Leo Lech is suing the police in Greenwood, Colorado for storming his house with a 50-person SWAT team because they mistakenly believed that a man who ran into his house (whom Lech didn’t know) had shoplifted a shirt and two belts from Walmart; the police engaged in a 19-hour standoff that led to the near-total destruction of Lech’s house due to the use of “calculated destruction,” a tactic through which explosives are detonated through the house, room by room, to isolate the suspect.
Lech was given $5000 in compensation.
According to a report from the Denver Post, officers claimed that when they entered the home, “Seacat, who was on an upper floor, fired four or five shots through the floor at officers below.” Police decided to respond to one man barricaded in a home and armed with a handgun by employing 50 SWAT officers and a host of expensive technology, destroying the majority of the home, before they found their suspect in a bathroom and arrested him.The National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) described the strategy used by the SWAT officers as “calculated destruction,” in which they launched explosives throughout the house, room-by-room, in order to isolate Seacat.
Cops Thought Innocent Man Shoplifted a Shirt, So 50 SWAT Cops Tore Down His House
[Rachel Blevins/The Free Thought Project]
(via Naked Capitalism)
(Image: Denver Post)