
Judge: Drinking tea, shopping at garden store probable cause for SWAT raid - eric_h
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/12/28/federal-judge-drinking-tea-shopping-at-a-gardening-store-is-probable-cause-for-a-swat-raid-on-your-home/
======
jimrandomh
The actual basis of the raid was a false positive by a field test kit, which
misidentified tea leaves from the target's trash as marijuana. (They claim to
not need a search warrant to look at trash.)

The raid was conducted in 2012, and this article reports a test performed in
2009 which showed that the brand of test kits in question has a 70% false
positive rate. It links to a video in which running the test without a sample
(ie, just exposing it to air) produced a "positive" result. Notably, this was
_three years earlier_ than the raid in question, which means that they were
_still using the faulty test kits_.

There are only two possible reasons for a police department to be using a test
like that. The first is ignorance, but of a degree and nature that is quite
scandalous. The second is to commit fraud upon the courts, by claiming to have
evidence of drug possession where no drugs exist. In light of the FBI hair
test scandal ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-
fo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-
hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-
decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html)) I think
the latter explanation is fairly likely.

~~~
a3n
> The actual basis of the raid was a false positive by a field test kit

Yes, but the reason they were being investigated at all was because a cop was
recording license plate numbers at a garden supply store.

You don't even have to have something to hide to fall prey to the war on
citizens. If the police need an arrest, and they're looking at you, you'll be
arrested.

~~~
rdtsc
Exactly.

You don't know if you have something to hide.

Either because you don't know how an irrational enemy (in case govt) will
interpret your actions, so you want to minimize their ability to see your
actions, or you don't know what will happen in the future. Because everything
is recorded these days, you don't know if in the future you might want to hide
something you did today. Say, you like to drink hibiscus tea and wear blue
shoes. But it turns out in the future members of some horrible terrorist group
will be drinking hibiscus tea and wearing blue shoes. Then you'd be a target
all of the sudden.

EDIT: This similar to how police always can search your car if they want to --
they call the K-9 unit. The handler says "find boy" or does some other trained
jesture or word, dog signals, now there is a probable cause to search your
vehicle. It is very hard to prove that the dog was conditioned to signal on
command and hard to refute (cop's word vs yours). So that is why K-9 units are
very popular with some police departments. They provide ambiguity and
plausable pretext for searches.

~~~
s_q_b
It's really absurd that we've outsourced the Fourth Amendment to dogs.

~~~
u801e
Quoting a post I recently came across on reddit:

> The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution clearly states: "The right of the
> people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
> unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated unless a dog
> barks."

------
eric_h
I think the most damning quote from the article is "He also ruled that the
police were under no obligation to know that drug testing field kits are
inaccurate".

Police are under no obligation to know that a tool they use is inaccurate?
Would the same rules apply for the acquisition of, say, firearms - i.e. would
the police be under no obligation to know that the glocks they're purchasing
for their officers have a tendency to fire even when the safety is on?

Edit: per comments below please s/when the safety is on/without pulling the
trigger/ when reading this comment

~~~
jMyles
You are absolutely spot on. However, to pick a quick nit:

> the glocks they're purchasing for their officers have a tendency to fire
> even when the safety is on?

Glocks don't have a safety that goes "on" and prevents them from firing. If
you pull the trigger (which has a little mini trigger in it which must also be
pulled - the only actual safety), it will fire.

Even cops who don't carry glocks rarely carry weapons that have a safety that
works in the way you suggest; instead, most LEO duty weapons simply have a
heavy trigger pull.

~~~
moron4hire
Yeah, double-action-only should be the default for all handguns short of crazy
.22LR target pistols.

~~~
beachstartup
a glock isn't double action. if the striker isn't in firing position (done by
racking the slide when you first insert the magazine), it won't fire no matter
how many times you pull the trigger. the slide locks back after firing the
last round, so that it only readies the striker when you insert a new magazine
and release the slide.

~~~
moron4hire
Yes, I know how a Glock works, and I think it's a bad design.

~~~
Grishnakh
Only someone who knows nothing about shooting pistols would think that. How on
earth is it a bad design?

A normal Glock with its single-action mechanism is pretty close to the best
handgun design there is now. A double-action-only (DAO) design suffers from
heavy trigger pulls, which cause terrible shot accuracy. Look at the NYPD and
how many innocent bystanders they shoot because of their 12-lb trigger pulls.
DA/SA are even worse because the first shot is double-action, so it's
inconsistent. Both these designs should be banned from law enforcement use
because of public safety.

The only thing wrong with Glocks is they only have the trigger safety, and no
external safety (like the grip safety on Springfield XD pistols), so they
misfire if you're clumsy when reholstering and something gets into the trigger
guard, and this has caused a bunch of cops to shoot themselves in the foot or
leg.

~~~
moron4hire
Maybe the problem in NYC isn't accuracy, maybe it's the number of people the
NYC cops are _trying_ to shoot.

Yes, Glocks make great target shooting pistols. I don't think it's a good gun
to be putting into the hands of adrenaline-jacked people on the street. This
year alone we've seen several instances of cops having shot suspects already
subdued on the ground as well as _each other_ because they are squeezing the
gun too tightly while drawing and aiming. Adrenaline stress + bad trigger
discipline = "the gun just went off".

You might disagree that DAO firearms are good for avoiding accidental
discharge, but it's not an uninformed opinion. I own several firearms, have
gone through several firearm safety courses, and have even had my own CCW
permit in the past. I don't know how common of an opinion it is, but it's not
just something I've made up because I don't know anything about guns.

~~~
Grishnakh
Glocks were designed as military weapons, not target shooting pistols, and are
used in the militaries of many nations. Similar pistols (like the XDs) are
used in other nations' militaries. I would imagine that combat is about as bad
an environment as you can get for adrenaline stress.

It sounds like the big problem is shitty training for cops.

The problem in NYC has been well-documented by gun experts, it's not the
number of people they're trying to shoot. There have been many cases of them
shooting at legitimate targets (not black guys running away, not small black
children with toys, but real suspects wielding weapons on the street) at
hitting bystanders because their shot accuracy is so pathetically bad. A 12-lb
trigger pull (specifically designed into Glocks that were never meant to have
them, at the insistence of the NYPD because they were used to crappy old
revolvers) is a big part of that.

If a cop shoots a suspect on the ground, that's just plain murder, I don't
care what their excuse is. Bad trigger discipline should be prosecuted as
murder: you never put your finger on the trigger unless you've decided to kill
the target.

~~~
moron4hire
>> Glocks were designed as military weapons

yeeeeah, definitely not suitable for cops

~~~
Grishnakh
Um, why not? The stress of actual combat is far more than almost any cop ever
goes through, unless he's one of the rare ones involved in an active shooter
situation (and even those tend to be over pretty quickly; military combat can
go on for hours or days).

~~~
moron4hire
Because the metric it optimizes for is "successfully hit target", and ignores
whether or not the target needed to be hit. NYPD's problem is not heavy
trigger pulls. It's trigger happiness to begin with. Police duty is not like
TV, it's not battles with drug cartels, even in LA. Police should not in any
way resemble soldiers. We should go back to the time when recent military duty
was considered a _negative_ when applying for police duty.

~~~
Grishnakh
I'm sorry, this is just plain stupid. Giving cops inaccurate weapons is not
going to make them less trigger-happy, you'll just wind up with more
bystanders shot. Yes, the NYPD _does_ have a problem with heavy trigger pulls,
whether you agree or not. Many expert sources have pointed this problem out.
If you want to hit a target, a heavy trigger pull makes it more likely you'll
torque the gun and miss your target. Going back to revolvers isn't going to
fix that (though at least the revolvers were heavier so maybe the effect
wasn't as bad).

If you want to argue about police tactics, recruitment, training, or purpose,
this isn't the place for it. This is a thread about pistols and trigger pull
weights.

As for military duty, that should be a plus for police duty. Military soldiers
have to learn about things like "rules of engagement" and had very strict
training about that. If they saw combat, then they are also much less likely
to lose their demeanor when dealing with a rough situation, because they've
already seen much worse. The cops who have all the problems seem to be ones
who were never in the military, and probably would have been (or were)
rejected if they had applied: basically thugs who want to play soldier and
never got the chance. Notice that you never hear about problems with military
police (MPs) shooting people unnecessarily, despite the extremely high numbers
of non-white people in the military? I think there's a reason for that.

------
y0ghur7_xxx
"A state trooper had been positioned in the store parking lot to collect the
license plate numbers of customers, compile them into a spreadsheet, then send
the spreadsheets to local sheriff’s departments for further investigation."

this sound a lot like a stasi operation.

[https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7209-what_does_big_brother_see_w...](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7209-what_does_big_brother_see_while_he_is_watching#video)

~~~
simoncion
> this sound a lot like a stasi operation.

No.

Assuming that the parking lot is exposed to the street, there is _absolutely_
nothing wrong with posting an officer in or near the lot and recording the
plates of vehicles that travel near the area. The notion that it is 100% okay
that things that happen in public view may be subject to notice and recording
at _any_ time is _very_ important to preserve.

Where this goes oh _so_ wrong is when the PD posts a robot policeman [0] at
the location, or a network of them throughout the district that record things
(like license plates).

There are only _so_ many officers in a district, each of them can only be
doing one thing at a time, and every one of them requires OT pay for extended
work hours. This means that a district has to decide if plate collection at a
location is the _best_ thing that they can be doing with a particular officer.

If a district can suddenly -for the price of one meatbag officer- dedicate ten
new robot "officers" [1] to the task of car movement surveillance, then their
powers have been _greatly_ expanded.

It's _very_ important that we protect the right to notice and record things
that happen in public. I feel that it's equally important that we work to
limit the damage that an entity can do when they have the resources available
to record such things on a _large_ scale.

[0] AKA: a camera

[1] who can work 24/7 and _never_ require OT pay

~~~
hellbanner
You're saying public recording is fine when it's "expensive" \-- costing a
human salary, but not when it's a robot? I'm not following you.

If police are going to record citizens, citizens should feel comfortable
recording police. What their routes are, favorite stops, conversations, etc.

~~~
simoncion
> You're saying public recording is fine when it's "expensive" \-- costing a
> human salary, but not when it's a robot? I'm not following you.

You _are_ following me. That's exactly what I'm saying.

Human scale surveillance is okay. Because the surveillance is carried out by a
human on the scene, it requires the surveillers to decide _who_ should be
surveilled, and prevents or eliminates blanket surveillance.

> If police are going to record citizens, citizens should feel comfortable
> recording police.

100% agreed. Because of the _extraordinary_ powers they are entrusted with,
on-duty police [0] should be held to a _much_ higher standard than regular
folks.

Off-duty cops who aren't exercising police power? They're folks like any other
and must be afforded the same rights and protections as every other regular
citizen.

[0] Or off-duty police who are otherwise exercising their police powers.

~~~
whoopdedo
> Human scale surveillance is okay. Because the surveillance is carried out by
> a human on the scene, it requires the surveillers to decide who should be
> surveilled, and prevents or eliminates blanket surveillance.

But what we're describing is not a human using his judgment to select probable
suspects for further investigation. It's a guy parked pointing a camera at all
license plates and feeding them en masse to a computer for automated
processing. It is not functionally different than the hypothetical robot you
described, only this happens to be a robot with an organic component.

~~~
simoncion
> It is not functionally different than the hypothetical robot you described,
> only this happens to be a robot with an organic component.

Two things.

1) You _appear_ to have missed this in my original comment:

> It's very important that we protect the right to notice and record things
> that happen in public. I feel that it's equally important that we work to
> limit the damage that an entity can do when they have the resources
> available to record such things on a large scale.

2) It's _obvious_ that one can _very_ cost-effectively blanket _any_ urban or
semi-urban area in ALPR cameras. When you do this, you gain the ability to
track any vehicle in that area _forever_. For areas of any appreciable size,
_no_ police force has the personnel on hand to achieve the same level of
coverage with human officers. This means that -if you ban robot officers- you
_dramatically_ limit the parts of one's trips that the police can remember.

It's the difference between a passive attacker that controls a _few_ nodes in
the Tor network, and a passive attacker that controls _most_ of the nodes in
the Tor network. In the former situation, that attacker _may_ be able to use
traffic analysis to unmask a _few_ Tor users. In the latter situation, they
_will_ be able to unmask _very_ many Tor users. [0]

Make sense?

[0] This is -as the Tor people have _always_ said- not something that Tor
protects against.

~~~
hellbanner
Ok -- I'm following your argument now. I'm surprised that you think 100%
blanket surveillance is not ok, but partial surveillance -- limited only by
its expensiveness -- is OK.

Because what's most likely to happen is that the police choose to surveil an
area for political reasons (like racial segregation), and are thus attacking a
specific group.

Yes, by limiting robot police & robot cameras you make this difficult for
police by limiting their memory, but mass-surveillance is still happening!
This, myself & the other commenter (I believe) find this unacceptable.

I'm arguing that police shouldn't be mass surveilling at all -- with robots,
helmet cams that track license plates or by individual human officers
selecting a zone to surveil. Or that if this surveillance happens -- it
becomes _public_ knowledge. Let every citizen view the live feeds around them,
perform their own tracking if they wish, to keep the playing field open.

The Tor project doesn't protect against isolated attacks (surveillance), but
would it not be nice if it could?

I think we have a difference of opinion here so I'm curious -- what are valid
reasons from your viewpoint in which a human officer should select an area to
surveil?

~~~
simoncion
> Because what's most likely to happen is that the police choose to surveil an
> area for political reasons (like racial segregation), and are thus attacking
> a specific group.

That has nothing to do with police surveillance. That has everything to do
with crooked cops. It's a problem that's worth talking about, but it's
completely unrelated to a conversation about limiting the damage that can be
done with tireless, incredibly cheap robot police officers.

> ...but mass-surveillance is still happening!

What I'm describing as the ideal situation isn't mass surveillance. If you
declare _all_ surveillance that gets fed back into a filing cabinet
(computerized or otherwise) to be mass surveillance, you make it impossible to
distinguish between a single guy on a stakeout and an organization that
records and stores for the rest of eternity _every_ single phone call in a
nation, the exterior of _every_ single piece of snail mail in a nation, and
the movement of _every_ single automobile in _every_ major and most minor
metropolitan areas in that nation.

Please don't do that.

> The Tor project doesn't protect against isolated attacks (surveillance), but
> would it not be nice if it could?

If you could get it for free, it would be nice. It's a hard problem that
requires some _very_ serious tradeoffs. There is _no_ way around those
tradeoffs.

Tor -as is- is very useful. If it protected against a passive adversary that
controlled most of the nodes in the network, nearly noone would use it because
it would be too slow.

> ...what are valid reasons from your viewpoint in which a human officer
> should select an area to surveil?

I mean, the obvious stuff?

* As part of a routine crime-prevention patrol. (E.g. an officer walking a regular beat.)

* As part of an ongoing investigation into one or more people who are -at a minimum- suspected of being involved in illegal activity.

Let's skip the conversation about what should or shouldn't be illegal. While
that's a useful conversation to have, it's not in-scope for a conversation
about limiting the damage done by robot policing.

------
leepowers
These type of police power abuse stories are depressing to read. It seems the
whole legal system is designed to protect and perpetuate itself, with justice
itself being a mere side-effect. It's hard not to be pessimistic, especially
after having read Balko's (the article author's) book _Rise of the Warrior
Cop_.

Much of the problem stems from our hysterical over-reaction to the crime
spikes of the 60's and 70's, where the citizenry clamored for and were
provided with draconian laws and tactics. Combine this with an almost blind
deference to police authority (both as a matter of law and public opinion) and
the environment is ripe for abuses of power.

That being said, this particular case did result in some small legislation to
help correct the problems of police overreach. Which is small nudge in the
right direction, away from the fear-driven policies of the past. But I'm still
afraid - that the situation will get much worse, and the abuses even more
egregious, before any substantial reform is enacted.

~~~
hyperdunc
> It seems the whole legal system is designed to protect and perpetuate
> itself, with justice itself being a mere side-effect.

This applies to almost every entity - whether a system, industry, organization
or individual. Any value the entity delivers externally is of secondary
concern to the entity, but it is also how the entity defines its usefulness in
the eyes of others.

------
OldSchoolJohnny
How does the U.S. differ substantially from a classic "police state"?

~~~
colechristensen
'police state' isn't something well defined.

In any case, regardless of the fact that these sorts of incident are not
uncommon, they're not particularly frequent either.

The term _police state_ has 'taken on an emotional and derogatory meaning" by
describing an undesirable state of living characterized by the overbearing
presence of the civil authorities'

Which isn't at all the case for most people. More like isolated abuses of
power than the pervasive control of civil authorities. It's a problem, and the
problem is growing, but "police state" is an unhelpful hyperbole – using terms
like that loses you credibility and distracts from the real discussions that
should be happening.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Have you seen this[1][2] 30 page document published by the Australian
Government, entitled "Preventing Violent Extremism And Radicalisation In
Australia"

The title on page 10 is "Violent extremism", followed by a 'Case Study' on
page 11 which reads:

"Karen grew up in a loving family who never participated in activism of any
sort. When she moved out of home to attend university Karen became involved in
the alternative music scene, student politics and left-wing activism."

The Australian Government associating "university" and "the alternative music
scene, student politics, and left-wing activism" with "violent extremism" is
an undesirable state of living charactered by the overbearing presence of the
civil authorities indeed.

> More like isolated abuses of power than the pervasive control of civil
> authorities.

In Australia, first they came for people who listened to alternative music.
And I didn't speak up because I didn't listen to alternative music. ...
Except, I do. I've also voted for, and been a member of, left-wing political
parties in the past. When should I start worrying? Probably not until the
current set of primary school aged kids are running the country, because it's
them who have been born in to a world where persistent surveillance is
_normal_ and listening to alternative music is _extreme_.

Oh well, we tried.

1\.
[https://www.livingsafetogether.gov.au/informationadvice/Docu...](https://www.livingsafetogether.gov.au/informationadvice/Documents/preventing-
violent-extremism-and-radicalisation-in-australia.pdf)

2\. [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-24/anti-radicalisation-
ki...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-24/anti-radicalisation-kit-under-
fire-from-green-groups-teachers/6803024)

~~~
stillsut
So I investigated [1] at your suggestion.

 _Literally on the same page_ as the Karen story is examples of far right hate
groups including anti-islam and abortion clinic attacks.

All ideologies can produce extremist according this document, why are you so
upset there is an example of yours?

------
btown
There's an interesting meta-question here about why the legal system relies so
heavily on binary decisions, rather than taking uncertainty into account as
far as possible.

Imagine that in Bayes World, the presence of a positive THC test updates, in a
way that takes into account the probability that the test gives a false
positive, a random variable G|* representing the probability that, given all
available information, the suspect is growing marijuana. Similarly, the event
of the resident's visit to a garden store updates G|*. [0]

Then, perhaps the Bayes City Police Department would use Bayesian Decision
Theory [1] (perhaps with a custom loss function that takes into the account
that a false positive for sending a SWAT team can actually cause needless loss
of life!) to decide who to raid. The Judge (a trained statistician and data
scientist) would supervise the algorithm and make sure that procedures are
updated to constantly balance the case-specific "gut feelings" of the
investigators with the need for a predictable system.

And let's keep rolling with this! In Bayes World, we never think of "guilty"
or "not guilty" as a set fact. If there's any uncertainty in the case, that's
taken into account quantitatively in sentencing. A jury of the accused's
peers, all educated in statistics (because in Bayes World, the politicians
dispute certain assumptions going into macroeconomic models, but they
grudgingly agree that investments in basic income and education have positive
expected value when weighted by the likelihood of those assumptions... but I
digress...) choose certain coefficients for sentencing based on the human
factors of the case.

But we don't live in Bayes World, so we get stories like this.

[0]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/2b0/bayes_theorem_illustrated_my_way...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2b0/bayes_theorem_illustrated_my_way/)
[1]
[http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~jcorso/t/CSE555/files/lecture_ba...](http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~jcorso/t/CSE555/files/lecture_bayesiandecision.pdf)

~~~
grecy
I think the other interesting question is why Law Enforcement feel the need to
execute a search warrant like this with a SWAT team and a massive show of
force.

Based on the article, these people were not considered "high risk", in which
case the Police could have politely knocked on the door, informed the
residents what was happening without ever drawing a weapon, or forcing anyone
to the ground.

In the same way their decision making is binary, it appears their method of
action is also binary - either take no action, or bring the big guns and go
all out with a show of force and violence.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I think the other interesting question is why Law Enforcement feel the need
> to execute a search warrant like this with a SWAT team and a massive show of
> force.

 _If_ they actually had probable cause to believe that it was a major criminal
marijuana grow operation, _that itself_ would probably be nearly sufficient
reason to expect that the risk of armed resistance would be high enough to
warrant the kind of raid actually conducted.

~~~
jbooth
No, it actually wouldn't. We're not talking about the Juarez Cartel here,
we're talking about 2 white people from Kansas with an _extremely_ weak lead.
If the lead was accurate, which it wasn't, it would've been 2 aging hippies,
probably unarmed. Maaaaaaybe somoene with a handgun stashed in the house.
Definitely not a paramilitary force of gangsters looking to get into a
shootout.

The real reason for the SWAT raid is because SWAT raids are cool. Look at the
gear. Look at the guns. Looks like fun. In fact, it looks like more fun than
anything in the average policeman's day job. Ever seen a coder pick the more
fun, cooler approach rather than the more appropriate, boring tool that gets
the job done with a minimum of fuss?

------
clarkmoody
It's time to start the conversation about _Private Production of Defense_.[1]
Without competitive forces coming to bear upon the monopoly enjoyed by the law
enforcement and judicial systems, we will see ever-increasing rights
violations with no recourse from the citizens.

Ending the War on Drugs is a great step in the right direction and make sense
any way you look at it, but it will not end the systematic abuses of power
perpetrated by the State.

[1]: [https://mises.org/library/private-production-
defense](https://mises.org/library/private-production-defense)

~~~
eric_h
This is a trivial criticism of a work that I do not presently have time to
review, but I can't help but think of capitalist dystopia described in Neal
Stephenson's _Snow Crash_ when considering the delegation of defense/police
forces to the free market.

~~~
marktangotango
Vernor Vinges "the ungoverned" puts a clever twist on this idea.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ungoverned](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ungoverned)

------
cryoshon
FTA: "Once they had been cleared of any wrongdoing, the Hartes wanted to know
what happened. Why had they been raided?"

They got raided because in a police state, constant paramilitary raids happen
whether or not the police have valid criminal targets. If there are no real
criminals to raid, criminals will be invented. Poor quality contraband testing
and the drug war itself are two such ways that criminals can be invented. The
purpose of creating criminals and conducting armed raids is to keep the
citizens afraid of their government.

We've fallen a long way. In what world is the growing of a certain kind of
plant a legitimate reason for a violent raid?

Fascist behavior is exactly why I am purely indifferent when the police are
killed or maimed: they have earned their reputation as oppressors and wear it
with stolid pride.

~~~
anon4
I hope this account isn't linked to your actual identity, because in a police
state, stating that you're indifferent to police being killed is a very good
way of getting very special attention.

~~~
kuschku
If someone wants to find something bad on the person, then it’ll be very easy.

Bought fertilizer? said online that you’re indifferent to police being killed?

"We have clues the person might have planned a bomb attack on local police
headquarters".

The whole issue of being able to use planted evidence, misinterpreted
information, or faked witness statements to hurt some random person is real.
As can be seen in the fact that a single call can lead to a SWATting.

------
fweespeech
> Once they had been cleared of any wrongdoing, the Hartes wanted to know what
> happened. Why had they been raided? What possible probable cause could the
> police have had for sending a SWAT team into their home first thing in the
> morning? But even that information would prove difficult to obtain. Under
> Kansas law, the sheriff’s department wasn’t obligated to turn over any
> information related to the raid — not to the Hartes, not to the media, not
> to anyone. The couple eventually had to hire an attorney to get a judge to
> order the sheriff to release the information. They spent more than $25,000
> in legal fees just to learn why the sheriff had sent a SWAT team into their
> home. Once they finally had that information, the Hartes filed a lawsuit.

> He also ruled that the police were under no obligation to know that drug
> testing field kits are inaccurate, nor were they obligated to wait for the
> more accurate lab tests before conducting the SWAT raid.

This is bullshit.

By this standard, Marijuana Dowsing Rods can be sold to the police and used to
raid people's homes!

Oh, and the police are under no obligation to disclose the fact they use
dowsing rods as a primary method of "discovering" drug dens!

> Keep in mind that this was a ruling for summary judgment. This was not a
> trial. To dismiss the suit at this stage, Lungstrum needed to view the facts
> in a light most favorable to the Hartes. And yet he still found that at no
> point did the police violate the family’s constitutional rights.

Congratulations! We live in a police state if the most favorable
interpretation of those events for the victims is "Nope, no problem here!"

------
temac
I more and more fail to understand why people from the USA tolerate their
police / justice and assimilated services. From all the articles I see here
they seem to do far more harm than good and to be populated with lots of
insane people (how else would you define randomly spying on gardeners, then
trashing them, then raiding them based on lousy evidences)? Do they ever do
something good and not stupid? Are they ever accountable for they misbehavior
and absurd investigations? Isn't there an inspection service that can
investigate on police actions and actually recognize that they are insane when
they are?

Not that this is so much better in France. They recently administratively home
arrested ecologist activists using extra power given by the state of emergency
that was activated by the islamist terror attacks. That's beyond fucked-up,
but given demonstrations were forbidden at the same time they could get away
with that totalitarianism move without much trouble... :/

~~~
eric_h
For the time being, it would seem that the vast majority of encounters with
police in the United States is entirely uneventful: traffic tickets, a stern
talking to, etc.

Naturally, every police encounter where a gun is not drawn/no one's rights are
apparently violated will never make the news.

It's the exceptions that make headlines, and it's the internet that has
empowered those exceptions to be made public and spread much farther and wider
than they ever had even 10 years ago (what with everybody and their mother and
grandmother on Facebook these days). This is perhaps one upside of the true
eternal September that we've entered (much more so than the advent of AOL back
in the day).

This is not to say that there isn't a problem. The fact that stories like
these have popped up in basically every state in the US suggests that there is
indeed a culture that has developed amongst law enforcement/government that
facts and science and reason play second fiddle to a number of other factors
(not to mention the "thin blue line").

I do believe that most cops in the US act in the public interest to the best
of their knowledge/ability; the problem is that it's _most_ and not _all_ ,
and the minority with perhaps ulterior motives now has access to a great deal
of surplus military equipment manufactured for various recent US military
operations (and provided to local law enforcement at tremendous discounts),
and laws that allow them to behave in ways that they should not be allowed to
behave.

------
AnimalMuppet
"Keep in mind that this was a ruling for summary judgment. This was not a
trial. To dismiss the suit at this stage, Lungstrum [the judge] needed to view
the facts in a light most favorable to the Hartes [the SWATed family]."

Words fail me.

~~~
flumpmastet
> words fail me

Why?

As you state, this was a motion for summary judgement, not a trial. The burden
of proof for summary judgement is higher than for a civil suit trial. [1][2]

While the information presented in this article raised disturbing questions
and the family involved appears to have been subjected to unreasonable search
based on faulty testing, the article is light on details for why the judge
rejected the request for summary judgement.

Has anyone found a link to the judgement?

I hope the family continue to push their case - it appears the were a victim
of 'war on drugs theatre'.

[1] Burden of proof for summary judgement:

The court shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no
genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment
as a matter of law. The court should state on the record the reasons for
granting or denying the motion. In civil cases, the plaintiff has the burden
of proving his case by a preponderance of the evidence.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_56](https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_56)

[2] Burden of proof for civil cases: In civil cases, the plaintiff has the
burden of proving his case by a preponderance of the evidence.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/burden_of_proof](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/burden_of_proof)

~~~
jessaustin
_I hope the family continue to push their case..._

How can they do that? TFA clearly describes judgement in favor of the
defendants' (i.e. the cops) summary motion to dismiss all elements of the suit
completely. Read TFA more closely, please.

[EDIT:] The comment to which I reply seems to misunderstand TFA to have
referred to a summary motion by the _plaintiffs_ , which is not the case. If
appealing to a higher court rather than just getting the fair trial to which
one is entitled seems like a trivial thing, then one must be either fabulously
wealthy, or an attorney. We're certainly out of the $25k range mentioned in
TFA.

~~~
dragonwriter
> How can they do that?

By appealing to the appropriate US Court of Appeals.

> TFA clearly describes judgement in favor of the defendants' (i.e. the cops)
> summary motion to dismiss all elements of the suit completely.

Such a judgment does not prevent an appeal. (Indeed, a final judgment of this
type may be necessary for an appeal to be ripe.)

> Read TFA more closely, please.

Good advice for you to follow. Note the last sentence (also, paragraph) of the
article: "The Hartes’s attorney recently told KMBC that they will likely
appeal Lungstrum’s decision."

------
dragonwriter
Just as a side note, the article kind of drops the ball at the end:

> The Hartes are also a white, financially sound couple who both happened to
> have worked for the CIA. Most people on the receiving end of these raids
> aren’t white, aren’t middle-class, didn’t once work for a federal law
> enforcement agency and don’t have $25,000 to fund a fight in court.

The CIA is not now, and has never been, a federal law enforcement agency.

~~~
caf
s/federal law enforcement agency/part of the federal security apparatus/
doesn't really change the argument, does it?

~~~
dragonwriter
> s/federal law enforcement agency/part of the federal security apparatus/
> doesn't really change the argument, does it?

Since there is no argument actually made, just a recitation of supposedly-
relevant facts designed to create an emotional response, the argument can't
actually be changed. But, yes, I think that the given that this is a non-
security-related law enforcement issue, the change even in the fuzzy emotional
appeal the reporter is making with that paragraph is radically transformed
without the implication that he Hartes' have a background in law enforcement
specifically giving them a notional advantage in dealing with this kind of law
enforcement action.

~~~
brazzledazzle
The far simpler interpretation is that they're likely vetted far beyond what
the local PD is capable of. Which doesn't change if you swap out the
description of the agency. It should have been a huge red flag for the
detective or their management.

~~~
dragonwriter
The context in which it is mentioned is not about why the police should have
done more vetting of the information, but of supposed advantages they have in
legally fighting a poorly-justified police raid in the legal system that other
targets of such raids would not have; material resources, being white, and a
law-enforcement employment background are the three given examples -- the
first is quite real advantage, the second is a real feature, though how much
of an advantage it is in the contextay be debatable, and the last is simply
false, based on the misidentification of the CIA as a law-enforcement agency.

------
golergka
> both former CIA analysts

Is it not related to the events? I only skipped through the article, but they
didn't seem to mention it ever again.

Smells... Interesting.

~~~
pmalynin
Yes I though that mention would lead to some espionage investigation or
something. Perhaps the whole "drug bust" thing was a farce designed to search
for evidence of some other covert activity.

~~~
eric_h
I think, perhaps you're giving them too much credit, especially given that
they stated that once they'd found no evidence of a grow op, they switched to
searching for evidence of personal use (the absurdity of which is a whole
other discussion).

My guess is that they did no homework at all before performing this raid; they
just built a spreadsheet of gardeners, started checking trash cans and raided
the first house that had a positive field test.

~~~
golergka
Or thry had another reason for the search entirely which they didn't want to
make public, so just switched stupid excuse for another one?

~~~
eric_h
Mention the CIA and the conspiracy theories just come flying in :P.

I'm more inclined to side with both Occam's and Hanlon's razor in this case.

Further, if we had data on the number of false positives these "4/20" raids
turned up (which, per the article, seems like it could be quite a task to
produce), we could come to a reasonable statistical certainty either way.

------
geggam
... that moment when you realize the system is the problem.

------
ProAm
What's the saying, "Don't expect a persons behavior or opinion to change when
their paycheck depends on them having said behavior or opinion".

~~~
kittenfluff
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
on his not understanding it.” -- Upton Sinclair

[http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-
get...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/21810-it-is-difficult-to-get-a-man-to-
understand-something)

~~~
stillsut
Is this true, though? Does a judge's salary depend on him not understanding
the fourth amendment? Does a policeman's salary depend on him not
understanding appropriate search warrant tactics? I understand most people
disagree with law enforcement's decisions in this case (I do too).

But the only people who seem to _refuse to understand_ the circumstances are
those whose righteousness depends on portraying the police as cartoon
villains.

------
cmurf
Please, it's a podunk middle-America state, full of ignorance and local
Republican governments who are control freaks when it comes to this sort of
thing. This is precisely the expected outcome of having such a state and local
government. That's why I don't live there anymore.

And it's not just simple ignorance, it's prideful ignorance, and active
resentment of people who question the local politics, status quo, religion,
and anyone liberal.

And the judge in the case? George H.W. Bush appointed him. So yeah, this story
is not a surprise to me at all.

Now in defense of podunk, they're incentivized by our militaristic culture to
behave this way. Not merely the violence, but also the money and arms the Feds
have thrown at them in pursuit of "drugs" without respect to the drugs'
relative risk factors. And these dense states who pay less in taxes than they
take in are more than happy to lie through their teeth like in this story to
get more Federal drug war resources.

~~~
seandougall
An acquaintance of mine was recently arrested on suspicion of stealing a
double bass from in front of a conservatory of music. Evidently, a bass was
reported as stolen, and a complete description of the instrument was provided
to police. Surveillance footage showed him leaving the conservatory carrying a
bass, and that was sufficient to obtain a search warrant for his home. Never
mind that he's a bassist, and the footage showed him carrying his own
instrument. There can clearly be only one bass in existence, and the one on
the surveillance tape must be it.

Upon searching his apartment, the police found not one, but _two_ double
basses in his possession. Never mind that he had documentation to show that
they both belonged to him, and never mind that neither one fit the description
of the instrument that had been stolen. There can clearly be only one bass in
existence, and these ... two ... basses, somehow, are ... it? I dunno, these
aren't the same maker, and they don't have the same identifying marks, but
hey, they have four strings! The one that's missing has four strings! Good
enough, he must have just hidden the stolen bass under a rug or something.
(They're easy to hide, right?) Let's just make an arrest and go home.

So they arrested him, and (again, despite having conclusive proof that neither
was the instrument in question) seized both basses, along with his cell phone,
and held him on $100,000 bail.

Astonishingly, charges were ultimately dropped for lack of evidence.

This was in San Francisco -- about as un-podunk, un-middle-America, and un-
Republican as you can get without showing a passport. Lazy police work is
everywhere. It has nothing to do with politics or ignorance, and it doesn't
really even have to do particularly with the war on drugs (although that
certainly gives the police more opportunities to brandish their laziness
publicly). It's a combination of pressure to show action by making arrests and
an utter lack of accountability when those arrests turn out to be specious,
and those two factors exist everywhere in this country.

------
draw_down
Law enforcement do what they want. That simple.

~~~
ypeterholmes
Agreed. However I wonder if this information age will change that? For example
Netflix's "Making a Murderer" MUST yield some sort of fallout against that
local department. Right? At the very least, I will be avoiding Wisconsin.

------
zipwitch
To sum up both the article and the judge's ruling: the idea of "Rule of Law"
in the United States is a bad joke.

This has been true for a while, but is becoming increasingly difficult for the
public to ignore.

