Do you think the cops are the ones that should be punished for this? Was the one charged the one that requested the warrant?
It seems to me they are just the ones at the tail end. The system is set up to do exactly what happened. Punishing the officer won't change anything.
I think the officers should be charged. I very much think the sack of excrement who filled out the warrant application should be charged with perjury, or making false statements on an official document. They person they were after wasn't even there. The warrant was a result of sloppy detective work. It was akin to other incidents in which police have served no-knock warrants on innocent occupants of their own homes when the person the cops were after had moved out months or even years before.
As to the other cops -- I'm pretty certain they took an oath to support and defend the Constitution. The Constitution supposedly protects the People from unreasonable searches. IMHO, except in the rare cases of actual armed and dangerous fugitives, no knock and "knock and announce" (which, as executed, are virtually indistinguishable from no knock) warrants should never be issued. If some judge is dumb enough to issue such a warrant in a case like this, then the cops should refuse to serve it. Saying they were just following orders wasn't good enough at the Nuremberg trials, why is it good enough for American police officers -- who killed an innocent person?
