The Detroit Police Department is being accused of misrepresenting an incident where a 7-year-old girl was shot to death in a police raid. Michigan attorney Geoffrey Fieger had obtained a video footage of the shooting captured by a crew filming for "The First 48." He didn't say how he got the tape, but that it shows officers rushing the home and throwing a flash grenade through a window before an officer fires into the house from the front porch. Assistant Police Chief Ralph Godbee says that the members of the Detroit Police Special Response Team came to the house and announced themselves as police. The officers used a "flash bang" device, entered the house and came across a 46-year-old female in the front room. Godbee says that what happened next is still under investigation, but an officer and the woman had some kind of physical contact and the officer's weapon discharged which struck Alyana Stanley Jones in the neck/head area.
The Police were executing a search warrant. They were searching for the suspect in a shooting that killed a high school student. Godbee said that the suspect was found and arrested at the home where the girl was shot.
Fieger called the explanation "entirely false." He had seen the tape and said that it portrays the grenade device was thrown and a shot was fired. The murder suspect wasn't found in Alyana's house, but in an upstairs apartment next door where he surrendered.
Godbee says that he wished to express to the Jones family the sorrow that they feel at the police department. The police got the high-risk search warrant based on intelligence. Because of the violent nature of the suspect, it was determined to be the best interest to execute the search warrant a.s.a.p.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/05/16/michigan.police.child/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29
I feel truly sorry for Alyana Stanley Jones family because they lost a child, a sister, and a family member all due to the police searching for a murderer. In the article it said that the police got a search warrant for the Jones house but not for the home next door. I think that they should have got a search warrant for the houses on either side of the Jone's house because that way they have 2 other possibilities for where the suspect might be. Although they got the warrant based on intelligence, I think that they still probably weren't sure whether or not the suspect was specifically in that house.
I think that if the police announced that they were police then they should have just gone and knocked on the door and if no one came then they could try opening the door to get in. I think that throwing a flash grenada in the window and firing a shot from the porch was a poor choice because that is probably why the woman was a little defensive. She probably thought that they were there it take something from her, like maybe her children. I think that they way they went about entering the home wasn't a very good plan.
I hope that they family is doing okay and that they get the answers they need as soon as possible.
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