US Army Raids Wrong Boston Hotel Room

[Chance]

From CNN.com (https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/us/fbi-us-army-personnel-raid-wrong-room-hotel-guest/index.html):


Members of the FBI and the US Army Special Operations Command who were conducting a training exercise in downtown Boston raided the wrong hotel room and detained the person inside before realizing their mistake, the FBI said in a statement to CNN.

The FBI said its Boston division was helping the military with a training exercise around 10 p.m. Tuesday “to simulate a situation their personnel might encounter in a deployed environment.”

“Based on inaccurate information, they were mistakenly sent to the wrong room and detained an individual, not the intended role player,” the FBI said.

“First and foremost, we’d like to extend our deepest apologies to the individual who was affected by the training exercise,” USASOC Lt. Col. Mike Burns told CNN.

The exercise was meant to “enhance soldiers’ skills to operate in realistic and unfamiliar environments,” Burns said.

No one was injured, the FBI said.

Definitely one of those, "This is going to take a *long* time to explain..." type of situations.

[Suvorov]

From CNN.com (https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/us/fbi-us-army-personnel-raid-wrong-room-hotel-guest/index.html):



Definitely one of those, "This is going to take a *long* time to explain..." type of situations.

The "detained" person was a Delta Air Lines pilot on rest. No doubt ended with flights being delayed or cancelled. I just hope that the poor guy was in a "decent" condition when the door came down. :rolleyes:

[PNWTO]

Delta just can’t catch a break.

“Thanks to a paper-pushing junior SA and a hungover SNCO who can’t remember floor numbers we’ll be canceling your Easter trip.”

[wvincent]

When you don't know the "safe word".......

[Stephanie B]

Somebody needs to tell the disbursing officer to warm up the office checkbook.

If the Deltoid had been a Federal Flight Deck Officer, that might have ended very badly.

[Coyotesfan97]

General no one was more surprised than me etc

[Coyotesfan97]

Somebody needs to tell the disbursing officer to warm up the office checkbook.

Sometimes we’d say just write the check and add some zeros. Some agencies have the Lieutenant in charge of the shift authorized to cut a check on the spot up to $5,000 IIRC along with a signature on a liability waiver form. Accidental dog bite sorry here’s a check I just need you to sign this form. It saves a lot of money sometimes.

[TGS]

Sometimes we’d say just write the check and add some zeros. Some agencies have the Lieutenant in charge of the shift authorized to cut a check on the spot up to $5,000 IIRC along with a signature on a liability waiver form. Accidental dog bite sorry here’s a check I just need you to sign this form. It saves a lot of money sometimes.

ahem *clears throat* which agencies?

Staccatos are expensive, just sayin'.

[Coyotesfan97]

LASD for sure. The K9 trainer I knew from there told us about it. There other agencies in Southern California that do. I don’t know of any AZ agencies that do it. The Lieutenants we mentioned it too thought it was a good idea.

ETA I’d take 5K for some punctures. LOL

[whomever]

I saw this a couple of days ago. The mind boggles.

You would think the protocol would involve something like an inverse safe word, i.e. after you barge into the room, the role-player would say 'kumquat green' or something, and if he didn't you'd realize something was really, really wrong. I don't see that a safety check like that would overly impact the realism.

Someone needs a new career.

I'm not sure how quiet the 45 minutes in the shower was, but if it was audible outside the room there is a potential for things going really south. All things considered, I wonder if the additional realism of doing this in an actual hotel is worth the risk of things going wrong.

[Oldherkpilot]

LASD for sure. The K9 trainer I knew from there told us about it. There other agencies in Southern California that do. I don’t know of any AZ agencies that do it. The Lieutenants we mentioned it too thought it was a good idea.

ETA I’d take 5K for some punctures. LOL

Location dependent, I should think.😁

[JRB]

I saw this a couple of days ago. The mind boggles.

You would think the protocol would involve something like an inverse safe word, i.e. after you barge into the room, the role-player would say 'kumquat green' or something, and if he didn't you'd realize something was really, really wrong. I don't see that a safety check like that would overly impact the realism.

Someone needs a new career.

I'm not sure how quiet the 45 minutes in the shower was, but if it was audible outside the room there is a potential for things going really south. All things considered, I wonder if the additional realism of doing this in an actual hotel is worth the risk of things going wrong.

That'd create a training scar - real life baddies aren't going to say the right thing, and folks will hesitate thinking they needed to hear something.

No, this was all piss poor planning and really screwing it all up on a critical detail.

[Suvorov]

Add to this the chance that the person in the hotel room could be armed.

[whomever]

That'd create a training scar - real life baddies aren't going to say the right thing, and folks will hesitate thinking they needed to hear something.

I'm a little skeptical here. This isn't a split second shoot/no-shoot decision - they spent 45 minutes talking to him. You have time to e.g. ask 'what's your name' and if you don't get 'John Jacob Jenkelheimer Smith' in return you take a time out.

If you did think that asking for a name is just too unrealistic, OK, tell them the subject is wearing a tie dyed handkerchief tied around his left wrist, or is wearing one of those custom football jerseys with name 'zzzzzz' and number 13 and purple socks, or just give them a frapping picture.

I'm just not buying 'it's too hard to make sure we have the right person'.

Better still, I think, to use a room at the BOQ as the hotel room.

[Joe in PNG]

Better still, I think, to use a room at the BOQ as the hotel room.

One would think that there's some fleabag hotel or deserted apartment block or something that would be better suited for this sort of exercise than a hotel with actual paying guest inside. Or throw together a mockup in the shoot house.

Hell, reserve a whole floor for the people training, then use one of the rooms on the floor for practice.

To me, it looks like practicing automotive pursuits & PITTs on the public interstate during daylight hours.

[TC215]

It’s common for SOF guys to train in US cities.

https://coffeeordie.com/boys-are-back-in-town/

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/san-antonio-army-special-operations-exercise/

Several years ago, MARSOC wanted to come train in my city, and our SWAT team was going to get to be role players. I was pretty disappointed when it didn’t work out.

[Trigger]

I'm not sure how quiet the 45 minutes in the shower was, but if it was audible outside the room there is a potential for things going really south. All things considered, I wonder if the additional realism of doing this in an actual hotel is worth the risk of things going wrong.

45-minute interrogation in cuffs in the shower? I’m sure there was a ball-gag and a guy named Zed involved.

The jokes just write themselves.

[rcbusmc24]

You are probably going to be agast at the idea that many units, and not all of them tier 1 SOF, conduct training off of their bases. RUT exercises are particularly valuable specifically because they are conducted in unfamiliar areas and in structures that resemble reality, because they are in fact realistic. You can only hit the same training site so many times before everyone has it memorized every way. Keeping all training on base is a non starter for this reason. The site controllers just have to do their jobs properly, which didn't happen here apparently.

[TDA]

Interesting that Boston PD shows up to this thing they presumably weren’t informed of and it ends up as an Army administrative fact-finding inquiry.

[Totem Polar]

You are probably going to be agast at the idea that many units, and not all of them tier 1 SOF, conduct training off of their bases. RUT exercises are particularly valuable specifically because they are conducted in unfamiliar areas…

Hell, I’ve done more than one hang-a-shingle cool guy civilian class in unfamiliar urban environments out among the normies, and I’m just some guy. I find it very easy to believe that this sort of thing goes on all the time among organizations that actually have skin in the game. :cool:

[idahojess]

The interrogators probably got frustrated when he readily admitted he was with Delta.

[HCM]

Interesting that Boston PD shows up to this thing they presumably weren’t informed of and it ends up as an Army administrative fact-finding inquiry.

I’m not sure where in the CNN story you were getting that the Boston Police Department weren’t informed.

These things are ALWAYS DeConflicted with local agencies. I however, in a large city, just because “the agency” knows doesn’t mean every cop or dispatcher on duty knows.

Given what happened here it’s no surprise there will be an army inquiry, there will probably be an FBI OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) investigation regarding the unlawful detention as well.

DeConfliction is a very serious matter. As noted by prior posters mistakes when encountering law enforcement or other armed individuals can, and have ended badly.


https://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/02/24/soldier.killed/

Deputy kills soldier during Green Beret exercise

February 24, 2002 Posted: 9:49 PM EST (0249 GMT)

ROBBINS, North Carolina (CNN) -- A sheriff's deputy mistakenly shot and killed a U.S. soldier and seriously wounded another taking part in a role-playing field training exercise, the Moore County Sheriff's Department said Sunday.

[TQP]

I always wedge my door when I'm staying in a hotel.

After one time where the maintenance guy walked in while I was unpacking ( said that the front desk hadn't told him that someone had checked in to that room) I started doing it as soon as I got everything in.

I don't know if that would have helped this guy, but it couldn't have hurt.

[Hambo]

ETA I’d take 5K for some punctures. LOL

Pass. My young Lab didn't bite me (not sure WTF he thought he was doing), but he vise-gripped my hand sideways, bending my little and ring finger in ways they do not normally go. It hurt so fucking bad I thought I was going to pee.

[Chance]

I posted this on PF somewhere a few years ago. Exercise in New Orleans.

103502

[awp_101]

45-minute interrogation in cuffs in the shower? I’m sure there was a ball-gag and a guy named Zed involved.

The jokes just write themselves.

So who would lose their LA Boston privileges in this case?

[Suvorov]

Given all the mixups I’ve endured as a frequent user of hotels - it is also quite possible that the mistake was made on the hotels end and the fbi/army didn’t double check.

[Dog Guy]

Hotels do screw up on room occupancy. We were put up in a hotel for a night while on a fire assignment in the San Diego area. Three of the assigned rooms were occupied when our crews entered using the key card.

[JohnO]

Given all the mixups I’ve endured as a frequent user of hotels - it is also quite possible that the mistake was made on the hotels end and the fbi/army didn’t double check.

I think double & triple checking should be the norm!

https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/search_warrant

Can't even get the floor of the apartment building correct!


A 35-year-old East Street resident suspected of involvement in child pornography was found dead in his apartment Tuesday five days after police surprise-searched his apartment — as part of a raid that began with cops busting down the wrong door and handcuffing an innocent neighbor.


The raid itself took a wrong turn early Thursday morning when members of the city’s special victims unit invaded the wrong apartment before entering the intended location.

Stacey Wezenter, who lived on the floor above the now deceased man, said that she was woken up at 6 a.m. on Thursday by a crew of cops breaking down her door, pointing guns and flashlights in her direction and handcuffing her — before they realized they had, in fact, gone to the wrong apartment. They had intended to take down the door of Wezenter’s downstairs neighbor instead.

[TGS]

I think double & triple checking should be the norm!

https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/search_warrant

Can't even get the floor of the apartment building correct!

The apartment building door thing can be a bit shocking to someone that hasn't worked in LE and can't fathom how it happens.

I can't tell you the amount of shitty apartment buildings I've been in NYC, as an example, with apartment numbering that is incorrect, heavily degraded/damaged to the point of being unreadable, or both. Places where apartment 3C is marked on two different floors, for instance, or 2F has been split into two apartments and they're both just marked 2F...or the markings are so worn that you have to rely on the building super or some sort of document....which are also incorrect. I use those examples because I saw both in just one day on my last trip to NYC trying to locate someone.

There's certainly negligence that happens from time to time, but in most cases the LEOs have done their job in as reasonable manner as possible, and usually beyond what is legally required.

[TGS]

Another example in mistake of address, which could be reported in the papers as follows:

"A Hundred Federal Agents Raid 2 Wrong Houses in Small Cul-de-Sac"

We were on a warrant in a poor, rural area of a southern state. We hit our first house and our subject wasn't there, but the person there told us where the target was. So we go to that next house and have a local TFO do the reconnaissance on the target house. We can't figure out which lot in this community is our target; everything is unlabelled. It's a dirt road nestled back in the woods, with about 6-8 houses on it clustered in close proximity. A local sheriff's deputy with us tells us that he's familiar with the community and that the last one is our target, so we walk up and they answer the door and a peaceful arrest is made. At the same time, we were walking up to 2 other houses that are clearly, from our perspective, on the same lot: they are clustered near our target house, and look to be on the same lot, separated from the road and other houses by the same fence as the target house, and use the same driveway (of you could call it that) as the target house. More notably, several vehicles out of the 24 present are vehicles that are on our seizure list, belonging to our target, and several of those are parked up against those outlying structures. They appear to be outlying structures in the same lot, you might refer to them as mother-in-law suites.

While waiting for our telephonic search warrant for the new location from the judge, the case agent tells us that those other outlying structures are completely separate lots, not owned by the target. Woops. That could've been written in a completely different light by the press looking to make a headline, but I challenge any of you to point out how we didn't act reasonably and within good faith given the information we had at the time. It was complete dumb luck that we walked up to the right house on that property and didn't detain a completely uninvolved person who was living on, technically, a different piece of property according to county records. By the end of the day my 10-agent team had gathered about 70 LEOs total from other warrant teams which had already wrapped up, to help execute the search warrant on what we thought was going to be a giant multi-building operation. That's a lot of dudes with guns who, to the average person, appear at first sight to be making incursions on the 4th Amendment rights of totally uninvolved parties living at different addresses...anyone here reading the imaginary news paper would react, "How could they be so stupid!?"

So, it's not always as clear cut and easy as your daily life might lead you to believe. We ran into the same exact issues when I was in EMS, as well.

[TDA]

I’m not sure where in the CNN story you were getting that the Boston Police Department weren’t informed. [/B]

Fair enough, CNN doesn't say that, but I think that's the what they wanted to imply. Or possibly CNN is bad at reporting. I should know better, but for example Boston News Channel 7 said:

"The FBI said Boston police were called to confirm the situation was a training exercise."

https://whdh.com/news/delta-pilot-mistakenly-detained-by-federal-agents-at-boston-hotel-during-botched-training-exercise/

[HCM]

Fair enough, CNN doesn't say that, but I think that's the what they wanted to imply. Or possibly CNN is bad at reporting. I should know better, but for example Boston News Channel 7 said:

"The FBI said Boston police were called to confirm the situation was a training exercise."

https://whdh.com/news/delta-pilot-mistakenly-detained-by-federal-agents-at-boston-hotel-during-botched-training-exercise/

Most major cities have DHS grant funded intel fusion centers hosted by the largest local PD. If it be cop, encounters, someone claiming to be from some type of Occie/secret squirrel organization the first thing they’re going to do is call their own Fusion Center / intel unit because if anyone’s gonna know it’ll be the fusion guys.

Also, worth pointing out that while the military conducts overt exercises like the ones in the little bird photos, they train for lower visibility operations too.

As mentioned, there are all sorts of ways they could have wound up at the wrong hotel room and the person they would be looking for in the training scenario would likely be an outside role player not previously known to them.

[Dr_Thanatos]

https://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/02/24/soldier.killed/

Deputy kills soldier during Green Beret exercise

February 24, 2002 Posted: 9:49 PM EST (0249 GMT)

ROBBINS, North Carolina (CNN) -- A sheriff's deputy mistakenly shot and killed a U.S. soldier and seriously wounded another taking part in a role-playing field training exercise, the Moore County Sheriff's Department said Sunday.


That was a bad day at work

[Hemiram]

I'm friends with 3 retired cops, and the stories they have, and on the videos on YT about cops going to the wrong address so often just amaze me. There's a recent one where they went to the wrong address, when the number, in like 4" high digits, is on both the curb, AND above the garage. They were also on the wrong side of the street! Odds on one side, evens on the other. The correct address was on the warrant, it's mentioned over the air several times, the raid was in the daytime, and they still got it wrong. Luckily, in the incident above, nobody was hurt, just embarrassed when the old grandmother had her lunch disturbed by police screaming (Why do they do that?) "Where is ____ _____?". Of course, she had no idea who they were talking about, since they were at the wrong house, a block away and across the street from the correct house. The only injuries were to the front door the cops kicked in. They could have knocked and found out easily they were at the wrong house. What was the guy wanted for? FTA for some sort of minor fight at a bar. Simple assault. Why a big raid for something so minor? I think the answer is they like putting their gear on and playing "combat".

Yeah, sometimes the addresses are all mixed up on a street, a friend lives on one where they jump all over, or used to. But when a place has the number on the garage or whatever, what is the excuse? Laziness, just a "whatever" attitude? I don't get it.

On a happier note, I used to work in a Las Vegas hotel. One time, we had a ton of tourist buses come from LA with a few hundred people all together. Mostly retirees from city/county govt. One woman, about 65 and her daughter 43, said they didn't feel well (They had spent hours walking around downtown LV without any real water comsumption, in August). The hotel manager had a room that a bus driver had slept in only one of the two beds, and she gave it to the women to lay down in until they felt better, or it was time to get back onto the bus. Well, somehow, nobody told the incoming second shift desk clerk that that room was being occupied by the mother and daughter. The couple who was rented the room went upstairs, and opened the door to find both the mother and daughter naked. The mother was just coming out of the shower, when the door opened up. The bellhop saw them too. I was in the lobby, and the daughter's scream was from the 4th floor, but sounded like it was right above my head. "OH MY GOD!, GET OUT GET OUT!!". I go up there, and the mother is in the hallway, wrapped up in a towel, yelling at the couple and the bellhop. The daughter is in the room, curled up in the fetal position on the bed, still naked, blubbering. The mother started yelling at me, the couple did too. Why? I don't know. The hotel manager was called, she just came right back. The mother and daughter got comped a few days with food at the hotel restaurant included, along with a free Greyhound bus ticket back to LA about 4 days later. After that incident, any room occupied for any reason had a big red flag put on it on the desk "panel", so it wouldn't happen again. And yet it did. I wasn't there to see it though.

[Coyotesfan97]

I was in our Tactical Unit for twenty five years between SWAT and K9. I never put on my heavy gear thinking I was going to play “combat”. I guess unless if you consider “combat” to be standing outside in 115 degrees for hours wearing heavy shit, listening to the negotiations drag on, and waiting for the warrant to be signed. If anything you knew it was time for your low frequency/high risk game.

ETA I can only remember us going to the wrong place several times in 25 years. We had a pretty stringent scout system that got updated as needed. I’ll detail them in a later post.

[TGS]

I was in our Tactical Unit for twenty five years between SWAT and K9. I never put on my heavy gear thinking I was going to play “combat”. I guess unless if you consider “combat” to be standing outside in 115 degrees for hours wearing heavy shit, listening to the negotiations drag on, and waiting for the warrant to be signed. If anything you knew it was time for your low frequency/high risk game.

ETA I can only remember us going to the wrong place several times in 25 years. We had a pretty stringent scout system that got updated as needed. I’ll detail them in a later post.

Wearing body army is playing combat.

Because real men just like getting shot, instead.

:rolleyes:

[HCM]

Wearing body army is playing combat.

Because real men just like getting shot, instead.

:rolleyes:



“A real warrior would like to go to combat with a weapon, a loin cloth and a light coat of oil.”

- Mr. George W. Solhan, SES ... Director, Marine Corps S&T.

[Wise_A]

These things are ALWAYS DeConflicted with local agencies. I however, in a large city, just because “the agency” knows doesn’t mean every cop or dispatcher on duty knows.

Total lack of trust is real. I get it in large, underfunded agencies where dispatchers are paid less than some places pay burger flippers and have to hire what they can get. I'm not that and not even my supervisor is informed of low-level Sekrit Squirrel activities unless the guy that runs narcotics investigations tells me to sit on suspicious vehicle complaints in an area. It makes sense that the less people that know, the less information accidents can take place, but at a certain point you're shooting yourself in the foot. It's not that hard to put a piece of paper on my desk. Nobody liked it that time I pointed out how we had two units over 100 because of a "prowler" that was one of our guys, or how not knowing these things forces dispatch to play catch-up when some guy could be bleeding out on the floor.

I think that it's the result of dogshit communication in general, and a bizarre lack of redundancy and confirmation in an industry that typically lives and breathes by it.

Also, I find it abso-fucking-lutely hilarious that a bunch of guys pulling down the good money with much better retirements than me couldn't figure out how to confirm an address properly, which is the most basic and very first skill I teach a new hire in my line of work.

[Hemiram]

I was in our Tactical Unit for twenty five years between SWAT and K9. I never put on my heavy gear thinking I was going to play “combat”. I guess unless if you consider “combat” to be standing outside in 115 degrees for hours wearing heavy shit, listening to the negotiations drag on, and waiting for the warrant to be signed. If anything you knew it was time for your low frequency/high risk game.

ETA I can only remember us going to the wrong place several times in 25 years. We had a pretty stringent scout system that got updated as needed. I’ll detail them in a later post.

There should be some sort of system in place to prevent screw ups like wrong or really out of date addresses, but it seems like that's not common. Or it's ignored. When they go to the wrong house, on the wrong side of the street, or in some cases, the wrong street entirely, someone messed up, badly. I used to get mail for the house down the street from me, even though I was on the odd side, he was on the even. At least the number was close. Every mail carrier we had over almost 40 years did it. I don't know how many times I would leave for work and stop at the neighbor's house to put their main into the mailbox as I left. The names weren't similar, but it happened again and again. I don't get why, but it got to the point it was comical.

When I say "play combat", I don't mean when there is someone barricaded in a house, or a high risk suspect. It's when someone has a warrant out for a FTA on some minor thing, like a traffic ticket, and 20 guys show up in full gear, in their APC. One YT video I saw recently was a deal where the person they were looking for hadn't lived there for years(The current owners were easily found on google and the local tax site). They drove right through the gate instead of asking to come in, and even though it was late morning, they had their night vision gear on. The couple living there told them that the person they were looking for hadn't lived there for many years, but they seemed sure they were there, even though the house had changed ownership TWICE since the wanted guy's parents owned it, about 15 years ago. What was the charge? FTA for a speeding ticket and suspended license. 20 guys in full battle gear with shotguns and ARs? For that? At first I thought maybe they had problems with him getting violent in the past, but apparently, his entire record was traffic stuff, like no insurance and speeding. Knocking down the gate was a douchy move too, IMHO. Yeah, I guess they paid to fix it, but I bet it wasn't paid quickly. I don't understand the over the top raid they did at all. Kind of like the response we got at the hotel I worked at when a guest threatened suicide. Eight cars, a dozen cops, and he's sitting on the bed, eating Fritos as they knocked the door in. The PD refused to pay for the door, saying they didn't have the key. No kidding, but I DID, and I was right there, waiting to hand someone the key. The whole thing was pretty funny, but the hotel manager was not happy, as it was one of our most expensive rooms, and since they carted him off to the hospital, we got screwed on the room entirely. About 2 years later, that guy did commit suicide at the Mint, I think it was, by jumping out the window. When one of my coworkers was shot, the response by LVMPD was less than the half assed suicide "attempt".

[TGS]

. What was the charge? FTA for a speeding ticket and suspended license. 20 guys in full battle gear with shotguns and ARs? For that?

Due to staffing concerns, most police departments these days won't even send a patrol officer to go arrest someone for a bench warrant. Usually, the current standard is that the bench warrant is issued and just sits in the database until the person is randomly picked up during a police encounter, such as a traffic stop.

So, I highly doubt what you witnessed was a SWAT team being sent JUST for a failure to appear. Warrant service decisions are not made on just the current charge. If the person is known to be armed and violent tendencies or ideations, that's going to drive the decision making more than the fact it's "just" a bench warrant, and I guarantee you there's no way you're getting a SWAT team called out to serve someone for just a bench warrant on a traffic violation and no other aggravating factors.

This is multiple times now you've made flippant statements based on ignorance, and that the topic of this thread isn't even titled "Hemirams Police Trashing Bonanza". This thread, arguably, isn't even about LE...it's about the military conducting a training operation in which a LEA had been consulted.

I'm going to politely ask you that you reel your neck back in. Instead of further making assumptions and dumb statements about LE because you "don't know what you don't know." Perhaps it better to ask questions about how something that seems unreasonable at first glance might not actually be so.

[whomever]

... I guarantee you there's no way you're getting a SWAT team called out to serve someone for just a bench warrant on a traffic violation and no other aggravating factors.


Is that universally true?

I recall reading a long time ago in one of the online police magazines (policeone.com?? early 2000's??) an article titled something like 'So your department just created a SWAT team', with advice for the commander of a newly stood up SWAT department. Most of it was exactly the kind of things you would expect, but one item stood out: he advised the new commander to volunteer to do raids for low-risk warrants that would ordinarily be served by a uniformed officer or detective knocking on the door. The rationale was that it provided good low risk training for your new team.

That bothered me - I don't think I have a problem with a check-kiter getting raided for an FTA, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with drafting Mr. Check-Kiter's wife and kids as unwilling role players for a training scenario. You can argue she's getting what she deserves for living with a low life, but the kids don't get to choose their parents.

So how common is what that author recommended? No departments do it? Some do? That author was totally talking out his wazoo (which would be my preferred answer)?

[TGS]

So how common is what that author recommended? No departments do it? Some do? That author was totally talking out his wazoo (which would be my preferred answer)?

I can't provide an authoritative answer on that as I'm not on a SWAT team liaising with other SWAT teams, but the SWAT teams I've personally worked with are so busy that they fight to turn down warrants just to get a day off.

I'm sure it happens, but also keep in mind that the reasonableness of the actions must still be commensurate to the threat; the team is still held to the US Constitution, and has to justify their actions. You can't take a Bearcat and tear off the end of a trailer on an otherwise "harmless" bench warrant just because the underutilized SWAT team needs practice.

Coyotesfan97 TC215 WobblyPossum have all been on SWAT teams, they might have a better informed or more nuanced answer.

[HCM]

Total lack of trust is real. I get it in large, underfunded agencies where dispatchers are paid less than some places pay burger flippers and have to hire what they can get. I'm not that and not even my supervisor is informed of low-level Sekrit Squirrel activities unless the guy that runs narcotics investigations tells me to sit on suspicious vehicle complaints in an area. It makes sense that the less people that know, the less information accidents can take place, but at a certain point you're shooting yourself in the foot. It's not that hard to put a piece of paper on my desk. Nobody liked it that time I pointed out how we had two units over 100 because of a "prowler" that was one of our guys, or how not knowing these things forces dispatch to play catch-up when some guy could be bleeding out on the floor.

I think that it's the result of dogshit communication in general, and a bizarre lack of redundancy and confirmation in an industry that typically lives and breathes by it.

Also, I find it abso-fucking-lutely hilarious that a bunch of guys pulling down the good money with much better retirements than me couldn't figure out how to confirm an address properly, which is the most basic and very first skill I teach a new hire in my line of work.

As someone who deals with deconfliction of routine law enforcement activities like surveillance and warrant service local LE dispatch not passing info to patrol, info not being passed from one shift to another etc happens all the time.

That’s before you get into the fact that anything put out to entire department he’s probably gonna be late to someone in the media because your average local PD has more leaks than the Iraqi navy.

As far as going to the wrong address, as mentioned cops do that all the time, sometimes with deadly results. If that’s even what happened. See the comments from prior posters who worked in hotels. Swapping rooms giving out the wrong room or room key happens all the time in that industry.

[TC215]

There is a lot of BS in this thread.


Also, I find it abso-fucking-lutely hilarious that a bunch of guys pulling down the good money with much better retirements than me couldn't figure out how to confirm an address properly, which is the most basic and very first skill I teach a new hire in my line of work.

I respect your job and appreciate what you do, but you need to stop equating being a dispatcher with being the police. It is not the same.

On a SWAT job, I think it is nearly inexcusable to hit the wrong location. You generally have time for pre-planning, recon, surveillance, etc. It happens sometimes because we're human, but that doesn't make it okay.

It's different for patrol, for reasons already described. I have a co-worker that kicked down the door to the wrong apartment once to save a life. The apartment buildings were labeled wrong...not his fault. He got the call just a few moments earlier.

Several years ago, I traveled to another part of the state to assist in a takedown to arrest homicide suspects from one of my cases. Those targets ended up getting wrapped up into a federal drug/gang case, as well. A SWAT team at one of the locations hit the house next to the target house. Flash banged a kid's room, etc. It was bad, it made national news, and they wrote a big check. Luckily I was at another site when that happened.

After that, on our SWAT warrants, I started writing the house number on my arm with a sharpie, and also on the interior of the SWAT van's windshield. Occasionally we would put the affiant in the stack to point out the right house or apartment, then they would break off. Maybe that was overkill, but I was determined to not hit the wrong location.


When I say "play combat", I don't mean when there is someone barricaded in a house, or a high risk suspect. It's when someone has a warrant out for a FTA on some minor thing, like a traffic ticket, and 20 guys show up in full gear, in their APC. One YT video I saw recently was a deal where the person they were looking for hadn't lived there for years(The current owners were easily found on google and the local tax site). They drove right through the gate instead of asking to come in, and even though it was late morning, they had their night vision gear on. The couple living there told them that the person they were looking for hadn't lived there for many years, but they seemed sure they were there, even though the house had changed ownership TWICE since the wanted guy's parents owned it, about 15 years ago. What was the charge? FTA for a speeding ticket and suspended license. 20 guys in full battle gear with shotguns and ARs? For that? At first I thought maybe they had problems with him getting violent in the past, but apparently, his entire record was traffic stuff, like no insurance and speeding. Knocking down the gate was a douchy move too, IMHO. Yeah, I guess they paid to fix it, but I bet it wasn't paid quickly. I don't understand the over the top raid they did at all. Kind of like the response we got at the hotel I worked at when a guest threatened suicide. Eight cars, a dozen cops, and he's sitting on the bed, eating Fritos as they knocked the door in. The PD refused to pay for the door, saying they didn't have the key. No kidding, but I DID, and I was right there, waiting to hand someone the key. The whole thing was pretty funny, but the hotel manager was not happy, as it was one of our most expensive rooms, and since they carted him off to the hospital, we got screwed on the room entirely. About 2 years later, that guy did commit suicide at the Mint, I think it was, by jumping out the window. When one of my coworkers was shot, the response by LVMPD was less than the half assed suicide "attempt".

You should quit getting your information from YouTube.


Is that universally true?

I recall reading a long time ago in one of the online police magazines (policeone.com?? early 2000's??) an article titled something like 'So your department just created a SWAT team', with advice for the commander of a newly stood up SWAT department. Most of it was exactly the kind of things you would expect, but one item stood out: he advised the new commander to volunteer to do raids for low-risk warrants that would ordinarily be served by a uniformed officer or detective knocking on the door. The rationale was that it provided good low risk training for your new team.

That bothered me - I don't think I have a problem with a check-kiter getting raided for an FTA, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with drafting Mr. Check-Kiter's wife and kids as unwilling role players for a training scenario. You can argue she's getting what she deserves for living with a low life, but the kids don't get to choose their parents.

So how common is what that author recommended? No departments do it? Some do? That author was totally talking out his wazoo (which would be my preferred answer)?

FTA keeps getting thrown around. FTAs can be for different things. I arrested a guy on a state FTA a few weeks ago. I had aviation support, tech agent support, analyst support, etc, and was on surveillance for like 9 hours. His FTA stemmed from a shooting incident with local LE and he was carrying a Gen5 G22.

SWAT teams are a use of force, and I've seen departments get sued for excessive force for using SWAT teams on minor things. That being said, there are some calls where there is some discretion on using the team or not. You just have to articulate why you're using them.

Even HRT picks up drug search warrants and high-risk arrests just to stay sharp with real-world expereice, because it's not like they're getting hostage calls every day.

[DpdG]

Policing can be extremely regional, so I hesitate to speak in absolutes, but there has been a LOT of changes in all aspects of policing and SWAT specifically in the last 20 years. I would highly caution against using a trade magazine article from 20 years ago as an indicator of current industry practices.

The NTOA (trade organization for tactical teams) sets standards for all teams, although they are voluntary, that include the use of threat matrixes to determine the appropriateness for team utilization. Under current standards the use of a team for routine warrant service without significant aggravating factors would be highly discouraged if not outright prohibited.

One final note- cops in overt vests does not a SWAT team make. I’ve heard many amalgamations of patrol officers being called a SWAT team inappropriately. Then there’s the conversation regarding full-time teams vs. well run multi-jurisdictional collateral duty teams, plus the agency of 30 officers with a 20 person “team.” Regardless, I would be very doubtful even the most podunky “team” would do a team hit for simple traffic/FTA warrants.

[Coyotesfan97]

Is that universally true?

I recall reading a long time ago in one of the online police magazines (policeone.com?? early 2000's??) an article titled something like 'So your department just created a SWAT team', with advice for the commander of a newly stood up SWAT department. Most of it was exactly the kind of things you would expect, but one item stood out: he advised the new commander to volunteer to do raids for low-risk warrants that would ordinarily be served by a uniformed officer or detective knocking on the door. The rationale was that it provided good low risk training for your new team.

That bothered me - I don't think I have a problem with a check-kiter getting raided for an FTA, but I'm pretty uncomfortable with drafting Mr. Check-Kiter's wife and kids as unwilling role players for a training scenario. You can argue she's getting what she deserves for living with a low life, but the kids don't get to choose their parents.

So how common is what that author recommended? No departments do it? Some do? That author was totally talking out his wazoo (which would be my preferred answer)?


I can't provide an authoritative answer on that as I'm not on a SWAT team liaising with other SWAT teams, but the SWAT teams I've personally worked with are so busy that they fight to turn down warrants just to get a day off.

I'm sure it happens, but also keep in mind that the reasonableness of the actions must still be commensurate to the threat; the team is still held to the US Constitution, and has to justify their actions. You can't take a Bearcat and tear off the end of a trailer on an otherwise "harmless" bench warrant just because the underutilized SWAT team needs practice.

Coyotesfan97 TC215 WobblyPossum have all been on SWAT teams, they might have a better informed or more nuanced answer.

First of all there’s a difference between serving a search warrant vs an arrest warrant. My Department had to crack down on search warrant services by other units because they were ignoring aggravating factors like weapons in the structure, violence potential, number of suspects etc to avoid calling SWAT. Fortunately nothing really horrible happened before it got fixed. But there was a lot of mistaking good luck for good tactics.

I’m retired now but my team served a lot of “low risk” search warrants if someone was in the structure. If it was a high likelihood that no one was in the structure the other units could serve search warrants. How SWAT served warrants depended on the suspects involved. I’ve seen it where warrants were served by SWAT guys in patrol garb knocking on the front door with the team parked nearby in case shit hit the fan. The overwhelming majority of our search warrant services started with surround and call outs. How the tactics involved from there was dependent on the compliance of the suspect(s) inside.

How we served warrants in the late 90s and early 2000s was a lot different from how we served warrants 20 years later. When I started in the mid 90s it was dynamic entries for search warrants which evolved into surround and call outs with slow and deliberate searches with a K9 often searching ahead of the team. Could a “ low level” warrant be considered training for a higher risk warrant? I’d say yes as doing the real thing is always keeping you sharp as long as you’re working on good tactics.

I can fucking guarantee that our SWAT team wouldn’t be called out to serve an arrest warrant on a misdemeanor absent a lot of aggravating factors. Even if the suspect is a violent, armed suspect we are not going strictly to serve that arrest warrant. But I would bet a lot of money our patrol lieutenants wouldn’t even call SWAT on that scenario. Patrol might surround the house and try to call him out but if he wouldn’t come out they’d walk away.

[WobblyPossum]

A lot of good information has already been presented by people with actual experience doing the things being discussed so I don’t have much to add. There are numerous reasons that the police might end up at the wrong location that aren’t their fault: hotels booked things incorrectly or swapped someone’s room, houses that don’t have numbers on them, street signs that have been vandalized or purposely rotated to make things harder for LE, poor building management that labels things inconsistently, etc. Usually these mistakes result in some embarrassment and a check being written. Sometimes they end in tragedy. As TC215 explained, there’s less of a reason for a tactical team to hit the wrong house because of the nature of the job. If it’s a warrant service planned in advance, there’s time for surveillance, meeting with the case agents, and getting an aerial asset to fly over the residence. If the team is called out to respond to something patrol initiated like a domestic that turned into a barricaded subject, then the correct house will already have a bunch of police present. For emergencies at the patrol level like 911 calls that start with “it sounds like my neighbor is beating his baby mama to death, you guys have to come now,” it gets easier to see how an officer could kick in the wrong door when combined with those factors discussed earlier.

When I first read about the incident that precipitated this thread, I imagined myself in that situation as the hotel guest. During the brief time I was on my AOR’s team, I spent a lot of nights in hotel rooms for operations and training. I had my duty pistol in my waistband or on the night stand and my rifle in condition 3 by the bed. I’m only assuming here, but my guess is the military folks and their FBI counterparts weren’t armed with live ammunition because this was a training scenario involving role players in a public location. If they had aggressively entered the room of someone armed who wasn’t expecting to be part of a training scenario that night, someone likely would have been hurt. I’d gotten lax about actually having a door stop with me in hotel rooms. That’s going to change going forward. It’s a simple thing that can buy just enough time for people to figure out they’re trying to enter the wrong hotel room.

[TDA]

If I were going to try to redeem myself by saying something not stupid, it would be that if you’re simulating making a covert entry to a hotel room with your role player in it, you should probably use the a keycard/key coded to the room you rented, and just pretend it’s a master you swiped from housekeeping or got from the management. That way you have a check if it turns out you’re on the third floor instead of the fifth or something.

[rcbusmc24]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-police-wrong-house-fatal-shooting-homeowner-new-mexico-rcna79848

This just happened, and the sequence of events appeared to unfold exactly like what several of our officer members have described...horrific tragedy for everyone involved.

[Wise_A]

I respect your job and appreciate what you do, but you need to stop equating being a dispatcher with being the police. It is not the same.

I'm clearly being facetious. Slow your roll.

One team.


As far as going to the wrong address, as mentioned cops do that all the time, sometimes with deadly results.

I'll take "Shit That Keeps Me Up At Night" for 600, Alex.

[kwb377]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-police-wrong-house-fatal-shooting-homeowner-new-mexico-rcna79848

This just happened, and the sequence of events appeared to unfold exactly like what several of our officer members have described...horrific tragedy for everyone involved.


I wasn't able to watch the video, just read the article...

This happens all the time. Most people don't put their house numbers on their house. And if they do, there's no "standard" for posting house numbers...some people put them on their mailbox (although sometimes mailboxes are clustered together and even if numbered, which box goes to which house?), some paint them on the curb, some post them near the front door, some put them on a cute wooden sign they got at the Arts & Crafts show and nail it to a tree in the dark corner of their yard opposite from their driveway and front door., or it's posted and blocked by a vehicle/hedges/etc.

On the other hand, answering the door by pointing a handgun at whoever is there is just fucking stupid. Even if you didn't call the police, there are thousands of reasons they could be knocking on your door at a late hour. "Hi, we got a report of a possible domestic happening in the area...have you heard anything?", "We were patrolling and noticed the window was busted out of your car...you wanna come take a look and see if anything is missing?", "Your neighbor's house in on fire...we'd like to evacuate you just in case.", "Are you the relatives of John Doe? Unfortunately, he was involved in a vehicle crash and was killed...", etc.

If I'm awoken by knocks on my door, I'm at least going to look out a window and try to ascertain who it might be before opening the door. Could be a family member, could be someone lost and thinking they're at someone else's house, or it could be police. If I see a few people in uniform, I'm not answering the door with my gun in hand. This was a case of officers looking for one dipshit but finding another.

[Eric_L]

TC215 your post and comments are the level of dedication I hope for in gun carrying government representatives. (LE).

“It happens sometimes because we're human, but that doesn't make it okay.“ As people we do make mistakes but we all should strive to minimize them and do well, especially in this high stake area.

Thank You.

[JohnO]

Earlier in the thread I posted about a recent incident where police hit the wrong apartment.

Here is something interesting that came out regarding the guy they were after. Perhaps missing his floor gave him time to solve the taxpayers problem.


Former Planned Parenthood director under investigation for child porn commits suicide

Wanted on charges of child pornography, the former director of strategic communications at the Southern New England branch of Planned Parenthood, Tim Yergeau, 36, committed suicide on Tuesday. On April 6th, police from the New Haven Special Victims Unit investigating Yergeau raided his neighbors house by accident looking to arrest the 36-year old.



https://thepostmillennial.com/former-planned-parenthood-director-under-investigation-for-child-porn-commits-suicide