This is from a man who was arrested, and had his license revoked for 6 months, for "operating a vehicle" while intoxicated.  Where was he operating his vehicle?  His own front yard.  And what was the vehicle you ask?  His bicycle.  And how was he operating it?  He was walking it.

But hey... we have to show zero tolerance to these sorts of crimes right?  Via Radley Balko.

And yet, that is the role that they often take on for themselves.  I believe that is one of the primary reasons behind the increase in SWAT raids in this country.  It has nothing to do with officer or civilian safety (as they more often than not put both in increased danger), and it has little to do with protecting evidence.  This has to do with the feeling among many that laws against certain individuals aren't harsh enough, and if the courts won't dole out the appropriate punishment... well then... the police will do it instead.  And so you have SWAT teams who break into homes to cause property damage and frighten and sometimes hurt individuals.  The problem with this of course is that these individuals are often times not guilty... which is the entire point of the court system.

And it doesn't stop with drug offenders or SWAT raids.  Everyone else's favorite target are child pornographers and sex offenders.  Nobody cares if the police abuse those guys right?

A man alleges that police entered his home illegally and ripped a catheter from his body during a child pornography investigation that led to the arrest of two neighbors.

Andrew Glover, 60, of New Britain filed a notice with the city Thursday that he intends to pursue a federal civil rights lawsuit. He accused the officers of inflicting severe injuries as he was recovering from intestinal surgery in February.

Glover's lawyer, Paul Spinella, said police entered Glover's apartment Jan. 30 and Feb. 28. Glover wasn't involved in child pornography, has not been charged and has no criminal record, Spinella said.

"The poor guy," Spinella said. "They ripped the catheter off his person. They assaulted the guy. He's got major problems as a result of this. He's a mess now."
...
Spinella said officers "tossed" Glover's apartment during a search Jan. 30. In February, he said, Glover returned home from the hospital after his surgery to find officers searching his apartment again. That's when they assaulted Glover and left him alone in the apartment without calling for medical help, Spinella said.

The police didn't have search warrants, Spinella said.

Had this guy been an actual child pornographer, I'm sure people would have a smile on their face reading this story, saying he got what he deserved.  But what do you say when you get the wrong guy?

If you're not familiar with the case of Corey Maye, he is a Mississippi man who was tried and convicted of killing a police officer during a SWAT raid on a duplex.  Corey, who was locked in his bedroom with a gun protecting his 18 month old child, says that the police never announced beforehand, and that he shot the man breaking into the bedroom in defense of his home and child.  You can read the original story here.

The Drew Carey Project has now produced an excellent video with all the most recent news, and some absolutely shocking revelations about what lead up to the original raid, now that Corey's new lawyer is attempting to appeal. This is yet another case of the madness of SWAT raids and the War on Drugs^TM in this country, and the absolutely devastating and inexcusable cost it has on our society and freedom.

I'm really getting sick of hearing about SWAT raids that have either been used against innocent people, or against guilty people who pose no danger to police that warrants a military style assault.  This story is completely over the top.  You should read the entire thing, which includes copies of the warrants and affidavits that were used to justify this extremely dangerous and confrontational raid.  The evidence that the police put forward is practically nil, and yet they were able to get a judge to justify a military style raid that resulted in major gun fire, against someone who seems to be innocent.

What's worse, is that not only did they break into his house and cause major property damage, they also shot him several times.  Then, they pulled him out of the ICU to interrogate him, and then put him in a jail cell for several days while ignoring his wounds so they became infected.  No drugs were found in his house, and he has been charged with assault for pointing a gun at officers.

Why did he point a gun at the police you ask?  Because he thought he was being robbed!  It's so so sad that it's almost funny because so many people (especially on the right) demand more and more of these military style tactics which confuse property owners, so they don't know what's happening.  But at the same time, they encourage property owners to own guns to defend themselves against criminals.  But what happens when the police break down a door in the middle of the night while you're asleep so that you think they're criminals?  Can a home owner really be blamed for defending himself?

With more and more of our lives, and daily interactions occurring online, it should come as now surprise that the Director of the FBI is suggesting the following (emphasis added):

FBI director Robert Mueller's testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday gave a tiny glimpse of the future of law enforcement online, and it raised some tough questions about the evolving line between public and private in a networked world.

In a blog post on the hearing, CNet's Declan McCullagh reproduced the most relevant portion of the testimony - an exchange between Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Director Mueller on the subject of the FBI's role in detecting and stopping illegal activity on the Internet. Issa began the discussion with the analogy of an FBI raid on a bookie, where the Bureau obtains a warrant to get proof of illegal activity. He then moved to the subject of online crimes and the ongoing barrage of cyberattacks on civilian, government, and military targets, asking Mueller what types of legal powers he would need to be able to obtain proof of those attacks in order to bring a prosecution.

Mueller responded with the follow revealing nugget.

"I think legislation has to be developed that balances on one hand, the privacy rights of the individual who are receiving the information, but on the other hand, given the technology, the necessity of having some omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to preempt that illegal activity where it comes through a choke point as opposed to the point where it is diffuse on the Internet."

In other words what he'd like is a permanent wire tap through the major routing points of the internet to sniff whatever information happens to come through.  Basically he's jealous of the current FISA spying capability that the NSA has, and wants the FBI to have the same thing.  They'd like to read your email, review your internet searches, see what books you buy on Amazon, and do it all without asking a judge beforehand.

Of course he throws us a bone by saying we need to "balance privacy rights"... but here's the kicker.  We have something that already does this.  It's called the 4th Amendment!  This is the people's protection for our privacy.  If you'd like get at our data, then you need to get a warrant.  Period.

Now some would argue that this would be inconvenient for the government.  So the hell what.  The 4th Amendment is meant to be inconvenient for the government, because that is what provides the greatest protection to the people.  The government's convenience should never, ever, ever, be used as an excuse to eliminate our rights.

Of course these suggestions not only come from officials in the government, they also come from people who are supposedly trying to help citizens, such as a former Milwaukee Police Captain.  For instance there is the suggestion that came out of a comment thread at BadgerBlogger (which I can only see as being serious), that we need to send the military (or the police using military tactics... i.e. shoot first and ask questions later) into parts of Milwaukee for a Fallujah style sweep of gangs there.  Innocent lives, and rights, be damned apparently.  If you live in the wrong neighborhood, you should welcome tanks and M-16's openly I guess.

And those of us who oppose these attacks on our rights?  We just don't understand the realities.  Silly us.

The case I talked about in the post below centered around the misuse of confidential informants.  Even scarier is this case which Radley Balko investigated, where jailhouse snitches were used by racist cops and prosecutors to railroad an innocent Loiusianna family.  It shows how drug laws can easily be used by corrupt, power hungry government officials, for the worst purposes imaginable.  It's a long, heartbreaking read, but well worth it.

Here's an interesting decision handed down by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.  It's a reversal of a guilty verdict against a man who shot a Milwaukee police officer.  Badger Blogger has the original link to the opinion, and includes a fairly restrained commentary.

The case is against Tony Payano, who shot a Milwaukee Police officer during a no-knock raid in 2006.  A confidential informant reported to police that he saw Payano packing cocaine at the kitchen table and that there was also a gun present.  The next day, several officers executed a no-knock warrant.  During the warrant execution, Payano's cousin ran into the house and according to the Proof and Hearsay blog:

Payano said a cousin ran into the apartment the next day saying “it’s not me” but little else. A short time later, someone was attempting to break down the front door. Payano said he retrieved a handgun and fired one shot because he wanted to protect himself, his mother and his cousin. The shot struck Police Officer Michael Lutz in the arm. Payano was charged with reckless endangerment with a gun but was not charged with any drug violations.

The first trial resulted in a hung jury, but the informant never testified.  The second trial resulted in a guilty verdict, but the informant was allowed to testify over the defense objection.  The appellate ruling itself seems to revolve mostly around prior case law regarding evidence that is prejudicial to defendants, and found non-reversible error in the trial courts decision to include the evidence.

I'm not going to delve into the legal details here because I'm not sure there is enough information at hand to make a lot of solid comments, but I do want to point out several things here.  According to the background presented, the confidential informant made observations of drugs and a gun, and reported them to the police.  That is all it took to get a violent and volatile no-knock raid approved.  I emphasize that very clearly because that is a dangerous idea.

There was no controlled drug buy which took place.  In fact, Payano was never charged with a drug related crime, which would leave me to believe that the no-knock raid resulted in no drugs being found on the premises.  If this person was in fact a drug dealer, you'd think that there would have been some evidence of drugs in the house.  Without full court transcripts, its obviously impossible to tell for sure here, but this is troubling if true.

Confidential informants are hardly reliable sources.  They are criminals who have made deals with the police in exchange for leniency on previous charges.  In fact, these deals are usually structured in such a way that they have to continue to provide information or they will lose their preferential treatment.  They have every incentive to lie, or exaggerate what they find in an effort to save their own asses.  The fact that a violent and volatile no-knock raid was initiated in this case, solely on the basis of a shady confidential informant, is downright scary.

Of course I've tried to argue that no-knock raids are generally dangerous and misused anyway in the past.  Most SWAT teams are created (at least according to press releases) to go after gunmen who are holding people hostage, or against extremely violent individuals.  But they are frequently used in these much less dangerous circumstances as well.  In fact, according to the background in this case, the no-knock warrant was secured not because a gun was present, but rather because the police simply feared that evidence would be destroyed.

And of course, when the police talk about why they use no-knock raids (especially in the middle of the night), they talk about how they are meant to purposefully confuse and disorient the suspect.  But in this case, they are now saying that the defendant was supposed to do everything exactly right, and know who was coming through the door.  You can't have it both ways.  Either defendants are supposed to be capable of analyzing the situation and act rationally, or they can be disoriented and confused.

Now that's not to say that I fault the officers involved for their actions.  They were simply following the policies and procedures in place, and certainly, you never want to see an officer injured in the line of duty.  The problem isn't the officers involved, but rather poor policies that put them, and the civilian population, in unnecessary danger.

You know it's going to be a long day when you're already hearing stupid, idiotic comments at 6:45 in the morning.  Today's "Stupidest Comment of the Day" comes to us via Susan Kim, co-anchor of Live at Daybreak on TMJ4.  They were discussing this news story, about a woman who was humiliated for no good reason by TSA personnel while trying to board a plane:

A WOMAN in the US says she was forced by airport security guards to remove her nipple rings with a pair of pliers before she could board a flight.

Mandi Hamlin, 37, is demanding a civil rights investigation, as well as an apology from federal security agents after being forced to remove a nipple ring before boarding a flight from Lubbock to Dallas in Texas.
...
She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped nipple piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

"Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her," Ms Hamlin's lawyer, Gloria Allred, told the director of the TSA's Office of Civil Rights and Liberties.
...
"After nipple rings are inserted, the skin can often heal around the piercing, and the rings can be extremely difficult and painful to remove," said Ms Allred.

Ms Hamlin said she heard the male security agents snickering as she took out the ring, before being scanned again and eventually allowed on the plane.

Ms Allred said Ms Hamlin had filed a complaint to the TSA's customer service manager at Lubbock airport, who said the screening was handled properly.

First of all, this is yet another horrifying example of TSA incompetence, all in the faux effort to make us feel more secure after Sept. 11th.  I'd say this is right along with mothers being forced to drink their own breast milk, but at least that doesn't cause significant pain and later scarring.  But in a truly horrifying display of how complacent with government idiocy we've become, Susan then said during banter with her co-anchor Vince Vitrano (and I'm paraphrasing a bit)... "She deserves an apology, but not a civil rights investigation.  What did she expect getting on a plane with nipple rings?"

I'm sure she expected to be treated with dignity, and also didn't expect to be treated like a terrorist because she had two little bars in her nipples.  What's next Susan?  Are you going to make a child with leg braces take them off and prove they can't walk without them before being allowed to board a plane?  Jesus, I'd be scared to get on a plane if I had a plate in my arm... they might insist on performing surgery right there on the spot to remove it.  Honestly... is this what we've come to in the name of security?

So does putting more people in jail automatically reduce crime?  Your gut may say yes, but there are some interesting statistics on this matter.  Here is more from the Washington Post on our Incarceration Nation:

The growth in prison population is largely because of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.
...
For instance, Florida, which has almost doubled its prison population over the past 15 years, has experienced a smaller drop in crime than New York, which, after a brief increase, has reduced its number of inmates to below the 1993 level.
...
Many state systems also send offenders back to prison for technical violations of their parole or probation, such as failing a drug test or missing an appointment with a supervisory officer. A 2005 study of California's system, for example, found that more than two-thirds of parolees were being returned to prison within three years of release, 40 percent for technical infractions.

So while prison is an important part of the overall criminal justice system, the New York example clearly shows that there is no direct tie between increased incarceration, and decreased crime.  It is in fact possible to decrease crime, and not throw the world in jail.  It means we need to be smarter about who we incarcerate, and the crimes which we choose to go after.  The problem with this country is that we're so obsessed with passing laws, that its nearly impossible to stay a law abiding citizen.  If someone wants to throw you in jail for some reason, they can... they'll just have to do a bit of research to figure out what you did wrong.

Either crime in the UK is so low that they have to really search for it, or the police union is looking to increase it's statistics to look good:

A pupil has been arrested for attacking a classmate with a baguette.

The 15-year-old attacker was questioned by police after arming himself with the French stick at a secondary school.

The unusual weapon was one of 80 seized by cops from schools in Sussex over the last two years.
...
A 13-year-old was warned by police officers after an assault with a pillow, a 14-year-old attacked another with an egg and a tomato and a 15-year-old was cautioned for common assault using a baguette.

I remember when pillow fights were fun, not jail worthy.  What is the matter with these people?  Via Nobody's Business.

This absolutely shocks me.  A Chicago police officer who was found guilty for beating a man who was handcuffed to a wheelchair in a hospital is getting his job back:

A 42-second snippet of video shows Cozzi, who was on duty, shackling Miles' legs to the wheelchair, then striking Miles about 10 times -- finishing with a roundhouse blow.

Cook County prosecutors have said Cozzi struck Miles with a "blackjack" -- a small baton.

He got 18 months of probation, and a 2 year unpaid suspension... but now is coming back to work.  It's guys like this who give good cops bad names.  And when the system doesn't properly take action against bad cops like this, it casts a shadow of doubt on the rest of hard working, brave men who serve their communities.

You'll also notice all of the couragious officers who stepped in to stop the beating... oh wait... nevermind.  Via The Agitator, who has some more disturbing stories as well.

The police have invaded neighborhoods in Atlanta... literally:

Officials in Clayton County have intensified their efforts in the war on drugs. Sheriff Victor Hill announced he is planning an invasion into drug-infested communities.
...
Deputies have identified five known drug houses, that they want to investigate. Thursday night, deputies set up a road block, and checked each car coming into or out of the street in question for drugs.

The operation has been dubbed Operation Jericho. Mobile police checkpoints have been set up outside suspected drug houses in the neighborhood. Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill said the plan is to occupy suspected drug territories with deputies -- one house, one location at a time.
...
Hill said the conventional method of warrants and arrests are not working, and that military-like occupation of deputies is necessary.

Think about this.  The police have decided that they think it's simply too much trouble to get warrants to search these drug houses, and so they've decided to simply not bother any more.  They'll simply randomly search anyone who had the temerity to drive down a particular street with no justification.  You are simply no longer secure in your person or your papers.  Goodbye Constitution, it was nice knowing you.

Via Hit & Run.

This story... doesn't just baffle me... it scares the living crap out of me.

Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak.

The boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy's father told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves.
...
The sheriff said the decision to use SWAT team force was justified because the father was a "self-proclaimed constitutionalist" and had made threats and "comments" over the years.

However, the sheriff declined to provide a single instance of the father's illegal behavior. "I can't tell you specifically," he said.

"He was refusing to provide medical care," the sheriff said.

However, the sheriff said if his own children were involved in an at-home accident, he would want to be the one to make decisions on their healthcare, as did Shiflett.

"I guess if that was one of my children, I would make that decision," the sheriff said.

More here from Yahoo News.  The child was evaluated and immediately released, because the doctors couldn't find anything wrong with him, just like the father said.  So apparently the police were so fearful for the child's health that they thought it best to send in a dozen men with sub machine guns, where the child could have easily been shot and killed in the cross fire and confusion had gunfire erupted.  Are you fucking out of your minds?!

The rationale used to be that SWAT teams would only be used against heavily armed and dangerous people who were accused of serious crimes, or in terrorist situations, or hostage situations.  Now we're sending them in to take custody of children because they have a bruise on their head, and because heaven forbid, a citizen actually believes that the Constitution means something?  And people think this is acceptable?!

This is beyond outrageous.  It is criminal.  Whoever made the decision to send in a SWAT team in this case should be immediately relieved of duty, and fully investigated.  Their ability to adjudicate the law in a manner consistent with the Constitution is obviously in doubt.

Via The Agitator.

Most of the wrong door raids I've blogged about have been in other parts of the country.  But today, Jim Stingl has a column detailing a wrong door SWAT raid against a child pornographer.  Of course, in all of the detailed planning that is supposed to go into these highly dangerous, and volatile operations, they apparently failed to determine that he'd moved out more than a month prior to the raid:

A SWAT team from the Milwaukee Police Department burst into Denise Berndsen's apartment and turned the place upside down looking for evidence of child porn.

Oops. The man they were targeting had moved out five weeks earlier.

Instead they roughed up Berndsen, who had returned home from back surgery that day, her 74-year-old father, and a man she had just started dating and who for a few terrifying minutes wondered what he got himself into.
...
Officers rummaged through her bedroom closet, dresser drawers and kitchen cabinets, and in doing so, broke a couple of wizard figurines and cracked the headboard mirror on Berndsen's bed, she said.

They brought high-tech equipment into the apartment and hooked it up to her laptop computer to search for evidence. If they were looking for porn, Berndsen said, she found it odd that they never touched a bookcase full of DVDs and videocassette tapes in the living room.
...
"They said, 'We're sorry. I guess you're just one more of his victims,' " meaning the child porn suspect, Berndsen said. "I said, no, we're your victims."

Now that's just unbelievable.  They made a huge mistake, and they just shifted the blame.  Just the cost of police work that we should all have to bear right?  Wrong.  My question, beyond why they missed the very important fact that the target had moved more than a month prior, was why a SWAT team was being used to serve this warrant at all.

Was he considered to be heavily armed, or an immediate danger to the police, or his neighbors during the serving of the warrant?  I highly doubt it.  SWAT teams are over used in our communities, and contrary to what many police say, they escalate situations, and increase the odds of violence, instead of the opposite.  The victim here is lucky that she was recovering from back surgery.  Had she been a gun owner who believed in her right to protect her home from intruders, she'd more than likely be dead now.

YouTube is doing an excellent job of shining the light on police abuse of Tasers.  As I've said many times before, because police are being told that they aren't lethal (which is clearly not the case), they are being used by many police to get "compliance", even when the only resistance is daring to question a police officer.  Here is a roadside stop in which a man questions why he's getting a ticket.  The audio is hard to get at times because of traffic, but at no time do I ever hear the motorist get verbally abuse, or angry.  He simply wants an explanation, and the cop refuses to give him one, and does a poor job of explaining why he won't.  Instead, the police officer orders the man out of the car, and then without warning tases him.  Then he jokes around about it with an officer who comes as backup.

The man in the video is planning to sue, since the police officer violated Utah State Law by not warning the motorist that he was going to be tased if he did not comply with his instructions.  Based on the video, I don't know what instructions the motorist didn't obey.  The police officer ordered the man out of his car to tase him, so clearly the police officer can't claim he was being threatened.  Is the officer really going to make the claim that it's appropriate to tase someone for refusing to sign a speeding ticket?  Really?  More at Hullabaloo, via VodkaPundit.