EVANSVILLE, INDIANA. — Dressed in full protective gear, a heavily armed SWAT team stormed the door, broke a front window and tossed not one but two flashbang stun grenades into the living room — all while a local television crew’s cameras were rolling — Cops invited the station to film their activities, but there was one little problem, it was the wrong house.
Stephanie Milan, 18, was in her family’s living room Thursday watching TV when the heavily armed squad of Evansville officers descended on the house. Stephanie’s grandfather and owner of the property said, “The front door was open. It’s not like anyone was in there hiding,” the still shaken grandpa said, “To bring a whole SWAT team seems a little excessive.”
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After embarrassed cops got done speaking the girl’s grandmother, Louise, they could do nothing but limp away from the house determining the mortified family had nothing to do with their investigation. Duh.
Police were executing a search warrant based on an anonymous online threat against police and their families on a forums website, so they got Stephanie’s IP address with a court order — without first considering that anyone could have used the her unsecured wi-fi connection to post the online threats — Again duh.
Grandpa summed it up well, “I think it was a show of force that they are not going to tolerate this, but what about the residents and what they have to tolerate?”
Sgt. Jason Cullum, a police department spokesman, had this to say of the ridiculous raid, “It said, ‘EPD leak: Officers’ addresses given out,’ or something along those lines. There were some generalized comments about people not liking the police, and that didn’t really concern us, we brought them out and talked to them, they were released at the scene. Investigators felt they were not involved in the posting, this is a little more difficult that a traditional crime scene, because we’re dealing with the Internet. They definitely weren’t expecting (a SWAT team at the door). The reason we did that is the threats were specific enough, and the potential for danger was there. The sarg concluded, “This is a big deal to us, this may be just somebody who was online just talking stupid. What I would suggest to anybody who visits websites like that is that their comments can be taken literally.”
In this hilarious Youtube video marvel at local Indiana news as they try and spin this HUGE FAIL into a win…