Does the headline strike you as over-the-top rhetoric, it’s not.  There are times when we defend decisions made by police, and then there are times like this when their decisions are indefensible.  However, this time we are not alone.

stun grenade 1stun grenade 2Baby Bou Bou
(Via Lew Rockwell) “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
In their effort to deflect blame for the near-murder of 19-month-old Bounkham Phonesavah , Habersham County, Georgia Sheriff Joey Terrell and his Berserkers — more appropriately styled the Baby-Burning Stormtroopers of Habersham County — added a repellent appendix to Carl Sandburg’s cynical advice:

When police blow the face off a toddler in an illegal 2:00 a.m. no-knock SWAT raid, and the victims file an unassailable civil complaint, blame the baby.

That is the unambiguous claim made in the “Defendants’ Reply” to the lawsuit filed on behalf of the infant, who is known as “Baby Bou-Bou.”
Baby Bou-Bou and his family have received a tax-subsidized settlement that will leave them with millions of dollars of unpaid medical bills, and leave Sheriff Joey and his henchmen unscathed. Exposure of their legal strategy has prompted a number of readers — some of whom are probably chauvinistic defenders of the Sacred Brotherhood of State Coerion, aka the Blue Line — to demand specific quotes from the “Defendants’ Reply” that blame Bou-Bou for the injuries he suffered, and accuse him of negligence or “criminal” conduct. For those interested in reading full text of that reply, the document is found in my Scribd archive.
[scribd id=265760507 key=key-eLM9fi8vbILZKiT0QdGI mode=scroll]

[…]  read the “Seventh Defense” on page 34, in which the defendants assert that “plaintiffs’ damages, if any, were directly and proximately caused by the contributory and comparative negligence of plaintiffs and their failure to exercise ordinary care.” Note also the claim made in the Tenth Defense (see page 35) that the injuries and damages “were caused by the deliberate, criminal conduct of plaintiffs.”

The “Four Corners” doctrine, which applies to wills, contracts, and other legal instruments, dictates that the author’s intention in composing such a document is defined by the plain meaning of the text. If a claim or assertion isn’t found within the four corners of that document, it can’t be considered. The “Defendants’ Reply” filed on behalf of Sheriff Joey and his comrades made several accusations about the supposed conduct of the “plaintiffs”; nowhere within that text is an effort made to distinguish Bou-Bou from the other defendants. Ergo, under the Four Corners doctrine, all of those accusations apply to both Bou-Bou and his parents. (link to read more)
Baby Bou Bou
(Another Report) –  It was the baby’s fault that he was nearly burned to death in his own crib.
Bou-Bou Phonesavanh was barely a year and a half old, just learning to walk, and unable to speak, but those limitations didn’t stop him from engaging in “deliberate, criminal conduct” that justified the 2:00 a.m. no-knock SWAT raid in which he was nearly killed.
The act of sleeping in a room about to be breached by a SWAT team constituted “criminal” conduct on the part of the infant. At the very least, the infant was fully liable for the nearly fatal injuries inflicted on him when Habersham County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Long blindly heaved a flash-bang grenade – a “destructive device,” as described by the ATF, that when detonated burns at 2,000-3,500 degrees Fahrenheit – into the crib.
Merely by being in that room, Bou-Bou had assumed the risk of coming under attack by a SWAT team. By impeding the trajectory of that grenade, rather than fleeing from his crib, Bou-Bou failed to “avoid the consequences” of that attack.
In any case, Bou-Bou, along with his parents and his siblings, are fully and exclusively to blame for the injuries that nearly killed the child and left the family with more than one million dollars in medical bills. The SWAT team that invaded the home in Cornelia, Georgia on the basis of a bogus anonymous tip that a $50 drug transaction had occurred there is legally blameless.
This is the defense presented by Haberham County Sheriff Joey Terrell and his comrades in their reply to a federal lawsuit filed last February on behalf of Bou-Bou Phonesavanh and his family.
A tax-subsidized settlement was reached about a month ago in which the National Fire Insurance Company will pay $964,000 to the family — a little more than $538,000 for medical expenses, and multiple installments of $200,000 to the infant after he turns 18 in 2033. This arrangement will leave the family facing at least a half-million dollars in current medical expenses, a figure that will be matched or eclipsed by future costs incurred by Bou-Bou’s ongoing medical treatment.
In familiar fashion, nobody responsible for this crime will be compelled to make restitution, or be held accountable for the nearly fatal injuries inflicted on the child – and the significant but non-life-threatening injury suffered by his father — during the 2:00 a.m. home invasion that took place nearly a year ago.  (read more)
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