Kentucky Cops Raid Wrong Home, Kill Innocent Man over Alleged Stolen Weed Eater | Hacker News Reader

Kentucky Cops Raid Wrong Home, Kill Innocent Man over Alleged Stolen Weed Eater

atlantablackstar.com

43 pointspseudolus23 comments

They cant produce the warrant, they were out of jurisdiction, they raided the wrong house after being given the correct address 5 times.

This was not just some weedeater, I'm sure it belonged to a family member of one of the cops.

Seriously, most car thefts go un investigated. Am I really being asked to believe a warrant and nighttime raid was ordered over a hedge trimmer?

The weed eater apparently belonged to a local "judge-executive".

What a shocking revelation.

Interesting how cops get off, seemingly reliably, in cases like this.

Sure we need protection that the law provides via protectors like police.

But this is stupid in practice. Not what we need. So it should be changed. Punishment seems crucial to affect change.

The police murdered a man, and if we were to pretend we didn't have a multi-tiered justice system, every officer could get charged with murder too, as they were accomplices during the act.

But of course nothing will change because they only killed a normal person.

> Seriously, most car thefts go un investigated.

This isn't true

> Am I really being asked to believe a warrant and nighttime raid was ordered over a hedge trimmer?

Yes, in fact, you say directly right before you'd like us to assume so, and assume that there was special attention to this case because someone important asked for it.

That seems reasonable.

The rest...not sure what you mean by "nighttime" or "raid" here.

Multiple cops doesn't imply what people generally would understand by " raid".

By default, due to safety protocols, there are multiple cops. The edge case is when there's one, you're extremely cooperative, and it's a minor infraction. I've watched too many police body cam videos, if its anything outside of that, they call for backup immediately.

I'd bet $1000 it was a search warrant served over a weed eater that had particular interest to a powerful figure, yet that it was all standard behavior.

Occam's razor here is what I see over and over again on bodycams: police protocols are designed to keep cops safe, and the proliferation of handguns creates charged situations that don't need to exist.

The article directly calls it a raid. It also says the raid happened at 11:55pm.

Also only 10% of auto thefts result in an actual police investigation.

Nah Mandela Effect: the article you read / source you read said 10% were solved, not that 10% were investigated.

To wit:

Title: Big Rise In US Car Thefts Date: January 24th, 2024 Link: https://www.newsweek.com/car-theft-rise-fbi-council-criminal...

"The "clearance rate" or rate of solving car thefts, has dropped from 26 percent in 1964 to 9 percent in 2022.

In comparison, the 2022 clearance rate was 12 percent for larceny and 13 percent for burglary. The homicide clearance rate in 2022 was about 50 percent."

> the proliferation of handguns creates charged situations that don't need to exist.

This is an excellent point. If there isn't the political will to end sovereign/qualified immunity, then we should reduce the immediate damage that it does by ending this proliferation of guns to municipal police. When the rare situation does end up escalating into armed resistance, the local police can call in a special state police unit. That state police unit will have better training on respect for firearms, containment, and deescalation. And a second chain of command will serve as an additional check on the situation.

Original source: https://www.wkyt.com/2024/12/27/did-officers-go-wrong-home-d...

I'll say it until I'm blue in the face: this idea that police can perform a surprise (night time) home invasion and then summarily execute you for exercising your natural right to self defense is the most pressing second amendment issue of our time. Perhaps the NRA could actually say something here, as this time the victim wasn't black. Of course that's probably being way too hopeful.

Agreed. If the state can get away with your murder because you defended yourself during a home invasion, what is the purpose of the 2nd?

so so many questions, but the one that I just can't shake is how in the world does a stolen weed eater warrant a home raid of the suspect? although it reads like my use of the word warrant was the only valid warrant related to the entire story.

No police dept would put that amount of resources for a weed whacker. Someone politically powerful got some stuff stolen out of their shed and pulled some strings to make this happen.

Not much technology related to this issue. Maybe we can steer the direction that way at least? How about this: Are guns more effective at quickly subduing people than other methods? Basically: Why shoot if it is less effective at stopping/slowing down someone than technology x and what is technology x?

Weed eaters hack grass; next question.

If this were real journalism, I'd want a profile of the person they killed-- was he a former government employee? Was he a Boeing whistleblower? Was he involved in something? Not to be suspicious, but we should be thorough. It's too weird to have such accidental murders.

How’s it too weird? Seems to happen at least once a year somewhere in the U.S.

Since ~1162 were killed by police in the USA, odds are pretty good this happens at least once a year. I would be surprised if it's not once a week...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

I’m with you on that. Probably nothing, just everyday lethal abuse of power, but it’s always a good idea to look a little deeper. Incompetence is king, but sometimes Machiavelli hides in the shadow of incompetence.

Terrible story. Not terribly uncommon. Doesn't seem on topic for HN though.

what ever. it's a local new source reporting on an event from a not-local incident. they probably only covered it because their corporate overlord pushed it as a must carry. however, it's an incredibly fucked up situation that in and of itself is newsworthy even if it wasn't a corporate push.

all sorts of police injustice is covered and discussed quite frequently on HN. you need to readjust your settings a bit I think

> it's an incredibly fucked up situation

Agreed.

> all sorts of police injustice is covered and discussed quite frequently on HN

Not really. Most of this type of news is off topic. Looks like this too since it's now flagged.

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