Sadly, justice has not been served.
True -- no police officers were prosecuted for the fuster cluck.
The bad news is that he was ever charged in the first place. And that police departments across the country continue to put themselves and the public at risk by conducting such volatile, high-stakes raids not just on people suspected of nonviolent, consensual crimes but also on people like Rosas, who aren’t even suspected of such crimes but merely happen to be related or connected to someone who is.
I've been saying for years that no knock, "dynamic entry" warrants should be totally outlawed. Same with the so-called "knock and enter" warrants, which is when the cops stand outside the door, tap a couple of times, whisper "
POLICE," wait 9.73 seconds, and THEN smash down the door.
The state’s case against Rosas was weak. The cops did no surveillance on the house before the raid. They didn’t verify that Rosas’s nephew was in the home at the time of the raid. They subjected not only Rosas to the violent tactics but also his elderly, disabled mother, who could also have been injured or killed in the gunfire. The officers gave conflicting testimony about his demeanor after the raid. Some said he was uncooperative and profane (both of which would have been perfectly understandable, given the circumstances). Others said he was cooperative and apologetic. Before deliberations, the judge in the case instructed jurors to factor in the fact that the state had failed to produce some critical evidence and that they should consider that evidence unfavorable to the state. Prosecutors eventually dropped the attempted capital murder charges but pressed on with the multiple charges of aggravated assault.
Business as usual. This is why/how there are no knock, dynamic entry warrants being served at incorrect addresses, or at correct addresses except that the subject of the warrant moved out MONTHS before, yada, yada.
The CATO institute tracks this kind of stuff. It's pretty scary, actually.
A number of the comments fault the police higher-ups, and I agree with that. But there's another group that also bears a lot of culpability -- the judges who sign these warrants. They should be FORCED to read every single report of a SWAT "warrant service" in complete, agonizing, excruciating detail before they are ever allowed to consider signing one of these warrants. Better yet, the legislatures should just make all such raids illegal. They endanger the police, they endanger innocent people, and they endanger people who may live in proximity to a house being raided.
