This made me scratch my head a fair bit. I’m not addressing the fact it was the wrong address (a big problem in itself), but what got me curious is the FBI doing breaching with…a chainsaw?
Maybe it wasn’t a chainsaw and something similar to an K-12 extrication saw and it was a metal skin door…no one appears to know. Is there another way to attack a metal door with something other than a gas-powered saw? It would seem (to me) tactically unsound to operate power tools to visibly cut an opening in front of the door, nothing more than lousy concealment, when a suspected drug dealer (what the agents were up against) can simply punch through with a firearm while they’re cutting away. The element of surprise is long gone.
I’m going out on a limb and thinking if this happened in an armed home, a reasonable and prudent person would have no reason to believe that law enforcement was executing a warrant. I’d expect either a knocking and loud announcement or a battering ram with the door swinging open with a no-knock.
Very strange indeed, when I was a Firefighter I used K-12s for ventilation (roofs) but could cut throught walls etc if needed too. For forced entry I used a Haligan bar & axe, sometimes a K tool (rips deadbolts apart like a pretzel) and hydraulic rabbit tool for solid steel doors and occasionally the ram off of one of the the ladder trucks.
I would agree that if they were using a chainsaw then they probably had intel which indicated that the door had a crossbar.
They’re very lucky it wasn’t an armed scumbag on the ball. Given that drug raids are supposed to be uberdangerous, it just seems tactically unsound to spend what…10 seconds cutting a hole through the front door with a gas-powered tool. That kind of nullifies the surprise of a no-knock warrant and gives both a visual and audible clue to a bad guy that at least one person is actively behind the front door.
The warrant was served at 6:04 AM. It was probably like my state where knock warrants are only served 6AM to 10PM. Doing it right at 6AM is most likely to catch a late night drug dealer asleep. The door appears to be a shitty, hollow wood apartment door. It appears they cut it horizontally in the middle like a Dutch door. I see no benefit to what they did and how they did it.
After looking at the picture of the door it appears that they were treating the door as possibly being barricaded. If the intel they had stated that the residence was normally barricaded/barred then I can see why a chainsaw was used.
How much time is typically allowed after an announcement before the door goes down? I think most normal folks are conditioned to climb out of bed to investigate if someone at 6am was shouting “FBI!” Or “police!”. Given this was the wrong address, a perfectly innocent person doesn’t seem to have a rational reason to sit on their ass unless there was insufficient time to respond.
What “intel”? Their intel is obviously useless or they’re illiterate. They went to a wrong apartment number and if they’d taken the time to do proper reconnaissance and verify their information they wouldn’t have fucked up and gone in to the wrong home through the front door with a chainsaw scaring a woman and her child half to death.
I couldnt tell you since I wasnt sitting in the briefing that they had prior to the service. I do know that information is put out in said briefings that determine methods of entry to be used. And since chainsaws arent a normal entry tool, then common sense would say they were told something in the briefing that caused them to use the chainsaw to gain entry.
Their intel is obviously useless or they’re illiterate.
Going to the wrong apartment has nothing to do with the information they were provided during their briefing.
