Goota love the war on your neighbor:
Brooklyn Park police were looking for a meth lab, but they found a fish tank and the chemicals needed to maintain it.
And a few hours later, when the city sent a contractor to fix the door the police had smashed open Monday afternoon, it was obvious the city was trying to fix a mistake.
It happened while Kathy Adams was sleeping.
“And the next thing I know, a police officer is trying to get me out bed,” she said.
Adams, a 54-year-old former nurse who said she suffers from a bad back caused by a patient who attacked her a few years ago, was handcuffed. So was her 49-year-old husband.
“They brought us here and said once we clear that area, you can sit down and you will not speak to each other,” she said.
Police were executing a search warrant signed by Hennepin County Judge Ivy Bernhardson, who believed there was probable cause the Adams’s home was a meth lab.
I think my favorite thing about home invasions like this is how the police maintain that they did nothing wrong. This quote, from the Capt. Roehl regarding the information that was used to invade the home, is just priceless:
“Everything this person told us turned out to be true, with the exception of what the purpose of the lab was,” Roehl said.
Idiot.
Incertus
The general attitude is that the cops can’t afford to ever be sorry, because that shows weakness, and this is a war dammit where innocent people are sometimes going to get hurt. That seems to be what happened in the Sean Bell case.
Zifnab
WTF. Seriously.
Remember back in the old days of Noir pulp fiction when a detective would… you know… investigate before he kicked down a door and started arresting people? What on god’s green earth are they teaching today’s police force?
It is, however, comforting to know that the guy who checks your gas meter or mows your lawn can now call down a fucking air strike by saying the word “meth lab” to the right people. I know I certainly feel safe all of a sudden.
myiq2xu
Look on the bright side, the cops didn’t
executekill anyone this time.chopper
fantastic. gotta love the war on drugs.
Ripley
I believe this incident clearly falls under the Bush Doctrine, which states:
The important thing is, nobody was hurt and we all learned a valuable lesson.
As a side note, I think the cops should be commended for not breaking out the Electric Finger of Justice (this time).
Now, back to more weighty issues, like OMFG!!! Wright!!! BLACK MAN!!! FLAG PIN OMG FLAAAG PIIIIIIN!!!!
b. hussein canuckistani
Well, what if they were raising sharks in that salt-water tank that could kill swimmers, carry lasers or courier drugs from South America without ever surfacing?
Better safe that sorry is what I say.
Bret Harris
We’re just doing what our Government tells us to do. You know, those signs above the highways: “Report Suspicious Activity”.
But remember the old mantra folks: “My Country, Right or Wrong”.
Seanly
I guess the NYPD got tired of leaving credit card-loaded wallets on the subway?
One of my neighbors has a dog that barks alot. I think she is trying to warn us about the satanic rituals / baby eating / terrorist meetings that are occuring there. I better call 911!
4tehlulz
These cops fail. Didn’t one of them bring the cough medicine to plant?
Jesus.
DougJ
Is it just me or does this sound exactly like the neocons talking about WMDs in Iraq? The only real difference here is that the police aren’t talking about occupying the apartment for the next 100 years.
DrDave
That’s generous.
The judge gets an A+ for stupid too.
Doesn’t this remind you of the story (last fall?) about Homeland Security training New York City firemen to spy on citizens who appeared to be engaging in “terrorist-like activities”?
jake
What lab? Oh, the second bathroom with a couple of smelly bottles sitting on the sink.
Jesus Christ, I sometimes ignore the cat box until the S.O. complains. Guess I’ll stay on top of that from now on since I’m not my best in the mornings. If some steroid-stoked SWATie wakes me up with a boot to my ear I’ll probably wind up full of bullets for behaving in a threatening manner (shouting “Getthefuckoff” while brownish) and Al Sharpton will take up my cause and then I’ll be PISSED.
Ripley
Hey, where did all my all exclamation points go?
John Cole is censoring my artistic freedom!
Punchy
I’m curious as to how far someone could take this. Could a jealous ex-spouse “tip” the police to a “potential lab” of the new boyfriend, ensuring embarrassement, harrassment, and a broken door/house/whatever? Could a pissed off neighbor simply phone in a phony report of drug use, and be assured that his enemy gets the battering ram, the cuffs, the local TV camera, and nary an apology?
Seriously, if this is all the cops need to go full-on Rambo on someone’s casa, I smell Retribution City between divorcees and such.
Wilfred
I think my favorite thing about the Iraq invasion is how Feith et al. maintain they did nothing wrong. As above, below.
POTD.
Dennis - SGMM
If you’re in Iraq or Afghanistan a pissed off neighbor can get you sent to an American-run detention center forever – and we’ll pay him a bounty for turning you in.
cleek
a quick browse through the Google results for “police property seizures” shows that this couple merely got lucky.
yet another jeff
I’m thinking that it’s already Retribution City, we just haven’t heard any of the stories yet. So, it would all be justified if they found a dime bag of smokey treat after smashing down the door?
General Disorder
As long as they read them their rights, then everything would have been cool. So, a few little mistakes are made. Look at all the screw ups GWB has made and there have been no downsides for him. Why should it be any different for the police in this community? Those people who’s door got busted in, they must be guilty of something, if for nothing else, then living in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do you suppose they have any outstanding parking tickets? The police should do back for another search.
The people in power this country sure are given a lot of crap. It’s not right, I tells ya.
Tsulagi
Not yet, but wait until they discover PowerPoint.
Zifnab
Hey, not according to Scalia. Miranda rights are a total sack of “living constitution” bullshit. How dare you inform a suspect of what he is or is not required to say to the police? If a guy gets thrown in a chair and barked at by 250 lb gorillas with badges until he signs a confession for a crime he didn’t commit, who are the SCOTUS judges to get in the way of that?
Svensker
I’ve got this Horton Hatches The Egg visual, only ickier. Thanks.
CFisher
She’s lucky.
Given some of the results of these other ‘justified’ raids, she could have just as easily ended up dead or facing capital punishment if she had exercised her right of self-defense against (to her mind) unknown armed intruders.
This war against citizens needs to stop now.
Tsulagi
Saw maybe half of a 60 Minutes interview of Scalia last Sunday. What an arrogant little ass pimple of a Supreme Court justice.
ThymeZone
What? No chorus of “that’s the way the legal system works, get over it?” from the BJ failed-lawyers club? I’m surprised, really. No, I mean it.
Hey, SHUT UP.
Okay, but cereally, so any asshole who wants to play a prank on you can report a meth lab at your house and get your door broken down? Yeah, that’s a good idea, I think that if I were a police chief I would be totally down with that. Because, you know, it’s how our legal system works.
But no, SHUT UP, I mean it. Okay, this is why I carry an ACLU card and send them my fun money. The government in this country is out of fucking control, that’s why, and if our “legal system” can’t do better than this then it’s time to GET RID OF THE FUCKING LEGAL SYSTEM AND START OVER because it is no longer serving the interests of the citizens it is supposed to protect.
NR
When it comes to the drug war, the writers of The Wire said it best:
ThymeZone
I LOVE that show. I do.
But anyway, I’m reporting a meth lab at myiq2xu’s house.
Heh. Oh yeah.
Dennis - SGMM
Here in California, one of our state legislators has introduced a bill that would mandate that computer technicians report any child pornography, or suspected child pornography, that they find in the course of their work. Here’s the kicker: failure to report the porn could result in a $5000 fine or six months in prison.
Encouraging people to report child porn is okay. Threatening them with fines and imprisonment for not doing so is disgusting. How long before you can be fined or imprisoned for not reporting your neighbor’s occasional toke? The possibilities are endless: “I hereby fine you one-thousand dollars for not reporting your cousin’s dog’s expired license.”
Psycheout
Ironically his beloved Clintons would come down on him like a ton of bricks. Can’t have any competition in the drug dealing business, can they?
ThymeZone
Idiotic. And how does one prove who downloaded the material? If anyone did? Can hackers plant this material on your machine?
How long before the broadband providers are required to sniff packets and report certain kinds of traffic to law enforcement? Can Johnny Law mine your ISP’s proxy servers and DSN servers for information about your surfing habits?
ThymeZone
Remember Mena, Arkansas, baby. The truth hurts.
dAVE
This is the second incident. a few months ago a swat team mistakenly assaulted the home of some hmong immigrants who didn’t speak much english the man, defending his home and family got off two shots from his 45 hitting at least one officer in his kevlar vest. The officers returned fire luckily not hitting anyone. I’m not sure of the excuse but I think they had the wrong address. I’m not sure if it was the same department (the Twin Cities area has several police departments).
Dennis - SGMM
Yes, there are a number of viruses that allow hackers to do pretty much whatever they want with your machine. If you’re on an unsecured wireless network, anyone within range of your router can have their way with your PC.
The feds and law enforcement have routinely sought IP assignment data from ISP’s for years. The feds are just progressively obviating the necessity for any sort of warrant to get the data. They are also attempting to mandate how long (In years) the ISP’s have to retain the data.
John S.
Well, there is ample evidence of substance abuse…
b. hussein canuckistani
Hackers certainly can plant this material on your machine. Turning unsuspecting computers into illegal software and media sharing sites is what hackers (or crackers for anal-retentive nerds) are doing for fun nowadays. A friend of mine recently found that 200G of missing storage on his PC was loaded up with stolen games. It could easily have been kiddie porn, or plans for the Pentagon.
chopper
we know where the meth is. it’s in the area around the Adams’ bathroom and east, west, south and north somewhat.
jake
Showboating legislation at its best. When some Republican bedroom monitor is busted for posessing that crap the pros will have to look through his bills for any evidence of service to the computer. When the cops fetch the tech he’ll say “I didn’t see anything like that.” End of story.
Except you’ve given the defendant’s lawyer a way to cast doubt on the important case.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say some of these legislators are just looking for new excuses to talk about pr0n.
Martin
Sounds like the Cory Maye incident. Cops kick in the door (of the wrong side of a duplex) with no announcement, guy runs to his daughters room, pulls out a gun and shoots one of the cops. The police never announced themselves and Maye had done nothing wrong. He’s serving life in prison for killing a police officer. It was originally a death sentence but that was overturned.
Anyone shocked that Maye is black? No. But let’s go beat up Wright some more since black people clearly don’t face institutional discrimination in this country.
Martin
Sure they can. One of the other offices where I worked had a server that was hacked and being used as a kiddie porn sharing machine. A friend of mine works for a very large video streaming outfit. When he first got the job, he estimated that about 20% of the machines had been compromised and were hosting illegal software, video, porn, etc. Hundreds of machines. (Some of it was hard to sort out because the company also legally streamed porn – the challenges some employees face…) Took him ages to get them all cleaned up. Why? The company didn’t keep track of the physical location of their servers, so he had to go and figure out which machine was which, with data centers across multiple states, all while they were racking new systems as fast as they could. As expected they got bought up by some huge media company for a zillion bajillion dollars because they looked like they knew what they were doing. IIRC, they ran all of the accounting out of Excel or some f’d up thing like that.
Glenn
I thought Mr. Cole and readers might appreciate the following re: cops, cocaine, and DARE.
http://www.november.org/stayinfo/breaking08/DAREOfficer.html
No more drug war!
Paul
‘
His NPR interviews just reinforce that point of view. He actually thinks that if it were legal to put people in stocks at the time of the writing of the Constitution, that, in principle, without a constitutional amendment, it would be fully legal now.
Punchy
Oh shit. I just noticed that I have a lot less free memory than I though I should on my lappy, which uses an unsecured wireless network in a college town (read: LOADED with nerds).
Gulp. Now I gotta fear kiddie pr0n or the reciepe for Coke is being harbored on my PC? GREAT…..
The Other Steve
I was reading this… Brooklyn Park? Hennepin County. Hey wait a minute! This is in my neck of the woods. On the other side of minneapolis as I live, but woo hoo!
We’re in the news!
Bad police, no donut for you!
Calouste
And:
How many arms do you think daddy has twisted to revenge the death of his son?
The Other Steve
I’m going home right now to clean the litter box.
Dennis - SGMM
If you’re running WindowsXP or Vista it’s a good idea to enable the built-in firewall. An unsecured computer on the open Internet takes less than two minutes to get owned.
lilysmom
We have become so fucking stupid that it is painful. We have been conditioned to fear and rat out everything. And we allow this.
Martin
T,FTFY
/me spins the propellor on his hat for p0wnage
Clockwork Buddha
Goota love? That’s just unsanitary. Cheddar love, now *that’s* the way to go.
Cuz goota…sounds like gouda…cuz…
Oh well, hopefully that didn’t just burt the tribe.
Studly Pantload
That is just priceless. But I gotta ad another exception to the one about violence: I would vote to convict someone obviously caught with/dealing meth with extreme prejudice and a twinkle in my eye. In my neighborhood, I get to see up close and personal what that crap does to people. The alcoholics pissing everywhere may be annoying as fuck, but the tweekers are the truly scary ones.
That said, a) it would be nice as hell if the manufacturers of pseudoephedrine just knocked off making the stuff altogether (my understanding is taking the stuff off the market would do tons of good in shrinking the number of meth labs), and b) signing a warrant for forceable entry into someone’s home simply because someone smelled something unusual is a farking farce; I hope the homeowners in this story get mucho legal revenge.
Vishnu
Agressive police action with low information is certainly alarming, but I am confused as to why this was posted?
I don’t see any linking connection as to how exactly this incident is Clinton’s fault? Surely her eeeevvvillll campaign method drove these police officers to take action somehow. Or maybe the repair person saw an Obama ’08 sticker on their car and the racist voice in his head told him this couple must be punished.
Without the spoonfed analisys from Mr. Cole proclaiming this as an outcome of Clinton Rules, how else can the sheeple here come to understand that Billary has done another dirty to Mr. Obama.
Martin
Ah, there was a post at Crooked Timber about Maye.
josephdietrich
This is what happens when we encourage untrained service people to notify the police about any activity they deem suspicious, and allow said police to follow up such tips using paramilitary raids instead of investigative police work.
The Moar You Know
Happens at least twice a year here in San Diego, rarely even makes the local news unless someone gets killed.
And speaking of that, we have an utterly out-of-control police department here. We’ve always had more problems than average, but in the last decade we’re experiencing some really fucked-up incidents with off-duty cops who refuse to show ID, shooting people in circumstances that are, to put it mildly, shady. The DA does nothing but rubberstamp the cop’s side of the story, and truthfully, our current DA is a big part of the current problem.
The last guy was even worse.
DBrown
This nutcase believes in the divine right of kings (that is, no law a king makes can be wrong since the king is slected by god due to his birth)- really believes this bullshit and wrote a paper on it (try googling); the nutcase is a loony even for rightwing nutcases. He hates democracy.
charles
Speaking of pseudoephedrine, does anyone know what happens to the ID information gathered from drugstore sales of Sudafed? How many boxes do I have to buy over what time period to get my door kicked in?
DougJ
I wouldn’t be so sure.
After Hillary scored political points taking that shot of Crown Royal at the dive bar, the next logical step is smoking meth in a trailer park. That will prove to the voters, once and for all, that she is no elitist.
Martin
Need more information: are you a minority?
Delia
I don’t know, but I’ve found that taking one pill along with a cup of Yogi Breathe Deep tea is quite helpful for asthma relief. I live in Oregon where you can’t buy the damn stuff at all without a prescription, but I’ve found I can buy it from online pharmacies, so no doubt I’m on all sorts of high alert lists.
Luke
Normally I abstain from vulgarity in any of my post (or life in general), however, Jesus Fucking Christ people The Hillary Bashing in EVERY fucking post is old and tired. I used to enjoy and looked forward to reading Cole. Now, I find this endless Bashing to be child like and parallel to the far right rage found in people like Malkik, O’Reilly and Hannity. Fatal Attraction??? Takin my toys and goin home!!! Never in my life have I voted for a Republican, however, if it is between Obama and McCain my vote will go to McCain. And it is due the incoherent, confused and delusional Hillary hatred.
Timb
Just finishing my class in Criminal Procedure and you bet your ass it’s legal. As long as the cops can claim they received the information from a good source, then it’s up to a judge. And, cops always know the right judge.
As for entry, the police, the Scalia-led court has found, don’t have to knock and announce if there are “exigent circumstances” and drugs are the first part of exigent (they represent situation in which evidence can be quickly disposed of, although how one disposes of a lab in between the announcement and the knocking is apparently not important).
Former spouses do this to each other constantly. In fact, one of our cases is the former spouse opening the door to the place with her key and giving the police the permission to search the place. They found stuff and the dude was convicted. She said he was a drug dealer and it turned out he was a drug user. Didn’t matter.
By the way, the cops says things like “we did nothing wrong” because they fear the Title 1983 lawsuit the homeowners could file. I would not be surprised if there was a more quiet, less media accessible payment to the couple for their “trouble”.
In the end, the drug was is ruing our country.
Martin
People hate Obama and McCain irrationally too. So you’re gonna base your vote on whichever random blog you land in? Interesting approach. Darts would probably be more responsible, to be honest.
Luke
Martin:
LOL – Not just random blogs.. However, I am pretty darn good at darts. Thanks for bringing my feet back on solid ground. Peace.
Martin
So, the drugs are at fault, even though the entire process behind dealing with the drugs has minimal effect and actually ads to it to a significant degree. Has anyone considered that the drug isn’t the problem but is instead a symptom of something else?
PaulB
Um, I think he was saying that the drug war is ruining our country, not the drugs themselves.
Martin
Ah. I read that as a stutter on was/is.
Poor grammar kills, you know.
Lesley
Not suprising. Police in the state of New York are never wrong! This couple did fair much better than Sean Bell and his friends though.
EJ
The other day I’m in a welding shop buying some high-pressure gas pipe fittings for a CO2 system. The guy who rang me up walked out with me to take out the trash, and sees that I’ve got some high-intensity flourescent tubes in the back seat of the car.
“How much weed are you growing?” he asks. “I’m just curious because I used to do that.”
I tell him that actually I’m setting up an aquarium (you need bright lights and CO2 to grow some types of aquarium plants). He just rolls his eyes like that’s the dumbest excuse he’s ever heard.
It’s funny because he clearly wasn’t the type to call the cops on a suspected pot grower – had he been, though, it could have been a huge hassle.
Chuck Butcher
Assuming the information presented regarding Maye is correct something is amiss. Because Maye would have no reason to believe he’d be a police target the entire burden should fall on the State.
I’m afraid that if I awake to the sound of a breaking door a gunfight is going to ensue and I shoot competitively and in timed events. I also only shoot heavy caliber firearms and the loaded one has hollow points, well the other loaded one is a hand cannon, but it isn’t right at hand.
The primary defense weapon is a .45ACP Colt auto loaded with heavy hollow points to avoid over-penetration, the secondary is a Vaquerro .45Colt loaded 365 grains at 1350 feet per second, that one will blow through any vest short of 1/4 inch armor plate at indoor range. The police should not be put at this kind of risk and neither should citizens. At the first shot fired everyone in the room would be deaf and nearly blinded by muzzle flash.
Anyone with a brain points at center mass, TV nonsense to the side, there is no such thing as shooting to wound or warning shots. At indoor range any hesitation means the gun can be taken from you or a wrestling match occurs, not good. In this scenario the government is no one’s friend. I also don’t expect it to come to an end any time soon.
find remedy
Democracy is messy?
chuckieboy
Get used to it. Brownshirts, jackboots, all of the tri mmings of a thoroughly fascist country. My thanks go out to chimpy, dickhead, condi, rummy, and the rest of these motherfuckers for ruining my country. At least I had some good times here, I feel sorry for the kids, growing up in this country is going to be a horrible experience.
binzinerator
It is the same. The fish rots from the head.
Cylk
Seems to me everyone has gotten off the subject of the discussion! Which was – the police breaking down the door, dragging a half-crippled woman and her huband out of bed, handcuffing them, in search of a meth-lab reported by one person who didn’t know what vinegar smelled like or what a salt-water fish tank looked like!
Do police not have to investigate things anymore?