Sorry if I've missed anything - I only did a cursory Googling - but I tried to follow up on the unfortunate shooting of Police Chief Louis Ross during a raid on Dallas Horton's home. As a reminder, the incident was interesting because the police chief is black, the shooter is white, and none of the police on the scene returned fire.
First off some good news, the police chief survived. The rounds were low caliber, and he borrowed a bulletproof vest from someone just prior to the raid. He received severe bruising, and one bullet went cleanly through an arm, but from what I can tell he was "only" hospitalized for a matter of weeks.
The cause for the raid was a fake bomb threat from a caller who claimed to be Dallas Horton, the suspect. Apparently this is called "SWATing", a tactic used to sic police on someone maliciously. A felony of course, but
I didn't see any sign that the caller was found. I didn't look close enough! James Edward Holly was arrested on Tuesday (Jan 17 I think) and faced $100,000 bail. His preliminary hearing is in late March. So, there is some justice there at least.
http://www.koco.com/news/bond-set-at-100000-for-sentinel-man-in-connection-to-bomb-threat/30857522To summarize the incident, the police conducted a raid on Horton's home while also investigating the bomb threat target. During the raid Horton shot the police chief four times, then surrendered claiming a misunderstanding. The police fired no shots. The fake call was placed at 4AM, the raid occurred some time that morning.
Here's where it gets weird. According to freethoughtproject, Mayor Sam Dlugonsky said the deputies traced the call to Horton's house. I didn't see the actual quote though, and think freethoughtproject may have paraphrased inaccurately... Unless looking at (trivialy forged) caller-ID counts as "tracing". The mayor did say "They made entry, cleared the first bedroom, started to clear the second bedroom, he opened fire on police and shot our chief three times in the chest and once in the arm,"
The obvious question is "Why didn't the police return fire?". An officer was down, right? Well, sorta. Here's part of the account from the officer who dragged the police chief to safety and applied pressure until paramedics arrived:
"After that, the next thing I hear is gunfire," Stewart said. "I turn around, and Officer Louis is backing away, saying he’s hit.”
http://www.koco.com/news/undersheriff-deputy-describe-saving-police-chiefs-life/30873350Horton didn't shoot any more after that. It sounds like he realized the intruders were police and surrendered, though I wonder if he was tased... didn't see any mention of tasing, but it would make sense. He claims he had no idea he was shooting at cops.
And here's where I'll volunteer my opinion: I believe him. This was a no-knock raid, probably before 7AM (the hoax call was placed at 4AM). The wounded police chief says the cops were loudly announcing their presence, but... were they? The internal investigation concluded that Horton didn't know. Maybe they were shouting (the other officers would confirm it to the board) but the investigation decided that Horton was reasonably confused being woken up by shouting intruders. I don't know how I would react, if I had a gun and was woken up at 5AM.
Though, it *could* be a conspiracy. Honestly. Police Chief Ross was shot 4 times, three of them in the chest. Horton didn't fire on anyone else. Ross normally wouldn't have had a bulletproof vest and would have almost certainly died, except that:
Minutes before kicking in the door, Loftiss noticed that Ross wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest.
“I went to my patrol vehicle and pulled my entry vest out and gave it to him to wear,” Loftiss said.
Furthermore, Horton himself is a vocal proponent of... gun rights, among other things. If they needed someone to "accidentally" shoot a cop, they couldn't have picked a better fall guy. Perhaps the plan was for him to get involuntarily manslaughter.
The cops don't have to be in on it, though... It might have just been Horton and Holly, setting up an excuse to kill the police chief. Or possibly even just Holly (the fake caller).
As for why they would target the police chief specifically? His wife is white.
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Topic: The Abusive Policing Thread: Beyond Brown, No Justice (Read 443971 times)