Brooklyn Red Leg
Anarcho-Capitalism FTW!
Matt Welch | June 8, 2011
When will someone realize there's a popular politics to be had AGAINST this kind of shit?I know Mike Riggs just mentioned it in the morning links, but if this story isn't a wake-up call about the militarization of police and criminalization of everything, then I'm afraid the patient is even deader than the Fourth Amendment. Read this, and weep for what your country has become:
STOCKTON, CA - Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.
"I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers," Wright said.
Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team 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.
As it turned out, the person law enforcement was looking for was not there - Wright's estranged wife.
"They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids," Wright said. [...]
The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for [redacted] 'an unspecified criminal investigation'.
http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/08/no-really-swat-team-raids-hous
http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/08/dept-of-education-swat-team-up
UPDATE: News10 ABC reports that it was the DoE, not Stocktown SWAT, doing the heavy lifting here:
A U.S. government official 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. [...]
He went on to say OIG is a semi-independent branch of the U.S. Department of Education that executes warrants for criminal offenses such as student aid fraud and embezzlement of federal aid. [...]
The Stockton Police Department said it was asked by federal agents to provide one officer and one patrol car just for a police presence when carrying out the search warrant.
Police officers did not participate in breaking Wright's door, handcuffing him, or searching his home.
Someone want to explain to me WHY the DoE needs a SWAT team?
