It isn’t clear if police in Elyria, Ohio, knew there was a 1-year-old boy with a heart defect and a breathing disorder in the Parmely Avenue residence where they shattered a window, deployed a flash grenade and smashed the door open with a battering ram. What is clear is that they terrified the boy’s mother, who says the smoke and fumes from the flash grenade put her son in the intensive care unit. “There were 20+ officers in the house,” she wrote on Facebook. “Not one had the decency to check on my baby, get the glass off him or get him out of the house that had smoke in it.”
The Elyria Police Department issued a news release insisting, “Any allegation suggesting the child was exposed to chemical agents, lack of medical attention or negligence is not true,” though it’s hard to say how they’d know that for sure. The department also claimed they raided the correct home, even though according to NBC News, a voice can be heard in video of the raid saying, “Whoa, it’s the wrong house.” The raid was apparently part of an investigation into some stolen guns.
Nor is it rare for these raids to go very wrong, very quickly, even when there isn’t a young child at home.
This isn’t the first time police have apparently injured a toddler with a flash-bang during a raid. Back in 2014, a flash grenade put a baby in a coma during a drug raid on a home in Georgia. (The man police were after was not at the house.) Nor is it rare for these raids to go very wrong, very quickly, even when there isn’t a young child at home. And part of the fault lies with the Supreme Court.
Last November, police in Mobile, Alabama, shot and killed a 16-year-old boy during an early morning marijuana raid on his home. The teen thought the home was being invaded by criminals and grabbed a gun to protect his family. The police were investigating the boy’s brother, who was arrested with 8 grams of marijuana.
Eight months before that, police in Mobile shot and killed…
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