Miami Florida Police Didn’t Consider House Might Have A Back Door – Neighborhood Evacuated As SWAT Team Spends 5 Hours Forcing An Empty Home Into Submission

MIAMI, FLORIDA – A suspect remained on the loose Saturday when a SWAT team responding to a what they thought was a barricade situation found the man had left the home.

Miami-Dade officers went in the home on the 10000 block of Southwest 69th Terrace Friday afternoon after learning there might be an armed man inside refusing to leave his home.

Police said the incident began as a domestic dispute between the man, Carlos Guerrero, 36, and his brother. When the rescue squad arrived, they saw Guerrero run toward the house. When police couldn’t make contact with Guerrero, they were concerned he might be barricaded inside and a danger to himself or the community.

“We learned that he is a veteran and there were firearms inside the house,” said Miami-Dade Police Det. Alvaro Zabaleta. “So now, of course, when you add to the formula an individual who has firearms inside the house, refuses to come out, who’s already had a physical confrontation with somebody, then of course that escalates things a little bit.”

Police taped off several blocks surrounding the home and kept dozens of neighbors out of their homes for more than five hours. Other neighbors who were inside before the SWAT team arrived were told to remain inside.

Melissa Morejon was outside the police tape while her mother and son were inside.

“He tried going out earlier but they wouldn’t let her out of her house. They told her to go right back in,” she said.

Morejon spent much of the evening on the phone with her mom who kept her updated on the situation.

“She heard the police trying to negotiate,” Morejon said.

Police are searching for Guerrero to find out what happened. Although neighbors were displaced for hours, police said they had to take every precaution to keep people safe.

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Dumbass Evansville Indiana Police Bring News Crew Along On Violent SWAT Attack On Wrong House That Catches Innocent 18 Year Old Woman Watching TV

EVANSVILLE, INDIANA – The long-standing, heavily documented militarization of even small-town American police forces was always going to create problems when it met anonymous Internet threats. And so it has, again—this time in Evansville, Indiana, where officers acted on some Topix postings threatening violence against local police. They then sent an entire SWAT unit to execute a search warrant on a local house, one in which the front door was open and an 18-year old woman sat inside watching TV.

The cops brought along TV cameras, inviting a local reporter to film the glorious operation. In the resulting video, you can watch the SWAT team, decked out in black bulletproof vests and helmets and carrying window and door smashers, creep slowly up to the house. At some point, they apparently “knock” and announce their presence—though not with the goal of getting anyone to come to the door. As the local police chief admitted later to the Evansville Courier & Press, the process is really just “designed to distract.” (SWAT does not need to wait for a response.)

Officers break the screen door and a window, tossing a flashbang into the house—which you can see explode in the video. A second flashbang gets tossed in for good measure a moment later. SWAT enters the house.

On the news that night, the reporter ends his piece by talking about how this is “an investigation that hits home for many of these brave officers.”

But the family in the home was released without any charges as police realized their mistake. Turns out the home had an open WiFi router, and the threats had been made by someone outside the house. Whoops.

So the cops did some more investigation and decided that the threats had come from a house on the same street. This time, apparently recognizing they had gone a little nuts on the first raid, the police department didn’t send a SWAT team at all. Despite believing that they now had the right location and that a threat-making bomber lurked within, they just sent officers up to the door.

“We did surveillance on the house, we knew that there were little kids there, so we decided we weren’t going to use the SWAT team,” the police chief told the paper after the second raid. “We did have one officer with a ram to hit the door in case they refused to open the door. That didn’t happen, so we didn’t need to use it.”

Their target appears to be a teenager who admits to the paper that he has a “smart mouth,” dislikes the cops, and owns a smartphone—but who denies using it to make the threats.

While the open WiFi issue has caused many problems over the last five years—especially in child porn cases—the FBI is becoming more savvy about how it executes search warrants. As we noted last December, a well-run FBI child porn investigation (also in Indiana) took rather obvious precautions before executing a warrant:

On April 30, two FBI special agents drove past the Carmel home and noted the existence of two WiFi networks reachable from the property. One used WEP encryption, the other had the more robust WPA2, but the key point from the FBI’s perspective was that neither network was unsecured. A search thus seemed much more likely to find its proper target.

Because most people aren’t stupid enough to make obvious threats from their own home Internet connection, the corollary principle also holds: if a home does have an open WiFi connection, investigators might want to ease away from the flashbangs-and-SWAT-team approach; the threat of getting it wrong is a real one.

But Evansville police aren’t backing down from their initial SWAT raid (read more about their later justification for using such force). And the targets of that raid aren’t pleased. As the owner of the first house told the paper, “The front door was open. It’s not like anyone was in there hiding. To bring a whole SWAT team seems a little excessive.”

The city will be paying to repair the damage it caused.

Not that all Evansville residents think the SWAT raid was in any way improper. Writing on the same Topix message boards where the initial threats emanated, one resident responded to critics: “They had a warrant. Sometimes warrants turn up nothing. Her home was repaired. On with your life now crusader!!! Lol”

“Noodle heads come on here thinking they are just big bad asses, threatening cops and their families,” wrote another, “then the cops come back and bitch slap them with SWAT teams and flash bang grenades. Awesome. Teach these fools a lesson and make examples out of them.”

But when all you have is an IP address, some non-trivial percentage of the time you teach a lesson to the wrong fools.

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Washington DC Police, SWAT Teams, And Bomb Squad Rampage Destroys Iraq Veteran’s Home – Illegally Searched Locked Home, Seized Property Without A Warrant, And Arrested Man Without Cause

WASHINGTON, DC – While Army Sgt. Matthew Corrigan was sound asleep inside his Northwest D.C. home, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) was preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of his home. SWAT and explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams spent four hours readying the assault on the English basement apartment in the middle of the snowstorm of the century.

The police arrested the veteran of the Iraq war and searched his house without a warrant, not to protect the public from a terrorist or stop a crime in progress, but to rouse a sleeping man the police thought might have an unregistered gun in his home.

It all started a few hours earlier on Feb. 2, 2010, when Sgt. Corrigan called the National Veterans Crisis Hotline for advice on sleeping because of nightmares from his year training Iraqi soldiers to look for IEDs in Fallujah. Without his permission, the operator, Beth, called 911 and reported Sgt. Corrigan “has a gun and wants to kill himself.”

According to a transcript of the 911 recording, Beth told the cops that, “The gun’s actually on his lap.” The drill sergeant told me he said nothing of the kind, and his two pistols and rifle were hidden under clothes and in closets, to avoid theft.

So around midnight, the police arrived at the row house at 2408 N. Capitol Street. Over the next two hours, several emergency response team units were called to the scene, calling in many cops from home.

Police memos from that night describe the situation as involving a man who is, “threatening to shoot himself,” but “doesn’t want to hurt anybody.”

None of the cops’ documents indicate a threat that warranted a “barricade” and the closure of several streets to create “an outer perimeter that prohibited both traffic and pedestrian access.” With dozens of cops on the scene, they created a “staging area” two blocks away.

Around 1 a.m., the police knocked on the door of Tammie Sommons, the upstairs neighbor in the row house. Ms. Sommons had lived there since 2008 with her three roommates and, in that time, had become a close friend of Sgt. Corrigan. She had a key to his apartment and often walked his dog Matrix.

“I opened the door to this scene with three cops with guns pointed at Matt’s door,” she recalled in an interview this week. “One officer told me that Matt called a suicide hotline and was about to kill himself. I said that was impossible, he wasn’t that kind of guy. I told the police I see him every day and would know if he was suicidal.”

Over the next hour, Ms. Sommons repeatedly told the police she was sure that Sgt. Corrigan was merely sleeping. She knew he took prescription sleeping pills because of repeated nightmares from his year in Iraq. The cops wouldn’t listen to her.

“I said to the police, ‘You guys are making a big mistake. He’s not what you think,’” recalled Ms. Sommons. She offered to go downstairs and clear up the situation, but the police would not let her.

The officers asked her whether Sgt. Corrigan owned any guns. “I said, of course he has guns, he’s in the military,” she replied. Ms. Sommons had never seen the sergeant’s guns, but she is from a military family, in which gun ownership was the norm. She was truthful with the police because she was not aware the District requires registration of every gun.

This month, the U.S. House passed a nonbinding amendment, sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey, that said active military living in or stationed in D.C. should not be bound by the stringent firearm laws. Were such a law in place two years ago, Sgt. Corrigan would not have been targeted by the police.

MPD told Ms. Sommons that someone had reported that there was the smell of gas coming from Sgt. Corrigan’s apartment. “I told them that there was no gas in his apartment — it was all electric,” she recalled. “I said if they smelled something, it’s just my roommate who was cooking chicken parmesan.”

Still, the police refused to accept the simpler explanation. “The cops said we needed to leave our house because Matt was going to shoot through the ceiling,” Ms. Sommons said. “They painted this picture like Rambo was downstairs and ready to blow up the place.”

At 3 a.m., the police called in an EOD unit — the bomb squad. They brought in negotiators. They had the gas company turn off the gas line to the house. A few minutes before 4 a.m., they started calling Sgt. Corrigan’s cell phone, but they got no answer because he turned it off before going to bed. They woke him up by calling his name on a bullhorn. He then turned on the phone and was told to surrender outside.

Arrested Without Cause

When the police wouldn’t accept Sgt. Corrigan’s word that he was fine, he was forced to leave his home and surrender. When he stepped outside, he faced assault teams with rifles pointed at his chest. He immediately dropped to his knees, with his hands over his head.

Officers in full protective gear zip-tied Sgt. Corrigan’s hands behind his back and pulled him up from his knees, forcing him into a large tactical command center called the “BEAR” which was parked at the staging area.

Although police did not read Sgt. Corrigan his Miranda rights, they questioned him inside the tactical truck. They asked the Iraq veteran basic questions about his life from various angles to get him to admit to owning guns. He remained silent about his two handguns and one rifle, which he had not registered after moving into the city.

Suddenly a police commander jumped in the truck and demanded to know where Sgt. Corrigan put his house key. He refused.

“I’m not giving you the key. I’m not giving consent to enter my house,” Sgt. Corrigan recalled saying in an interview with me last week at D.C. Superior Court after the city dropped all 10 charges against him.

“Then the cop said to me, ‘I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit with you. We’re going to break your door in, and you’re going to have to pay for a new door.’”

“‘Looks like I’m buying a new door,’” Sgt. Corrigan responded. “He was riffed”

Realizing quickly that his house would get raided without his permission, he asked for one thing from the police. “I said, ‘Please don’t hurt my dog. He’s friendly. He’s a good dog. Please don’t hurt him.’ They said they wouldn’t.”

The police then took Sgt. Corrigan to the VA hospital, still with his hands restrained. He didn’t want to be put in the hospital against his will, so he was okay with being left there temporarily. He signed himself in for help.

“After having all those guns at me, I was broken,” he said, pointing again at his chest, where he’d seen the rifle red laser dots. “I hadn’t slept in days, I just wanted to sleep.”

The reservist spent three nights in the hospital. When he got out, the police were waiting to arrest him for the unregistered guns found when they raided his home, without a warrant.

Search, Seizure, but no Warrant

Since Since Sgt. Corrigan refused to permit a search of his house, the police had to break down his door. The cops, however, didn’t bother to wait for a search warrant before doing so. “They were all keyed up because they had been there and ready to go all night,” surmised Sgt. Corrgian’s attorney Richard Gardiner.

The first to enter the apartment with the supposedly dangerous apartment was the Emergency Response Team, which secured the dog Matrix and gave him over to animal control, according to police reports. Only then did the EOD personnel enter to search using portable x-ray equipment.

During the “explosive threat clearing efforts,” police reported finding the sergeant’s “hazardous materials,” which included two pistols and a rifle, binoculars and ammunition. The report also details how it took the combined efforts of the police, EOD and the D.C. Fire Department to seize the “military ammunition can that contained numerous fireworks type devices.” These were fireworks left over from the Fourth of July.

Also taken into evidence was what the police described as a “military smoke grenade” and “military whistler device.” This smoke-screen canister and trip wire were put in Sgt. Corrigan’s rucksack in 1996 by his squad leader and had long been forgotten over the years. EOD took custody of the smoke grenade and whistle. The rest of the the materials were handed over to the crime scene search department at 7:30 a.m.

RAID

Police Lt. R.T. Glover was pleased with the seven hour operation that resulted in finding three unregistered guns in D.C. In his report to Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier, he concluded that, “as a result of this barricade incident, there are no recommendations for improvement with respect to overall tactical operations.”

Police Destruction

The dry after-action notes from the police following the operation give no clue to the property damage done to Sgt. Corrigan’s home. They tore apart the 900 square foot place.

Instead of unzipping luggage, the police used knives to cut through and destroy the bags. They dumped over the bookshelves, emptied closets, threw the clothes on the floor.

In the process, they knocked over the feeding mechanism for the tropical fish in the sergeant’s six-foot long aquarium. When he was finally released from jail two weeks later, all of his expensive pet fish were dead in the tank.

The guns were seized, along with the locked cases, leaving only broken latches behind. The ammunition, hidden under a sleeping bag in the utility closet, was taken. They broke Sgt. Corrigan’s eyeglasses and left them on the floor. The police turned on the electric stove and never turned it off and left without securing the broken door.

When Ms. Sommons came back to her home the next day, she looked into Sgt. Corrigan’s apartment. “I was really upset because it was ransacked. It made me lose respect for the police officers involved,” she said, the stepdaughter of a correctional officer.

“Here was Matt, who spent a year fighting for our country in Iraq — where these police would never set foot in — and they treat him like trash off the street.”

In February, Sgt. Corrigan filed a civil suit against the District asking for a minimum of $500,000 in damages for violating his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. His attorney, Mr. Gardiner, intends to add some of the individual officers to the suit when they are identified in discovery.

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Washington DC Police Using Pointless Firearm Registration To Harass, Arrest, And Jail Servicemen – US Army Veteran Brutalized, Home Searched Without A Warrant, Property Seized Without, Home Destroyed, And Jailed On 10 Bogus Charges

WASHINGTON, DC – The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) seems to have it out for our military. The department is using the city’s pointless firearm registration mandate to harass, arrest and jail servicemen.

Army 1st Sergeant Matthew Corrigan was woken in the middle of the night, forced out of his home, arrested, had his home ransacked, had his guns seized and was thrown in jail — where he was lost in the prison system for two weeks — all because the District refuses to recognize the meaning of the Second Amendment. This week, the city dropped all charges against Sgt. Corrigan, but the damage done to this reservist cannot be so easily erased.

This story will describe how Sgt. Corrigan went from sleeping at home at night to arrested. Subsequent installments of the series will cover the home raid without a warrant, the long-term imprisonment and the coverup by MPD.

Sgt. Corrigan, 35, and his attorney Richard Gardiner appeared before Judge Michael Ryan at D.C. Superior Court on Monday. The District’s assistant attorney general moved to dismiss all ten charges against him – three for unregistered firearms and seven for possession of ammunition in different calibers.

Wearing a blue suit and black-rimmed glasses, Sgt. Corrigan looked unemotional after the hearing that ended his two-year ordeal. Outside the courtroom, I asked him how he felt. I expected some vindication or, at least, relief. Instead, he was weighed down by the losses and trauma of the experience. “For court, I put on a face showing I’m okay,” he said. “Overall, this has broken me.”

Nighttime Raid

Sgt. Corrigan was asleep in rented apartment on North Capitol Street in the Stonghold neighborhood at 4am on Feb. 3, 2010, when he heard his name being called on a bullhorn from outside. There was a heavy snow falling — the first storm of what became known that winter as “snowmageddon.”

Flood lights glared through the front and back windows and doors of his English basement apartment. “Matt Corrigan, We’re here to help you, Matt,” the voice said in the darkness. An experienced combat soldier, he assumed a bunker mentality and hid in the dark room.

dogHe turned on his cell phone and a police detective immediately phoned and said, “Matt, don’t you think this is a good time to walk your dog?” The SWAT team outside could obviously see the 11-year old pit bull, Matrix, a rescue from dog fighting, who had been with Sgt. Corrigan since graduate school in Northern California.

“I’ll come to the window and show myself,” he offered on the phone. Sgt. Corrigan still didn’t know why his house was surrounded, but he knew exactly what he should do in such situations. “I’ve been on the other end of that rifle trying to get someone out,” he explained.

He said that the cop on the phone answered that, “‘It’s gone beyond that now.’”

Iraq

Sgt. Corrigan volunteered to serve for a year in Iraq from 2005-2006. He’s an Army reservist in a drill sergeant unit based in Alexandria. By day, he is a statistician at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

His unit would generally never be needed overseas, but the Army need people to train the Iraqi soldiers. So, the then-drill sergeant signed up for the deployment because he thought it would be good for his military career.

iraqThe reservist and nine other soldiers were embedded with the Iraqi army to train them to be a functional military force. He was stationed in Fallujah during the transition from the assault on the city to allowing the civilian population to move back in and through the elections.

The team was spread out over 4 or 5 locations so that each Iraqi company could have a very different tasking from the Marines who operated that battlespace.

Among other duties, the sergeant would go out on patrol with the Iraqis, clear routes of IEDs, prevent new IEDs from being placed in the urban areas. During patrols, he would search for any detail in the street that had changed in a way that would indicate a possible new explosive, then he would scan the horizon for the enemy with the detonator.

He says that in his daily life now, he’s still looking for the “IED triggerman.” He was awarded the bronze star.

His twelve months of service ended without much time to re-adjust to civilian life. “In 20 days, I went from being shot at to sitting in a cube wearing a suit,” he recalled of the difficult transition returning to his statistician job. “Your body is in America. Your head is in Iraq.”

Night of the arrest

Sgt. Corrigan never fully recovered emotionally from the combat and continues to have vivid nightmares that gave him insomnia. The Veterans’ Affairs (VA) hospital gave him medication to help him sleep, but by early 2010, he started having new dreams.

bronze“I kept seeing my own dead body with my friend and family standing over me, looking disappointed. Sometimes I died in Iraq, sometimes here,” he recalled. “I didn’t sleep for four or five nights in a row.”

At the same time, he was tasked to prepare a mental health manual for his soldiers on mild traumatic brain injury and suicide prevention. On a pamphlet from VA hospital, he saw a link to a website VeteransCrisisLine.net. On it, he found a number for a counseling hotline, which turned out to be a suicide hotline.

When he called it a little before midnight, he asked to speak to someone about the bad dreams and sleeplessness. The woman asked for his name, address, phone number, whether he was active duty, if he was using alcohol or drugs, and his unit. Then she asked if he had any firearms.

Sgt. Corrigan had three personal guns for protection and for competition in his home. He had recently moved from Virginia to the District, but had not registered them because he thought the process was too convoluted and risky.

“It didn’t sound right that I could just carry my guns to the police station and not get arrested.” He recalled thinking that, “I’ll just wait for them to clear up this complicated process and do it then.”

The only places in the United States that require citizens to register every single gun they own with the government are Hawaii, New York City, Chicago and the District.

After the police raided his home that night, they took the three firearms: a Sig 226 in .40 caliber, a Smith and Wesson 5904 in 9mm and a M1A Springfield Armory Scout Squad rifle.

courtAt the Monday hearing at D.C. Superior Court, Mr. Gardiner petitioned the court to return the property. It took two years for the firearms’ attorney’s other active-duty veteran client, Lt. Augustine Kim, to get his guns returned.

Judge Ryan gave the attorney general’s office three days to file a document in opposition to the release, and he said he will make a decision by the end of this week.

When asked by the VA hospital counselor on the night of Feb. 2 whether he owned guns, Sgt. Corrigan answered truthfully.

The woman answering the suicide hotline would not listen to him. “I told her, ‘I don’t have the gun out.’ And she kept saying, ‘Put down the gun.’ She talked like I had the gun in one hand and my cell phone in the other.”

“She insisted I repeat the words, ‘The guns are down,’” he said. “I finally got agitated and said, ‘I shouldn’t have called’ and hung up.” Then, Sgt. Corrigan took a prescribed sleeping pill and went to bed.

Attack and Surrender

After being jolted awake four hours later, Sgt. Corrigan agreed to exit his home to show that he was fine. As he walked out his front door, he turned the lock on the knob so that it would lock when he closed it. He had a stow-away key in a box outside.

When he opened the door, he saw about 25 officers in full body armor and kevlar helmets, carrying M4 assault weapons. SWAT and explosive ordinance disposal teams were on all sides. Streets were barricaded for blocks. “They were prepared to be blown up or attacked,” Sgt. Corrigan remembered. Experienced in combat, he knew how to surrender with the least chance of being hurt. He put his hands over his head and spun around so they could clearly see he was unarmed.

matt2In the dark, snowy night, the Iraq vet was an easy target. “I looked down at saw 10 jiggly red dots all over my chest,” he said, appearing afraid at the memory. “I crumbled.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one officer ready to tackle him, so he dropped to his knees and crossed his ankles to demonstrate complete defenselessness.

“They immediately zip-tied me tighter than I would have been allowed to zip-tie an Iraqi,” Sgt. Corrigan said, pulling up his dress shirt cuff to show his wrist. “We had to check to fit two fingers between the tie and the Iraqi’s wrist so we weren’t cutting off circulation. They tied mine so tight that they hurt.”

Mr. Gardiner, the defense attorney, still questions whether this initial arrest was legal, since there were no charges against him at this point. The only thing the police had was the word of a VA operator saying he claimed to be a gun owner. He was not read his rights. MPD spokesman, Gwendolyn Crump, would not comment on the case.

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Lewisville Texas Police Fall For Fake Call, Send SWAT Team To Home Of Child Who Pissed Off Someone On Gaming Network

LEWISVILLE, TEXAS – A gun battle on a video game turned into guns drawn in a Lewisville neighborhood Monday.

A family had to face down a police swat team for what police say was a hoax, delivered through a video game system.

The incident happened just after 5 p.m. Monday.

The teenage boy, whose parents asked he not be named, was playing Call of Duty: Black Ops. He had joined friends playing online on the Xbox 360.

In the game, players can talk to each other using headsets. In between games, in a chatroom, the boy said a voice suddenly chimed in that he says he didn’t recognize. “Some dude just popped out of nowhere, and basically said he’s going to hack me, he’s going to get my information, call the swat team over to my front yard.”

The teen ignored it, and kept playing.

About 20 minutes later, Lewisville received a call from an operator with the AT&T Instant Message Relay Service. The system is designed to allow hearing impaired users to reach someone with a standard telephone. The operator said they had received a message that a person was shot and that someone was still inside the house shooting.

The first responding officers saw no signs of shooting at the home. The video game was still on when police surrounded the house, with the entire family inside.

The teen said it was his parents who first noticed men outside with real guns, and someone with a bull horn, calling his name.

“We were all scared, out of our minds,” he said. “Didn’t understand why they were here. We thought there was some stranger some dude running around our house, hiding behind the boat. We didn’t know. We didn’t expect nothing.”

Captain Kevin Deaver with Lewisville Police said they started calling the family out because there were no signs of shooting. “At one point they did come out of the residence but then went back in the residence, which did cause us some alarm,” he said.

What officers had seen was the boys father, pulling his wife back inside to keep her safe. The family hid in a bedroom, and the boy’s mother called 9-1-1 herself. The operator connected her to police who convinced the mother, father, three children and grandparents to come out.

The teen said he has no idea who would want to pull the dangerous prank.

Police are investigating the crime as a false report or false alarm. They are working on a subpoena to try to get the information for the gamer who made the story up.

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Hutchins Texas Police Officer Sgt. Gregory McKinley Arrested, Suspended, Charged With Assault After Domestic Violence Incident

HUTCHINS, TEXAS – A North Texas police officer is on administrative leave following his arrest earlier this week on an assault charge.

Hutchins police Sgt. Gregory McKinley was taken into custody Monday by Wylie police. The charge stems from an incident that happened at his home last week.

The 42-year-old was was booked into the Collin County Jail on a charge of assault causing bodily injury, a third-degree felony.

Hutchins Police Chief Frank McElligott announced that McKinley will remain on administrative leave until an internal affairs investigation is complete.

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Elsewhere:

Wylie Police have released the name of the person involved in a SWAT incident March 9.

Charles Gregory McKinley, a resident of Wylie and a police officer in Hutchins, is being held at the Collin County Detention Facility on charges of Assault-Family Violence-Impede Breath or Circulation, according to Wylie Det. Venece Perepiczka.

About 10 p.m. March 9, WPD was dispatched to the 2800 block of Sutters Mill Way in reference to a domestic disturbance call. When the officers arrived on the scene, they were told by the person who had made the call that McKinley was a Hutchins officer and that he had made statements indicating he may be suicidal. He had also indicated there were weapons in the house.

Attempts to contact McKinley were unsuccessful and, due to the mention of weapons and suicidal statements, Wylie SWAT and negotiator teams were sent to the residence, Perepiczka said. “Continued attempts to make contact with McKinley were unsuccessful. Officers obtained house keys and went into the residence. McKinley was found unconscious but breathing by the Wylie SWAT team, and he was transported to the hospital by EMS for a possible overdose,” she said.

McKinley was released from the hospital March 14, and he was taken into custody and transported to the Collin County Detention Facility on the familiy violence warrant. The charge is a third degree felony. McKinley’s bond has been set at $200,000.

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Duh – Phoenix Arizona SWAT Team Sniper Shot Wrong Woman In Standoff

PHOENIX, ARIZONA – A wardrobe switch may have caused a Phoenix S.W.A.T. sniper to shoot the wrong woman.

A Phoenix police spokesman said an armed female suspect barricaded herself and another woman inside an apartment complex near 12th Street and Broadway Road.

Sgt. Trent Crump said police sharpshooters fired when they thought they saw the suspect threatening the other woman.

It turns out, the person they shot was not the suspect.

Police sources have told CBS 5 News that investigators believe the two women switched clothing during the standoff, causing the confusion.

The sources did not know if the clothing swap was done to intentionally deceive police.

Crump said the suspect ultimately exited the apartment and was arrested.

The wounded woman was taken to the hospital and is expected to survive.

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Federal SWAT Team Invades Home And Assaults Man After His Estranged Wife Defaulted On Student Loans

STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA – Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.

“I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers,” Wright said.

Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.

“He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there,” Wright said.

According to Wright, officers also woke his three young children ages 3, 7, and 11 and put them in a Stockton police patrol car with him. Officers then searched his house.

As it turned out, the person law enforcement was looking for was not there – Wright’s estranged wife.

“They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids,” Wright said.

Wright said he later went to the mayor and Stockton Police Department, but the City of Stockton had nothing to do with Wright’s search warrant.

The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife’s defaulted student loans.

“They busted down my door for this,” Wright said. “It wasn’t even me.”

According to the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General, the case can’t be discussed publicly until it is closed, but a spokesperson did confirm that the department did issue the search warrant at Wright’s home.

The Office of the Inspector General has a law enforcement branch of federal agents that carry out search warrants and investigations.

Stockton Police Department said it was asked by federal agents to provide one officer and one patrol car just for a police presence when carrying out the search warrant.

Stockton police did not participate in breaking Wright’s door, handcuffing him, or searching his home.

“All I want is an apology for me and my kids and for them to get me a new door,” Wright said.

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Veteran Defending His Home Didn’t Shoot At Tucson Arizona Police, But Was Shot 60 Times By SWAT Team During “Drug Raid” – Nothing Illegal Found In His Home

TUCSON, ARIZONA – A U.S. Marine who died in a flurry of bullets during a drug raid near Tucson never fired on the SWAT team that stormed his house, a report by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department shows.

The revelation was contained in an internal investigation released by the department Thursday.

Jose Guerena died May 5 after a SWAT team descended on his home in a Tucson suburb with a search warrant. His home was one of four believed to be associated with a drug smuggling operation in the area.

A video released Thursday by the sheriff’s department shows the uniformed SWAT team pulling up outside his house, sounding their sirens, banging on the front door — before kicking it in — and opening fire shortly after entering the home.

Officers fired more than 70 shots, the investigation showed. Deputies said they opened fire after Guerena, 26, gestured at them with an AR-15 — a semiautomatic rifle.

Some of the officers said they believed that Guerena fired on them, but the investigation showed that no shots were fired from the weapon and it was never taken off the safety position.

Initial news reports indicated that he had been struck by more than 60 bullets. However, CNN has seen an initial report from the medical examiner that details 22 bullet wounds.

A lawyer representing the deputies defended their actions.

“They absolutely responded how they were trained. They responded within Arizona laws, within the law throughout the nation,” attorney Mike Storie said.

“If you are faced with that type of deadly threat, you’re allowed to respond.”

Guerena served in Iraq and was discharged from the Marines five years ago. He was working for a mining company in the Tucson area.

But authorities allege he also was involved in drug smuggling, strong-armed robberies and human smuggling.

A search of the home after the shooting revealed nothing illegal, although officers found weapons and body armor.

The five deputies involved in the shooting remain on active duty. No criminal charges have been filed and no disciplinary action taken.

The findings of the investigation are detailed in a five-inch thick report, including a 60-page statement from Guerena’s wife, Vanessa, who was in the home at the time of the shooting along with a young son.

In addition to the video, the sheriff’s department also released audio of Guerena calling 911 to get medical attention for her husband. Audio of the SWAT team’s radio conversations was also included.

She has retained a lawyer, but no legal action has been taken.

“We just learned that the sheriff’s department has released voluminous amounts of information in respect to this incident,” said Guerena attorney Chris Scileppi. “We will review the documents and CDs, and will make ourselves available for comment in the near future.”

Appeared Here

Detroit Mom Had Full Authority To Stop Giving Girl Medication – But That Didn’t Stop 12 Hour Police SWAT Team Siege On Her Home – Authority To Stop Medication Was By Same Group That Complained She Wasn’t Giving Medication

DETROIT, MICHIGAN – A mother accused of medical neglect for refusing to give her daughter a prescribed drug had authority to halt treatment, court files indicate.

The “informed consent” form signed by Maryanne Godboldo, who sparked a debate over parents’ rights when her daughter was removed from her care March 25, authorized her to give her daughter, Ariana, the antipsychotic drug Risperdal.

“It has been explained to me that I have the right to withdraw this consent at any time and can stop taking the medication at any time,” the form reads.

The agreement was signed June 3, 2010, by Godboldo and a psychiatrist associated with a children’s health organization that later complained to child welfare workers when Godboldo stopped giving her daughter the drug used in treatment of symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Lawyers for the 13-year-old’s mother and father will be in Wayne County Circuit Court Juvenile Division today attacking the validity of a petition obtained on a medical emergency claim by a county Child Protective Services worker to take the girl from her home by force March 25. Ariana has since been kept in a state facility for mentally ill juveniles.

The social worker’s efforts to take Ariana set off a 12-hour siege after armed police broke open a door at Godboldo’s west side home and a shot was fired. The 56-year-old mother and the girl’s father, Mubarak Hakim, 58, face neglect claims and attempts by state authorities to make the girl a ward of the court and possibly resumption of drug therapy. Godboldo also is charged separately with criminal assault and resisting and opposing the three Detroit Police officers who entered her home.

The case has drawn nationwide attention from groups advocating parents’ rights, concerns about the safety of childhood immunizations and use of psychotropic drugs, and those opposed to government intrusion on personal decisions.

Godboldo has said her daughter’s problems began in 2009, after she took a cocktail of immunizations to catch up with requirements to switch from homeschooling to a regular school environment. Godboldo, who believes her daughter’s problems are from encephalitis caused by a severe reaction to the immunizations, has said drug therapy worsened her daughter’s behavior. Godboldo has said she sought a “holistic’ alternative with the help of another doctor.

The form was signed by Dr. Rajendra Kanneganti, a psychiatrist associated with the Children’s Center of Wayne County. The treatment plan resulted from a mental health assessment of then 12-year-old Ariana after she was found by police wandering naked in her neighborhood last Memorial Day weekend.

The document, signed by the mother on behalf of her minor child, says, “I understand that I will not be forced to take this medication and that I can stop taking it at anytime. I also understand that discontinuation of prescribed medication without consultation with my doctor could cause my condition to worsen.”

“I think that document proves our case,” said Godboldo’s lawyer, Wanda Evans. “She understood she had a right to stop giving the medication. If you sign an informed consent that says you can stop, and you stop, you did the right thing, and CPS (Child Protective Services) is just being nasty.”

Kanneganti did not respond to a Detroit News telephone call.

A legal expert said the signed document might not carry much weight in court.

“In this case you do have these countervailing rights and obligations and they are difficult to assess,” said John Pirich, professor at Michigan State University College of Law. “But, in practice, a court usually looks first at the health, safety and welfare of the child.”

The News obtained access earlier this week to the previously withheld court file. The file was made available only after a lawyer for The News reminded officials that court files are open to the public under Michigan law.

The original petition to remove the child was obtained by case worker Mia Wenk, two weeks on the assignment, who expressed frustration with Godboldo’s lack of cooperation in her investigation of accusations of medical neglect from at least four sources, including the Children’s Center.

Evans said Godboldo consulted another doctor before weaning her daughter from the drug.

“Our intention is to begin an evidentiary hearing (today) on why the girl was removed from the home,” Evans said. “On what authority did they (Protective Services) act when it is a parent’s responsibility to make these decisions?”

Wayne County Child Protective Services workers last week filed an expanded explanation of claims. It quotes the clinical director of the facility where Ariana is being held, saying the girl, “may have a severe case of childhood onset schizophrenia, which would require medication for her to be treated properly.”

However, Assistant Attorney General David Law, representing Protective Services in court last week, said there was no current emergency need to medicate the girl.

Appeared Here

Massachusetts State Police Respond With SWAT Team To Search For Man Carring An Umbrella After Dumbass Mistakes It For A Rifle

BURLINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS – A report of a man with a rifle inside a Nordstrom department store triggered a massive police response and the evacuation of a mall near Boston on Tuesday, but the man turned out to be carrying only an umbrella.

The Burlington Mall was evacuated and closed for more than two hours as a police SWAT team wearing body armor and carrying shields searched for an armed man.

State police wrote on their Twitter account that they had received two calls about a short white man with a gray shirt and a backpack who was carrying what appeared to be a rifle.

It turned out the man was an employee of the Lahey Clinic, a nearby hospital, who had stopped at the mall before work and was carrying an umbrella. State police and the clinic said the man called police as soon as he realized he fit the description of the person being sought. Police questioned him and determined he was not a threat.

“The male does not have a weapon. He was reportedly holding an umbrella,” state police said in a statement. “Witnesses and surveillance footage confirm that this is the person who was seen in the mall.”

In a statement, the clinic said the employee “is pleased he took appropriate action and contacted the police, however, he feels terrible about the situation.”

The hospital would not identify the man and said he asked that the media respect his privacy.

The mall, an upscale shopping center about 15 miles northwest of Boston with more than 185 stores, was featured in the 2009 Kevin James comedy “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” It reopened shortly after 12:30 p.m.

Burlington Mall workers said they feared a mass shooting when police told them to leave.

“Cops just came in and told us to evacuate the mall. There’s a guy with a gun,” said Jose Abdul, 26, manager of a Verizon store in the mall. “I couldn’t believe it. I just legged it out of there.”

Dotti Gerrior, a Victoria’s Secret employee, said she and about 17 other workers were trapped inside the store for about two hours after mall security told them the mall was locked down.

The employees pulled down the store’s security gate, then waited in a storage area in the back of the store. They spent the time calling friends and family to let them know they were OK, Gerrior said.

“Everyone was nervous,” Gerrior said. “I really believed it, and I don’t fall for anything so easily. My heart was pounding so hard.”

The initial reports also sparked a buzz on social media sites — even on the Burlington Mall’s Facebook page — from concerned shoppers and relatives of mall workers. “Burlington Mall” also started trending worldwide on Twitter.

Appeared Here

Chicago Illinois Officials Use SWAT Team To Snatch 13 Year Old Who Didn’t Need Medication After Mom Refused To Give Her Medication

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – Authorities have determined there is no emergency need for a 13-year-old girl to be on medication, after the girl’s mother was accused of medically neglecting her by not giving her a psychotropic drug.

The girl has been in state custody since Child Protective Services workers showed up to take her, prompting an hours-long standoff between her mother and police.

Judge Lynne Pierce said during a hearing in Wayne County’s juvenile court Wednesday that a jury trial in the case will begin June 8.

The girl’s mother, Maryanne Godboldo, is accused of firing a gun at officers when CPS came to her Detroit home take her daughter.

Godboldo has said she should have the right to decide treatment for her daughter, whom she was weaning off the drug in favor of holistic methods.

Though officials said Wednesday that there was no immediate need to give the girl medication, Michigan Assistant Attorney General David Law said he may reintroduce the issue later if the need arises.

“They took her unlawfully,” Godboldo said after Wednesday’s hearing.

Godboldo has said she noticed changes in her daughter’s behavior after a series of immunizations in 2009.

Mia Wenk, a CPS worker, testified earlier this month that she filed a petition containing multiple allegations of neglect, along with the order to take the child into protective custody, two weeks after she became involved in the case March 10.

An amended version of the petition was submitted to the court earlier this month.

Pierce will rule on emergency motions by defense attorneys on April 22.

Godboldo’s attorney, Wanda Evans, has filed motions to dismiss and to relocate the child from a care facility in Northville, where she has been since shortly after the standoff with police ended March 25.

Pierce requested the child’s advocate find out whether the girl can be medically discharged and placed with a qualified family member.

“I’d love to get this child into a family member’s home,” but the court, Pierce said, “has to follow the law.”

Appeared Here

Air Quality Test Devices Taped To Light Poles On Eve Of 9/11 Closes Romeoville Illinois School And Puts Others In Lockdown As County And City Police Run Around In Circles For 7 Hours

ROMEOVILLE, ILLINOIS – The mysterious cylindrical metal objects were first spotted this morning duct-taped to light poles at five Romeoville schools, and for several hours — on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary — the school district was thrown into a panic.

Valley View School District officials decided to close one school and put six others on lockdown while Romeoville police and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office’s Hostage, Barricade and Terrorism unit tried to figure what they were dealing with.

It turns out, the cylinders are air-quality monitoring devices.

“To find these cylinders that looked like bombs taped to light poles in a school yard — it waves all sorts of flags in your face,” said a frazzled-sounding Valley View School District spokesman Larry Randa. “We have a school emergency and crisis response plan, and we put it into place right away.”

The canisters were installed by the company that owns an underground pipeline that ruptured in a Romeoville industrial park and continued to leak Friday. .

Randa said it’s maddening that no one in the school district was told ahead of time that air-monitoring devices would be in place this morning. He said there’s no label on the cylinders to indicate who owns them.

“You tell me why they would choose the eve of 9/11 to tape devices by duct tape to poles in schools without telling anybody,” Randa said. “It’s crazy. For seven hours, we and the Romeoville Police Department have been running ourselves ragged.”

Randa said the first device — about 1 1/2-foot-long with some kind of pressure gauge attached — was discovered about 6:30 a.m. at Hermansen Elementary School by a maintenance worker. Classes were cancelled shortly after 9 a.m., when police told school officials it could be several hours before the bomb squad could give the all-clear, Randa said.

As the day progressed, devices were found at three more district elementary schools and one middle school, Randa said. Parents were kept up-to-date through the district’s website and Twitter account, Randa said.

“We had a lot of concerned parents calling all of the schools to find out what was going on,” Randa said. “The staff at the schools very capably handled those calls.”

But it wasn’t until 1:50 p.m. that the school district learned the true purpose of the devices, Randa said.

Randa said it’s been “quite a day,” — one which started in the early morning hours, when school district officials learned there would be no transportation for the 10,000 kids who usually ride buses to and from school. The district’s bus barn is located close the oil spill and Romeoville Village officials were concerned about bus drivers inhaling fumes from the leak, Randa said.

Gina Jordan, a spokeswoman for the pipeline owner, Enbridge Energy Partners told WLS-TV that “it’s just too early to know how long it would take to find and repair the leak.”

About the scare, Jordan told the Sun-Times: “While emergency officials were aware of the air monitoring that was going to take place, they were not aware of the specific type of canisters or the location for those canisters. We do have processes in place to ensure that they will be advised not just of the type of canisters but the location of the canisters in the future.”

Appeared Here

Orland Florida SWAT Team In Standoff, Raid On Empty Motel Room

ORLANDO, FLORIDA – A meth lab bust led to a standoff Wednesday at an Orange County hotel. The SWAT team was working Wednesday afternoon to smoke out a man who was believed to be holed up inside the Palace Hotel (see map), but when they went inside there was no one there.

The hotel was evacuated around 6:00am after a search through a stolen vehicle parked outside the hotel led deputies to a meth lab inside a room. A deputy had to be hospitalized after being exposed to the toxic fumes. Two others had to be treated on the scene.

AT THE SCENE: Images Of Hotel Meth Lab Scene

The SWAT team was on the scene at the Palace Hotel on West Colonial Drive where a suspect was thought to be barricaded inside early Wednesday afternoon. However, the SWAT team entered the room with force and didn’t find anyone. They suspect the person was on a cell phone and leading them to believe he was inside.

“We were all asleep and they bang on the door, had a megaphone, told us to get out,” eyewitess Samantha Smith said.

Smith and her family got the frightening wake up call at six Wednesday morning, one they never expected to get during their Orlando vacation from England, but they had to grab their luggage and run.

A fleet of Orange County sheriff’s deputies, the SWAT team and the fire department’s special operations unit surrounded the hotel to dismantle a working meth lab. Rebecca Turner and her son were forced out before he could grab his shoes.

“I’m just thank God, for Jesus, I’m alive. Me, my husband, son and I could’ve been dead, all of us in there,” Turner said.

The meth chemicals were so strong a deputy in a protective suit couldn’t handle it and had to be rushed to a local hospital when he collapsed.

“I asked the officer was he shot or stabbed, cause I hadn’t heard any gunshot. Said he walked into a meth lab,” eyewitness James Jones said.

Three people were arrested. Two of them had to be treated from exposure to the dangerous chemicals used to make the drug. Investigators are unsure where the fourth suspect is at this time.

Appeared Here

Orland Florida SWAT Team In Standoff, Raid On Empty Motel Room

ORLANDO, FLORIDA – A meth lab bust led to a standoff Wednesday at an Orange County hotel. The SWAT team was working Wednesday afternoon to smoke out a man who was believed to be holed up inside the Palace Hotel (see map), but when they went inside there was no one there.

The hotel was evacuated around 6:00am after a search through a stolen vehicle parked outside the hotel led deputies to a meth lab inside a room. A deputy had to be hospitalized after being exposed to the toxic fumes. Two others had to be treated on the scene.

AT THE SCENE: Images Of Hotel Meth Lab Scene

The SWAT team was on the scene at the Palace Hotel on West Colonial Drive where a suspect was thought to be barricaded inside early Wednesday afternoon. However, the SWAT team entered the room with force and didn’t find anyone. They suspect the person was on a cell phone and leading them to believe he was inside.

“We were all asleep and they bang on the door, had a megaphone, told us to get out,” eyewitess Samantha Smith said.

Smith and her family got the frightening wake up call at six Wednesday morning, one they never expected to get during their Orlando vacation from England, but they had to grab their luggage and run.

A fleet of Orange County sheriff’s deputies, the SWAT team and the fire department’s special operations unit surrounded the hotel to dismantle a working meth lab. Rebecca Turner and her son were forced out before he could grab his shoes.

“I’m just thank God, for Jesus, I’m alive. Me, my husband, son and I could’ve been dead, all of us in there,” Turner said.

The meth chemicals were so strong a deputy in a protective suit couldn’t handle it and had to be rushed to a local hospital when he collapsed.

“I asked the officer was he shot or stabbed, cause I hadn’t heard any gunshot. Said he walked into a meth lab,” eyewitness James Jones said.

Three people were arrested. Two of them had to be treated from exposure to the dangerous chemicals used to make the drug. Investigators are unsure where the fourth suspect is at this time.

Appeared Here

Police Fall For Phone Pranks And Send SWAT Teams To Innocent Families Homes

ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA – Doug Bates and his wife, Stacey, were in bed around 10 p.m., their 2-year-old daughters asleep in a nearby room. Suddenly they were shaken awake by the wail of police sirens and the rumble of a helicopter above their suburban Southern California home. A criminal must be on the loose, they thought.

Doug Bates got up to lock the doors and grabbed a knife. A beam from a flashlight hit him. He peeked into the backyard. A swarm of police, assault rifles drawn, ordered him out of the house. Bates emerged, frightened and with the knife in his hand, as his wife frantically dialed 911. They were handcuffed and ordered to the ground while officers stormed the house.

The scene of mayhem and carnage the officers expected was nowhere to be found. Neither the Bateses nor the officers knew that they were pawns in a dangerous game being played 1,200 miles away by a teenager bent on terrifying a random family of strangers.

They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called “swatting” because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems.

The AP examined hundreds of pages of court documents and law-enforcement transcripts, listened to audio of “swatting” calls, and interviewed two dozen security experts, investigators, defense lawyers, victims and perpetrators.

While Doug and Stacey Bates were cuffed on the ground that night in March 2007, 18-year-old Randal Ellis, living with his parents in Mukilteo, Wash., was nearly finished with the 27-minute yarn about a drug-fueled murder that brought the Orange County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team to the Bateses’ home.

In a grisly sounding call to 911, Ellis was putting an Internet-based phone service for the hearing-impaired to nefarious use. By entering bogus information about his location, Ellis was able to make it seem to the 911 operator as if he was calling from inside the Bateses’ home. He said he was high on drugs and had just shot his sister.

According to prosecutors, Ellis picked the Bates family at random, as he did with all of the 185 calls investigators say he made to 911 operators around the country.

“If I would have had a gun in my hand, I probably would have been shot,” said Doug Bates, 38. Last March, Ellis was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to five felony counts, including computer access and fraud, false imprisonment by violence and falsely reporting a crime.

In a separate, multistate case prosecuted by federal authorities in Dallas, eight people were charged with orchestrating up to 300 “swatting” calls to victims they met on telephone party chat lines. The three ringleaders were each sentenced to five years in prison. Two others were sentenced to 2 1/2 years. One defendant pleaded guilty last week and could get a 13-year sentence. The remaining two are set to go on trial in February.

A similar case was reported in Salinas, Calif., where officers surrounded an apartment where a call had come in claiming men with assault rifles were trying to break in. In Hiawatha, Iowa, fake calls about a workplace shooting included realistic gunshot sounds and moaning in the background. In November, a teenage hacker from Worcester, Mass., pleaded guilty to a five-month swatting spree including a bomb threat and report of an armed gunman that caused two schools to be evacuated.

Many times, however, swats don’t get fully investigated or reported.

Orange County Sheriff’s detective Brian Sims spent weeks serving search warrants on Internet providers before he identified Ellis through his numeric computer identifier, known as an IP address.

Law enforcement hopes lengthy prison terms will deter would-be swatters. Technology alone isn’t enough to stop the crimes.

Unlike calls that come from landline phones, which are registered to a fixed physical address and display that on 911 dispatchers’ screens, calls coming from people’s computers, or even calls from landline or cell phones that are routed through spoofing services, could appear to be originating from anywhere.

Scores of Caller ID spoofing services have sprung up, offering to disguise callers’ origins for a fee. All anybody needs to do is pony up for a certain number of minutes, punch in a PIN code and specify whom they’re calling and what they’d like the Caller ID to display.

Spoofing Caller ID is perfectly legal. Legitimate businesses use the technology to project a single callback number for an entire office, or to let executives working from home cloak their home numbers when making outgoing calls.

At the same time, criminals have latched onto the technique to get revenge on rivals or get their kicks by harassing strangers.

“We’re not able to cope with this very well,” said Roger Hixson, technical issues director for the National Emergency Number Association, the 911 system’s industry group. “We’re just hoping this doesn’t become a widespread hobby.”

The 911 system was built on the idea it could trust the information it was receiving from callers. Upgrading the system to accommodate new technologies can be a huge task.

Gary Allen, editor of Dispatch Monthly, a Berkeley, Calif.-based magazine focused on public-safety communications centers, said dispatchers are “totally at the mercy of the people who call” and the fact they don’t have technology to identify which incoming calls are from Internet-based sources.

Allen said upgrading the communications centers’ computers to flash an Internet caller’s IP address could be helpful in thwarting fraudulent calls. He said an even simpler fix, tweaking the computers to identify calls from Internet telephone services and flash the name of the service provider to dispatchers, can cost under $5,000, but is usually still too costly for many communications centers.

But because this style of fraudulent calls is so new, and many emergency-dispatch centers receive few Internet calls in the first place, those upgrades are not frequently done.

Swatting calls place an immense strain on responding departments. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department deployed about 30 people to the Bateses’ home, including a SWAT team, a helicopter and K-9 units. It cost the department $14,700.

They take their toll on victims, too.

Tony Messina, a construction worker from Salina, N.Y., was swatted three times by the gang broken up by the federal authorities in Dallas. He was even arrested as the result of one call, because authorities found weapons he wasn’t supposed to have while they were searching the house.

Messina had made some enemies on a party line he frequented to flirt with women. Some guys disliked him and out of jealousy, he says, they started swatting him.

The first time, he was home alone with his two poodles when officers swarmed his backyard at 6 a.m. According to Messina, the callers said he had “killed a hooker and sliced her ear to ear, blood all over the place, I’m doing drugs and if you police come over here I’m going to kill you, too.” After a few hours at the police station, he was let go.

Two weeks later, he was detained outside his house. A month later, he was in bed watching TV when he saw someone with a flashlight at his window. He went outside and was handcuffed while deputies searched his house and car.

Messina had been told to call 911 himself if the swatting calls happened again, and when the deputies realized it was another fraudulent call, Messina was let go. He said he suffered bruised ribs that kept him out of work for a month and a half.

Investigators say swatters are usually motivated by a mixture of ego and malice, a desire for revenge and domination over rivals.

Jason Trowbridge, one of the defendants currently serving a five-year sentence, told the AP in a series of letters from prison that the attacks started with the standard fare of prank callers — sending pizzas and locksmiths to victims’ homes — escalated to shutting the power and water off and eventually led to swatting.

“Nobody ever thought anyone would get hurt or die from a SWAT call,” he said.

Appeared Here

Police Fall For Phone Pranks And Send SWAT Teams To Innocent Families Homes

ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA – Doug Bates and his wife, Stacey, were in bed around 10 p.m., their 2-year-old daughters asleep in a nearby room. Suddenly they were shaken awake by the wail of police sirens and the rumble of a helicopter above their suburban Southern California home. A criminal must be on the loose, they thought.

Doug Bates got up to lock the doors and grabbed a knife. A beam from a flashlight hit him. He peeked into the backyard. A swarm of police, assault rifles drawn, ordered him out of the house. Bates emerged, frightened and with the knife in his hand, as his wife frantically dialed 911. They were handcuffed and ordered to the ground while officers stormed the house.

The scene of mayhem and carnage the officers expected was nowhere to be found. Neither the Bateses nor the officers knew that they were pawns in a dangerous game being played 1,200 miles away by a teenager bent on terrifying a random family of strangers.

They were victims of a new kind of telephone fraud that exploits a weakness in the way the 911 system handles calls from Internet-based phone services. The attacks — called “swatting” because armed police SWAT teams usually respond — are virtually unstoppable, and an Associated Press investigation found that budget-strapped 911 centers are essentially defenseless without an overhaul of their computer systems.

The AP examined hundreds of pages of court documents and law-enforcement transcripts, listened to audio of “swatting” calls, and interviewed two dozen security experts, investigators, defense lawyers, victims and perpetrators.

While Doug and Stacey Bates were cuffed on the ground that night in March 2007, 18-year-old Randal Ellis, living with his parents in Mukilteo, Wash., was nearly finished with the 27-minute yarn about a drug-fueled murder that brought the Orange County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team to the Bateses’ home.

In a grisly sounding call to 911, Ellis was putting an Internet-based phone service for the hearing-impaired to nefarious use. By entering bogus information about his location, Ellis was able to make it seem to the 911 operator as if he was calling from inside the Bateses’ home. He said he was high on drugs and had just shot his sister.

According to prosecutors, Ellis picked the Bates family at random, as he did with all of the 185 calls investigators say he made to 911 operators around the country.

“If I would have had a gun in my hand, I probably would have been shot,” said Doug Bates, 38. Last March, Ellis was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to five felony counts, including computer access and fraud, false imprisonment by violence and falsely reporting a crime.

In a separate, multistate case prosecuted by federal authorities in Dallas, eight people were charged with orchestrating up to 300 “swatting” calls to victims they met on telephone party chat lines. The three ringleaders were each sentenced to five years in prison. Two others were sentenced to 2 1/2 years. One defendant pleaded guilty last week and could get a 13-year sentence. The remaining two are set to go on trial in February.

A similar case was reported in Salinas, Calif., where officers surrounded an apartment where a call had come in claiming men with assault rifles were trying to break in. In Hiawatha, Iowa, fake calls about a workplace shooting included realistic gunshot sounds and moaning in the background. In November, a teenage hacker from Worcester, Mass., pleaded guilty to a five-month swatting spree including a bomb threat and report of an armed gunman that caused two schools to be evacuated.

Many times, however, swats don’t get fully investigated or reported.

Orange County Sheriff’s detective Brian Sims spent weeks serving search warrants on Internet providers before he identified Ellis through his numeric computer identifier, known as an IP address.

Law enforcement hopes lengthy prison terms will deter would-be swatters. Technology alone isn’t enough to stop the crimes.

Unlike calls that come from landline phones, which are registered to a fixed physical address and display that on 911 dispatchers’ screens, calls coming from people’s computers, or even calls from landline or cell phones that are routed through spoofing services, could appear to be originating from anywhere.

Scores of Caller ID spoofing services have sprung up, offering to disguise callers’ origins for a fee. All anybody needs to do is pony up for a certain number of minutes, punch in a PIN code and specify whom they’re calling and what they’d like the Caller ID to display.

Spoofing Caller ID is perfectly legal. Legitimate businesses use the technology to project a single callback number for an entire office, or to let executives working from home cloak their home numbers when making outgoing calls.

At the same time, criminals have latched onto the technique to get revenge on rivals or get their kicks by harassing strangers.

“We’re not able to cope with this very well,” said Roger Hixson, technical issues director for the National Emergency Number Association, the 911 system’s industry group. “We’re just hoping this doesn’t become a widespread hobby.”

The 911 system was built on the idea it could trust the information it was receiving from callers. Upgrading the system to accommodate new technologies can be a huge task.

Gary Allen, editor of Dispatch Monthly, a Berkeley, Calif.-based magazine focused on public-safety communications centers, said dispatchers are “totally at the mercy of the people who call” and the fact they don’t have technology to identify which incoming calls are from Internet-based sources.

Allen said upgrading the communications centers’ computers to flash an Internet caller’s IP address could be helpful in thwarting fraudulent calls. He said an even simpler fix, tweaking the computers to identify calls from Internet telephone services and flash the name of the service provider to dispatchers, can cost under $5,000, but is usually still too costly for many communications centers.

But because this style of fraudulent calls is so new, and many emergency-dispatch centers receive few Internet calls in the first place, those upgrades are not frequently done.

Swatting calls place an immense strain on responding departments. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department deployed about 30 people to the Bateses’ home, including a SWAT team, a helicopter and K-9 units. It cost the department $14,700.

They take their toll on victims, too.

Tony Messina, a construction worker from Salina, N.Y., was swatted three times by the gang broken up by the federal authorities in Dallas. He was even arrested as the result of one call, because authorities found weapons he wasn’t supposed to have while they were searching the house.

Messina had made some enemies on a party line he frequented to flirt with women. Some guys disliked him and out of jealousy, he says, they started swatting him.

The first time, he was home alone with his two poodles when officers swarmed his backyard at 6 a.m. According to Messina, the callers said he had “killed a hooker and sliced her ear to ear, blood all over the place, I’m doing drugs and if you police come over here I’m going to kill you, too.” After a few hours at the police station, he was let go.

Two weeks later, he was detained outside his house. A month later, he was in bed watching TV when he saw someone with a flashlight at his window. He went outside and was handcuffed while deputies searched his house and car.

Messina had been told to call 911 himself if the swatting calls happened again, and when the deputies realized it was another fraudulent call, Messina was let go. He said he suffered bruised ribs that kept him out of work for a month and a half.

Investigators say swatters are usually motivated by a mixture of ego and malice, a desire for revenge and domination over rivals.

Jason Trowbridge, one of the defendants currently serving a five-year sentence, told the AP in a series of letters from prison that the attacks started with the standard fare of prank callers — sending pizzas and locksmiths to victims’ homes — escalated to shutting the power and water off and eventually led to swatting.

“Nobody ever thought anyone would get hurt or die from a SWAT call,” he said.

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Boston Massachusetts Police SWAT Team Surrounds Home Of Police Captain After She Bought Gifts For Poor Children

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – Boston Police Capt. Christine M. Michalosky spent hours last weekend rooting through the shelves and racks at TJ Maxx for the perfect Christmas presents – not for herself or her family, but for the needy children at Bromley-Heath, a public housing project in the district she commands. All told, she filled six shopping carts with toys and clothes for kids.

Days later, on Friday, the Metro SWAT team would converge on her Braintree home after a report that she had barricaded herself inside. Her quiet street became a cordoned-off spectacle. Neighbors were barred from re-entering their homes. Those already inside were ordered to stay clear of the windows.

Though it ended peacefully, the hour-long maelstrom of blue lights and camouflaged cops constituted a heart-breaking turn of events for a proud, private woman who has spent her life as a renowned police officer and good Samaritan. Michalosky, 61, was one of the first women to don a Boston police uniform back in the ’70s. She is a fixture at community meetings in Jamaica Plain, with a rare ability to command equal respect among the rank-and-file and top brass.

But she didn’t ascend the ranks by showcasing her troubles – including a breast cancer diagnosis and heart ailment within the past six months.

In an age when the bottled stress of cops too often turns tragic, BPD was concerned about her being potentially depressed – and they wanted to be sure Michalosky’s recent selfless spending wasn’t a sign of imbalance. After the Boston Police Family Assistance Unit knocked on her door Friday at around 4 p.m. – and Michalosky didn’t answer – a tactical operation was launched to locate her.

Kerry Michalosky was driving home on Friday night when she spotted a dozen police cruisers and the SWAT team converging on her mother’s house.

Michalosky’s family doesn’t believe she was suicidal, and is convinced a miscommunication is to blame for what quickly spiraled out of proportion into the headline “Armed Standoff.”

After all, this was a woman who had Mrs. Claus-like plans to rent a truck, fill it up with gifts and deliver them to the families at Bromley.

“Her house was like a warehouse of toys,” said Kerry Michalosky, 32. “She just went through a lot, but she wanted to give back to everyone who’s been so supportive of her.”

Appeared Here

Boston Massachusetts Police SWAT Team Surrounds Home Of Police Captain After She Bought Gifts For Poor Children

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS – Boston Police Capt. Christine M. Michalosky spent hours last weekend rooting through the shelves and racks at TJ Maxx for the perfect Christmas presents – not for herself or her family, but for the needy children at Bromley-Heath, a public housing project in the district she commands. All told, she filled six shopping carts with toys and clothes for kids.

Days later, on Friday, the Metro SWAT team would converge on her Braintree home after a report that she had barricaded herself inside. Her quiet street became a cordoned-off spectacle. Neighbors were barred from re-entering their homes. Those already inside were ordered to stay clear of the windows.

Though it ended peacefully, the hour-long maelstrom of blue lights and camouflaged cops constituted a heart-breaking turn of events for a proud, private woman who has spent her life as a renowned police officer and good Samaritan. Michalosky, 61, was one of the first women to don a Boston police uniform back in the ’70s. She is a fixture at community meetings in Jamaica Plain, with a rare ability to command equal respect among the rank-and-file and top brass.

But she didn’t ascend the ranks by showcasing her troubles – including a breast cancer diagnosis and heart ailment within the past six months.

In an age when the bottled stress of cops too often turns tragic, BPD was concerned about her being potentially depressed – and they wanted to be sure Michalosky’s recent selfless spending wasn’t a sign of imbalance. After the Boston Police Family Assistance Unit knocked on her door Friday at around 4 p.m. – and Michalosky didn’t answer – a tactical operation was launched to locate her.

Kerry Michalosky was driving home on Friday night when she spotted a dozen police cruisers and the SWAT team converging on her mother’s house.

Michalosky’s family doesn’t believe she was suicidal, and is convinced a miscommunication is to blame for what quickly spiraled out of proportion into the headline “Armed Standoff.”

After all, this was a woman who had Mrs. Claus-like plans to rent a truck, fill it up with gifts and deliver them to the families at Bromley.

“Her house was like a warehouse of toys,” said Kerry Michalosky, 32. “She just went through a lot, but she wanted to give back to everyone who’s been so supportive of her.”

Appeared Here