An Austrian SWAT team learned the perils of working in the dark this week (as did an innocent family) when the police decided to leave off hall lights in an apartment building so not to alert the suspect. The problem is that, with the lights off, they could not make out the door numbers and raided the wrong unit.
Police official Josef Knoflach admitted that the SWAT team in the southern city of Klagenfurt used a battering ram to raid the wrong unit and surrounded its still sleeping tenant with drawn guns.
Eventually, they went across the hall to the correct apartment and surprisingly two men were still in the unit, where the police found cocaine, cannabis and cash.
As for the innocent victim, he received a compensation form.
Source: ABC
@jdgalt
Nick is the resident troll. He is retired (at least that is what he says) and he has to do something with his free time. Throwing out off topic one liners is his part of his schtick.
ishobo – I would think that even calling someone the resident troll is both uncivil and trolling.
Ain’t that American….
If I remember my history, the NAZIs didn’t shoot any dogs.
Paul C. Schulte
when the twitchy firm was SWATed the other day and it was live streamed, everything did go down exactly how it should have happened (other than it shouldn’t have happened to begin with). The cops were very professional.
Other than the obvious 4th Amendment violation. They started going through the guy’s phone, which as of Riley is not OK.
Liz – yes, thank you for noting that. However, they did not do anything with it. Not sure why they were looking at it except to see if maybe he had called 911. They didn’t seem to have it long.
Still, we have heard the kid interviewed, I would like an interview with the cop who went through the kid’s phone.
jdalt, If you look through the archives there are MANY posts on the problems w/ US police. So, chill. And Austria still has a good % of anti-Semites.
Why call out countries where the police use their weapons a tiny fraction as much as here in the US? Our victims wouldn’t even be offered compensation, and the cops would arrest every person in sight (and shoot every dog) whether they realized their mistake or not.
There’s a valid comparison to Nazis here, but it’s not in Austria.
The business owner building the lard pit better check with his insurer and his property insurance company. Such booby traps can injure first responders entering a building under appropriate circumstances. If your business is on fire, you don’t want the firefighters falling into a flaming pit of pork fat.
I visited a business in Ferguson which had been looted by the out of town looters cashing in on the protestor antics. The business owner confided that he had a new set up for burglars which was being built as we spoke. It was simple. Just inside the outter door was a trap door in the floor which was a foot wider than the door on either side and extended inward about 8 feet. If the door was opened without the right code then the trap door would fall open and take down the intruder. Down below in the cellar was a huge vat of lard. The burglar would fall in and be covered in lard and have no escape. The alarms would go off of course. I wont reveal which business it was. The owner said that he could rely on the Ferguson Police to watch over his place but when the Saint Louis County Police took over they allowed the looters to come in and wreck the places so as to prove a point. The point was that the phrase Hands Up! Dont Shoot! has a follow up phrase: We just wanna Loot!
In my mind looters need to be larded over and perhaps drown in lard. God knows that those protestors praise the Lard too much.
So the Keystone cops weren’t joking? If it is agenda 21 to shove everyone into multiple-occupancy the PR people need to concentrate on the police. Give me a bungalow on the suburbs any time.
The problem is that it seems government institutions are populated by people who were never civilized by their parents. My parents taught me that I am responsible for the damage I cause whether I meant to do it or not.
The SWAT team operations commander got the wrong address, but the pizza delivery guy gets it right? I’d lawyer up and go over that compensation form with a fine tooth comb.
Speaking of which, American police departments have not been big on compensation in advance. I think they could cut their costs a lot if they would admit they were wrong right from the beginning and agree to fix any damages immediately.
Here he would have resisted arrest by being in the wrong apartment. However, when the twitchy firm was SWATed the other day and it was live streamed, everything did go down exactly how it should have happened (other than it shouldn’t have happened to begin with). The cops were very professional.
On the down side, the fact that they carry a compensation form with them shows that they expect to cause some little problem at the scene.
From the nation that brought you Adolph and Arnold.
Reblogged this on sea-swoon.
“Man up and tak responsibility”. Do you think any of our leaders know how to do that? Local, state or federal.
A careless error. What is notable however is that they provided a compensation form to the tenants immediately so that they could start the process rather than perhaps here where a big legal battle and the city would fight them every step of the way.
I don’t know what the process is after completing this form, but that is certainly more promising than the attitude of “We didn’t screw up, and we’re not paying anything.”
The point is that sometimes errors are made, whether they be large or small in consequence. In simple terms just man up and take responsibility.
At least it didn’t happen in the US. This time………
Night vision? flashlight maybe? a spare smartphone would work. This level of incompetence strains credulity.