Radley Balko: His Police raid Fail of the day.
In January 1992, a Gregg County, Texas narcotics team conducted a 2 am raid on the home of 84-year-old Annie Rae Dixon. According to police, an informant told them he had bought crack from Dixon's granddaughter.
Dixon, a paraplegic, was also bedridden with pneumonia at the time. When Officer Frank Baggett, Jr. kicked open the door to Dixon's bedroom, he'd say later, he stumbled, causing his gun to accidentally discharge, which sent a bullet directly into Dixon's chest. She died moments later. There were no drugs in Dixon's home. The raid team was also out of its jurisdiction. Dixon lived just across the county line in Smith County.
A subsequent inquest split with a hung verdict, divided along racial lines. (Baggett is white, Dixon was black.) Five months later a grand jury declined to charge Baggett with a crime. Dixon's death set off racial tensions in the town of Tyler. Andrew Mellontree, a black county commissioner, expressed the frustration of blacks in the area to the New York Times. "People can't accept the idea that a 84-year-old grandmother gets shot in her bed and it's not even worth a negligence charge," he said.
More at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/raid-of-the-day-annie-rae_n_2615079.html?utm_hp_ref=the-agitator
Balko is great reporter on Police abuse. Bookmark his site. It is worth it.
His new book is "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" is due out in July
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