ginmar ([info]ginmar) wrote,
@ 2008-07-23 23:03:00
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Entry tags:assholes

Civil rights issues
My neighbors across the street were raided by the Sheriff's office. K came running up to me to ask me about warrants and stuff like that, and after a while the whole family came over. The cops raided her house based on the word of a guy who was a big guy in the coke foodchain.

They've raided her house or that of relatives at least three times.

1. In one raid, a five months pregnant woman was thrown to the ground on her stomach.

2. In the second raid, M's husband's ribs were broken.

3. In this raid, three exterior doors were left damaged---by which I mean, yanked out of their frames or hinges--and the home owner---M----and her daughter, R, were tossed to the ground and handcuffed. Her daughter is twelve.

The cops come with drug dogs and everything. They have never once found anything. The family does not know their rights and is afraid of further harassment. The cops call them 'illegal' but that's bullshit. M works her ass off.

The cops broke windows this time, broke doors entirely, ripped ceiling tiles down, and left the house insecure. They posted the house as 'unfit for human habitation'---but that was after they rampaged through it.

One cop's name keeps coming up. And like I said---they never find anything. Never. You'd thikn they'd question their informant's reliability by now, don't you think?

I have one feeling, too: this is what Iraq is like. You give the cops an anonymous tip, they do a raid, and then what? Do they check out if there's enmity between the tipper and the tippee?


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[info]rantinan
2008-07-24 05:40 am UTC (link)
But the Police are your Friends (tm)! they would never do anything like that.
And every time i look down ad my right foot, i know just how "friendly" the copper was who smashed it.
THe police rely on their names non being blackened because of the presumption of guilt in the mind of your average idiot. the whole "where there is smoke, there is fire" routine. The media does not help, the bastard who smashed my foot was praised by the right wing rag in this town as "a heroic officer helping suppress a riot". If it had been a riot, I'd have been lighting things on fire. If it had been a riot, there would have been more than one injured police officer to several hundred smashed protesters.

The only antidote is to tell the truth about criminals in uniform as much as possible, which you are doing.
Yet again, you rock hard gin.

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[info]interactiveleaf
2008-07-24 06:05 am UTC (link)
[info]copsrurfriends

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-24 08:33 pm UTC (link)
My CO in Iraq is a cop, you know. When it comes to victims of crimes, he's...well, he's the man he is.

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[info]interactiveleaf
2008-07-24 09:00 pm UTC (link)
Most cops are trustworthy, honest people. I have friends who are cops.

But some of them are thugs who get to carry a gun to go with their power trip. I think it's important to combat the idea that cops are people who can automatically be trusted to do the right thing.

Insofar as actual dealings with policemen, I think [info]bradhicks summed it up, in three parts: 1, 2, and 3.

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-25 02:01 pm UTC (link)
I know a lot of decent cops. Unfortunately, we only hear about the evil ones, the injured, and the dead. We don't hear about cops like my CO.

If you've never seen 'the first 48' I recommend it. It shows cops being humane and compassionate and kind.

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[info]absofrickinlute
2008-07-24 06:19 am UTC (link)
Ginmar, I am so so sorry to hear this. I am sometimes just so floored by the relentless injustice of this world.

That poor family.

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[info]rabidsamfan
2008-07-24 08:11 am UTC (link)
Hmm. Got any newspaper reporter types or tv-news people who take on that kind of incident like a holy crusade in the area? Or a legal aid society? Do they own the house or will the landlord have to make good the damage? A landlord who's willing to sue for the cost of repairing doors and windows might make things interesting.

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[info]fiona64
2008-07-24 12:59 pm UTC (link)
I have one feeling, too: this is what Iraq is like. You give the cops an anonymous tip, they do a raid, and then what? Do they check out if there's enmity between the tipper and the tippee?

Le sigh.

I've mentioned my friend E., who is in Baghdad. His translator's house was raided, doors pulled off the hinges, etc., just as you describe -- while Hussein kept showing them his Green Zone IDs and explaining that he works for the US. Didn't slow down the American soldiers one bit' they'd gotten a tip that there were illegal weapons in his house.

Turns out that Hussein's BIL is in one of the Sunni Awakening groups ... and someone who was pissed at the BIL was the tipper.

Not so much as an apology to Hussein and his family, whose house had no front or back doors, and whose armoires were destroyed, after the soldiers were done. :-(

E. is a retired Army officer ... and he's flat-out ashamed at the way some of the soldiers have behaved over there. No one questions the tips at all ... they just send these gung-ho, ignorant young kids in to tear up the houses and create further enmity. :-(

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[info]rickvs
2008-07-24 01:06 pm UTC (link)
Is it possible that your creepy neighbor with all the cameras had one recording a view of the raid?

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-24 08:28 pm UTC (link)
No, unfortunately not.

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[info]crwilley
2008-07-24 02:02 pm UTC (link)
They probably have grounds for a claim against the police for repairs - but it might take hiring a lawyer to get that claim actually paid off, especially if your city has a policy of taking every case to trial.

R is about the same age as K and C, right? Her being thrown to the ground in handcuffs is the kind of thing that could get a media stink made, especially if someone recorded it on their phone or if Creepy Camera Neighbor got a shot of it. Likewise, if someone can get in there and videotape or photograph the damage, now while it's still fresh, that would be important and helpful.

The ACLU isn't likely to get directly involved at this point, but it's probably worth talking to them as a point in establishing a pattern of abuse by cops, and they might also be able to offer advice to the family as to exactly what their rights are when served with a warrant - and whatever rights they have are probably complicated if a no-knock warrant was issued.

(At a bare minimum, if the police knock, they have the right to inspect the warrant, and verify that the address is correct and what items are to be searched for. If anything is seized, they should ask for a receipt. They theoretically still have these rights in a no-knock warrant but if the police have already kicked your door in and started trashing the place it's a little difficult to exercise those rights...)

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-24 08:31 pm UTC (link)
I took pictures and video yesterday. Nobody videotaped the initial entry because the cops did not knock; they just came in. I've been on the phone with lawyers and the city all day. The city inspector made a pretty clear threat against me because I was making a stink.

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[info]nekosensei
2008-07-24 03:30 pm UTC (link)
That's positively awful. Do you know if the pregnant woman was okay? She didn't lose the baby from all that, did she?

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[info]ginmar
2008-07-24 08:31 pm UTC (link)
No, but it's amazing that it even happened.

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[info]sinuousrillls
2008-07-24 07:16 pm UTC (link)
I'm so sorry, though saying so doesn't help, nor does me crying about it, but I am anyway. Bah.

I think you're right about Iraq being that way too.

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[info]interactiveleaf
2008-09-15 07:29 pm UTC (link)
Unfortunately, this is entirely legal and there really isn't much to be done about it. Even when Mayor Calvo's home was raided and both his dogs shot, it was written off as a completely legal unfortunate accident. He has no recourse. (I assume you know the background there; if not, it's easily Googlable.)

I came back to this entry because I thought you might be interested in listening to this podcast about No-Knock Raids.


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