Don’t give me grief about this one. I know: day in, day out, SWAT teams risk their lives in the endless pursuit of public safety. THEY are FAR more likely to be killed by perpetrators than kill anyone—including innocent bystanders. And those bystanders are often standing by and/or harboring dangerous criminals. Unlike the 34-year-old murderer the Detroit team was seeking, the officer or officers responsible for this horrible accident—where a seven-year-old girl lost her life—will face immediate investigation. There will be consequences for all the law enforcement officials involved. Now that I’ve provided context, before I scrape the details from the AP, I want to say one more thing: the press needs to get over this idea that guns “discharge” all on their own. Even if a gunshot is accidental, in 99.99 percent of the cases, a shooter pulled the trigger. The police shot and killed Aiyana Jones. Suggesting anything else is needlessly, perhaps even recklessly obsequious.
Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee said officers set off the flash grenade as they entered the apartment with their guns drawn about 12:40 a.m. Sunday with a warrant to look for a suspect in the Friday slaying of a 17-year-old boy. The lead officer’s gun went off after he encountered a 46-year-old woman inside the front room of the house and “some level of physical contact” ensued. Police do not believe the gun was fired intentionally, he said . . .
Family members identified the woman as the child’s grandmother and Charles Jones’ mother, Mertilla Jones, who has said she was not involved in a struggle with the officer. Police later said the officer may have just collided with the woman.
Strangely, there’s no word about the whereabouts of the suspect sought by the police in the fateful raid.