A friend of Derrick Cruice talking with reporters about the raid.
Yesterday morning, at approximately 6:30am, Volusia County deputies entered a home with the intent to serve a narcotics search warrant. Inside were six men who were asleep and within seconds, one of them—26-year-old Derrick Cruice—was dead with a gunshot wound to the face. Friends inside the home say they posed no threat, had no weapons and Derrick was wearing only a pair of basketball shorts—no shirt, no shoes and there was nowhere for him to even conceal a weapon.
According to friends, he was ""the nicest guy and wouldn't hurt anyone." And when it comes to the actions of the Deputy Todd Raible and the Valusia County Deputies who raided the home, Derrick's friends aren't mincing any words. They are accusing Deputy Todd Raible of murder. See an interview with two of Derrick's friends who were with him at the time of the shooting:
Volusia County Deputies claim Cruice "advanced on them", something his friends adamantly deny. They say they were in shock over waking up to men with guns raiding their home and the shooting happened mere seconds after they entered.
Derrick Cruice is another in a lengthy list of people killed in these "no-knock raids." There was 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, who was curled up in a Disney blanket, sound asleep on the couch in her family's living room. And 59-year-old David Hooks, who thought his house was being burglarized. No drugs were found. Those are only two recent high profile cases, but they beg the question—why are police using these no-knock raids and SWAT teams for nonviolent, relatively minor crimes? According the ACLU, 62% of SWAT team raids are for drugs and 36% of those raids found no drugs on the premises at all. In the mid-80s, there were approximately 2,000 SWAT raids per year in the U.S. Today there are more than 80,000.
What was the search warrant for in the case of Derrick Cruice? Marijuana. Investigators say they recovered 217 grams of marijuana in the house. Did Derrick Cruice really need to die so police could recover less than a half a pound of marijuana? In a state that is listed as one of the most likely to legalize in the next two years?
It's outrageous and it needs to stop. It's time to put an end to these dangerous military-style raids.