No, seriously. My life really IS this strange.

This is one of several strange events in my life that has prompted me to start a blog. I've decided that I really should start chronicling the unusual happenings around me, so here we are.

The North Las Vegas SWAT Team conducted a raid on the house next door to mine yesterday. Seriously.

I was sitting at my computer after work, and I heard an extremely loud BANG. My first thought was that one of my neighbors had shot someone. The family that lives next door to me consists of 3 generations. The grand-mother and grand-father, the mother and father, the two sons (who are about my age) and the youngest daughter who is about 7 and as bright as a gold-fish. These people always get into very loud arguments with each other. The cops have been called several times in the past, and one time the youngest son even pulled a gun. These people are genetic sludge, to say the least.

So I look out my window to find out just what the hell is going on. I see this:

Immediately I hear my family yelling back and forth to each other from different levels of the house about what is going on. The SWAT Team had busted down their door, and was currently clearing the house and pulling the family out. It was at this point that I grabbed my camera and dutifully started taking pictures. Keep in mind that a few of these pictures are somewhat fuzzy, because I stayed in the house to take several of them, and I have screens on my windows that are un-removeable.

More SWAT Team:

They even had a pair of "snipers" posted in the yard behind mine watching the back door. The one on the right, I assume, is packing rubber bullets. The one on the left has an actual rifle.

Animal control showed up to deal with the Pit Bull owned by my neighbors. Unfortunately either the dog was over tranquilized or SWAT shot her (for good reason I would imagine) After the raid was all over, they put Diamond in a bag and put her in the animal control van. Unfortunate, but you can't really fault the cops for this one. (I didn't get any shots of the dead dog, nor would I post them if I had, so the squeamish need not worry)

After everyone was out and the house was cleared, CSI showed up to take a look around.

Also, a couple of detectives were there.

For a little bit of a humorous twist on the whole situation, the unmarked car that had been watching the house before the wrath of the North Las Vegas Police Department came down upon it broke down during this whole event, and they had to jump start it with a squad car.

I'm not entirely sure why all of this went down, but what I've been able to gather from neighborhood gossip is that they had a warrant to search the house because they believed that at least one of the two sons (my age) had been been breaking into houses and performing home invasions (the burglar knocks on the door, and forces his way inside when the occupants answer).
I suspect there was probably more to it, as I'm positive that the youngest of the two sons is involved in drugs. He is scrawny as hell and has that signature tweaker laugh. Total meth-head.


UPDATE

Earlier this evening after everything had settled down and we sort of knew what was going on, my mother remembered having a conversation with one of the people next door about them renting a storage space somewhere. She called the police and gave them this information, as they may want to search that as well. The detective assigned to the case called just now to follow up on that lead and find out if we knew where the storage unit was. During the course of the conversation, my mother was able to determine that the police suspected that the guy in the house that is around my age had upgraded from bicycle theft to ARMS TRAFFICKING.
Also, the loud bang that I heard at the beginning was not the door being smashed down as I initially suspected. It was a flash-bang.

I feel so safe, here in suburbia.