Monday, February 26, 2018

SWAT

  It was a beautiful June day in 2012 when I had a scheduled visit to a family on Main Street in Cohoes.  I went to turn onto their street, but it was blocked off. The sidewalks were crowded with people watching the events unfolding. I saw a helicopter flying away and a tank obstructing the entrance to Main Street, so I couldn't reach the house where the family lived.
   As I waited, the woman I was to meet came out of the crowd and approached my car. She was upset. She said it was her apartment the SWAT, or Emergency Response Team, had raided, firing Flash Bangs through the upstairs window to force them out onto the street. They had taken her boyfriend to the police station. She asked me to drive her there, which I did.
   The officers had been looking for three men who had robbed and pistol-whipped an elderly man in a robbery attempt a street away from them.  (I think it later came to light that the perpetrators were actually 2 men and a teenaged girl.)  The girl had been staying with the family and the 2 men were acquaintances of hers.
   The elderly victim did not die, not then. He had never, though, been able to return to his family home where he had spent his life. After the trauma, he no longer  felt safe in his old neighborhood,  and he did die a short time afterwards.
   The police, not finding the suspects, had searched for the gun. They didn't find it, because it had been spirited away by someone just before the police strike.
I later went into the apartment with the woman and learned what happens when  SWAT visits: every single door and drawer is opened, and left open. All the contents of dressers, and kitchen cabinets,  are on the floor, every single item of clothing, and every dish and glass, etc.  A large scorch mark on the kitchen floor, where the flash bang landed.
   The woman's friend was not involved, but the girl who had been staying there,  a minor, and who had actually committed the assault, was later charged, after one of her 2 accomplices had been arrested. I don't know the final outcome: probably minor penalties.

 

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