Patience is a Virtue

[talon]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/05/16/michigan.police.child/index.html?hpt=Sbin

All we can do is pledge an open and full investigation

This is something that should have - should always happen before they raided the home. They should know who lives there, confirm they have the correct address, conform who is present, and use disabling but not killing force. If the suspect gets away, s/he can be caught some other time. The important thing is that the innocents survive the encounter with the police - the children, the pets, the residents at the wrong address being raided.

There is no compensation that the police will ever be able to provide that will ever restore the life of that child.

All we can do is campaign to make home invasions of this sort less than lethal.

If you object to it being called a "home invasion", then obviously neither you nor anyone you know has been the recipient of such. It's a home invasion when the police are not properly prepared and a) have the wrong address, b) use deadly force on anyone inside the residence even if it is the right address, c) do not know who is in the house, and d) shout "police" as they lob the flash bang and grenades into the house and break down the front door - that's not enough time for an innocent person to prepare and react and cooperate.

We have a reasonable expectation of safety inside our homes - and a Constitutional right to be safe in our own homes. What the police are doing is eroding that expectation and that right by these ill-prepared home invasions.< p>Police have forgotten that their main duty is to protect the innocent, not slay them. The "bad guy" will eventually be caught, and can be cornered or taken in less traumatic situations and with less "collateral damage" - "collateral damage" being police-speak for killing children and pets and beating up innocent homeowners/tenants in their unseemly haste to "get the bad guy". Patience is a virtue and no more so than when pursuing justice and "bad guys".

No amount of justification, no amount of "we got our man", makes killing innocents in the process right.