SoylentNews

"gewg_" writes:

from the good-thing-no-one-was-jaywalking dept.

AlterNet reports [alternet.org]

A Colorado man accused police in Greenwood Village of being "paramilitary thugs" after they blew up his home while trying to catch a gun-toting shoplifter who had decided to hide out there.

[...]Robert Jonathan Seacat, 33, had allegedly picked [Leo] Lech's home at random [June 3] when he was on the run from police who suspected him of shoplifting. Seacat was said to have opened fire on officers as they tried to apprehend him.

[...]According to a SWAT spokesperson, officers were able to end the 20-hour standoff by using flash-bangs, chemical agents, and a "breaching ram" to enter the home.

[...]KMGH [thedenverchannel.com][1] reported that nearly every room in the second floor of the home had holes blown into the walls.

"When they used the explosives to blow apart the side of this house here, they broke our windshield," a neighbor told the station.

"There are holes just like this one all through the back of the house too," Lech added. "They methodically fired explosives into every room in this house in order to extract one person. Granted, he had a handgun, but against 100 officers?"

[...]Lech speculated that the SWAT team could have limited damage to $10,000 by using appropriate force, instead of the $250,000 that he estimated it was going to take to rebuild the home.

The homeowner said that he confronted the chief of the Greenwood Village Police Department, telling him, "In any civilized nation ... this is the act of paramilitary thugs."

But the chief shrugged off the criticism, he recalled.

[1] Want a chuckle? Look at all the whitespace in the source code of that page.

Original Submission