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OK, This Is Just Too Freaking Far.


Subdeacon Joe

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Has SWAT teams? Lordy, I guess those who fall behind in their student loan payments are really dangerous!

 

Dept. of Ed. Raids Stockton Home

 

The resident, Kenneth Wright, does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe why what he thought was a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 in the morning.

 

"I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers," Wright said.

 

As Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts, he said the officers barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.

 

"He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there," Wright said.

 

According to Wright, officers also woke his three young children, ages 3, 7, and 11, and put them in a Stockton police patrol car with him. Officers then searched his house.

 

"They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids," Wright said.

 

As it turned out, the person law enforcement was looking for - Wright's estranged wife - was not there.

 

Wright said he later went to Stockton Mayor Ann Johnston and Stockton Police Department, but learned the city of Stockton had nothing to do with the search warrant.

 

U.S. Department of Education spokesman Justin Hamilton confirmed for News10 Wednesday morning federal agents with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), not local S.W.A.T., served the search warrant. Hamilton would not say specifically why the raid took place except that it was part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

 

Hamilton said the search was not related to student loans in default as reported in the local media.

 

OIG is a semi-independent branch of the education department that executes warrants for criminal offenses such as student aid fraud, embezzlement of federal aid and bribery, according to Hamilton. The agency serves 30 to 35 search warrants a year.

 

"They busted down my door for this," Wright said. "It wasn't even me."

 

We as a society REALLY need to rethink every department, every bureau, every municipality and county having its own army. For what is likely a white collar crime, is storming a house really necessary?

 

And it seems like more and more "serving a warrant" means "Break down the door and act like thugs."

 

And then this, from a month ago in Tucson:

 

A Tucson, Ariz., SWAT team defends shooting an Iraq War veteran 60 times during a drug raid, although it declines to say whether it found any drugs in the house and has had to retract its claim that the veteran shot first.

 

 

Jose Guerena, 26, died the morning of May 5. He was asleep in his Tucson home after working a night shift at the Asarco copper mine when his wife, Vanessa, saw the armed SWAT team outside her youngest son's bedroom window.

 

"She saw a man pointing at her with a gun," said Reyna Ortiz, 29, a relative who is caring for Vanessa and her children. Ortiz said Vanessa Guerena yelled, "Don't shoot! I have a baby!"

 

Vanessa Guerena thought the gunman might be part of a home invasion -- especially because two members of her sister-in-law's family, Cynthia and Manny Orozco, were killed last year in their Tucson home, her lawyer, Chris Scileppi, said. She shouted for her husband in the next room, and he woke up and told his wife to hide in the closet with the child, Joel, 4.

 

Guerena grabbed his assault rifle and was pointing it at the SWAT team, which was trying to serve a narcotics search warrant as part of a multi-house drug crackdown, when the team broke down the door. At first the Pima County Sheriff's Office said that Guerena fired first, but on Wednesday officials backtracked and said he had not. "The safety was on and he could not fire," according to the sheriff's statement.

 

Tucson SWAT Team Shot Iraq War Vet 60 Times

 

SWAT team members fired 71 times and hit Guerena 60 times, police said.

 

So, a vet gets woken up by his scared to death wife and reacts to what he thinks is a home invasion by criminals. And gets shot. You think maybe that if he had heard someone, anyone yelling "POLICE! WE HAVE A WARRANT!" he might have put the rifle down?

 

In both these incidents, from what is in the articles, NO ONE was announcing that they were LE and had a warrant.

 

This is getting out of hand.

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I know this is going to open up the can of worms yet again, but I agree with you. We have the FBI, Federal Marshalls, the Secret Service and more. Give them the money, the manpower, and the authority, instead of "semi-independent" para-military groups loyal to a specific department.

 

If we want to ignore the Fourth Amendment, then do away with or modify it by the proper process, but stop destroying it through pretext, "necessity," and procedural "progress." We used to have a tradition in this country that limited government, and where the legal system had an ethos of preferring 1000 guilty men go free than one innocent be incarcerated. No more is that the case.

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For some reason, I think we're not getting the whole story, like the probably cause for the raids.

 

 

Oh, no doubt. But ... follow me here ... The Department of Education! What all could the Dept. Edu. be going after that requires SWAT?

 

The Tucson incident - drug raid. And the dept. that carried it out is not saying if it found drugs - which to me says they found bupkis. If they had found drugs it would have been trumpeted for the world to hear.

 

And, in any case, even if we are missing "the rest of the story" where does it stop? Will this become the normal way any warrant is served? Check this:

Education Department Press Secretary Justin Hamilton said in a statement to The Lookout that the department "does not execute search warrants for late loan payments." He said the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) "conducts about 30-35 search warrants a year on issues such as bribery, fraud, and embezzlement of federal student aid funds."

 

"bribery, fraud, and embezzlement of federal student aid funds." Now USUALLY those things aren't the subject of dawn raids by special weapons teams.

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What next? SWAT librarians? :wacko:

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Our police forces are being militarized. This type of incident occurs all too frequently.

 

I recall that Dillon was producing vulcan guns and armored vehicles; many of our colleagues thought this was way cool but what is the customer base for these things? And who will be the targets? Is this the first step toward terrorizing the citzenry so that when the demand to turn in our toys comes, will anyone dare resist?

 

DD

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What next? SWAT librarians? :wacko:

I once had a librarian swat my behind . . . cost me $200.00 and a kiss!

 

Things are getting scary out there - even Skeletor is fore-shadowing upcoming civil unrest . . .

 

40 acres in Wyoming and a mule. .. . getting to be my escape plan . . .

SC

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Wow. The shotguns have 14" barrels making them illegal for private citizens to own by 1934 NFA standards.

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Oh, no doubt. But ... follow me here ... The Department of Education! What all could the Dept. Edu. be going after that requires SWAT?

 

The Tucson incident - drug raid. And the dept. that carried it out is not saying if it found drugs - which to me says they found bupkis. If they had found drugs it would have been trumpeted for the world to hear.

 

And, in any case, even if we are missing "the rest of the story" where does it stop? Will this become the normal way any warrant is served? Check this:

 

 

"bribery, fraud, and embezzlement of federal student aid funds." Now USUALLY those things aren't the subject of dawn raids by special weapons teams.

You got a point. I question the reason for the existence of the Federal Department of Education. They spend billions of our dollars and they don't educate one single student. And now they have a swat team?

 

The drug raid in Tucson, depending on their information, sounds like SOP for a high risk search warrant where they are expecting resistance. It sounds like the high risk and resistance part of their information was correct.

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You got a point. I question the reason for the existence of the Federal Department of Education. They spend billions of our dollars and they don't educate one single student.

 

 

America put men on the moon before the Dept. of Education existed.

 

Think we could do it today?

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If the DOE has their own SWAT units, I wonder how many other agencies have their own "enforcement" departments.

 

I thought that's what the US Marshals and the FBI were for.

 

Yet another issue to be brought to the attention of whatever members of Congress are left that still care about the country, the citizens, and The Constitution.

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You got a point. I question the reason for the existence of the Federal Department of Education. They spend billions of our dollars and they don't educate one single student. And now they have a swat team?

 

The drug raid in Tucson, depending on their information, sounds like SOP for a high risk search warrant where they are expecting resistance. It sounds like the high risk and resistance part of their information was correct.

 

Here is a link with a video from the police side of things: http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/crime/shocking-helmet-video-shows-barrage-of-bullets-5-26-2011

 

It sounds as if one or more of them had yelled something. I don't know about you, but if I'm not expecting to hear something, the first half dozen or so words are totally meaningless, just garbled sound. And from the time the door is forced open to the time we hear the shots, I very much doubt that there was time to even wave the warrant in the general direction of the person, much less let him see that it was a warrant.

 

I'm sorry, I know "DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE!" and "SAFETY OF THE OFFICERS!" But slowly, or maybe not so slowly, the 4th and 5th Amendments are being eroded in pursuit of those two things. The Bill of Rights is NOT about protecting the State or its agents, it is about protecting the individual citizen AGAINST the power of the State and its agents. People who fly into a tizzy at new circulation of old rumors about restrictions on the 2nd Amendment often seem willing to give a pass to the State on predations on the 4th & 5th. If we decry the pathetic (from pathos, an appeal to the emotions) use of 'It's for the children' and other such things used by the antis when we support the 2nd, shouldn't we also decry the use of 'It's for the cops (state)' and 'we can't let them destroy evidence' when that appeal to the pathetic is used to chip away at the 4th and 5th?

 

ADDED:

I'm wondering if part of training for LE, and especially SWAT type people should include an unannounced late night/early morning raid at their homes?

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Where in God's name is it written that the DOE has enforcement authority and who the heck allowed that?

 

If a law is broken, law enforcement is notified. That is the way it should be.

 

As far as the officer safety and destruction of evidence thing goes; It seems to me that the late night raid has become the first option when it should be the last resort.

 

Destruction of evidence? is that really worth putting the lives of the officers and the suspects (innocent until proven guilty) in danger? How much drug evidence could be destroyed without any kind of indication?

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Even if we did not get the whole story in this case did they need to handcuff a person obviously not the target of the search warrant.

Where was the person who was the target and why did they oig not know this.

Why terrorize the kids. At least use the AC.

 

I do detect and hope for a lawsuit of immense proportions unless he was involved.

 

Law enforcement oig from US Dept of Education MUST still do a COMPLETE job of locating the target of the search warrant.

 

Obviously this was not the case here.

Perhaps they were not trained properly. Not the irony.

 

So this is yet another encroachment on our 4th amendment rights. And this from the federal level.

Why does the US dept of education need a swat team?

 

And another example of how sloppy "law enforcement?" work can lead us down the path towards a police state.

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I don't believe the Department of Education is a constitutionally proper power to be asserted by the Federal Government, nor quite a few additional agencies. Perhaps our governments would not be so expensive if they didn't all overlap in their activities (notice I did not say duties as an unconstitutional body has no duties only activities)

 

The Supreme Court and a few good lawyers might be able to put the government back on track-I'm offering 1,000,000to one odds that it won't happen in our lifetimes. (I'll be holding all funds for any takers TYVM ;)

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