swat – Techdirt (original) (raw)
Jury Says Texas City Must Pay Woman $60k After Cops Destroyed Her Home To Apprehend A Suspect
from the could-have-saved-taxpayers-cash-by-paying-her-two-years-ago dept
Bucking a trend set by two separate Appeals Courts (Ninth and Tenth), a federal court in Texas has said it is actually a violation of rights when cops destroy an innocent person’s home to effect an arrest. What’s more, a jury has backed up that decision with actual compensation. (h/t The Honest Courtesan)
Today, a federal jury ruled that Vicki Baker is entitled to $59,656.59 in damages after a SWAT team destroyed her McKinney, Texas, home while pursuing a fleeing fugitive in July 2020. The ruling is a victory for Vicki, who joined forces with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to file a lawsuit in March 2021, after the city refused to pay for the damage that had been caused.
“My priority has always been to make sure that cities like McKinney cannot treat other people the way I’ve been treated,” Vicki said. “I expect today’s victory to send a message to governments across the country that they have to pay for what they break.”
Vicki Baker’s home suffered more than $50,000 in damage after the McKinney PD detonated explosives to open a garage entryway, tossed tear gas grenades into her house, ran over her fence with an armored vehicle, and tore her front door off its hinges. All of this to effect an arrest of a fugitive wanted for kidnapping who had decided to hide out in his former employer’s house until the heat died down.
The officers did all of this despite being given a garage door opener, a code to the back gate, and a key to the house.
Late last year, this court hinted (but did not make a final call) this sort of wanton destruction was a rights violation.
While the Court acknowledges that governmental bodies are not “liable under the Just Compensation Clause to property owners every time policemen break down the doors of buildings to foil burglars thought to be inside[,]” Nat’l Bd. of Young Men’s Christian Ass’ns v United States, 395 U.S. 85, 92 (1969) (emphasis added), Baker has alleged damage to her private property—and the City’s refusal to compensate for such damage—that plausibly amounts to a Fifth Amendment violation.
It also suggested it might be a violation of the state constitution as well, especially since the damage caused was hardly “incidental” or “unforeseen.”
Even if the government did not intend to damage Baker’s property to apprehend Little, the City was substantially certain such damage would result. It is unreasonable for the City to suggest the Department officers stormed Baker’s house, broke the windows, knocked down the garage door, rammed down the backyard fence with a tank-like vehicle, and fired dozens of explosive tear gas cannisters into the home without a degree of certainty that such actions would cause damage to the property.
A little more than a month ago, the court handed down a ruling [PDF] that confirmed its earlier speculation: this senseless destruction — one the city refused to pay for — violated Baker’s rights. And the victim of this unconstitutional taking must be compensated.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the Takings Clause prevents the government from “‘forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.’” Penn Central, 438 U.S. at 123 (quoting Armstrong, 364 U.S. at 49). The Supreme Court has also articulated a per se rule that applies here: in the case of physical appropriations by the government, the government must pay for what it takes. Cedar Point, 141 S. Ct. at 2071. The Court is not persuaded to deviate from physical takings jurisprudence “as old as the Republic,” Tahoe-Sierra, 535 U. S. at 322, especially considering the decisions the City relies on cherry-picks dicta from Bennis to produce a rule that undermines decades of Supreme Court Takings precedent. Thus, the Court does not find that the total destruction of private property pursuant to the government’s exercise of its police power is categorically non-compensable under the Fifth Amendment.
As for the “cherry-picked dicta” the city cited to justify its ongoing refusal to pay for any of the damage its police department had caused, the court offers this rejoinder:
More importantly, were this rule applied here, Baker’s constitutional protections under the Fifth Amendment would disappear. It cannot be the case that public good could be done at the cost of the individual. When the Court reads the decisions in Lech, Johnson, and Amerisource, the Court is left with one question: “What is more terrifying: the fact that the government would have to pay a just amount for the property it destroys pursuant to its police powers, or that it would be exempt from paying a dime, regardless of the motivations behind its actions?” Emilio R. Longoria, Lech’s Mess, 11 WAKE FOREST J. L. & POL’Y 297, 306 (2021).
The city also cited Lech, the Tenth Circuit’s abysmal decision that pretty much said no public entity should ever have to pay for damage to private property caused by law enforcement officers. But, as the court points out, this means nothing in this case. First off, the Tenth Circuit is an entirely different jurisdiction. (Texas courts are in the Fifth Circuit.) Second, the decision wasn’t precedential. (And, third, it obviously disagrees with the Lech decision, finding it to run contrary to Supreme Court precedent.)
Finally, after two years of litigating, the city will have to pay what it probably just should have paid Baker two years (and thousands in legal fees) ago. The check hasn’t been cut yet, and there’s a good chance the city will appeal this decision, but it does at least show the general public (the jurors in this case) feel the government should have to pay for the private property it destroys.
Filed Under: home destruction, mckinney, police, swat, texas
Supreme Court Asked To Tell Cops That Consenting To A Search Is Not Consenting To Having Your Home Destroyed
from the domicile-made-furtive-movements dept
Five years ago, an Idaho police department destroyed a woman’s house to end a standoff with her dog. The Caldwell PD — after having been given permission (along with a house key) to enter the home to see if a suspect was in the home — decided this meant the Shaniz West had given them permission to fire grenade after tear gas grenade into the house before sending in the SWAT team to confront the family dog.
Exhibit A:
Shaniz West sued, stating that this 10-hour “standoff” that rendered her house uninhabitable for three months was a violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. The district court agreed, finding the officers being sued could be held accountable for destroying her home, rather than just using the house key she had given them.
Unfortunately, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and granted the officers qualified immunity. According to the Appeals Court [PDF], this was an appropriate use of police force, given the circumstances. Mainly it was that the circumstances were unique enough, the court could find no way to say this was unreasonable. Without controlling precedent, the officers were allowed to escape the consequences of their ridiculous, house-destroying actions.
Here’s the Court’s summary, which sounds like it was written by a cop PR shop.
The panel held that assuming the consent was voluntary and defendants exceeded the scope of the consent by shooting tear gas into the house, they were still entitled to qualified immunity. The panel held that given that defendants thought they had permission to enter plaintiff’s house to apprehend a dangerous, potentially armed, and suicidal felon barricaded inside, it was not obvious, in the absence of a controlling precedent, that defendants exceeded the scope of plaintiff’s consent by causing the tear gas canisters to enter the house in an attempt to flush the suspect out into the open. Officers Seevers and Winefield were therefore entitled to qualified immunity on this claim.
“Causing tear gas canisters to enter the house.” It’s like the canisters were just hanging around outside and the SWAT team’s reasonable appearance on the lawn gave the canisters permission to hurtle themselves through the nearest windows and doors.
There was no suspect to flush out. The person they were seeking had vacated the residence before officers stopped Shaniz West and threatened her with arrest if she didn’t “consent” to a search of her house. What West actually consented to was far different than what the officers ended up doing, as the dissent pointed out.
The majority adopts an entirely implausible contrary reading of West’s consent, one a “typical reasonable person [would not] have understood by the exchange between the officer and the suspect.” Jimeno, 500 U.S. at 251. Because West “never expressed a limitation as to time, place within the house, or manner of entry,” the majority concludes that her consent that officers could “get inside” permitted a violent initial attack on her house with toxic objects. Maj. Op. at 13. In so concluding, the majority supposes that someone who permits law enforcement officers to “get inside [her] house” while handing over a key consents to the officers not entering the house but instead lobbing dangerous objects, such as tear gas canisters—or stones or bombs, for other examples—into the house from the outside. It further presupposes that, in providing consent to entry, a resident must preemptively forbid actions no one would guess are contemplated by the commonsense understanding of the articulated consent. That is not the law.
What this court finds reasonable for officers (destroying a house) does not align with what any “reasonable” non-cop would willingly permit when consenting to a search of their residence.
In concluding that the officers performed a search consistent with West’s consent, the majority does what no court has before—it holds that a “typical reasonable person” consenting to an entry to look for a suspect could be understood by a competent police officer as consenting to damage to his or her home so extreme that renders it uninhabitable for months.
There is still no finding that destroying a house while performing a consensual search is a violation of rights. The Ninth punted on drawing the line following this case, leaving officers free to “cause canisters to enter” houses in the future when performing searches for suspects.
The Institute for Justice wants some precedent set. It’s asking the Supreme Court to rule on this issue. The petition [PDF] seeks a ruling that would prevent officers from dodging lawsuits from citizens rendered homeless by consensual searches.
QUESTION PRESENTED
Whether an officer who has consent to “get inside” a house but instead destroys it from the outside is entitled to qualified immunity in the absence of precisely factually on-point caselaw.
It’s a valid question. It’s far more valid than the Ninth’s conclusion: that consent to search is consent to destruction. Even given the circumstances of this case — a potentially armed felon who was supposedly suicidal — the officers had options they normally didn’t have during warrant service: specifically, permission to enter the home and a key that unlocked the front and back doors.
Instead of using the key to enter the house (or at least attempt to — the front door also had a chain securing it, but it’s not like a bunch of tear gas grenades were going to dislodge the chain), the cops decided to call in the SWAT team. They left the premises, met with the SWAT team, came up with a plan and did a couple of dry runs and three hours later, decided to start the “search.”
It wasn’t until 4.5 hours later the key was even tried. It unlocked the back door, but redundantly because the glass had already been shattered by tear gas canisters, allowing officers to reach inside and unlock the door.
As the petition points out, there’s no reason to find precedent that directly aligns with law enforcement’s actions here. It should have been plainly apparent to the officers that their actions were unreasonable.
The dissent did not purport to find a “closely similar case[ ] to guide the clearly established law inquiry[.]” App. 27. Instead, it found no such case was necessary because any competent officer would have understood he could not lawfully destroy a house simply because he had consent to enter it.
This should be obvious. If it were a car being searched, a person’s consent to a search would not justify officers towing the vehicle to place away from the public and detonating it just because of the slim possibility something inside it might pose a threat to officers.
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will take a look at this case, rather than decide it’s up to the lower court to set a bunch of conflicting precedent — or far more likely, continue kicking the QI can down the road. Giving officers permission to search your house should never mean giving them permission to leave you with no place to live.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, consent, destruction, idaho, search, shaniz west, supreme court, swat, swat teams
After No-Knock Raid Goes Horribly Wrong, Police Union Boss Steps Up To Threaten PD's Critics
from the garbage-in,-garbage-out-apparently dept
Four Houston police officers were shot — allegedly by now-dead suspects — while serving a no-knock warrant on a Houston residence. The no-knock warrant was supposed to make everything safer for the officers, giving them a chance to get a jump on the suspects and prevent the destruction of evidence/officers. But as anyone other than cops seems to comprehend, startling people in their own homes with explosives and kicked-in doors tends to make everything more dangerous for everyone.
Operating on a tip that from someone claiming to have purchased heroin from the home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas, the Houston PD SWAT team secured a no-knock warrant and kicked in the door roughly five hours later. No heroin was found. Some guns and an apparently small amount of cocaine and marijuana were recovered. According to cops, the 59-year-old Tuttle opened fire on officers and his wife tried to take a shotgun from a downed officer, resulting in her being killed as well. The married couple are now dead, having amassed a combined 21 years of marriage and a single criminal charge — a misdemeanor bad check charge — between them before this raid ended their lives.
The cops have vouched for the reliability of their confidential informant despite there being a huge discrepancy between what the CI told them and what was actually found in the house.
According to the affidavit, the informant said he bought the powder from the middle-aged man, who called it “boy,” a street name for heroin. The informant also said that the man carried a gun, and that there was more of the brown powder at the house, “packaged in a large quantity of plastic baggies.” The author of the affidavit wrote that the informant had “proven to be credible and reliable on many prior occasions” and he asked a municipal court judge “to enter the suspected place and premises without first knocking and announcing the presence and purpose of the officers executing the warrant.”
The dead couple cannot provide a narrative, so the one we’re stuck with comes from the Houston PD.
“Once the officers breached the door and the gunfire began from the suspects, one of the suspects actually retreated momentarily to the back of the room and then that suspect came back and again engaged the officers in gunfire,” Acevedo said at a Monday evening news conference.
Maybe some footage survived the shootout…
[Chief Acevedo] said none of the officers was wearing a body camera.
It’s not that the Houston PD doesn’t have cameras. It’s just that officers wear them when they want to and activate them only when they want to. It appears no one in the department has stepped up to hold officers accountable for failing to follow policy. So, only one story survives this shooting: the PD’s account.
There might have been a second version covering some of the raid, but the PD took care of that as well.
[K]HOU, the CBS affiliate in Houston, reports that the house had no security cameras, although “a house next door to the Tuttles’ home does have surveillance video,” and “police took that footage for evidence.”
As is to be expected, this deadly raid has led to criticism of the police department and its tactics. It started with a CI tip about an illegal substance that wasn’t found during the search and ended with four cops wounded and two people with no criminal history shot dead in the home they had lived in for twenty years.
The criticism is well-earned. But the head of the city’s police union believes the police have done no wrong — not in this case and possibly not ever.
Houston Police Department Union president Joe Gamaldi went a step further, calling out people who criticize the police. “We are sick and tired of having targets on our back,” Gamaldi said at a press conference on Monday night outside of the hospital where the injured officers were being treated. (All four survived their injuries.) “We are sick and tired of having dirtbags trying to take our lives when all we’re trying to do is protect this community and protect our families. Enough is enough. **If you’re the ones out there spreading the rhetoric that police officers are the enemy, well just know we’ve all got your number now. We’re going to be keeping track on all of y’all, and we’re going to make sure to hold you accountable every time you stir the pot on our police officers.**”
This statement says a lot about the mindset of law enforcement. Officers appear to believe that because they do a job few people want to, they shouldn’t be criticized for how they do it.
But the statement says something much more worrying about how police officers and their representation respond to criticism. Gamaldi’s statement suggests the Houston PD will be keeping tabs on its critics. He’s basically saying the government agency employing the people he represents is willing to retaliate against protected speech. That’s not something the Houston PD can do (at least not legally) and it’s something it shouldn’t do, even if some officers feel they might be able to get away with it. If the PD is willing to violate the Constitution when it’s publicly criticized, it’s probably willing to do it during its more private ventures. Ultimately, this statement says more about the PD than its critics, and what it does say is pretty ugly.
Filed Under: dennis tuttle, houston, houston pd, houston police, joe gamaldi, no knock, no knock raid, police, police killings, rhogena nicholas, swat, warrants
Arkansas Police Department Has Been Engaging In Illegal Drug Raids For Years
from the bogus-narratives-and-boilerplate dept
The War on Drugs seems to bring out the worst in law enforcement. Wiretap abuse, asset forfeiture, flashbang grenades tossed into toddlers’ cribs, internal corruption… these are all aspects of law enforcement’s drug-related police work.
Radley Balko has uncovered more abuse and Constitutional violations, this time stemming from the Little Rock PD’s anti-drug efforts. The wrongs detailed in Balko’s investigation include false statements on warrant requests, abuse of no-knock warrants, “reliable” confidential informants who are anything but reliable, and a handful of destroyed lives left in its wake.
It opens with the story of Roderick Talley, whose apartment was raided by a Little Rock (AR) SWAT team. The team used explosives to remove his door, sending it flying onto the couch where Talley was sleeping. The raid was predicated on an informant’s supposed controlled buy. But Talley’s own security cameras — which also captured the raid itself — showed the informant didn’t do what police said he did.
The outside camera had recorded two odd incidents. First, a man whom Talley didn’t know approached the apartment while Talley wasn’t home. Looking anxious, the man knocked, waited a few moments and then left. A few days later, the camera picked up a police officer outside the door. The officer looked around, snapped a photo of Talley’s door with his cellphone, and left.
According to the search warrant affidavit, the CI had purchased drugs from Talley, with the swearing officer claiming he had actually witnessed this (nonexistent) purchase take place.
The detective wrote that he and two other detectives then watched as the informant approached Talley’s apartment. Importantly, the detective wrote that the officers “observed the door open” and witnessed the informant have “a conversation with someone inside the apartment.” Immediately after, they met up with the informant at a prearranged location. The informant said he had just purchased $100 worth of cocaine from two men in the apartment. One man took his money at the door, then an inside man handed the door man a small bag of cocaine.
If it hadn’t been for his own cameras, it would have been Talley’s word against the Little Rock PD’s. The only drugs found during the no-knock raid was a misdemeanor amount of marijuana. Talley was then kicked out of his apartment by his landlord and billed for the damages caused by the SWAT team.
Talley isn’t alone. Balko details a couple of other questionable raids that can be traced back to the same questionable informant.
Talley says the informant did speak to him, and when he confronted him about his own case, the informant admitted that he never bought cocaine that day. Furthermore, “his girlfriend told me that he’d get paid for each bust, so he’d just take the cops to the places of people he knew or had heard about, knock on the door, and then he’d just make small talk for a few minutes,” Talley says. “Then he’d go tell the cops that he’d bought whatever drug they were looking for.”
That jibes with the accounts of two other people who say they were recently raided because of the informant. Derrick Davis says that on Sept. 2, 2017, a few weeks after the raid on Talley, a strange man knocked on his door. “I’d never seen the guy before,” Davis says. “He just comes up, knocks and walks right in. Then he starts asking weird questions about my apartment, like whether I like living there, and how much the rent is. He stayed for a few minutes, then he thanked me and left. It was weird.”
Two weeks later, an LRPD raid team blew down Davis’s door. “I saw the video of what they did to Mr. Talley. It was exactly what they did to me,” he says. “They used explosives. It blew the door clean off. Then about 10 guys came in, all decked out in SWAT gear.”
What’s most concerning about the LRPD’s tactics is its reliance on “no knock” warrants. These warrants are supposed to be limited to cases where officers can demonstrate a sufficient need to enter a private residence unannounced. There’s a higher bar than regular search warrants and are meant to the rare exception to the rule. For the Little Rock PD, the exception is the rule.
Of the 105 warrants, LRPD officers requested a no-knock raid in 103. Of those 103, Little Rock’s criminal court judges granted the request in at least 101. (The other two search warrants were missing the page that included the judge’s instructions on how the warrant should be served.)
The”neutral magistrate” — the check against government power — was, in these cases, the rubber stamp applied to PD boilerplate. Only eight warrant requests contained any specific details about the sought suspect. The other 90+ warrant requests were copy-pasted assertions about drug dealers and danger. As Balko points out, this isn’t just lazy police work (and lazy adjudicating), it’s actually illegal.
Some police agencies adapted to the Wilson ruling [on no-knock warrants] by simply deciding that all drug cases involve violent suspects and easily destroyable evidence. The Supreme Court rejected this approach two years later in the 1997 case Richards v. Wisconsin. The court ruled that to obtain a no-knock warrant, law enforcement officers must demonstrate specific exigent circumstances for each suspect for whom they’re trying to obtain a no-knock warrant. They can’t simply state that an entire class of crimes, such as drug crimes, presents de facto exigent circumstances.
The Little Rock PD has been engaged in unconstitutional policing for who knows how many years. It just took a set of personal security cameras to catch them in the act. The resulting paper trail has exposed an assembly line for illegal SWAT raids and it’s unlikely this Arkansas law enforcement agency is the only one in the nation using the War on Drugs as an excuse for violent behavior and rights violations.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, arkansas, confidential informants, little rock, little rock police department, no knock warrants, roderick talley, swat, war on drugs, warrants
Hell Forms Bobsled Team After Police Chief Admits Fault In SWAT Raid Targeting Wrong Address
from the tfw-the-gold-standard-should-just-be-the-goddamn-standard dept
Something that happens far too often — police officers raiding the wrong house in search of criminals — has resulted in national headlines.
A police search warrant team going after a drug dealer targeted the wrong address and burst into the apartment of an innocent resident who shot and wounded two officers believing they were home invaders, Prince George’s law enforcement officials said.
It has been greeted by something that almost never happens.
Police Chief Hank Stawinski apologized for the error Thursday and said he has halted executing search warrants until the department reviews how it corroborates information to confirm addresses and the location of investigative targets.
There’s more. No charges will be filed against the man who shot two officers. The police chief said the man ambushed in his own home was a “law-abiding citizen.” Beyond that, he called the warrant itself into question, along with the information used to obtain it.
A confidential informant led investigators to the address at which they were serving the search warrant Wednesday night, Stawinski said. But the chief said he is “not satisfied” with the amount of information investigators used to obtain the search warrant and with the efforts to verify the information from the informant.
Here’s all the things that didn’t happen:
– No one suggested everyone “wait until all the facts are in.”
– No one blamed the media for rushing ahead with a narrative the PD didn’t find flattering.
– No one refused to comment until an investigation was completed.
– No one disparaged the victim of the raid by feeding his criminal record to local media.
– No one suggested the resident be more compliant in the future.
– No one defended the officers’ actions as reasonable.
– No one filed charges against the resident for shooting and wounding police officers.
This is an astounding reaction to incidents that are far too commonplace in this country. This is also an indictment of policing in America. There is no reason this reaction should be as stunning as it is. This should be standard operating procedure when cops screw up. Instead, we’re most often greeted with defense of indefensible actions combined with a multitude of efforts designed to make the SWAT raid victim appear as unsympathetic as possible.
Wrong address raids, killings of unarmed citizens, excessive force deployment… all of these events are normally handled by police departments with maximum defensiveness and minimal acceptance of culpability. A law enforcement agency immediately stepping up to take responsibility for its errors — especially ones with potentially deadly outcomes — is a breath of fresh air in the fetid, stagnant swamp of US policing.
But this shouldn’t be the ultra-rare exception. It should be the rule. The public law enforcement serves deserves far better than the condescending, self-serving crap it’s so often handed in the wake of incidents like these.
Filed Under: apology, hank stawinski, police brutality, prince george, responsibility, swat, swat team, wrong address
Judge Helps Ensure That The More Ignorant Law Enforcement Officers Are, The More They'll Be Able To Get Away With
from the useful-idiots-on-the-front-line-of-the-Drug-War dept
So much for the Fourth Amendment. Even though a field test for marijuana returned false results twice and a SWAT team raid of Robert and Addie Harte’s house turned up no drugs or paraphernalia, the cops involved have been let off the hook by a federal judge. Radley Balko runs down the details of the decision in his post entitled “Federal judge: Drinking tea, shopping at a gardening store is probable cause for a SWAT raid on your home.”
The family was held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.
The investigation leading to the raid began at least seven months earlier, when Robert Harte and his son went to a gardening store to purchase supplies to grow hydroponic tomatoes for a school project. A state trooper had been positioned in the store parking lot to collect the license plate numbers of customers, compile them into a spreadsheet, then send the spreadsheets to local sheriff’s departments for further investigation.
[…]
On several occasions, the Sheriff’s Department sent deputies out to sort through the family’s garbage. (The police don’t need a warrant to sift through your trash.) The deputies repeatedly found “saturated plant material” that they thought could possibly be marijuana. On two occasions, a drug testing field kit inexplicably indicated the presence of THC, the active drug in marijuana. It was on the basis of those tests and Harte’s patronage of a gardening store that the police obtained the warrant for the SWAT raid.
The incriminating leaves were nothing more than loose-leaf tea. The Hartes were not drug dealers, nor were they using marijuana. Nonetheless, the federal judge decided the whole thing — from cops camping out in the parking lot of a gardening store to the two bogus field tests to the fruitless raid of the Harte’s residence all complied with the Fourth Amendment.
[Judge John W. Lungstrum] found that the police had probable cause for the search, and that the way the search was conducted did not constitute excessive force. He found that the Hartes had not been defamed by the raid or by the publicity surrounding it. He also ruled that the police were under no obligation to know that drug testing field kits are inaccurate, nor were they obligated to wait for the more accurate lab tests before conducting the SWAT raid.
The Hartes’ lawsuit is still alive… barely. The judge granted a motion for summary judgment in favor of the defendant law enforcement agency, but the case has not been dismissed.
Orin Kerr, writing for the Volokh Conspiracy, took issue with Balko’s “provocative” headline, claiming Lungstrum’s ruling said nothing of the sort.
Yes, there was a legal decision, but it had nothing to do with visiting gardening stores or the culpability of drinking tea. Instead, the issue in the case was when the police can rely on positive field tests for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. The judge ruled that officers cannot be held personally liable for searching a home with a warrant based on two positive field tests for marijuana, a week apart, from plant materials found in the suspect’s discarded trash, at least when the officers did not know about the risks that the field tests results were false positives
This basically says the same thing Balko’s paragraph on the ruling does, only Kerr maintains that it does not show drinking tea and visiting gardening supply stores could lead to a SWAT team raid. The problem is that this is exactly what happened. So, while the judge’s decision doesn’t explicitly state officers are fully justified in using dubious field tests and inefficient garden store parking lot stakeouts as probable cause for search warrants, it absolutely does affirm that these elements are insufficient to show a Fourth Amendment violation.
Why? Because probable cause is whatever a cop says it is. This is an ongoing issue in states where marijuana has been partially legalized. In California, medical marijuana is legal. The cops can’t seem to deal with this new reality. So, they find bogus reasons to raid houses, relying on multiple law enforcement-friendly exceptions to the Fourth Amendment to keep their busts intact… or at least minimize the number of times judges will find them culpable for violations. Cops say “upon information and belief” and magistrate judges nod in approval.
Here’s attorney Rick Horowitz on the subject.
In my area of the world, I get a lot of what defense attorneys call “medical marijuana cases,” and prosecutors – enrobed, or not – call drug-manufacturing, or drug-dealing, cases. Because the voters of the State of California voted to decriminalize marijuana use for people who obtained recommendations from medical doctors for the use of marijuana, and because doctors give out (really bad) legal advice along with the recommendations, and because the cops don’t want to try to go after doctors who recommend marijuana to anyone with $150 bucks (or whatever the current going rate is), because they have the money to fight back, we have a lot of folks growing marijuana in the highly-conservative right-wing center of California (the San Joaquin Valley) where it is most definitely not wanted by those in power. And so a cop will talk to a judge about a house he’s heard about with a bunch of marijuana plants, and say, “Based on my training, and experience, no one grows this many plants unless they are actually marijuana dealers hiding behind the medical marijuana laws stupidly passed by the electorate.”
Boom! There’s your probable cause. The law be damned.
In this case, the probable cause was exceedingly thin. The Hartes went to a store where hydroponic gardening supplies could be purchased — items that are used for legal gardening all the time. This simple fact was all that was needed for law enforcement to perform trash pulls. Items from the trash were tested and “found” to be marijuana, even though they weren’t.
The only response offered by the sheriff’s department for its field test failures is a shrug of indifference. If a cop tells a magistrate judge the tests are reliable, more often than not, a warrant will be issued, despite loads of evidence showing field tests to be notoriously unreliable. The officers simply say, “Huh. I’ve never heard of a failed test,” and a federal judge forgives them for their ignorance and ineptitude.
Hilariously, the sheriff claimed these two failures on the same case are the only two times the department’s field tests have been wrong, dating back to 1978.
The decision makes it clear the best thing cops can do to make bogus searches stick is to be wilfully ignorant of failure rates. They should do no research on the subject and should never question a positive test result. (They will likely remain skeptical of every negative result and re-test until the results confirm their biases.) Any information they might have that undermines probable cause should be discarded and wiped from memory. After all, the judicial branch has stated they’re under no obligation to ensure statements made in warrant affidavits actually have any merit. Ignorance is bliss… or at the very least, good faith.
While Kerr is technically correct that a judge didn’t say cops could go after anyone whose trash contains leaves if they also shop at gardening supply stores, the end result is basically the same thing. Kerr’s view of the decision is summed up best by this comment on his post. (And credit where due, Kerr did point out that he enjoyed this comment.)
This is one more example of a case where the vast majority of people of good will review the facts and conclude there was an obvious and gross violation of justice while a pedant who is an expert in the 4th amendment assures us that “No, no, this is all very interesting, but…”
If you want a technical view of the ruling, Kerr lays it out best. But the decision runs contrary to many people’s view of the Fourth Amendment: that they should be free from unreasonable searches. The problem is, what’s “unreasonable” to the public is very much considered to be “reasonable” to law enforcement and far too many judges. That explains the outrage at the outcome. The law can’t protect innocent people from law enforcers. The remedies are too limited, and far too often, removed completely by judicial deference to law enforcement’s definition of “reasonable.” Scott Greenfield explains.
That the judge who signed off on the warrant accepted the results of the test as being sufficient to show probable cause, that the test produced sufficient positive results, even if totally false, to support the issuance of the warrant, made Lungstrum’s ruling perfectly legally reasonable. The Fourth Amendment says get a warrant, and they did. It requires probable cause, and they had it based on the field tests. The police enjoy qualified immunity unless they knew their application to contain material omissions about the test, and they shrug and say, “science.”
Except the Hartes did nothing more than some veggie gardening and drink tea. All the twists of the law upon which summary judgment was granted against them not only failed to protect the sanctity of the home of two innocent people from a SWAT raid, and all that accompanies it, but provided no remedy after the accusations fell apart.
At the end of it, we’re supposed to take comfort in the fact that at least a warrant was obtained. This piece of paper, no matter how ignorantly or deceptively obtained, will shield law enforcement from much of the potential damage. But everything about this decision says cops are better off stupid and idealistic, rather than cognizant of the deficiencies of their tactics and methods. Judges don’t expect law enforcement officers to know the laws they enforce and this only further encourages them to remain ignorant on other subjects as well.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, addie harte, gardening, probable cause, raids, robert harte, swat, warrant
Nineteen-Hour 'Standoff' Ends With Law Enforcement Officers Destroying An Empty House
from the we'll-teach-you-to-be-vacant! dept
The Cherokee County (KS) Sheriff’s Department engaged in a fruitless 19-hour standoff with a vacant residence. On the 20th hour, the fugitive house was finally taken down.
A SWAT truck with a battering ram attached was used to poke holes and tear apart the house in an attempt to drive the nonexistent suspect out. As deputies became unable to find him, they began taking their frustration out on couches, beds, lamps, clothing, toys, and even the family’s Christmas tree was ripped through a window and smashed to bits.
The entire time, Nita Lane, the homeowner, was trying to tell the cops that Alexius was not there and does not live there.
The sheriff, quite expectedly, remains unapologetic. Despite being told by the victim that Alexius was not in her house, [Sheriff David] Groves maintains that his officers acted in the best possible manner.
“It appeared using that tool [infra-red camera] there was somebody in the attic. As it turns out, now we know that was incorrect. But nonetheless that was the information we were operating under at the time,” said Groves.
The write-up at The Free Thought Project contains a decent summation of the ridiculous ordeal, but the real fun comes in reading the play-by-play at the Joplin Globe, which captures the shifting narrative provided by the Sheriff’s Department.
It begins on December 15th, with the site declaring “Joplin man in standoff with law enforcement in Galena.” Granted, this was several hours before it was discovered that a more accurate headline would have been “Joplin house in standoff with law enforcement.”
Galena police and agents with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and the FBI served a search warrant about 9 p.m. Monday at 1009 E. Fifth St. looking for Alexius and removed a woman and four children from the home. In the course of serving the warrant, they learned that Alexius was hiding in the attic of the single-story house and might be armed.
That’s not really what they learned. They used a thermal imaging camera and thought they detected someone hiding in the attic. So, the standoff began, with the sheriff confidently stating they’d be able to wait out the fugitive member of the local gang concern, “Joplin Honkies,” thanks to the department’s bench depth.
“Time is on our side,” the sheriff said. “We have the luxury of being able to rotate officers out. At some point, he’s going to have to come out of there.”
Five hours later, Sheriff Groves admitted that the man the occupants of the house had already stated wasn’t in the house was, in fact, not in the house.
Cherokee County Sheriff David Groves said local, state and federal law enforcement officers late into the day on Tuesday had believed that Doug Alexius, 40, of Joplin, was inside the home and armed, although no shots had been fired.
Groves said a search that ended at 5:30 p.m. concluded that Alexius was not in the home.
Left unmentioned was the damage done to the house in search of the fugitive who wasn’t there. Law enforcement officers fired flash bangs into the home and used an armored vehicle-mounted ram to punch holes in the attic. The officers also tore apart the inside of the home in their futile search.
It wasn’t until the following day that the damage done to the home was addressed. The FBI agreed to pay for the destruction, but Sheriff Groves refused to shoulder any of the blame, despite initiating the pointless standoff.
“As for why specific tactics were utilized or items removed, those questions would need to be directed to the teams involved in that action,” Groves wrote in an email to the Globe. “The teams utilized were from the KBI and FBI. The FBI indicated yesterday (Tuesday) that they would be paying for the damages to the home.”
He also wrote:
“The information we received indicates he was in the residence that morning… Either that information was inaccurate or he left prior to law enforcement arrival. We have no reason to believe that he left the residence once a perimeter was established.”
This last sentence is problematic, given statements made later by other law enforcement officials.
The standoff that wasn’t included police dogs, the evacuation of nearby houses, a cordoned-off block, officers from three law enforcement agencies (FBI, Sheriff’s Department, Kansas Bureau of Investigation) and a plane circling overhead. Groves had “no reason” to believe the suspect had escaped undetected because that outcome verged on impossible. And yet, his statement was directly contradicted by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation two days later, starting with a justification for the havoc wreaked on the empty house:
Doug Younger, the agent for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation who oversaw part of what has been described as a standoff between agents and an armed man reputed to be a member of the Joplin Honkies gang, walked through the house of single mother Juanita Lane on Tuesday night after it was all over.
Windows were broken out and a ram had been used to batter a hole in the back of the modest white house so agents could reach the attic where Doug Alexius was believed to be hiding. Throughout the 20 1/2-hour ordeal, the children’s pet rabbit scampered around the house.
Younger, who oversees the statewide SWAT team for the KBI, told the Globe on Friday that he believes Alexius was in that house the whole time although the wanted man wasn’t found after agents combed through the house with the help of a robot and dogs.
“I believe he was there, but we were going to have to tear the place down to find him,” Younger said.
Faith. Just the sort of thing we like to see in our law enforcement officers — especially those willing to tear apart a family’s home in service of their gut feelings. Younger actually congratulates himself for the house not being completely razed during the search for the nonexistent fugitive.
“I feel like we did due diligence, but at the same time we stopped before we tore the place to the ground,” Younger said.
Good for him. But Younger still holds the belief that the wily Joplin Honky either burrowed into the house’s foundation or somehow made his way past the three-agency dragnet surrounding the house. This belief helps Younger justify the damage done to the house while simultaneously allowing him to brag about his agency’s admirable restraint.
The FBI will cover the damage, which is nice. The courts have already made it clear law enforcement has no obligation to reimburse property owners for damaged houses, vehicles, or personal effects. That a federal agency would step up and assist the homeowner in this fashion is commendable, even if everything leading up to that point was a debacle.
Filed Under: cherokee county, david groves, doug alexius, kansas, nita lane, police, standoff, swat
No Immunity For Cops Who Sent A SWAT Team To A 68-Year-Old Woman's House For Threats Delivered Over Open WiFi Connection
from the probable-cause-=-'internet-threats-plus-an-internet-connection...-somewhere& dept
Earlier this year, we covered the story of Louise Milan, a 68-year-old grandmother whose house was raided by a SWAT team (accompanied by a news crew) searching for someone who had made alleged threats against police officers over the internet. Part of the probable cause submitted for the warrant was Milan’s IP address. But the police made no attempt to verify whether any resident of Milan’s house made the threats and ignored the fact that the IP address was linked to an open WiFi connection.
While the presiding judge did take issue with the tactics deployed by the SWAT team (which included turning a regular warrant into a no-knock warrant by only giving Milan a few seconds to respond to their knock before battering down the door and hurling flashbang grenades into the house), he didn’t have much to say about the department’s bogus “an IP address is a person” justification for the raid. This was concerning because the police verified the IP address by wardriving. By doing so, they also could have confirmed the WiFi connection was open and that the threats could have been made by anyone accessing that connection.
The judge, however, refused to grant the defendants summary judgment on the excessive force claims or immunity. This decision was appealed by the police department, which still insists it should be granted qualified immunity. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has a lot to say about the police officers’ actions during this raid and the events leading up to it, none of it good.
First, it points out that the police officers could have performed their due diligence on the IP address before deciding to carry out a raid, but chose not to.
The defendants say they didn’t know that Mrs. Milan’s network was unsecured and therefore accessible by someone outside the house who could use the unsecured network to send the threatening messages. Although the police had discovered that there was an unsecured network near the house, they hadn’t bothered to find out whose network it was, as they could easily have done, precisely because it was unsecured and therefore accessible. Had they done that they would have known that it was Mrs. Milan’s network and, since it was unsecured, that it might have been used (without her knowledge) by someone outside her home to send the threatening messages. The failure to discover that the network was Mrs. Milan’s was a failure of responsible police practice.
The court notes that the officers’ irresponsibility didn’t end there. They also ignored the fact that a man who had made threats against officers in the past (Derrick Murray) was spotted sitting on a porch two houses away from Milan’s by officers prior to the raid. (And, indeed, Murray watched the raid unfold from this same porch.) They also ignored the fact that none of the three other people they suspected of making the threats (former residents of the house/distant relations of Milan) had been observed entering or exiting the house. Instead, they took the IP address and the info obtained from the service provider and went after Milan. And, despite having no evidence someone dangerous might be in Milan’s house, deployed a SWAT team.
So: a house occupied by an elderly woman and her two daughters; no evidence that any criminals would be present during the search although the possibility could not be excluded entirely; no effort to neutralize suspect Murray during the search, as by posting police to watch his house and make sure he didn’t rush over to Mrs. Milan’s house when the search began. But despite their insouciance about Murray and the perfunctory character of their investigation before the search, the police decided to search the Milan house—and in a violent manner.
The “violent manner” is described in greater detail in the opinion. The court grants itself a short tangent during its recounting of the incident to criticize the lingo cops deploy to downplay the violence of their methods and weaponry.
A search warrant was applied for and obtained, and the search was conducted by an eleven-man SWAT team accompanied by a news team. The members of the SWAT team rushed to the front door of the house, knocked, and without allowing a reasonable time—more than a few seconds—for a response (though they hadn’t gotten a “no knock” warrant) broke open the front door and a nearby window, and through these openings hurled two “flash bang” grenades. These are explosive devices, similar to but a good deal less lethal than military hand grenades, that are intended to stun and disorient persons, thus rendering them harmless, by emitting blinding flashes of light and deafening sounds. They can kill if they land on a person, especially a child. The police call them “distraction devices,” an absurd euphemism; we called them “bombs” in Estate of Escobedo v. Bender, 600 F.3d 770, 784–85 (7th Cir. 2010), and United States v. Jones, 214 F.3d 836, 837–38 (7th Cir. 2000).
Then the court gets to the most absurd part of the raid — considering the danger the police were attempting to neutralize by assaulting both Milan and her house.
That no men were found in the house during the raid confirmed the police in their belief that Murray was responsible for the threats. It took them only a day to discover that it was indeed he who was responsible—he had used Mrs. Milan’s open network to threaten the police. But rather than give him the SWAT-team treatment, the police politely requested that he come to police headquarters, which he did, where he was arrested without incident. The police department’s kid-gloves treatment of Murray is in startling contrast to their flashbang assault on Mrs. Milan’s home.
On top of that, even when it was evident there was no danger and none of the suspects were present, the SWAT team refused to dial back its aggressive tactics.
The handcuffing of the daughter, looking indeed much younger than her 18 years, is shown on the helmet video along with the rest of the search, and she is so small, frail, utterly harmless looking, and completely unresisting that the sight of her being led away in handcuffs is disturbing. All that the SWAT officer had to do was take her by the hand and lead her out of the house, which was rapidly filling with smoke from the flash bangs; there was no conceivable reason to handcuff her.
Everything about the raid bothers the Seventh Circuit Court. The lack of actual investigative work. The over-the-top tactics. The fact that a unit deploying flashbang grenades couldn’t even be bothered to ensure any more damage than “necessary” wasn’t done.
Precipitate use of flash bangs to launch a search has troubled us before, leading us to declare that “the use of a flash bang grenade is reasonable only when there is a dangerous suspect and a dangerous entry point for the police, when the police have checked to see if innocent individuals are around before deploying the device, when the police have visually inspected the area where the device will be used and when the police carry a fire extinguisher.” Estate of Escobedo v. Bender, supra, 600 F.3d at 784–85. The police in this case flunked the test just quoted. True, they’d brought a fire extinguisher with them—but, as if in tribute to Mack Sennett’s Keystone Kops, they left it in their armored SWAT vehicle.
The court notes that reasonable mistakes made by officers do not nullify qualified immunity, even when the mistakes seem less reasonable by the application of hindsight. But there was nothing reasonable about this entire debacle.
We cannot understand the failure of the police, before flash banging the house, to conduct a more extensive investigation of the actual suspects: Murray, living two doors away from the Milan home and thus with ready access to Mrs. Milan’s open network, and the male Milans. The police neglect of Murray is almost incomprehensible. His past made him a prime suspect. A day of investigating him would have nailed him, as we know because a day of investigating—the day after the violent search of the home—did nail him.
More to the point, the lack of even minimal investigative efforts precludes the department from claiming these “mistakes” were “reasonable.”
[T]o repeat for emphasis, the police acted unreasonably and precipitately in flash banging the house without a minimally responsible investigation of the threats. The open network expanded the number of possible threateners and just one extra day of surveillance, coupled with a brief investigation of Murray and the three male Milans, should have been sufficient to reassure the police that there were no dangerous men lurking in the house.
In other words, had the police officers actually performed any sort of police work, Milan’s house would have been left unmolested/un-flashbanged and she wouldn’t be suing the department for civil rights violations. This lawsuit could have been avoided entirely and the police were obviously capable of taking down a much more dangerous target without extra drama and explosives. But it had a news crew in tow — one it was apparently “repaying” for the tips about the social media threats. And once it had eyes on it, it couldn’t help but deploy its ridiculous “shock and awe” tactics… to take down a 68-year-old grandmother and her “small, frail” daughter.
Filed Under: derrick murray, louise milan, open wifi, police, raid, swat, wifi
Officer Indicted For Lying On Warrant Application That Led To Toddler Being Burned By Flashbang Grenade
from the actually,-I'd-rather-have-honest-cops-than-burned-toddlers,-TYVM dept
The local police union defended the indefensible: the burning/maiming of a toddler with a flashbang grenade, delivered during a no-knock raid in service of the Drug War. According to the union rep, burned toddlers are just the price society has to pay to keep the streets relatively free of criminals.
“You have to draw the line between your right as a citizen to privacy and a community’s right to live in a crime-free environment. You can’t have them both,” Mills said.
Thanks, but no thanks. Not only did the union defend these Georgia police officers’ needlessly aggressive tactics, but it attempted to lay the blame for a burned toddler at the public’s feet. And now, with a grand jury indictment being handed down, it appears the union was also defending a liar.
According to the indictment, [Deputy] Autry falsely claimed a confidential informant who had provided reliable information in the past had bought methamphetamine from Wanis Thonetheva at his mother’s house in Cornelia. In truth, the informant was newly minted, and it was his roommate who claimed (without verification) to have bought drugs at the house. That lie was the basis for the early-morning, no-knock raid during which 18-month-old Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh, Thonetheva’s cousin, was nearly killed by a flash-bang grenade that landed in the playpen where he was sleeping.
Any CI that can put a no-knock raid in motion is inherently trustworthy. Except when they aren’t. So, much like the toddler’s family’s lawsuit alleged, the impetus for the raid that saw SWAT members tripping over children’s toys in the yard on their way to tossing a flashbang grenade into a crib was nothing more than some random citizen “helping” keep his neighborhood safe.
All that investigative work and “upon information and belief” was actually Habersham County Deputy Sheriff Nikki Autry spinning a tale of small-time drug running in exchange for the permission to perform the law enforcement version of a home invasion.
Specifically, Defendant Autry provided and swore, in pertinent part, (1) that she conducted an undercover drug investigation during which time CI #1459 was able to purchase a quantity of methamphetamine from [W.T] at [W.T.’s] residence; (2) that CI #1459 [was] a true and reliable informant who provided information in the past that led to criminal charges on individuals selling illegal narcotics… and (3) that she confirmed that “there [was] heavy traffic in and out of the residence.”
This information that Defendant Autry provided and swore to was false, because, as Defendant Autry then well knew: (1) CI #1459 did not purchase a quantity of methamphetamine from W.T. during her investigation; (2) CI #1459 had not provided information in the past that led to criminal charges on individuals selling illegal narcotics… and (3) she had not confirmed that there was heavy traffic in and out of the residence.
The presentment accompanying the grand jury’s findings suggest several improvements for drug enforcement activities, starting with dialing back the “gung-ho” aspects of drug warring.
Some of what contributed to this tragedy can be attributed to well-intentioned people getting in too big a hurry, and not slowing down and taking enough time to consider the possible consequences of their actions. Without serious supervision and constant vigilance, the work of drug enforcement, like many other jobs, can unfortunately become routine and lead to complacency and lack of attention to detail. The difference in this type of work is that the consequences can be devastating to both citizens and law enforcement when things go wrong.
Making thing go “right” more often means bringing SWAT teams and tactics back in line with their original intentions: for use only the most dangerous operations. Over the past few decades, SWAT teams have gone from seldom-used specialists who dealt with shootouts and hostage situations to routine — but extraordinarily violent — delivery services for unremarkable search/arrest warrants. The presentment points out law enforcement agencies have several options that don’t involve violently raiding residences during odd hours.
We recommend that whenever reasonably possible, suspects be arrested away from a home when doing so can be accomplished without extra risk to law enforcement and to citizens. Going into a home with the highest level of entry should be reserved for those cases where it is absolutely necessary. This is to protect both citizens and law enforcement officers.
We have heard evidence that many drug suspects often initially believe a law enforcement entry is in fact a drug robbery. In an instant, they reach for a weapon or take an action that makes a situation escalate. This is dangerous to all involved, and neither the public nor law enforcement officers should be in this dangerous split second situation unless it is absolutely necessary for the protection of the public, which is the highest concern for our lawenforcement officers under their duty.
It’s a nice set of words, but the real test will be the application of these principles — principles that never should have been abandoned in the first place. To start with, it’s rare to find an officer who places protection of the public over protection of themselves. Almost every act of unwarranted violence is defended by the words “feared for my safety.” We don’t ask that officers become punching bags and bullet-catchers, but there’s a lot of leeway between a “furtive motion” and emptying a service weapon into an unarmed person. (Or tossing a flashbang through the nearest window with little regard for what lies behind it.)
The standard MO for drug-related warrants is to deliver them with as much violence, force and noise as possible, under the assumption that every drug dealer — no matter how small — awaits the arrival of police with barricades and an arsenal. This simply isn’t borne out by the results of these raids, which often fail to turn up any weapons — or at least none being wielded by the residents of the home. In some cases, there are also no drugs to be found, but this result rarely leads to the turfing of a CI or a less-violent entry when serving the next warrant.
The deaths and injuries caused by drug enforcement aren’t in danger of approaching the death and injuries caused by the drug trade, but the former is more disturbing than the latter. While we might expect a certain amount of violence from purveyors of illicit substances, we don’t really expect as much from law enforcement. And yet we’re seeing it occur on a far too regular basis.
Filed Under: drug war, flash bang, georgia, no knock raid, police, swat
Wisconsin Town Sends In The BearCat Tank To Collect Civil Fine From Seventy-Year-Old
from the tanks-for-nothing dept
So, hey, let’s say you’re an old guy in a tiny town in central Wisconsin. Old, like, seventy-five, let’s say, and the tiny town is farm country where you have a twenty-acre plot of good old American heartland. Now, let’s say that the municipality hasn’t appreciated the fact that you’ve kept your tractors out on the land you own and even went so far as to get a judge to level thousands of dollars of fines on you for not putting your toys away, because that’s apparently a thing that can happen. Now let’s say you’ve been ignoring these civil fines for some time. Under those conditions, would you expect this to show up on your lawn?
Could you repeat that? I couldn’t hear your answer over the sound of you crapping your pants…
Yes, along with a couple dozen SWAT officers, 75-year-old Roger Hoeppner had his property assaulted by a BearCat armored vehicle for the crime of not keeping things as tidy as the local government would like and refusing to pay the fines they levied.
Marathon County sheriff’s captain Greg Bean declined to answer multiple requests for comment, but told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the large police presence was called in because law enforcement officials expected they would have to seize large equipment.
See, this is our fault. I don’t think any of us realized that SWAT teams moonlight as large-format moving companies. I always thought they were for things involving tactics more complicated than the tactics of getting a tractor onto the hitch of a Mack truck. But, hey, what do I know? I’m sure Mr. Bean isn’t prone to saying super ridiculous stuff or anything. So how about that BearCat?
“I’ve been involved in about five standoff situations where, as soon as the MARV showed up, the person gives up,” Bean told the Journal Sentinel.
I don’t think the fact that the BearCat makes your job super easy to do is the proper justification for its deployment. If it was, why bother with the BearCat? Why not just bring the perp’s mother to the scene and threaten to put a bullet through her head if perp doesn’t give up immediately. Sure, it would be wholly unethical and inappropriate, but I bet Bean could still use the quote above, so all’s good, yes?
This is yet another obvious and gross misuse of tactical and/or military-grade equipment in a haphazard way. Hoeppner owes Stettin, his city of 2500 residents, $80,000 in fines for not keeping his property as clean as the city would like. In other words, he left his tractors out. As a result, he faced down a BearCat and a SWAT team, which then escorted him to the bank where he paid his fines and was escorted back out by SWAT. All of this because the authorities couldn’t be bothered to come up with a creative way to get Hoeppner out of his house.
“I just don’t understand why a dollar and a half of postage on an envelope that I would have had to pick up at the Wausau post office wouldn’t have done the same thing as 24 officers and an armored vehicle,” Hoeppner told the Guardian. “The United States is not supposed to terrorize its hardworking people.”
Good one, sir.
Filed Under: bearcat, fine, greg bean, marathon county, mrap, roger hoeppner, swat, wisconsin