From the Memphis police department’s website, on the Special Ops page:
Tact Unit
This elite unit, specially trained to respond to various emergency situations, is responsible for handling barricade situations, hostage rescues, counter terrorism, and high risk felony apprehensions.
And apparently, serving search warrants to suspected animal hoarders upon request of Memphis Animal Services. The MPD’s Tact unit “forced entry into the home” of an alleged animal hoarder last night. The unnamed man reportedly raised a gun and was shot to death by police.
While there is no confirmation at this time that the victim was a hoarder, given that MAS suspected same should have raised a mental illness flag. After all, hoarding is an illness, and MAS officers should know this. Further:
Police say the suspected animal hoarder told neighbors he’d go down fighting in order to protect his collection of pets.
Again, this should raise a red flag regarding mental illness. This would not be the sort of situation where a special ops unit should kick down the door to the possibly mentally ill, armed person’s home – at least I wouldn’t think that would be a good idea.
A neighbor described the killing as “shocking” to WMC-TV:
More shocking is what police say they found inside the home of a suspected animal hoarder on Cameron Ridge Trail.
“Inside the house we did find a lot of cats, dogs,” Sgt. Karen Rudolph said. “I’ve been told there were raccoons, possums, chickens.”
A lot of dogs and cats. And she heard there were other animals. Shocking? The Commercial Appeal describes the home as containing “multiple cats, dogs, raccoon, possums and chickens.” I’m having troubling reconciling the words “a lot” and “multiple” with “hoarder” and “shot”.
No word on what happened to the animals.