# Grand jury: Officers in raid that disfigured child won’t face charges **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 10, 2014, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935 "2014-10-10T06:10:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/1 "2014-10-10T06:10:13Z")
I can’t find the original thread talking about the incident, so for anyone interested: Unsurprisingly, a [grand jury has decided](http://host.madison.com/wsj/ap/mcclatchy/national/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-wisconsin-tot-won/article_b1ec6cfb-c532-54d1-be88-e11a7ab2ed27.html) that those Georgian cops who tossed a flash bang grenade into a toddler’s crib will face no charges. Oh, and they expressed sympathy for the suffering -\* of the police.\* > [@](#): > > ATLANTA — While labeling the drug investigation that ended with the disfigurement of a Wisconsin toddler “hurried and sloppy,” a grand jury in Georgia on Monday ruled the law enforcement officers involved should not face criminal charges. > > In a 15-page report, jurors were largely sympathetic to the Habersham County SWAT unit that carried out the botched raid that started a national conversation about police militarization. > > “Rather than seeing unfeeling or uncaring robots, what has not been seen before by others and talked or written about is that these individuals are suffering as well,” the jurors wrote. “We have seen and heard genuine regret and sadness on the part of the law enforcement officers involved, and we think it is fair and appropriate to point out that they are human beings as well.” Yeah, sure; I doubt those cops felt a moment of sympathy. They’ve a [history](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/05/30/drug-task-force-that-burned-a-toddler-this-week-also-killed-an-innocent-pastor-in-2009/) of brutalizing and killing innocent people, and getting away with it. ---
**Author:** ![jimbuff314](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c57346/32.png) [@jimbuff314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimbuff314)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/2 "2014-10-10T07:23:22Z")
Someone turn on the **Smapti** signal! Oh, I think the OP already did. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 7:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/3 "2014-10-10T07:38:50Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Yeah, sure; I doubt those cops felt a moment of sympathy. I’d be astonished if they didn’t. They injured a baby in the course of doing their job, I’m sure they felt fucking awful about it. Not that that’s relevant. What matters is the warrant. If anyone’s to blame, it’s whoever issued the warrant to search the wrong house, not the individual policemen who used it. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/4 "2014-10-10T08:35:53Z")
> [@Steophan](#): > > I’d be astonished if they didn’t. They injured a baby in the course of doing their job, I’m sure they felt fucking awful about it. And why should I believe that people with a history of hurting and killing innocents have suddenly acquired a conscience? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/5 "2014-10-10T09:42:16Z")
Well, there you go - it’s not justice unless the jury arrives at the verdict that the mob has predecided is the right one. Why even bother with a trial - the mere accusation should be sufficient for a lynching. After all, they’re just cops - its not like they’re people or deserve rights or anything. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/6 "2014-10-10T09:43:08Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And why should I believe that people with a history of hurting and killing innocents have suddenly acquired a conscience? Police officers are, I believe, individual human beings with their own personal set of feelings. The cop hive mind is a few years off, at least. If you can tell me that these particular police officers have a history of hurting and killing innocents, then I might buy that they don’t care about disfiguring a baby in a crib. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/7 "2014-10-10T09:47:49Z")
How fucking absurd this child was disfigured, and hundreds/thousands of others injured or killed and millions arrested and held in cages over fucking chemicals and plants! Do people understand this? That as a society we send what are basically soldiers with weapons and guns to bust into houses hoping to catch people possessing plants or plant extracts or chemicals?!? It is the biggest insane waste of money and human life and time, it beggars belief and centuries from now it will be looked at and people will shake their heads and laugh. Nobody can even defend it rationally when asked, it just comes down to a societal taboo. I think the best hope for stopping it is massive jury nullification, people need to tell whatever lies needed to get on juries and then show prosecutors what a waste of time and money this is by nullifying any drug case. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/8 "2014-10-10T09:56:57Z")
Or you could try voting. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/9 "2014-10-10T09:57:57Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And why should I believe that people with a history of hurting and killing innocents have suddenly acquired a conscience? Because even someone who enjoys torturing adults will, in almost all cases, draw the line at hurting babies. That’s a whole 'nother level of evil, basically. Saying that, I’m sure that the majority of people in history who have hurt or killed innocent people for reasons that they genuinely believe are right have felt great guilt over it. That’s not a defence of them, just an observation of human nature. If you have any doubt that the vast majority of people can’t harm or kill without it bothering them, just look at the military. Despite that being a group that’s to a large extent self-selected to be those who at least think they want to harm people, they still need to be highly trained - effectively brainwashed - to be able to do so, and even after that PTSD is rife. The police are neither psychopaths nor trained like the military. It’s absurd to think the vast majority wouldn’t feel remorse after harming or killing someone. Not that that should affect the judgement of whether they’ve done wrong or not, but they are just as human as the people they deal with in their work. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/10 "2014-10-10T10:16:17Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Or you could try voting. Because that is working so well right now, the Libertarian party has been hijacked by corporate interests to the point I don’t even call my thoughts libertarian because someone will think I watch Fox news and am against taxes on corporations. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/11 "2014-10-10T11:41:22Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Because that is working so well right now, the Libertarian party has been hijacked by corporate interests to the point I don’t even call my thoughts libertarian because someone will think I watch Fox news and am against taxes on corporations. Worked just fine in Washington and Colorado. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/12 "2014-10-10T12:40:27Z")
Moved MPSIMS to the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/13 "2014-10-10T12:58:48Z")
> [@jimbuff314](#): > > Someone turn on the **Smapti** signal! > > Oh, I think the OP already did. Is it a spotlight with the shadow of a jackboot? ---
**Author:** ![Norse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a9adbd/32.png) [@Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Norse)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/14 "2014-10-10T13:48:05Z")
> [@Steophan](#): > > I’d be astonished if they didn’t. They injured a baby in the course of doing their job, I’m sure they felt fucking awful about it. “I don’t go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterwards in seedy space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to my girlfriend!” ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/15 "2014-10-10T14:10:55Z")
“Hey listen! I think we’ve got enough problems on our own having you shooting at us, so if you could avoid laying your problems on us as well, I think we’d all find it easier to cope!” ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/16 "2014-10-10T16:05:24Z")
> [@Norse](#): > > “I don’t go around gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterwards in seedy space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to my girlfriend!” Do you _seriously_ think any of these cops enjoy severely injuring babies? Do you think they got up and got ready for work that day hoping they’d find a baby and an excuse to injure it? Do you think they _intentionally_ threw the device into the crib? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/17 "2014-10-10T16:22:36Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Do you _seriously_ think any of these cops enjoy severely injuring babies? Do you think they got up and got ready for work that day hoping they’d find a baby and an excuse to injure it? Do you think they _intentionally_ threw the device into the crib? There’s an excluded middle here. I don’t think (some) people are saying that cops go around looking to torture babies. Rather, they are maybe saying that these cops don’t care about the collateral damage. If someone gets hurt in a raid, these types of cops might just think “too bad, maybe they shouldn’t have been in a drug house, hanging out with criminals.” Or, they might be thinking “they got what they deserved/they must have been guilty of something.” Likely, these type of cops might actually feel sorry about an infant, but might not about a teenager or someone older. It’s sort of a self-preservation thing. “What happened is not my fault, because I’m the Good Guy. I don’t hurt/kill innocent people. So if I did hurt someone, they MUST be guilty.” ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/18 "2014-10-10T16:24:02Z")
Who gives a fat fuck whether the cops regret what happened? Talk about the biggest piece of shit red herring. Their regrets are not relevant to whether they deserve to be charged. What matter are their _actions_, not their intentions. They’ve prosecuted god knows \*how \*many people for accidental manslaughter, DUI, leaving their child in a hot car, et fucking cetera. That those people had regrets had \*no \*impact on whether they were charged, only when they were goddamn sentenced. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/19 "2014-10-10T16:28:56Z")
> [@Rachellelogram](#): > > Who gives a fat fuck whether the cops regret what happened? Talk about the biggest piece of shit red herring. Their regrets are not relevant to whether they deserve to be charged. And it is the finding of the relevant legal authority that they do not. ---
**Author:** ![Fallen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e99b99/32.png) [@Fallen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fallen)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935/20 "2014-10-10T16:29:10Z")
It is absolutely no surprise that jurors would do for law enforcement what they would not do for any other person accused of acts that can be viewed as criminal negligence and reckless endangerment. Plenty of accused criminals express remorse and regret, but that does not mean they aren’t subject to the penalties under the law. This is moral cowardice and wilful disregard at its best, and grotesque but, again, no surprise. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/grand-jury-officers-in-raid-that-disfigured-child-won-t-face-charges/700935.md?page=2)