SWAT Raid Burns Hole In Toddler

Be warned: This was a hard story to read and it is difficult to write about.

The tagline of the article reads: “Officers threw a flashbang grenade in my son’s crib, and left a hole in his chest. It gets worse.”

The gist of the story is that a family of six from Wisconsin fell on hard times following the burning down of their home and relocated to Atlanta to stay with relatives. In Atlanta, the family was sharing one room. As the family slept, (their 2-year old son, Bou Bou, was in his crib while the rest of the family was spread around the room) a SWAT team burst into the room and threw a flashbang grenade, which landed right in Bou Bou’s crib.

A flashbang is designed to make an incredibly bright flash and an incredibly loud bang sound. They are used to stun the occupants of an area, immediately preceding a tactical entry by law enforcement. While intended as a suppression device, those in close proximity to a flashbang can be severely injured. In order to produce such a bright light, a fairly intense chemical reaction occurs which produces high heat.

From Wikipedia:

The flash produced momentarily activates all photoreceptor cells in the eye, making vision impossible for approximately five seconds, until the eye restores itself to its normal, unstimulated state. The loud blast is meant to cause temporary loss of hearing, and also disturbs the fluid in the ear, causing loss of balance. The concussive blast of the detonation can still injure, and the heat created can ignite flammable materials such as fuel. The fires that occurred during the Iranian Embassy siege in London were caused by stun grenades.

These grenades have a long history of starting fires and hurting people. In 2011, a SWAT officer in North Carolina accidentally discharged a stun grenade close by and it killed him.

So what brought the SWAT storm down on this family? The son of the relative whose house they were staying in was suspected of having a small amount of drugs. After the raid, it was determined that this person of interest did not even live in the house. Even if he had been there and even if he had a little drugs on him, why couldn’t they knock on the door, serve a warrant and calmly search the house? These tactics are such ridiculous overkill. Not a single illicit drug was found in the house.

The tip the police had, incorrect though it turned out to be, was certainly not enough to necessitate this Jack Bauer-esque counter-terrorism raid, complete with military-grade stun grenades and machine guns. So why does this happen? Is there truly no better use of tax revenue than terrorizing the innocent and harmless?

The blast literally blew a hole in this 2-year old’s chest; his ribs were exposed. To hear the mother tell it, “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. 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. 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.”

As a father, I would almost certainly have been arrested for assaulting the police had they told me to shut up and that my son only lost a tooth, when I can plainly see a burned crib and pool of blood. I would have literally gone mad with rage. It is unconscionable that this type of shit is still allowed to happen. It has been shown over-and-over again that violence and punishment toward drug users is a historic failure. I don’t know what drug was supposedly in the house, but it really doesn’t matter at this point.

The SWAT members claimed they had no way of knowing that children were in the house, even though the victims say that they would have had to step over kids’ toys in the yard en route to the house. Beyond all that, why the insanely excessive use of force? This is like using an Abrams tank to kill a mosquito. I understand following orders, but at some point, can’t your common sense dictate your choices?

Alecia Phonesavanh, Bou Bou’s mother, covers her face in grief.

The shitty part is, I am certain that there are plenty of outstanding cops/SWAT members out there who only use force as a last result, yet the whole law enforcement community suffers a loss in credibility.

The mother continues: “A few nights ago, my 8-year old woke up in the middle of the night screaming, ‘No, don’t kill him! You’re hurting my brother! Don’t kill him.’ How can I ever make that go away? I used to tell my kids that if they were ever in trouble, they should go to the police for help. 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 neighborhoods, not waging war on the people in them.”

It’s time, indeed.

A world wherein cops truly helped would be fantastic. Please, police officers, stop the rapists, kidnappers, murderers, and thieves. Stop the pedophiles and corporate pirates and human traffickers. I want a world without that kind of crime. If you think some kid has a stash of illegal drugs, how about just sending a couple of beat cops by with a warrant to check out the situation. Or, at the very least, maybe do just a smidgen of recon prior to a violent ‘Shock and Awe’ raid that horribly maimed and possibly irreversibly harmed an innocent toddler.

As far as the little guy: “As of the afternoon of 6/24/2014, Baby Bou Bou has been taken out of the medically-induced coma and transferred to a new hospital to begin rehabilitation. The hole in his chest has yet to heal, and doctors are still not able to fully assess lasting brain damage.”

You’re in my thoughts, Bou Bou. I can only hope that this awful instance can affect some policy change that will keep this from happening again.