{"id":61055,"date":"2015-07-27T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=61055"},"modified":"2015-07-26T16:55:47","modified_gmt":"2015-07-26T20:55:47","slug":"alex-horton-caught-up-in-a-police-raid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61055","title":{"rendered":"Alex Horton caught up in a police raid"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the pages of the Washington Post<\/a>, our long-time friend, Alex Horton writes about his adventures with the Fairfax, Virginia County Police. His building manager moved him into an unoccupied apartment while repairs were being done on his own home. Some of the neighbors of that new apartment were unaware of the arrangement and called the police.<\/p>\n

An unspecified number of police officers busted in on an unsuspecting Horton, cuffed him in his boxer shorts and then conducted their investigation of the situation finding Horton completely innocent of squatting in an empty apartment.<\/p>\n

Of course, they could have done that before they charged into the apartment, guns drawn and at the ready arousing Horton from his party-induced stupor. However doing it that way would have robbed the officer of rushing into the home of an innocent man and cuffing him. <\/p>\n

Alex went to the patrol supervisor later;<\/p>\n

I asked why his officers hadn\u2019t contacted management before they raided the apartment. Why did they classify the incident as a forced entry, when the information they had suggested something innocuous? Why not evaluate the situation before escalating it?<\/p>\n

Rhoads defended the procedure, calling the officers\u2019 actions \u201con point.\u201d It\u2019s not standard to conduct investigations beforehand because that delays the apprehension of suspects, he told me.<\/p>\n

I noted that the officers could have sought information from the apartment complex\u2019s security guard that would have resolved the matter without violence. But he played down the importance of such information: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter whatsoever what was said or not said at the security booth.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, yes, it does matter. Horton recounts his experience as an infantryman kicking down doors in Iraq and how being on the trigger side of similar confrontations prevented him from acting a fool and endangering himself and the officers. The officers could have contained Horton in the apartment while they checked on his presence in the apartment without him even knowing they had been there as long as he remained in the apartment.<\/p>\n

People who know me, know that I support police officers, generally, but there are incidents like this and some of the encounters that I’ve had, which make me question their training. Yes, I want them all to go home at the end of their shifts in the same condition that they left their homes, but I also want them to respect the rights of all Americans.<\/p>\n

The Fairfax County police chief<\/a>, assures us that there will be an investigation of the incident to determine “if the conduct by the officers involved was in compliance with our policies related to all operational conduct in this matter”. <\/p>\n

If the officers’ conduct was in compliance with the department’s policies, they need to take a hard look at those policies and start coming down on the side of human rights, but not at the expense of officer safety. In this case, at least, officers were needlessly placed in danger by their own actions, or lack of action, not to mention the pointless exposure of Alex Horton to danger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the pages of the Washington Post, our long-time friend, Alex Horton writes about his adventures … Alex Horton caught up in a police raid<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[227],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/61056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}