Brickbat: Lawn Enforcement

Documents obtained by local media indicate police in London, Kentucky were at the wrong address when they fatally shot Doug Harless. Officers were trying to serve a search warrant at 11:54 p.m. on December 23 in connection with a weed eater stolen from a local elected official. Police say Harless pointed a gun at them before he was shot. TV station WKYT reports that dispatch audio and records show the warrant was for 489 Vanzant Road. Officers were at 511 Vanzant Road, the Harless home, when the shooting took place. WKYT says it has filed an open records request for the warrant to confirm what location it was for, but the local courts say they never received that request and the London police say they have turned over all their files to the Kentucky State Police, which is investigating the shooting.

 

Comments

[Balloon maker]

I’m going to need to see this weed eater before rendering judgment.

But also, everyone involved in this shooting/warrant/etc. should go to prison. How many times does this kind of shit have to happen?

[Adans smith]

A midnight raid for a weed eater,wrong address and a pissed off government official. That checks all the boxes. Now if they had only killed the guys dog.

[diver64]

I am also surprised a dog was not involved. Raiding a home for a $150 weed eater at midnight doesn't sound fishy. Not fishy at all.

[Minadin]

So the weed eater belonged to the judge executive, which in Kentucky is like what we call a county executive, the 'mayor' of the county, if you will. And the guy who stole it was actually arrested 4.5 hours prior to this botched raid.

Court records show Buttery was arrested on December 23 just after 7:30 p.m. That’s just a few hours before KSP says Harless was shot and killed by a London police officer at his home at 511 Vanzant Road in Lily.

“I told them on Vanzant Road, there was a weed eater there, and they took it to where they wanted to go with that,” Buttery, speaking from Laurel County Correctional Center, told WKYT. “That wasn’t me. That was them. I used to live down over the hill down there where they were supposed to go to that address, but they went to the wrong address, is what that was.”

https://www.wkyt.com/2025/01/02/ksp-search-warrant-gives-new-details-deadly-london-ky-police-shooting/

[mad.casual]

That checks all the boxes.

Iknowright? Does anybody else feel weird getting an *actual* brickbat?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Officers were trying to serve a search warrant at 11:54 p.m...

It seems an awful lot like they want this outcome. It's encouraging, I suppose, that local news stepped away from their police blotter stenography and actually looked into it.