Never a cop around when you need one. Sometimes it's because of police ineptness:
The District police department policy on forcible entry caused a "deadly delay" as officers waited for a supervisor outside an apartment while a mother and her two young sons were being stabbed to death inside, according to a lawsuit filed by the woman's family.
The policy that led to police taking nearly an hour to finally bust down the door and find the murdered family is at the center of a $60 million wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the officers involved.
The District legal team has not contested the facts in the case, many of which were pulled from official police documents. But the city has sought to have it thrown out of court on legal grounds.
"In general, officers should seek the approval of an official prior to making any forcible entry," police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump told The Washington Examiner .
And sometimes it's because of an officious little gatekeeper with an inflated sense of his own importance:
A police officer responding to the LaPorte County Fair to make an arrest was delayed by an attendant at the gate who insisted that he pay.
It's an incident that officials with the fair and sheriff's office were reluctant to speak much about Monday.
The mix-up stems from a decision to use private security during this year's fair, which ended Saturday night.
Sheriff's deputies used to working security were told they had to pay to enter the fairgrounds this year unless called to make an arrest.
Someone in that District family should have tried to get away from the murderers just long enough to phone in an anonymous tip that there were drugs in the house. Authorities seem to have no trouble defending their no-knock raids in those cases, even when the occupant turns out to be a 90-year-old invalid. And now we have a couple of things to try on the police should they ever storm our homes looking for drugs. "You have been misinformed, officer. There are no drugs here -- just a friendly little knife fight." And: "Where's your ticket?"
