Some of my US friends have been advising that this sort of action is increasing in parts of the US.
- 32 MINUTES AGO JUNE 26, 2014
Combat tactics ... Georgia State SWAT police say a review is being conducted into the raid on a Cornelia city suburban house. Picture: Georgia Police Source: Supplied
IT was 3am. Mum and dad were in one bed. Three little girls were in another. An 18-month-old baby was in his cot nearby. Then black-clad men suddenly burst into the room.
There was a deafening roar, a whoosh of air and a blinding flash of light.
Armed Georgia PD SWAT officers stormed into the room, pinning the husband to the ground and handcuffing him. Mum and daughters were shoved into a corner.
Shouting. Screaming.
Smoke.
“I kept asking the officers to let me have my baby, but they said shut up and sit down,†Alecia Phonesavanh says in an emotive online post published yesterday.
Crying.
Something was wrong.
“I heard my baby wailing and asked one of the officers to let me hold him. He screamed at me to sit down and shut up and blocked my view, so I couldn‘t see my son,†Alicia details in her post at Salon.com.
Collateral damage ... Bounkham “Bou Bou†Phonesavanh is in a critical condition with severe burns to his face and chest after a police “flash-bang†grenade landed in his crib. Picture: Phonesavanh family, via Salon.com Source: Supplied
“I could see a singed crib. And I could see a pool of blood. The officers yelled at me to calm down and told me my son was fine, that he‘d just lost a tooth.â€
The mother of four gives a harrowing account of what she saw when she finally got to see her son in a hospital in the city of Cornelia, Georgia, late last month.
“It was only hours later when they finally let us drive to the hospital that we found out Bou Bou was in the intensive burn unit and that he‘d been placed into a medically induced coma.â€
The family had only been staying at her sister-in-law‘s house as their own Wisconsin house had burnt down a few weeks earlier.
His wounds were horrific.
“There‘s still a hole in his chest that exposes his ribs,†she said. “At least that‘s what I‘ve been told; I‘m afraid to look.â€
She says her baby — whose real name is Bounkham — paid the price of guilt by association.
“My husband‘s nephew, the one they were looking for, wasn‘t there. He doesn‘t even live in that house,†she wrote on Salon.
“After the SWAT team broke down the door, they threw a flashbang grenade inside. It landed in my son‘s crib.
War comes home ... Georgia SWAT police engage in an exercise at a university. The need for military-style raids over relatively minor charges has been called into question by American civil liberties groups. Source: Supplied
“After … throwing my husband to the ground, and screaming at my children, the officers — armed with M16s — filed through the house like they were playing war. They searched for drugs and never found any.â€
For the past three weeks, Alicia and her husband have been sleeping at the hospital alongside their critically injured son. Since her post, baby Bou Bou has been taken out of his induced coma and transferred to another hospital. His critical wounds are yet to heal.
“Every morning, I have to face the reality that my son is fighting for his life. It‘s not clear whether he‘ll live or die. All of this to find a small amount of drugs?â€
The SWAT team used tactics usually reserved for use by military forces in urban battlefields — throwing explosives called “flash-bangs†to overwhelm the senses of people in a confined space before troops storm a building.
Since when have toddlers been terrorists?
The north-east Georgia SWAT team have expressed their dismay at the child‘s injuries.
The police officers involved have been called baby killers and received threats following the incident, Sheriff Joey Terrell said.
“All I can say is pray for the baby, his family and for us,†he told CNN.
The Sheriff says the raid followed a confidential tip-off that methamphetamines had been purchased from men only hours earlier at the house the family was staying at. A review was being conducted into the raid, he said.
The nephew, Thonetheva, was later arrested at a different location and now faces drug distribution charges.
Alicia points out that her family is not the only victim of increasingly militarised police raids over minor charges. Her story is but one in a growing list being compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union. Their report, War Comes Home, details 818 such incidents in the United States.
“Now my kids don‘t want to go to sleep at night because they‘re afraid the cops will kill them or their family. It‘s time to remind the cops that they should be serving and protecting our neighbourhoods, not waging war on the people in them.â€