Violent police attack family home by mistake.

It was a scene of domestic tranquility. David and Lillian Scott were in their living room talking. Their 15-year-old daughter was in the garage with two friends. Their 16-year-old son was elsewhere in the house feeding the 5-month-old baby. This was just last week in Temecula, California.

Just past 9:30 p.m. a gang of armed men burst through an unlocked front screen door shouting orders that couple and forcing them to the floor. The couple were then handcuffed. They begged to know what was happening and got no answer.

In the garage the men went after the teen aged girls ordering them to “get down on the fucking floor”. They too were handcuffed. And the son was in a similar situation as the armed men forced him to the ground. Lillian could hear her new-born crying and she asked one of the armed thugs if her baby was all right. She says that he “told me if I moved he was going to put a bullet in my head.”

Then the men started ransacking the house. Lillian found her bedroom door was ripped off the hinges and the door to her daughter’s room had a hole violently ripped into it. Of course the men were local police high on adrenaline and anxious to bash in the heads of “bad guys”. They haven’t said who they were looking for that night.

Lillian Scott could hear their radio’s as they spoke to one another. One of the officers announced that the second floor of the house was “clear”. That was one of the other officers pointed out that the house they were supposed to raid had only one floor. Apparently no one noticed, before attacking this family, that the house had two floors..

Notice also what is missing from this story. An open screen door with the Scott’s in the living room was entered by the police. No attempt was made to announce they were police first. Had they done that it would have easily been heard by the family. Nor was a search warrant shown to the family at the time of the attack and police refused to answer questions.

This is what lead to the murder of Kathryn Johnston by out-of-control police in Atlanta. Only a few blocks away Frances Thompson escaped with her life when police attacked her home in a similar style. Both those incident were “mistakes” as well. Dozens of innocent people have been killed by police in botched paramilitary style raids.

The police should not be turned into paramilitary outfits who are trained in the tactics of making war on the civilian population. How many such incidents have to happen before people realize something is seriously wrong with America?

Note: The map is courtesy of the Cato Institute and covers a portion of the paramilitary style raids where innocent people, or police officers, are killed. This is just the tip of the iceberg and shouldn’t be seen as an exhaustive list of such incidents. The map has not been updated this year. How many people close to where you live have been victimized? And exactly why do you think it can’t happen to you? Click to enlarge.

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