Friday morning, the manager and his young employee had finished another long shift, shuttered their Bronx bodega and headed home. But the young assistant had forgotten to grab a bar of soap that he needed. They went back, and when they unlocked the door, the thing so feared by those who work in neighborhoods contaminated by crime followed them in.

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Three robbers, one of them concealed in a ski mask and wielding a gun, forced their way into the store. Ordering the two men to lie motionless on the floor, they began scooping the bodega’s cash, cigarettes and lottery tickets into a backpack.
Before the criminals could finish, an arriving customer saw what was happening through the window and called the police.
In one of those chilling split-second dramas that become tragedy, the manager got out unharmed but his assistant was killed by a police bullet. The authorities said it was the result of an accidental discharge when the young man collided with a police officer in his frightened haste to escape the criminals.
Father was killed by muggers The dead man was identified as Reynaldo Cuevas, 20, a nephew of the store’s owner. He had worked in the bodega for six months and was helping to support a 3-year-old daughter in the Dominican Republic. Two years ago, his own father was shot to death in the Dominican Republic trying to ward off muggers wanting to steal his jewelry.
Mr. Cuevas’s killing was the third high-profile fatal police shooting in four weeks, although the circumstances on Friday were quite different from the previous two deaths, of a knife-carrying man near Times Square and of a man who killed a former co-worker outside the Empire State Building.
Empire State shooting: Bystanders hit by police rounds
The episode Friday began shortly before 2 a.m. at the Aneurys Deli on Franklin Avenue at East 169th Street in Morrisania. Felix Mora, 43, the store’s manager for nine years, and Mr. Cuevas had barely opened the door to fetch the soap when the three men descended on them, one of them holding a gun.
“He pointed the gun at us and was saying, ‘Get on the ground!’ ” Mr. Mora said. “We got on the ground.”
The gunman hit Mr. Mora in the head with the butt of the gun. Mistaking the relationship between the workers, he shouted at Mr. Mora, “If you move, we’re going to kill your son.”
The gunman began rooting through Mr. Mora’s pockets, while the two other men went behind the counter to fill the backpack with lottery tickets and the money Mr. Mora kept in a cigar box.
Officers arrive Within minutes of the customer’s 911 call, the authorities said, two officers from the local precinct house and two housing officers converged on the scene.
One of the housing officers peeked through the bodega’s window to assess the situation.
The gunman saw him, Mr. Mora said, and leapt behind the counter with his accomplices and shouted, “Policía, policía, policía!”
Two of the robbers retreated to the rear of the store.
Mr. Mora said that sensing an opportunity, he ran out the front door with his hands up and confirmed that a robbery was in progress. A moment later, he said, Mr. Cuevas sprinted past him on the sidewalk.
“He came out scared,” Mr. Mora said. “Running.”
A gunshot sounded. Mr. Mora looked and saw Mr. Cuevas crumpled on the ground, his right hand pressed against a bleeding wound. A policeman dragged Mr. Cuevas away by the arm. Mr. Mora met Mr. Cuevas’s eyes.
“He said, ‘Ah!’ He put his hand to his chest, and he just looked at me,” Mr. Mora said.
Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, said an officer with his gun drawn was waiting outside the door when the two workers came out. He said Mr. Cuevas “ran full speed into the officer; the two became entangled, at which point we believe the officer accidentally discharged his weapon.”
The bullet struck Mr. Cuevas in the back of his left shoulder. He was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, where he was pronounced dead. The single bullet had traced a harsh trajectory: it managed to damage the left lung, heart and major blood vessels, the medical examiner’s office said.
Suspects arrested The arrests of the three suspects took an additional four hours.
The authorities said that Christopher Dorsey, 17, trailed the two employees out of the store and surrendered. The other men — Orlando Ramos, 32, who the police said was the gunman, and Ernesto Delgado, 28 — remained holed up inside.
About 5:30 in the morning, Mr. Delgado emerged and claimed he had been held hostage, but the police did not believe him and arrested him.
According to the authorities, officers from the emergency services unit then went into the store and found Mr. Ramos tied to a pole with yellow rope, also pretending to be a hostage.

The gun, a Harrington & Richardson .32-caliber revolver, was found concealed in a plastic bag behind a bag of birdseed on one of the bodega’s shelves. The police said it was not loaded. They also said they found a ski mask and a gray backpack that contained $718 in cash, several packs of Newport cigarettes, scratch-off lottery tickets and some of Mr. Mora’s documents.
Mr. Kelly would not identify the officer who shot Mr. Cuevas but said that he had been on the force for seven years and had never before fired his gun. The officer was placed on administrative duty, Mr. Kelly said, pending an internal investigation.
“The tragedy here, of course, is that Mr. Cuevas was shot,” Mr. Kelly said, “but I see nothing wrong with the procedure.”
At a news briefing at Police Headquarters, Mr. Kelly played videos from the bodega’s security cameras. They showed the workers being held inside at gunpoint, their flight from the store and the collision between Mr. Cuevas and the officer.
Later in the afternoon, Mr. Kelly met with Ana Cuevas, Mr. Cuevas’s mother, to express his condolences.
The police charged the three suspects with robbery and with second-degree murder, because the crime led to a death. All three have criminal records, and the police said that Mr. Ramos had a prior robbery arrest.
In a related event, a police officer responding alone to the robbery crashed into a car stopped at a red light not far from the store. The authorities said he sustained a broken left femur and a possible fractured nose and underwent surgery; the civilians in the other car had minor injuries.
Once Mr. Ramos, the accused gunman, was unmasked, Mr. Mora said he recognized him as someone who worked for a while at a neighboring bodega. At 2 o’clock Thursday morning, he said, Mr. Ramos came by as Mr. Mora was leaving his deli.
Mr. Mora said Mr. Ramos told him, “I’ll get you tomorrow.”
Reporting was contributed by Daniel Krieger, Colin Moynihan, Wendy Ruderman and Nate Schweber.
This article, headlined "Just After Closing Time, a Fatal Split Second," first appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright © 2012 The New York Times



This is *EXACTLY* why gun bans don't make any sense.  These men would have likely been better off defending themselves with their own weapons rather than waiting on the cops to "rescue" them.

What the hell, Britain?

British "judge" declares burglars have great courage and sets one free

Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with this guy? First off, Britain is essentially disarmed, secondly "great courage" applies to doing GOOD things, not ripping people off because you're fiending for drugs.

I am at a loss for words.  What a completely moronic, fuckwitted, no-brained, gormless, anti-testicular asshole.  Seriously, this guy needs to die in a fire.

Courage my ass.

RIP Neil Armstrong (8/5/30 - 8/25/2012

The first man on the moon has indeed made his final journey into the night.

RIP, good sir.

Capitol Dome Needs Major Repairs

There's something so fitting about this:

WASHINGTON — To the myriad indignities suffered by Congress, including stagnant legislation, partisan warfare and popularity on a par with petty criminals, add this: the Capitol’s roof is leaking, and there is no money to fix it.

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Architect of the Capitol

A piece of cast iron was removed from the dome for safety reasons by the Architect of the Capitol.

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Architect of the Capitol

Damage to the exterior of the Capitol dome.

The Capitol dome, the nation’s grandest symbol of federal authority, has been dinged by years of inclement weather, and its exterior is in need of repair.

The dome has 1,300 known cracks and breaks. Water that has seeped in over the years has caused rusting on the ornamentation and staining on the interior of the Rotunda, just feet below the fresco “The Apotheosis of Washington,” which is painted on the Rotunda’s canopy.

Like most of what the federal government is on the hook to fix — highways, bridges and airports — the dome is imperiled both by tough economic times and by a politically polarized Congress. While Senate appropriators have voted to repair the dome, which has not undergone major renovations for 50 years, their House counterparts say there is not money right now. In that way, the dome is a metaphor for the nation’s decaying infrastructure.

“The dome needs comprehensive rehabilitation,” said Stephen T. Ayers, the architect of the Capitol, whose office oversees the building’s physical state. “It’s a public safety issue.”

The skirt of the dome — the section around the base of the original sandstone foundation — was fixed up recently at a cost of about $20 million, but an additional $61 million is needed to repair and restore the rest of the structure’s exterior.

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted just before Congress left for its August recess to provide the money.

“I support funding the Capitol dome,” said Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, who voted against an appropriations bill because it did not include money for the dome. (The money was included moments later in an amendment, which passed with Mr. Hoeven’s vote.)

The appropriators in the Republican-controlled House are starting with a smaller overall budget for the 2013 fiscal year than the Democratic-controlled Senate, and they want to finance much of the government’s operations at lower levels.

Senate leaders have decided that it would be too difficult to reconcile the two appropriations bills, as is normally done, until after the election.

That means Congress will have to pass a short-term spending bill — the sort that set off the fight that almost shut down the government last year — and it most likely will not include more money for repairs.

“This is not a ‘bridge to nowhere’ we’re talking about here,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the leader of the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees the architect’s office. “This is basic upkeep to the United States Capitol building. There is a time and place to debate spending levels and the proper role of the federal government, but when your house has a leaky roof, you pay to fix the roof.”

The history of the dome has been marked by cost overruns and construction problems.

The Capitol’s first dome, made of copper-covered wood, was completed in 1824 but by the 1850s was deemed too small. It was also seen as a fire hazard in a place where oil lamps, British attacks and other events had caused blazes. A cast-iron replacement was envisioned, and lawmakers, thrilled with the idea, appropriated $100,000 to begin construction, with the acquiescence of President Franklin Pierce.

Construction on the cast-iron dome began in 1856 and progressed through various architects, disputes over the design and the Civil War, when the project was continued in part by workers who were afraid that the military would take the metals and repurpose them for war use, said Donald A. Ritchie, the Senate historian.

The Statue of Freedom, which sits triumphantly atop the nine million pounds of ironwork that makes up the dome, was completed in December 1863, topping the project. The interior was finished in 1866, its famous fresco revealed. Total cost: $1,047,291, or more than $15 million in today’s dollars.

The dome was completely restored in 1960 during the construction of the Capitol’s East Front extension. Weather remains its biggest enemy: precipitation pelts the exterior, and the statue endures the occasional strike of lightning. At least 100 pieces of the dome have fallen off or been removed, including a 40-pound cast-iron decorative acorn.

Viewed from a (sort of scary) balcony between the fresco above and a frieze depicting American history that lines the Rotunda’s interior, tourists with iPhones and fanny packs can be seen lingering in awe hundreds of feet below, unaware of the water damage and chipping paint above.

“When you have those conditions on the outside,” said Mr. Ayers, the Capitol’s architect, “it really accelerates deterioration on the inside,” including possible damage to the fresco, which is painted on plaster.

In other words, just as it is best to fix a bathroom leak before it causes damage to the rest of the house, the dome repairs could prove much more expensive over time.

The project will involve taking apart many pieces of the dome, one at a time, and then putting them back together once repaired, much like a puzzle, Mr. Ayers said.

In many ways, the process reflects the history of the Capitol and the nation, said Mr. Ritchie, the historian. “The Capitol building is an interesting conglomeration,” he said. “It is a whole series of buildings put together at different times, and in that way it is a nice reflection of American democracy, which was put together piecemeal from a lot of different materials. It reflects one motto of our nation, ‘E pluribus unum,’ Latin for ‘Out of many, one.’ ”

It is a project, however, that may be delayed until the country’s fiscal condition improves.

“The Capitol is a wonderful story of the history of our nation,” Mr. Ritchie said. “And as a result it is preserved very carefully to maintain the story, not to mention to keep it from leaking into the Rotunda.”

Some people really deserve a kick in the ass.

Toddler fight club


Seriously? Someone thought this was a good idea?  Some people are too stupid to breathe, seriously.

THIS is *EXACTLY* why the RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS MUST NOT BE INFRINGED.

This old woman would have been utterly helpless against these bastards.  Tables = TURNED.

Fuckers.