Anti-vaxxers would let a child die, armed police have to intervene. In a country with widespread access to guns, I believe the police action was justified.
With guns drawn, the police officers broke down the door of the suburban Phoenix home in the early hours of a February morning.
“Come out with your hands up!” an officer yelled, with the dark front porch and foyer inside suddenly flooded with light from the officers’ flashlights.
The target of the raid: an unvaccinated 2-year-old boy with a high fever. Video from the officers’ body cameras that was released on Thursday shows that moments later, the child’s father emerges, walking out backward with his hands over his head. The boy’s mother then comes out, too, cradling her young son in her arms.
The boy was whisked away to a hospital, and since that raid on 25 February, he and the couple’s two other children, aged 4 and 6, have been in the state’s custody. The parents have been charged with child abuse.
The child’s doctor, after learning Ms Beck had ignored the recommendation to take the child to the hospital and having follow-up phone calls to the family go unanswered, then contacted the Arizona Department of Child Safety. Asked to do a welfare check, police officers later arrived at the family’s door, but were not allowed in. The body camera footage released on Thursday shows the police twice knocking and trying to enter, before an officer reaches Mr Bryce by telephone just before midnight, and tells him that he needs to verify that their youngest child is improving.
An emergency court order was issued, allowing police to take the child into custody. The officers asked the family to leave their home and take the child to the hospital, the video shows. After two more unsuccessful attempts at knocking at the door, they reminded Mr Bryce that they had a court order and broke down the door, nearly four hours after they arrived at the home.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...UFmGWjdcIFyDoY84_RozB1dqYw#Echobox=1553964062