Florida mayor opens fire on SWAT team serving warrant at his home

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  • KellyinAvon

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    A LOT of Paul Harvey still needed on this one. Bold is for emphasis. Why would you have a pre-dawn SWAT raid for practicing medicine without a license? On a Mayor of a town of 2,800? The rest of the story is hopefully coming soon.

    PORT RICHEY, Fla. – The mayor of Port Richey, Florida, is “lucky he’s not dead” after firing two shots at a SWAT team at his house to serve a warrant, Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco told reporters Thursday.


    Dale Massad, who was elected mayor in 2015, was arrested by the officers from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and accused of practicing medicine without a license. He now also faces two charges of attempted murder.



    Nocco said no one was hurt at Massad’s home after the predawn incident in which the sheriff’s SWAT officers were assisting FDLE.


    According to a complaint affidavit, SWAT officers knocked several times on the front doors of the mayor’s home and tried unsuccessfully to use a battering ram to force them open. Another officer tried shooting the locks of the doors with a shotgun.


    After they swung the doors open, a SWAT member set off a flash bang grenade inside the doorway.


    When officers heard two shots, they retreated behind an armored vehicle, the court document says.
    The mayor had a gun in his hand, so officers ordered him to drop the weapon, Nocco said.


    “If somebody is firing at us we have every means and every right to fire back at them,” the sheriff said. “They did what they thought was appropriate at the time.
    “He’s lucky he’s not dead.”


    Authorities said Massad, 68, was in jail Thursday. It is unclear whether he has an attorney. CNN called his home number and reached out to family members but didn’t get a response.


    Massad relinquished his medical license in 1992 but was still practicing medicine, the FDLE said. Patients were coming to his home, the agency said in a news release.
    “He had performed medical procedures at his residence, with one procedure requiring additional hospital treatment for the patient,” the statement said.


    Port Richey is on the Gulf of Mexico and has about 2,800 residents.

    https://fox59.com/2019/02/22/swat-t...se-with-a-warrant-and-he-opened-fire-at-them/

     

    MarkC

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    I'm sure he was just trying to help out those who could not afford the high cost of modern medicine. He was helping the people, man... :)

    And The Man came down on him for it. Or something.
     

    edporch

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    A LOT of Paul Harvey still needed on this one. Bold is for emphasis. Why would you have a pre-dawn SWAT raid for practicing medicine without a license? On a Mayor of a town of 2,800? The rest of the story is hopefully coming soon.
    -snip-

    This ^^^^^
    There has to be more to the story to justify bringing in militarized police and do a pre-dawn raid to make an arrest like this.

    As Mayor, they likely could've just called him at his office and arranged for him to turn himself in.
     

    MarkC

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    This ^^^^^
    There has to be more to the story to justify bringing in militarized police to make an arrest like this.

    Unfortunately, maybe not. Or maybe so. Sometimes if you have a SWAT team, why not use it?

    Or maybe this guy was a known armed unstable person?

    Again, more questions than answers. But I expect no less from the modern media, who focus their articles on people with the attention span of a goldfish.
     

    ditcherman

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    Interesting to me that they went to all that, flashbang and all, to get in some tough doors and then retreated at two shots. I would have thought that if they were serving an early morning warrant, and the doors were that tough that they might have expected it.
     

    cce1302

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    More of a drug dealer and thug from what I read:
    Last year, ABC Action News reported in depth on Mayor Massad’s legal troubles.We found that police had been called to his home dozens of times.
    Then in August he and a girlfriend were both arrested on domestic violence charges.
    Massad later told us that was one of the worst experiences of his life.
    “The main thing I learned from the jail is I don’t want to go back," he said.
    The Pasco Sheriff’s Office says Massad was a known drug user and had guns in the house.
    He admitted to us he’d even fired a gun inside.
    “I shot one of my smoke detectors because I couldn’t get up there to get it. It wouldn’t go off and it was 3 a.m.," Massad said.

    https://www.wptv.com/news/region-pa...rve-search-warrant-at-port-richey-mayors-home
     

    T.Lex

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    I wonder if the "medicine without a license" was some sort of euphemism for home style opioid apothecary.
     

    cce1302

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    I think it's more along the lines of charging moonshiners with tax evasion. They knew he was into a whole lot more, but that was an easy one to pin him on and get hard evidence of all the rest.
     

    Fargo

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    I think it's more along the lines of charging moonshiners with tax evasion. They knew he was into a whole lot more, but that was an easy one to pin him on and get hard evidence of all the rest.

    Still, it seems like there should have been enough to get a search warrant then. Hook him on the way to work and then hit the house.

    Maybe there was a staleness issue or something.
     

    cce1302

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    Or if this is true (in the OP):
    According to a complaint affidavit, SWAT officers knocked several times on the front doors of the mayor’s home and tried unsuccessfully to use a battering ram to force them open. Another officer tried shooting the locks of the doors with a shotgun.

    And if this is true (from the article I linked to):

    FDLE along with Pasco deputies came to Massad's home early Thursday morning with a search warrant.
     

    Fargo

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    In a state of acute Pork-i-docis
    Or if this is true (in the OP):


    And if this is true (from the article I linked to):

    If they had a search warrant, then I lean toward a different explanation, but not one that has ever made sense to me.

    Some people just really really really love publicity

    Kinda like when a certain Indiana agency brought news cameras with them when they punched the door on a house and roughed up the residents. Unfortunately for them, the house and residents turned out to be completely unrelated to the crime.
     

    cce1302

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    Well, this guy is the mayor, and he has a record, and these guys knew what sort of person they were dealing with, and they didn't have media with them so....I'm not sure what that has to do with an unrelated incident in Indiana.
     
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