New York police raid wrong apartment; woman dies

NEW YORK, May 16 (Reuters) - Police kicked down the wrong door at a New York apartment house on Friday and a woman with a heart condition died on the way to the hospital.

A bungled tip about a drug dealer's cache led police to kick down the door and toss a stun grenade into the apartment of a woman with a heart condition; she died of a heart attack within an hour, police said.

"This is a tragedy. This should not have happened. No doubt about that," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

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Man if I were that woman's family I would file the biggest lawsuit ever. This type of thing happens way too often. I remember reading about a similar incident like this a couple of months ago.

Man, thats a really sad story. I cant imagine how angry the family must be, along with upset of course. This should have never happened, it said they were responding to a tip by an untested informant, theres just no excuse for that. This will be a big lawsuit, if not just a payoff.

There's no point to this.

It can't be helped, maybe if people would stop doing drugs, we'd stop having to throw stun grenades in every place we think is a rat hole.

Blame those bastards not the police.

I imagine the lawsuit will come: are we to assume that this is in some sense "standard procedure" ( God help New Yorkers, if it is)- or will the policemen be disciplined for not following standard procedure?

One has every sympathy for the predicament of the policemen involved, of course. I imagine that -short of dead -"stunned" is how one wopuld like one's average NY drug dealer.
But -the risk must be part of the NY cops' jobs and there has to be a better way of dealing with this (even if slower and more expensive) than treating apartments as enemy bunkers.
This is "special forces and terrorists" stuff

maybe a little bit of reconaissance before kicking in doors all willy nilly? I smell a whole lotta money coming to that woman's family.....

I work around cops a bit, so I can see the cops POV. However, I do agree, going off of a tip from a previously unknown source, without any kind of recon was a really bad idea.

NYC is in some serious financial problems already, and thier police units are not doing them any favors...

Originally posted by IronDragon
NYC is in some serious financial problems already, and thier police units are not doing them any favors...

the police aren't doing them any favors?
they're doing what they have to... and worry about the budget at the same time.
there has been thousands of layoffs since bloomberg arrived.
and crime is also starting to escalate.

if you want... you can blame the state.
a lot of our taxes go to albany... and there is little that comes back.

Originally posted by IronDragon
I work around cops a bit, so I can see the cops POV. However, I do agree, going off of a tip from a previously unknown source, without any kind of recon was a really bad idea.

Actually, thats THE tactic druggies employ

They give out bogus tips so that pigs would get in bad light