Radley Balko has a post up today about yet another example of SWAT team overkill, this time out of Akron, Ohio:

Georgette Prince was making a quick run to the store last Thursday morning for orange soda and lottery tickets — a venture that should have been an uneventful five-minute trip but became a terrifying 20-minute ordeal.

The unsuspecting Prince was caught in the storm of a SWAT team raid that had her in fear for her life.

“I thought I was going to be shot. I thought I was going to die,” Prince recalled over the weekend as she sat in the living room of her Grace Avenue home.

She said she was just stepping out the front door of Mr. Pantry, a Copley Road convenience store, when her world became a frantic, frightening blur of guns, shouts and shoves of helmeted, armored men with guns.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” Prince said.

What was happening was Operation Milkman, an investigation of a multimillion-dollar, multicounty shoplifting ring that led last Thursday morning to raids at nine businesses and the arrests of nearly two dozen people in Summit, Portage and Medina counties

That’s right, a SWAT raid over a shoplifting investigation, and an innocent civilian and her son were caught in the middle:

“I was holding the pop in my arms and was backing out the door, pushing it open with my back,” Prince said.

“The next thing I know, I’m being shoved back into the store and someone is pointing a rifle at me, yelling at me to get back, get back and to get down on the floor.”

With the rifle trained on her and an officer clad in helmet and body armor advancing toward her, Prince went to the floor face-down. She said her hands were pulled behind her back and she was handcuffed.

“I was crying and telling them my son was outside in the car,” she said.

According to Prince, another customer, a man, ran toward the cooler when officers barged in and she saw the owner of the store at the counter.

“He had a gun on his hip… ,” Prince said. “I was just hoping he didn’t do anything. I was thinking if the owner made any kind of move, I was going to get killed.

“They (the officers) kept yelling: `Tell us where the guns and money are.’ I was so scared.”

Outside the store, Prince’s son found himself in an equally frightening situation as he stared down the barrel of a rifle.

“I was just sitting in the car waiting for my mom” when a SWAT officer pointed a rifle at him, Davonte said.

“He was looking at me through the rifle’s scope and telling me to get out of the Jeep, get on the ground and put my hands behind my back,” Davonte said.

Because, you see, a twelve year-old sitting in a car in front of a convenience store is obviously up to no good. The response from the police is typical of what one sees in this situation:

After questioning the officers involved, the sheriff’s office confirmed the Prince family’s version of the day’s events for the most part, but noted that standard entry procedures were followed.

“We believe everything was done according to the book,” said Keith Thornton, an inspector with the sheriff’s office. He stressed that officers “did nothing wrong and followed protocol and procedure.”

Capt. Richard Roach, who was at the scene as the tactical command leader, concurred with Thornton’s assessment.

“It was a standard SWAT entry,” Roach said. “It is designed to be quick, loud and startling.”

And startling it was, as Ms. Prince and her son can attest.