Where are our rights against search and seizure?
Tuesday, April 26, 6 a.m. Everyone is asleep.
Those in the main part of the house are jolted awake by repeated shouting, loud banging and bell-ringing at the front door. “POLICE!” “WARRANT!”
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Two small Vietnamese women in the front bedroom, barely a month in the country, frightened, confused, fearing for their lives, are thinking “robber” or “terrorist.” A young South American man, not understanding the words, thinking “emergency,” gets up and runs to open the front door.
“When I opened it, a policeman pushed me against the wall while he was handling a gun, he pointed (at) me and made me turn around and put my hands in my back,” the young man says.
Several officers, guns drawn, rush in. Other residents are collected and also handcuffed.
One resident attempts to explain that the two women in the front bedroom are not fluent in English. Ignoring what was said, or perhaps just not listening, several men force the locked door open.
“They pointed guns at us. Then they ordered us to put our hands up and checked us,” says one. “I was in fear of my life. I felt very cold and tired because I was two months pregnant.
“After that, both of us were handcuffed. They ordered me to sit on the floor. We were taken into the living room. At that moment I knew that those men around us were police. There were about eight or nine policemen.”
Though the officers are told he also was not fluent in English, a Vietnamese man in the back part of the house is punched several times on the back of the head, after he is face down on the floor, hands behind him. The entire house is ransacked.
Three days later, the pregnant woman suffers a miscarriage.
Is this a typical SWAT raid for drugs, undocumented immigrants or both, taking place in a “crime-ridden,” poverty-stricken area? No!
The incident described above occurred in a quiet, family-oriented neighborhood right here in Davis. Most residents of the house are either visiting international scholars or students, or American citizens who are students. No drug dealers. No “illegal immigrants.”
No one offering the slightest resistance, unless cowering in fear or closing a door for protection from an as-yet-unidentified police officer who is presumed to be a robber constitutes “resistance.” No one has been arrested or charged with any crime.
The raid was by seven to 12 federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of several agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. The warrant, shown to only one of the residents after most of the search had been conducted, was not for drugs or “illegals,” or any persons, but for items and records that “might” contain reference to a specific website, images of child pornography, or evidence of distribution or transmission of such images across international borders, which explains why ICE is involved.
Signed the previous morning, the agents had two weeks to execute the warrant based on what I was led to believe involved an alleged transmission and/or website visit that occurred more than a year ago.
Only one of the current residents had lived there longer than seven months. All of that person’s computer-related devices along with other items were confiscated.
Incidentally, the first time that person saw the warrant was when they were handed it with an attached list of items confiscated (unverified by the owner) when the search was completed.
During the search, agents thought it “necessary” to damage another door with a battering ram, and demolish a solid core door, locked on the side they were on. No reference to this damage has been made to the me, owner of the house, either verbally or written, even though two agents spoke with me, outside the house, at the scene.
As the owner of the house, I have a list of questions, as do the residents.
In a situation where the alleged “inciting incident” for the warrant occurred more than a year ago, why wasn’t time taken to gather more information about who might be currently living in the house? I assume ICE has access to top-notch intelligence gathering.
As owner of the house, and living next door, I could have provided information about who was currently living there, for how long, and could have facilitated entry into the house.
Do the facts justify forced entry at gunpoint and the detainment by handcuffing of terrified, non-resisting, innocent-until-proven-guilty people? Do the facts justify the risk of people being shot and possibly killed?
Who pays for psychological counseling for severely traumatized people? Who pays for the damage to the house? Are these injuries and damage simply considered “collateral damage”?
Prior to the search, must the search warrant be shown to each person whose property is to be searched? Is it necessary to ascertain whether those affected by the search understand what is occurring?
If one’s property is seized, is one permitted to verify the list as accurate? If not, is accuracy verified by another agent? Are agents required to sign for confiscated property?
Due to the fact that the warrant does not mention people, does the forced detainment and/or the manner in which the search was conducted constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment which says in part, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated …”?
This callous use of abusive force by the ICE agents must be questioned and reviewed to help prevent needless violence and injuries to innocent persons in the future. Our democracy requires no less.
— Linda Clark is a Davis resident. She has filed a formal complaint with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, and sent copies to a variety of agencies and government officials. The chancellor’s office at UC Davis has been in contact with the San Francisco ICE Office of Professional Responsibility and the Vietnamese Consulate in San Francisco, Clark says.
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on May 27 2011.
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Please need to arm themselves, and resist ANY home invasion, no matter who is doing it. Shoot to kill if you feel threatened (the cops do). This BS will not stop until the consequences for the Police State thugs get personal.
W. Smith … you really have to be kidding!
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?…The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, p. 13 and footnote 5.
I would ask you, what if every security operative, before he went out at night (armed to the teeth and in the company of others very like him) to make an arrest had own his home and family destroyed while he was still sleeping within it. Solzhenitsyn could never think like Stalin so any proposal he made lacks the common sense of pre-emptive action and was doomed to failure. How about taking control of local government from the toadies and using that legitimate power base to stop what is happening to you all?
an illegal arrest is no different than an illegal entry.
supreme court says lethal force can be used.
well, maybe not in Illinois. Isn’t that where Chicago is,
and Rahm Emanuel? The whole lot should be arrested and convicted.
With the keys thrown away.
Winston, I hope that the police come bursting into your house and you draw your weapon to defend yourself. I support your right to do so. You will be immediately shot dead and the world will be rid of an absolute idiot (you)! I hope you have not sired any children to pass your idiot gene onto them. In case you haven’t read about such incidents in the past, NUMEROUS people have been killed for merely LOOKING like they were going for a weapon. You may choose certain death, but I hope most others have not been infected by your lunatic bug! Jeez!
Wow Burt, why so angry with Winston’s perspective? I don’t know I can entirely endorse it, but it seems better than yours (which, rant excepting, is nothing)
I’m glad the Minutemen of the American colonies didn’t share your perspective. We’d likely be a colony stIll.
“Why so angry?” Because Winston’s way of thinking can get a lot of people innocent (including family members caught in a crossfire) killed. Dead people can’t vote, nor be activists to change the system. In case you haven’t noticed, LOTs of things have changed since the days of the Minutemen. Haven’t you seen the recent case (and video) of a hard working, ex-Marine in Tucson being shot 26 time by a SWAT team because he reportedly “reached” for a weapon after the team mistakenly raided his house!? Now, is that poor and innocent fellow, a guy who fought for his country, going to be able to put food on the table for his newborn baby and wife? There’s not even, at this point, conclusive evidence that he “reached” for anything – so even the state’s case is in doubt! But by Winston’s thinking, the ex-Marine did the “right” thing. But he’s DEAD… and leaves a widow and child to fend for themselves. Is that the results you’re looking for? The courts are likely to give her little or nothing because they claim “he reached for a weapon.” From recent history, these SWAT teams – extremely armed and wearing enough Kevlar to stop a cruise missile… shoot first and ask questions later. If things follow the line of history, this hard working ex-Marine will be almost completely ignored and his memory swept under the carpet by both the media and the tyrants that brought about his extremely sad death. In other words, he will have died for nothing and left a weeping wife and hungry baby to fight for themselves against the system (a very tough and expensive job). Seems to me (just my opinion) that if he were alive today, he and his family would be in a much better position to defend themselves in the courts and political arena (voting). Winston’s draw your guns and start shooting first idea is just as radical as that of the SWAT teams identical line of thinking. Both need to have cooler heads. As I stated in the original post, I support Winston’s right to do as he chooses. But waving a weapon- or actually shooting at – a bunch of trigger happy, SWAT cyborgs is a one way ticket to becoming worm food. How does that solve the problem? It don’t!!!!!
Silly sheeple. If you could change this sort of behavior by voting, it wouldn’t exist today.
If you could ever actually change ANYTHING important by voting, they would make voting illegal.
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We WANT them to be broken… There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one MAKES them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws… just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
–ATLAS SHRUGGED
Burt you are a pinhead…you missed the point.
A LIVE pinhead is much better able to change the system than a DEAD trigger happy “Hero.” I was asked by Rob S. why I was so angry at Winston’s point of view and I clearly stated that it gets innocent people killed and has a terrible ripple effect in families. How is it that I missed the point when that is the point Roy S. was asking about? Please be specific. Now, I wish to state that I VERY sincerely salute you for helping defend us in the Iraq war – no sarcasm there – absolute sincerity! Have you watched the video for your Iraq Vet brother being shot by the SWAT team? It will infuriate you. Here is the story and video. Listen to what the pros say about case. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkOXjOCkQfM What a tragedy! Do you think you could have taken out all these guys? Seriously, do you?
Burt, you’re a moron and a coward. It’s people like you who are making me loose my faith in this country.
“It’s people like you who are making me loose (sic) my faith in this country.”
It’s misspellings like loose for lose which are making me lose my faith in American orthography.
I fully support you being a “hero,” and pulling your weapon on a heavily armed and kevlar suited SWAT team member. That’s your choice. But it’s the old story of bringing a knife to a gunfight… Do you REALLY think you’re going to win? If you do, I think you should go to youtube and search for, oh, say SWAT TEAM INVASIONS. Do you seriously think you have a chance of killing them all and surviving? Can you really be that ignorant????
Every tool of the police trade, from the weapons to the armor, down to the flashlights and tread patterns on the boots, is a force multiplier. One guy against ten will usually lose unless his multiplier is higher than their collective multipliers, barring act-of-God level luck (or being a literal lone ninja).
That being said, if one were to contemplate having to face a band of armed soldiers at an unspecified future date, there are force multipliers that could be applied. It’s a pretty accurate military truism, that all things being equal, a defender in a prepared position is three times stronger than an equal enemy assaulting that position. Just having a secure defensive structure gives a lone defender equal strength to three equally well-armed attackers.
Taking other precautions can add other force multipliers. For example, you can’t lob a flashbang grenade into a building with unbreakable windows that don’t open (or no windows at all), and a door that your battering ram just bounces off of.
Arguably, given the odds of being a victim of a wrong-door raid are quite low per 100,000 people, but the number of SWAT raids increases every year these days. Arguably preparing for such an incident is a good sign of paranoia. But even so, what will keep out a SWAT team will keep out a home invasion robbery attempt for many times longer (since the police don’t need to worry about making noise or drawing police attention).
Given a couple thousand dollars and a junk yard to play with, I could put together enough force multipliers to give me an easy 10-1 force advantage, even all by my lonesome, over a 6-man SWAT team. And all of them would be totally legal, most of them passive.
People need to arm themselves, and resist ANY home invasion, no matter who is doing it. Shoot to kill if you feel threatened (the cops do). This BS will not stop until the consequences for the Police State thugs get personal.
You go first. I’ll be right behind you, heading the other way. Thanks for distracting them!
U.S.A.: what the U.S. does in other countries is much worse, house searching, killing civilians, prison abuse like Abu Ghraib, preator bombing, etc. This is the same policy conducted inward. What a country does outside finally comes inside. And this is just the beginning.
The american people need to wake up to the fact that the govt. isn’t there for
We the People any more; but doing the dirty work of the banksters, who really control congress through bribes, payoffs and threats. The people of the World have to unite to put an end to the real terrorists, the military industrial complex and their bosses, the international banksters.
Mr. Gudinas …. “The people of the World have to …. ” Have To???? Who in this world are you to now able to call upon to assist you? Your best friends and allies, Israel? Your country has been a terrorist threat to all of TRW (The Rest of the World) for an awful long time and now you want TRW to help you when they (YOU) are killing you in your own homes. No, no, no … It is strong within human nature that TRW will experience great satisfaction whist you destroy yourselves with and by your own dirty hands. Your comment is the funniest on the page. If you want help, look to the history of your very own Weathermen (WUO) for inspiration … only, I do advise you, do not organize it into a pro-socialist/communist group for rather obvious reasons. Ask yourself, who does the Afgan Taliban mostly attack?
Has Linda Clark or family thought of contacting Mike Thompson, our congressional rep? or our senators?
How long before the millions of armed “we the people” when seeing the cops coming just start shooting and consider it self defense?
I like your comment.
Sadly, this is just one of thousands of solid examples demonstrating the American Police State. What an ironic twist… the USSA has become the former Communist USSR, including the unchecked police powers, while Russia enjoys unprecedented freedom and prosperity, including a debt-free economy and one of the world’s largest gold reserves. I think most Americans can’t even imagine how far it has progressed in such a short amount of time. For most it simply would not even compute.
BTW, search Youtube for the vids just this week of people arrested for dancing at the Jefferson memorial, or the poor disabled man detained and then followed by police on trains in Baltimore, guilty of being an American (non-ethnic) tourist and (gasp) taking photos.
Wake up and start voting for libertarian and constitutional-minded candidates. Our future is not a football game, red vs. blue teams. Snap out of it idiocracy!
The two party system is just what the banksters want us to fight and argue about. it’s set up that way. the good guys against the bad guys. what a bunch of crap. BUT IT WORKS. we should have several parties and no electoral vote. popular vote only. And by all means, watch to insure no voter fraud.
If I were running for Pres., although I don’t know if I would really entertain such thought; My platform would be: Executive orders for the elimination of ANY lobbists within the confines of Wash.D.C.(or mandatory 10 years),
Constitutional amendment put forth for Term Limits.,Line Item veto.
so that each state could watch how thier elected officials vote.
Executive order to eliminate the IRS. and The Federal Reserve Act.
Create a new commission to look at; and get to the bottom of 911
Eliminate Homeland Security, the CIA, and all the gropers at the TSA.
Create a constitutional currency.
Reduce the military; as I can not see why we need 128 bases around the world. Lets take care of our own problems here at home before we go around the world fixing everyone elses.(who are the real terrorists?)
eliminate ALL foreign aid. Get the U.S.out of the U.N. and get the U.N. out of America. Give illegal immigrants 30 days to register for citizenship, or face twenty years followed by deportation when caught. That would slow them down a bit. Arizona doesn’t have an illegal immigrant problem; they are facing an invasion, let’s call it what it is. where the hell is the govt.
for that matter; where the hell are the other states? Oh, I forgot; they are all abroad. Executive order: Bring all troops home within two weeks. Let the other countries fend for themselves. What ever happened to the ‘Monroe Doctrin”? We don’t want anyone in the western hemisphere meddling; but it’s ok if we go all around the world installing dictators and despots.
wake up america, time is running out.
pawns in the game.
What makes you think your congressional rep or senator would give a damn?
duh
30-06, full metal jacket.
The police are the scourge of America. They have steadily been destroying our country for many many years. I despise them. I hope to see more and more retaliation shootings for destroying peoples lives. Most of the people in our prisons are not criminals, as in ” NO VICTIM = NO CRIME ! ” they deserve vengeance upon the cops and judges and prosecutors who put them there. I thank the Lord every time I hear one of the scum lost their lives or are maimed by someone for retaliation or someone defending their own freedom . There are no “good” cops. If there were they’d quickly be fired. Almost everything that they do is unconstitutional and unlawful. They are at war with ” WE THE PEOPLE” by their choice, not ours. We all just want good police, but instead we have criminal, mafia gangs enforcing slavery against their fellow man. BULLIES and Control Freaks….. pathetic losers.
You people are too chicken chit to even stand up for yourselves when retards order you around at the airport, what chance do you have against guys with machine guns? After you buy a pair of testicles…
First, refuse to show ID, to submit to grope or scan at the airport. All you need to show is a boarding ticket. Don’t believe me, please listen to TSA admit to the sham in Phil Mocek vs New Mexico. Here’s the link to listen to testimony and please send Phil a few bucks to help him pay his legal bill of $35k. He’s a gd hero!
http://www.papersplease.org/wp/mocek/
Next, build at least one wall of sand bags in your home to crouch behind for when the goons come calling. Have a large caliber semi auto in .308cal NATO ready to rock and roll at all times. I don’t want to suggest you set up Claymore mines at the doors as that would be illegal and we are all law abiding. However, nothing illegal about setting up desks, file cabinets, heavy furniture to slow an entry teams movement. Have a full face gas mask or at least a P100 mask for every member of the household. Don’t worry, as the raids continue, the assassinations will escalate and the military will soon be dispatched along with drones and truthfully, when they crash the power grid and cut the water supplies…only the hardcore will survive in remote areas, and of course, the wealthy living in gated communities.
Just look at Rio de Janero to peak into America’s future. Third world hell hole is coming if not already here in many places in our great country.
Oathkeepers, you guys are a major disappointment. Marines, what the fux are you waiting for. Arizona just fragged one of brothers and nothing is on the burner to honor our Devil Dog?
Good luck all. To my buddies that have been cops for over 20 years, I know you know what’s going down…it’s the fresh meat that is dumb as dirt we need to educate. All your pensions are going to ship newbies…got it! You want to frag people, go after the big fish, the queens, the princes, Blankfein, Rothschilds, Dupoints, Diamond, Grant of Monsanto…etc. All politicians are whores. Ron Paul is a shill. Don’t ever forget how he quit after getting millions. (fool us once…shame)
Pretty much the truth of it …. but sand bagging your personal house????
If you need to do that, you are already meat.
As for your Marines, they will do nothing except worry about where they are going to score their drugs the government made accessible to them – both legal or otherwise and please stop and ask yourself, how tough are former Marines without a warthog or an apache or artillery backing them up? More ex-marines have committed suicide then have been killed by the “enemy” in the past 10 years and a good many of the discharged survivors are sterile or already have cancers from sitting on DU rounds.
The only real benefit of marine training will go to your street gangs like the crips and latin kings (Google – Gang Members in the Military).
You all haven’t even got the brains to concentrate people into one state like maybe Idaho, Colorado or Michigan so that the like minded people can control the entire political agenda from local sheriff to governor and stand some chance against the federalist outrages. 500 like minded people moving into a town of 5,000 can own the town politically …. 5000 can control a city of 50,000 and so forth and so on.
But you are right, it will take balls!
It is the responsibility of a citizen to defend their own person against crime. Police have a duty to investigate, and to preserve public order, but every lawsuit brought because police failed to defend someone who called 911 instead of owning a shotgun has resulted in a win for the defendant.
In light of that, it’s almost a certainty that any responsibility for defending oneself against a wrong-door raid, a no-knock raid that isn’t really justifiable, or a cop claiming to smell marijuana that doesn’t exist (or seeing your tomato plants on the porch) also falls upon the citizen.
Most police entry tools and methods rely on exploiting the weaknesses in common American house construction. Hinges and a thin deadbolt going into a weak, tack-nailed door frame are classic examples of this. I often see people mounting solid-core security doors using cheap hinges into a door frame that is held to the rest of the house by only half a dozen nails.
But a pocket door, even a hollow core one, can defeat many of the tools used to open conventional doors. A steel-cored pocket door with multiple top & bottom locking bolts, overlapped with the frame by at least six inches on all sides, with a frame made of bolted-together 8×8 timbers, in turn mounted on leaf-springs into another bolted 8×8 timber frame will likely cause a police APC to bounce off, ram and all, as if it had hit a giant trampoline.
Similar measures can be taken with siding, windows, roof, etc. You can install defenses in your yard (45 degree sloped ornamental pond/artificial stream, gazing spheres mounted on concealed steel I-beams scattered in the yard, prison-grade small gauge chain-link fence with climbing ivy to conceal it, fence break sensors that turn on audio/visual security cameras with redundant offsite backups, etc). It all comes down to what your personal safety and that of your family is worth to you. Because anything that can keep out a SWAT team will keep out a common criminal or even a major gang ten times as long.
Now, I’m not advocating attacking the police. But having a house built well enough that they have to politely knock and request entry, because all means available to them to force an entry will simply fail, allows time for sanity to break out and adrenaline highs to wear off. Plus the hilarity potential in being so undisturbed by a SWAT raid at 3 am, that you don’t wake up, and only become aware of your “stand off” with police when you see it on the morning TV news after your invigorating shower, and during your leisurely breakfast.
This thread has no officially been hijacked by the crazies.
This thread has now officially been hijacked by the crazies.
I have to agree. It’s downright insane to make fun of people who are more responsible than you are, for being more responsible.
The Land Lady got it wrong. Actually, she is laboring under obsolete ‘law’. The new American way is “Guilty Until Proven Innocent”. And the judge in in the pockets of the Fuzz. Which means “Guilty Because We Say So”.
Is there no way to get our country back?
There is. The same way we got it from the British in the first place.
Alek was absolutely right…he lived it and wrote it as warning to the future.
Unfortuneatly, it seems history is repeating itself…
But if you love Liberty may you always remain locked, cocked and ready to rock.
[...] hugely over-the-top, while everyone is asleep SWAT raid on an innocent household. For alleged trafficking in child pornography over a year previously. [...]
4) Ammo box
Arm yourselves. You have nothing to lose except your life! We CAN be as peaceful as Somalia and Afghanistan if we make the effort! Tribal conflict forever! This is MY hole and you can’t come in.
The majority of the USA is lost to the zionist banksters and their corporate tyranny, combined with their long planned, massive multicultural invasion.. come Home to the Pacific North West and join the North West front.. (northwestfront.org) and also go to Amazon and buy the Northwest novels, starting with The Brigade (author Harold Covington) We are a growing secession movement up here and we are serious about making a new nation based on freedom and personal responsibility, only for the posterity of the Founders. If you read the novels you will realize that we mean business
Steve Elder, Where do you stand on Obamacare? Isn’t that largely about personal responsibility too?
Yeah, you mean business because you identify with fiction novels. I’m torn between being sickened by your racist unAmericanism and laughing at you for being no different than a Twilight tweaker.
Thank you ice…keep up the good work.