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(courtesy foxinews.com)

“A metro Atlanta police officer was in critical condition after he, a homeowner and a dog were shot when police responded to a call at the wrong house,” nbcnews.com reports. “Officers responded to a call for a burglary in progress about 7:30 p.m. ET, but they went to the wrong address because the caller gave only a description of a ‘gray brick house’ without a street number, [Dekalb County Public Safety Officer Cedric] Alexander said. Details of what happened hadn’t been determined . . . The homeowner was shot in the leg and was being transported to a hospital.” Turns out the cops shot the cop, the dog and the homeowner. Strangely enough, Fox News’ Outnumbered just referenced this shooting as evidence of an “epidemic” of firearms-related attacks on police. Meanwhile, in Houston we learn that the man who shot a Deputy . . .

. . . spent time in a mental hospital following a 2012 arrest, according to a prosecutor.

Shannon J. Miles is charged with capital murder in the death of Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth.

Miles’ criminal history includes an arrest in 2012 following a fight at a homeless shelter he was staying at in Austin . . .

Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson would not comment on a motive, saying investigators were still trying to figure that out. When asked if it might be connected to heightened tensions around the country between law enforcement and civilians, Anderson said, “I have no idea whether it does or not.”

The cbsnews.com report repeats the incendiary statement from Sheriff Ron Hickman linking incendiary anti-cop rhetoric to the assassination. While the killer’s mental health issues certainly come into play, it’s not known if the anti-cop Black Lives Matter’s and New Black Panther’s calls for retribution against the police played a part. Or are having any direct impact on officer safety, save psychological. Watch this space. Oh, the dog died in the Atlanta shooting.

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118 COMMENTS

  1. What are the odds the homeowner is going to face charges for this. (I’m assuming he was defending himself from what he thought was a non-cop intruder)

    • What are the odds that the cops will be on the hook for this fustercluck? The city taxpayers will probably foot the bill for all medical expenses, damages, and the pain & suffering award, but the cop(s) who fired the negligent shots will get away with it.

      At least in Mayberry, Andy took away Barney’s ammo and only let him keep the one round in his shirt pocket.

      • “The city taxpayers will probably foot the bill for all medical expenses, damages, and the pain & suffering award, but the cop(s) who fired the negligent shots will get away with it.”

        Police need to be held personally responsible. Take their homes, their kids college funds, and then watch them do what cops do when the get in trouble, which is suicide or family annihilation.

      • you’re right on that. Someone needs to be fired to send a message to police that if you don’t know the house number then you shouldn’t just crash a house and hope you get it right.

        And the f*ck1ng police! to immediately shoot the dogs is total B.S. and it stings even more when they hit the wrong house. Poor guys gets shot, dog killed and he did nothing WRONG! Makes my blood boil. Shooting the dogs is a matter of standard police POLICY and training. Damn morons jump at any chance to fire their weapon.

        http://wgntv.com/2014/08/18/chicago-police-shoot-and-kill-family-dog-during-chase/

  2. Why would they enter a house if they didn’t have a positive ID on the address? I understand they were trying to help, but that is profoundly stupid.

      • @Ray: This seems to have started WAY before the police arrived. Why did the 911 dispatcher contact the police when there was no address ? And how come nobody in the Police Department asked for a specific address before barging in ? Also appears that they went in with excessive force when they did not have a clue what was really going on. This was a “suspicion” of a home break in. Nobody said it was an actual break in as I understand the situation. The dog probably attacked the cops as it is supposed to do when a bunch of strangers barge into his master’s home. Sounds like a basic CLUSTER. Where is the training for things like this for the police department and the people answering the 911 calls ?

    • Story is, they did not have a street address, house fit the description, when they approached and knocked there was no immediate answer, door was unlocked so they entered, thinking a burglar might be inside threatening the homeowner. All reasonable, assuming they were in uniform, otherwise suicidal, at least at my house. Now, how we went from there to shooting each other, the unarmed homeowner, and the dog, I’m pretty sure that is going to be classified Top Secret, burn before reading.

      • @Larry
        “when they approached and knocked there was no immediate answer, door was unlocked so they entered, thinking a burglar might be inside threatening the homeowner. All reasonable, assuming they were in uniform”

        Helpful hint there Larry, cops don’t knock on the door of a place where a suspect is hiding. Element of surprise and all.

        I leave my doors unlocked, and to you that constitutes exigent circumstances for a cop to invade my home. Oh, and my house looks like every other house one on the block That is a violation of the 3rd amendment, because the cops are soldiers of the state, and have been since the SCotus said they have no duty to protect or serve WE subjects.

        Criminals can go to a costume store and pick up uniforms, and unfortunately the only way I will know if they were real cops or home invaders is when I am murdered by the next cop in line, because I would cease firing.

        This is why a rifle or a shotgun is the best home defense weapon.

    • Geez; the actual event is less than 24 hours old and you are labeling some information reported here as “grossly outdated.”

      Short attention span/attention deficit much?

        • “Guess that’s asking for too much.”

          So is asking people to not be melodramatic pedants, apparently.

          The story itself is less than 24 hours old. Some facts take time to filter to every conceivable news source.

          Or do you think the magic “information age fairy” just whispers into every blogger’s ear the very INSTANT new info on a developing story..develops?

      • Remember short attention span theater? Oh yeah a cop got killed in Fox Lake,Illinois this morning after chasing 3 guys(by himself)news EVERYWHERE…hey JR-some of us skim the articles and glean a response(I read all of this but sometimes-like today-I’m busy). Yeah I get not noticing it was less than a day before…

    • The complaintant was a neighbor out walking his dog, when he saw what he thought was a suspicious man trying to break into the front door of his home. He was interviewed after the shooting and said it took place at a different home than he reported, doubtful on the SWATing angle. Cops went into the home’s unlocked back door, no warrant no announcement im sure.

  3. “The homeowner was shot in the leg and was being transported to a hospital.” Strangely enough, Fox News’ Outnumbered just referenced this shooting as evidence of an “epidemic” of firearms-related attacks on police.”

    BY WHO!? OTHER POLICE?!

  4. I’m not sure I buy the “the officers tried to make contact before entering” line. What that should mean is someone called out very loudly at the front door, or was knocking very hard and announcing their presence. I don’t know about anyone else, but I have yet to meet the dog that wouldn’t start barking when somebody is banging at the front door. Which would mean the officers knew there was a dog present, which in turn should have given them some pause about entering the home, particularly since they didn’t have a specific address. You have to figure, what’s the likelihood that the dog would just be chilling during an in-progress burglary?

    Alarm bells should have been going off in all the officer’s heads. It doesn’t sound like SWATing (someone called in to report seeing a person break in to a house while out walking his dog), but as far as the cops knew it could have been. Seems like poor training and tactics all around.

    • The officers tried to make contact by killing the dog to awaken the homeowner. If you think like a “warrior cop,” it makes perfect sense.

      Guys like this once destroyed a village to save it.

    • Yeah… they went in the back door, not the front. I’m not a cop, and only know what I’ve read… Sounds like they got themselves into a mess, though. I know I’d be suing them.

      Good point about the dog being quiet in a burglary, though… Sounds like they weren’t using much logic during this fiasco.

        • It was a Brindle Boxer like my dog. Mine is seventy pounds of love, unless somebody tries to come in my home. Tinnitus from my AK-47 would have sucked.

        • I forgot:

          I do not yell at my dogs to be quiet when they bark at a strange noise, because I say good dogs. They are meant to be my first line of deterrence and defense, and barking is how they tell me it is my turn to be the protector.

        • H & E
          Same here. We have a black lab, sleeps outside, and he often barks at night when he hears any kind of noise. The close neighbor says she doesn’t mind, keeps the prowlers away.
          Dog outside, gun inside!

    • >> I’m not sure I buy the “the officers tried to make contact before entering” line.

      This was probably the usual bullshit ritual to work around the lack of warrant and the requirement to notify. Basically SCOTUS ruled a while ago that they have to knock, but since then had reduced this requirement pretty much to absurd level wrt how loud they have to knock and how long they have to wait after they do – if I remember correctly, 15 seconds is considered “long enough” according to the ruling in US v. Banks.

      Granted, this only really makes sense when they’re actually serving the warrant, but perhaps these guys were in the corresponding training, and had their wires crossed.

      By the way, next time you guys praise Scalia, remember that he was the one responsible for having the court rule that any evidence obtained from searches where cops didn’t knock when they should have, or didn’t wait for long enough, is still admissible (Hudson v. Michigun) – thereby gutting the long-standing principle that evidence obtained in the violation of the Fourth Amendment must be excluded (to force law enforcement to abide by the rules).

    • I feel sorry for the homeowner and his pooch, not the jack-booted, flat-footed, sloped-forehead, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, finger-painting Neanderthals that couldn’t be bothered to make sure the address on the warrant match the number plastered in the house. Uncaring, uncouth, uneducated fuckin’ retards.

      • Excedrine,

        The police were not executing a warrant. Rather, they were responding to a report of a potential burglary. The problem was that the caller did not supply the actual address of the home … only a description of the home and which street.

        Having said that, I do appreciate the sentiment which absolutely applies to other botched warrants.

      • I thought this story was about police reponding to a 911 call about a burglary, whose caller gave no address and only described the house by its color?

        If no address were given, then there’s nothing on the warrant to compare the house numbers to. If its a 911 call, then its exigent circumstances and there’s no warrant in the first place.

        • >exigent circumstances

          Not knowing an address from a phone call does not constitute an exigent circumstance.

        • So correct popo response is see the caller.

          “what did you see and where”

          “OK we will go check”

          How is the dog? Dead?

        • Exigent circumstance here is the crime in progress (which was assumed to be happening based on the 911 call). This is actually a legitimate reason to enter without a warrant. It’s not a legitimate reason to shoot random dogs and people, though, before figuring out what’s actually going on.

  5. You hear people who don’t belong in your house. You pull your weapon and investigate. You turn the corner to eye the door where the noises are coming from and there is a person in uniform yelling at you and pointing his gun at you. You command him to lower his weapon and he does not comply. What do you do?

    • As of today, I would lower my weapon and surrender. Tomorrow, who knows? After one raid to confiscate firearms, anywhere in the US, in compliance with a Feinstein-like law (Mr and Mrs America, turn them all in”) I would not have issued the warning.

    • “You command him to lower his weapon and he does not comply. What do you do?”

      It goes without saying that police practices are slow to change. Entry strategies like you describe are based on a set of assumption that are rapidly becoming outmoded as more and more households are armed and more and more individuals routinely carry weapons.

      There was a time when cops could enter a house with a fair expectation that they wouldn’t encounter an armed householder pointing a weapon at them. Also, they could reasonably assume that the sight of a uniform would quickly establish their status as LEOs. Now all of those assumptions are highly questionable.

      What we have now is a very ambiguous situation where the people claiming to be police MAY or MAY NOT actually be police, where the uniforms MAY or MAY NOT be legitimate. And, yet, the police don’t appear to be changing their tactics. They still appear to be operating on the assumption that their status of police will be recognized by armed homeowners trying to defend their property while homeowners increasingly are faced with making a hard decision about whether the cops in their house are real.

      When the behavior of the police and criminals grow so close together than it’s hard to tell one from the other, the potential for disaster is great.

    • “You command him to lower his weapon and he does not comply.”

      WE are not police, as armed citizens, and don’t act like one by giving a command, which is giving away your position of advantage. Shoot center mass until all of the threats invading your house are no longer a threat.

      My children have been taught respect, which means they won’t sneak out or in, which means any stranger in my house is a lethal threat, and will be dispatched as such.

    • You present an utterly unrealistic scenario. If a cop raiding your house, likely all adrenaline-pumped, sees you with a gun, they’re going to yell at you and then shoot almost immediately. You will hardly even get a chance to comply with his order, much less issue any of your own.

      And if you are actually holding the gun at high ready? You’ll be shot right away, period.

      • “If a cop raiding your house, likely all adrenaline-pumped, sees you with a gun, they’re going to yell at you and then shoot almost immediately. You will hardly even get a chance to comply with his order, much less issue any of your own.”

        It is my house which means I know the terrain. You are assuming that the homeowner isn’t in control of himself, which would be dead wrong in some cases. The first gun shot that went off in my house would have my adrenaline going, and I know how to function rather well in that state, at least better than some jerk off jack boot. I have staked my family’s protection on that particular non perishable skill set I unfortunately possess.

        “And if you are actually holding the gun at high ready? You’ll be shot right away, period.”

        A gun shot just went off in my house I will have a rifle at the high and ready and I will not silhouette myself in a kill frame. My home defense guns would rip through two of the invaders vest, leaving me 20 more .308 rounds to take care of the last home invading, attempted murdering, sate sanctioned scum. I would have let them bleed out, plus my wife probably would have shot them when they were outside slapping high fives for killing our children’s dog.

        • A .308 will not punch through a level III vest.

          And even if it did, and you’re as Rambo as you claim to be, the end result is that you’ll die sometime later. In an execution chamber.

          There is no winning move here.

  6. The GBI has issued preliminary findings that says the police entered the through the open kitchen door with unlocked screen door, immediately fired on the dog and killed it, fired on the homeowner who came in from a side room, shooting the homeowner and another officer in the process.

    No probable cause/exigent circumstance, no armed or unarmed threat to the officers …expect a medium sized payout to the homeowner. What flipping unprofessional undisciplined idiots.

    • “No probable cause/exigent circumstance,”

      Wrong. 9-11 call of “Burglary in Progress” *IS* both probable cause AND exigent circumstance.

      “no armed or unarmed threat to the officers”

      This, however, would be correct.

      “What flipping unprofessional undisciplined idiots.”

      As, it sure would seem, is this.

      • I’m curious as to how far that would stretch. All they knew was the color of the house and the street. If all the houses were the same color, would that give them carte blanche to ransack every house on the block looking for a maybe-burglar?

        What’s the lower limit for vagueness that they’ll still call “exigent circumstances”? If I call 911 and report “suspicious activity” in Smalltown, NE, and hang up, will they conduct house-to-house raids through the whole town?

        Also, nice work on the part of the guy calling 911. How hard is it to figure out a house number? Even if the house in question doesn’t have the number anywhere, odds are one of the two neighboring houses does.

        These clowns make the Keystone Kops look like Seal Team Six.

        • >If I call 911 and report “suspicious activity” in Smalltown, NE, and hang up, will they conduct house-to-house raids through the whole town?

          Don’t give them any ideas.

        • “I’m curious as to how far that would stretch. All they knew was the color of the house and the street. If all the houses were the same color, would that give them carte blanche to ransack every house on the block looking for a maybe-burglar?”

          Fair enough. That’s a valid counterpoint. I thought of that (after posting): that they did not have the numerical address, so PC to enter that PARTICULAR house is iffy.

          It does add some ‘gray’ to the situation.

          But…in general, ‘burglary in progress’ is both PC and exigent circumstance. Not knowing the “where” is problematic.

          Which leads me to wonder why the 9-11 operator did not stay on the line with the caller so the caller could “direct” them to the correct house. Even if the person fled the scene (for safety), they could have met with the caller at another nearby location and ascertained which property it was. That sort of thing, in my experience, is pretty SOP.

          So yeah, a Keystone Kops-esque response just barreling in.

  7. My guess is that no LEO’s are disciplined and they settle with the home owner begrudgingly for an undisclosed sum of money.

  8. Stranger than fiction.

    Also…. How huge was that dog for the officers to actually hit it and how many holes does the guys kitchen now have?

    • Why do you hate police?

      You do want the officers to go home to their families in one piece, don’t you??

      Have you even SEEN a dog? It’s a hellish creature, with huge TEETH in its mouth. And when it’s dark and you shine a flashlight at it, its eyes GLOW! Clearly, any reasonable person would shoot such a thing on sight.

      You just don’t understand, because the officers on duty have to deal with all kind of scum and danger, protecting YOU from harm. And all you do is criticize them for just doing their job the best they can.

      Well, sir, just you see what happens when they go away and you have no protection. You’ll be torn apart by those vicious dog creatures in no time at all. That is, if kids with plastic toy guns don’t get to you first. And if you somehow dodge that, some black guy will scare you to death by pulling their wallet or cellphone on you. It’s a dangerous world out there! Be glad you’re shielded from it by professionals who put their LIVES on the line for your miserable soul.

  9. Dang I was hoping that the cop was shot by the riled and packing homeowner who had just witnessed uniformed thugs kick in his door and shoot his dog for no reason.

  10. Home owner is lucky it wasn’t a SWAT call out! No doubt they would just love to deploy the battering ram on their new SWAT Tank. We had to rip down the house to make sure we caught the burglar even if it was the wrong house.
    http://www.wsbtv.com/videos/news/dekalb-county-shows-off-new-swat-tank/vHFn2/ sorry for all the adverts

    Here is hoping the homeowner doesn’t settle and costs the insurance company so much money that no one will insure Dekalb PD until they retrain their cops, and fire the stupid ones.

    • Given the current police mind-set, I can see an outfit like Force Science making a case that sending a SWAT team into the house would have been safer for the officers because the overwhelming force present would have reduced the homeowners options. I can see police bureaucrats and consultants making justifications for every routine prowler investigation being carried out by assault teams.

  11. Read about this, this morning in the local e-Rag, headline stated the homeowner shot a cop, even though there was no statement as such in the article from AP. The police chief said it was a “complicated” shooting. I surmised from that statement, it was going to embarrass the dept. when it came out that a cop probably shot the other cop in his haste to shoot the dog.

  12. A couple of years ago my across the street neighbor’s front door was wide open at about 10pm. He’s a preacher and was on retreat for the week, so I knew he wasn’t home. I did what a good citizen does, I called 911 and reported my concerns. 911 lady was professional and asked me three times what the address was.

    Perry, GA PD comes rolling up less than 5 minutes later and two cops talk to me in my yard. (I had been standing in the yard so I had a good view of the neighbor’s front door and I was packing heat just in case)

    So the two cops confirm the address again and ask me what I’ve seen so far and I tell them. They then ask me to keep an eye on the front door and they split up to go around the sides of the house. I hear them yell “police” a couple of times and then they come back out front and go in the front door, guns out yelling “police” a few more times. They go in and I can see flashlights lighting up the house as they move.

    They find nothing amiss. Speculation is that the woman who had been housesitting (she actually only came by once a day) had left the door ajar.

    Oh, and I didn’t go in the house myself because I’m not a dummy.

    Take away for me was that the Perry PD and Houston country 911 lady made damn sure they got a good address BEFORE they went traipsing around the house. Too bad Dekalb county PD aren’t smart enough to do that.

      • So you expect him to go check it out with his own gun drawn? So what happens to him if some other neighbor called the cops on seeing lights or flashlight in a known unoccupied house? I will tell you: they go in expecting trouble and see man with a gun, shout conflicting commands and shoot him for complying or if he doesn’t.

        His approach seems smarter to me.

        • The correct response is to let it be, because the cops won’t do a damn thing about a robbery (if there was one), and is far more likely to trash the place.

          At least he knew the neighbors were gone. Calling the pigsters knowing that there is a good chance they will assault the neighbors and shoot their pets is basically the same as SWAT’ing.

    • Here’s a good one: twice, in two separate jurisdictions, robbery calls.
      Cops show up. Property owner is on scene waiting. Cops demand property owner enter first.
      In both instances the owner was a female above the age of 50. Different people just similar demo.
      Present for both. First time I sort of ignored it foolishly believing officer knows best.
      Second time I laughed and told the cops if they were scared I’d go in for them. They eventually went in after hemming and hawing..

      Gotta love it.

    • “911 lady was professional, and asked me three times what the address was”
      Are you naturally very softly spoken, or
      did the batteries from the ladies hearing aid go dead?

  13. Police need to only have revolvers. It is a dangerous job that some can handle and some can’t. In a free country dead cops is part of dealing with criminals, and it is a rarity. The cops are so scared that they fire first, because they are not accountable. WE the citizens have to pay for their incompetence with our tax monies.

    SWAT teams acting on violent criminals is the only exception, and in that case they should only have shotguns. A deer rifle equipped sniper providing overwatch, is just part of good TacOps. Cops always have superior force and surprise because they pick the time of engagement.

  14. Fox is 90% the same as ABC/NCB/MSNBC etc. Ailes/Murdoch and all their cute little reader gals are NY/DC hive dwelling drones. Sold out in order to be allowed in the COOL parties.

  15. This story leaves me speechless. A shot cop, a shot homeowner, a dead dog, and a warrantless (and unwarranted) home invasion. The cop should be charged with an armed home invasion. That’s what it was.

  16. The story on 11alive says they “gained entry” to the residence through a screened porch. No hits if that was also “unlocked”. I can imagine the homeowner having locked the screened porch and leaving his door unlocked

    I have also seen the wound to the officer described as being in his “thigh” and as being in his “hip”. Any bets that one of his cohorts actually shot him in the ass?

    I can see the next dynamic entry with that crew. “No, you go first”. “Nuh Uh, I went first the last time and ended up with a bullet in my ass”

    http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/2015/08/31/dekalb-co-police-officer-shot/71492826/

  17. Well, if you call 911 start with the address. You may save someone’s dog. Plus if you don’t get to finish what you’re saying at least they will know where to find you.

  18. And in the meantime while police are dicking around in the wrong house, what is happening in the right house? Maybe husband in basement beaten near to death by career chriminals , wife, daughter raped and house about to be set on fire?

  19. Well, someone has a big lawsuit on their hands. I’d be apoplectic if they killed my dog (let alone shot me in the leg) because they ‘oh, oops, got the wrong house’

  20. have these govt terrorist monkeys EVER heard of a new fandangled tool called Google Maps? Or reconnaissance??

    Karma, bitches.

  21. This is how I would have responded.

    First, get the complainant back on the line and tell him to meet me to point out the house.

    If there’s no luck with that I would have gone to the house in question, given the address to dispatch. Run any tags in the driveway and see if they come back to the house. Post one dude up front and one in the back. Have dispatch call inside and have the homeowner step out. If no answer, get some more units there and set up around the house and wait for whoever is inside to step out. Unless there are screams or gunshots coming from inside there’s no reason to go in hot to that house if you don’t have positive address, especially since the call was from a passerby, not from a homeowner being invaded.

  22. Yet another crew of gung-ho retards in blue.

    You know what. I think I have an idea about how to address this whole “cops vs the world” mentality that is responsible for a good chunk of this crap lately…

    How about we make the police uniforms pink? Bright, shiny pink, with rainbow ribbons. Yes, for SWAT, too. They don’t really need camo 99% of the time, anyway.

    But it would weed out all the scum that joins the force to have fun by busting doors and skulls right away. They’ll be scared away by the idea of looking funny and silly, instead of the macho image that they so desire.

    And then the only ones that are left would be dedicated professionals, in there to actually serve the people and maintain peace, and not caring for the looks. And once we only have those guys, we can trust them with whatever equipment they say they need, be it assault rifles, Barretts or MRAPs (so long as it’s all painted pink, that is), and know that it won’t be abused.

    It would also make children like and trust police, rather than fear them.

  23. Outside of the cops shooting other cops (SOP, apparently), I am bewildered by all the reports over the years concerning raids on “the wrong house”. As a LEO back in the Stone Age (early 1980s), we were always able to access public records and utility records to determine the owner of a home. Today as an attorney, one of the first things I do before filing suit against an individual is to check public public records, available to anyone online, to see if they own their home.

  24. Some of the disarmed people murdered by the governments of the world, Christians Rome, Jews Nazi Germany, Aztecs Spanish, Maori of NZ and Aboriginals Australia, Scottish William Wallace, the Irish, Welsh by English and the Native America by the US government. THIS is why we need guns to protect ourselves from the who would subject us to their whim and if this is not enough just google dictators.There are over 400 gun laws on the books and they have done nothing to stop the violence because of the winey few we are chastised for wanting to protect ourselves. We NEED guns to protect ourselves from criminals in and out of the government. I deserve the right to protect myself and if you don’t like like it tough shit. mrpresident2016.com

  25. Home invasion, aggravated assault, attempted murder by the cop, where is the warrant and the due process or common sense to have the right address. I met a man that went to jail because he was to drunk and went to the wrong house by only one street. No double standards. The police should KNOW better. mrpresident2016.com

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