A narcotics officer with the North Little Rock (Arkansas) Police
Department received information on December 20, 2007 that a woman known
only as Kate was selling methamphetamine out of the house at 400 East
21st Street. The confidential informant who said he'd purchased meth
there, didn't know who owned the dwelling, if other people lived there,
how much drug activity was going on at that location, or anything about
Kate other than she usually carried a gun. A judge, relying entirely on
this sketchy report from a confidential informant, issued a nighttime
no-knock warrant to search the house.
At 7:40 PM, 17 days after the judge issued the warrant, Tracy
Ingle, a 40-year-old former stonemason with a bad back, was asleep in
his first floor bedroom in the back of the house at 400 East 21st
Street. Mr. Ingle awoke with a start at the sound of a SWAT battering
ram breaking down his front door. He instinctively reached for his
pistol, the unloaded and broken handgun he kept at his bedside to scare
off intruders. This would not be the first time burglars had broken into
his home. Suddenly, a flashbang grenade came though the window near his
bed, filling the room with blinding light. The SWAT officer who climbed
into the bedroom through the broken window yelled, "He's got a gun!"
That's when the shooting started. The first bullet, fired from a
.223-caliber semiautomatic rifle, tore into Ingle's left leg just above
the knee. As he dropped to the floor, SWAT officers outside the window
fired 20 more shots, hitting Ingle in the arm, calf, hip, and chest.
Moments later, several officers were in the room. One of the officers
kept referring to Ingle as Michael or Mike. Before being rushed to the
Baptist Health Hospital, Ingle said, "My name is not Mike."
The police did not find methamphetamine or any other illegal drug at
Tracy Ingle's house. They didn't find Kate, whoever she was, or any
incriminating evidence in Ingle's car. They did seize a digital scale
and a few baggies, common household items they designated as drug
paraphernalia. Ingle's sister, a surgical nurse who made jewelry as a
hobby, told the police the scale and baggies belonged to her.
Because the police had broken into Ingle's house and shot him five
times, then failed to find the drugs they had raided the house for, they
had to charge him with something. And they did: two counts of
aggravated assault for picking up the handgun in self defense, and
felony possession of drug paraphernalia. The North Little Rock police,
in a botched drug raid, had almost killed a citizen who had never been
convicted of a felony. Instead of apologizing for their shoddy, reckless
work, and overaggressive tactics, they wanted to send Tracy Ingle to
prison.
Ten days after the shooting, the hospital discharged Ingle from the
intensive care unit. Police officers immediately picked him up and
drove him to the police station. For the next six hours, detectives
grilled Ingle without an attorney present. From the interrogation room,
they hauled him to the Pulaski County Jail, where they booked him, still
in his hospital-issued clothing. When they released Ingle four days
later (he had sold his car to make bail), his wounds had become infected
because he had been unable to change his bandages every six hours.
The internal affairs investigation of the shooting cleared the two
SWAT officers who had shot Ingle of wrongdoing. Seeing the gun in
Ingle's hand, they had responded appropriately. Responsibility for this
drug enforcement fiasco rested on the shoulders of the case detective
and the judge who has signed the no-knock search warrant. Ingle, who
couldn't afford to hire a lawyer, finally caught a break in May when
John Wesley Hall, a well-known Arkansas defense attorney, agreed to
represent him.
In an April 2008 interview conducted by a reporter with the Arkansas Times,
North Little Rock Chief of Police Danny Bradley spoke about the
department's SWAT team, officer safety, and police militarism. Because
North Little Rock is a small city of 50,000, the SWAT team was made up
of 12 to 15 regular-duty patrolmen and detectives assigned to the squad
part time. These officers trained for the position twice a month. The
chief said he deployed the unit only in high-risk situations. "If we
have any doubts about detectives and uniformed officers being able to
execute the warrant safely we're going to use the SWAT team. I would
rather spend the extra money that it takes to get the SWAT team together
than risk someone getting injured." (By "someone," the chief was
obviously not thinking of a civilian. In modern police work, officer
safety trumps citizen safety. That's just the way it is.)
Chief Bradley, regarding nighttime no-knock home invasions such as
the one that got Tracy Ingle shot and almost killed, said, "How do you
weigh a situation where executing a warrant safely means exploiting the
element of surprise, versus the natural reaction of a person when
someone is intruding into his house? It's a dangerous business." (Yes,
but for whom? Body-armored cops with assault rifles, or innocent people
who are taken by surprise because they were not violating the law?) The
chief allowed that he didn't like the phrase "war on drugs" because he
didn't want his officers thinking they were soldiers, and drug suspects
their enemy. In that regard, he had worked to eliminate some of the
militaristic trappings of the force. For example, he had switched his
regular patrol officers out of their "fatigue-looking" uniforms. (This
suggests there must have been citizen complains along these lines.)
Tracy Ingle's attorney, on September 8, 2008, filed a motion to
suppress the evidence against his client. John Wesley Hall argued that
owing to the vagueness of the informant's report, the warrant
authorizing the raid lacked sufficient probable cause, which rendered
the evidence against Ingle inadmissible. Moreover, had there been
sufficient probable cause in the first place, it had been severely
attenuated by the 17-day delay in the warrant's execution. In other
words, the evidence had grown stale. (Under Arkansas law, search
warrants must be served within a reasonable time, but not more than 60
days after issue.)
The judge denied attorney Hall's motion, and in March 2009, a jury
found Tracy Ingle guilty of maintaining a drug house, and of felony
assault. The judge sentenced him to 18 years in prison, and fined him
$18,000. Tracy Ingle took his case to the Arkansas Court of Appeals,
which, on May 12, 2010, affirmed his conviction.
Source:
If you go to the source link and read the comments you see two links that are suppose to contradict this story. From what I read this seems like there are some holes that are being covered up and a severe lack of supporting evidence. Thats just my opinion, the links are below you can form your own...
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2009/04/16/1035886-nlr-cops-see-vindication-update
http://opinions.aoc.arkansas.gov/WebLink8/0/doc/47102/Electronic.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment
How does this make you feel?