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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

TechDirt reports:

The Cherokee County [Kansas] Sheriff's Department engaged in a fruitless 19-hour standoff with a vacant residence. On the 20th hour, the fugitive house was finally taken down.

[...] The write-up at The Free Thought Project contains a decent summation of the ridiculous ordeal, but the real fun comes in reading the play-by-play at the Joplin Globe, which captures the shifting narrative provided by the Sheriff's Department.

It begins on December 15th, with the site declaring "Joplin man in standoff with law enforcement in Galena".[1] Granted, this was several hours before it was discovered that a more accurate headline would have been "Joplin house in standoff with law enforcement."

[...] [The cops] used a thermal imaging camera and thought they detected someone hiding in the attic. So, the standoff began, with the sheriff confidently stating they'd be able to wait out the fugitive member of the local gang concern, "Joplin Honkies", thanks to the department's bench depth.

[...] Five hours later, Sheriff Groves admitted[1] that the man the occupants of the house had already stated wasn't in the house was, in fact, not in the house.

Cherokee County Sheriff David Groves said local, state and federal law enforcement officers late into the day on Tuesday had believed that Doug Alexius, 40, of Joplin, was inside the home and armed, although no shots had been fired.

Groves said a search that ended at 5:30 p.m. concluded that Alexius was not in the home.

Left unmentioned was the damage done to the house in search of the fugitive who wasn't there. Law enforcement officers fired flash bangs into the home and used an armored vehicle-mounted ram to punch holes in the attic. The officers also tore apart the inside of the home in their futile search.

[1] Yet another website that puts styling in their HTML (black text on a black background) then doesn't check that with a text-only browser.

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