There is no excuse for a case like this. The police had no excuse to get the wrong house. They knew they were looking for #82, not #74. How did they know? They made several undercover purchases from the right house. Then, on top of it, the police treated the old woman in #74 like dirt until they realized that they were in the wrong home. They threw a 77 year old woman on oxygen to the ground and started to handcuff her. The fact that they raided the home and found a surprised little old lady, should have been the first clue that they were not in the right trailer.
What pisses me off about cases like this is the rudeness and complete lack of respect and decency toward the individual they've wronged. How hard would it have been for the officers to ask her what her address was? Surely one of the cops who made the purchases was there and would have had an idea that they were in fact in the wrong place. Why couldn't they have just apologized, told her to get away from the windows in case there was shooting, and hit the place next door which was #82? I guess that would have required too much common sense and manners from those present at the scene.
Beggars belief really.
It's hard to think of a logical explanation of why you would throw a 77 Year Old to the Ground especially one that requires oxygen to breathe.
Mike,
It is all so simple I am surprised you don't get it yet. Old ladies don't shoot back. It just doesn't happen.It is much safer for the cops to go and harass her than to actually serve a warrant/arrest a perp.
Erik, that's not the issue here. The issue is that they never intended to be in her trailer to begin with, and then they treated her like this. The moment they saw her, they realized that something was wrong. Normal professionalism should have caused them to stand around her and ask where they were instead of treating her like that. They clearly intended to be nextdoor, but screwed the whole thing up.
Durango needs to stop hiring retards on their police force.
A few million dollars worth of settlement usually goes a long way towards forcing that sort of shakeup.
Purple guy,
What planet do YOU live on?
In America, municiple lawsuits never change behavior. The only ones "punished" are the taxpayers. Fear of lawsuits changes behavior, but not the actual event. City manager and police dept budgets are not in the least impacted by lawsuit payouts.
Hence the major problem with the culture of protecting their own in law enforcement. Many cops would rather let a dirty cop stay on the force rather than turn them over to internal affairs like the criminal they are. Many prosecutors won't prosecute cops to the same standards they would anyone else. How do you change that, except to bring in private prosecutors (allow groups like the ACLU and the libertarian Institute for Justice to file criminal charges against prosecutors and police)?