...are the Ohio Department of Agriculture employees, along with their police support, who staged a dangerous "no-knock" raid on a LaGrange farmhouse, apparently to investigate a claim of unlicensed fruits and vegetables:
"While state authorities were looking for evidence of illegal activities, the family was not informed what crime they were suspected of, they were not read their rights or allowed to make a phone call. The children, some as young as toddlers, were traumatized by armed officers interrogating the adults with guns drawn."
I always thought that one had to already possess "evidence of illegal activities" in order to convince a judge to sign a search warrant, much less one that authorizes such dynamic entry. This one had "tragic disaster" written all over it. Fortunately, no one was harmed, unlike what has happened in numerous other incidents where Constitutional rights-sapping official overkill was used with absolutely no justification.
"Friends of the Stowers openly question why such aggressive tactics were necessary to investigate a licensing complaint."
It's not just their friends; I'm kind of wondering who in officialdom over there decided that this was a good idea, especially since they've been slapped upside the head previously for similar stunts:
"The Ohio Department of Agriculture has apparently been chastised by the courts in previous cases for over-reach, including entrapment of an Amish man to sell raw milk, which backfired, when it became known that the man gave milk instead of selling it to a state undercover agent, refusing to take money for what he believed to be a charitable act."
How do either of these cases, basically accused health code violations, rise to the level of an imminent threat of a serious crime by presumably armed and dangerous individuals, which is pretty much the only scenario that "no-knock" warrant services should be used for?
Raids such as this, because of the danger involved to both the police and the citizenry, should be strictly limited to the most serious and dangerous cases involving provably dangerous individuals, not people suspected of "unlawful selling of food".
UPDATE: The Agriculture Department "enforcement agent" in charge of the raid appears to be a man named William Lesho. Ohio residents would do well to contact their representatives and ask them to immediately investigate whether Agent Lesho did indeed lead a SWAT raid on a family farm suspected of committing the heinous crime of running a retail establishment without a license.
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This kind of thing will keep happening until the police that do it and those who sent them are jailed. The police chief and prosecutors are more culpable than the police that actually carry it out, but the chief and the prosecutors aren't going to arrest and prosecute themselves. Perhaps the feds need to do something.
My goodness, the whole thing sounds like a really bad Monty Python skit. It would only be, um, "better" if the no knock raid had been on the Amish family--since the Amish are known pacifists.
I can imagine the dialogue:
PUT DOWN THE ZUCCHINI AND SLOWLY PUT YOUR HANDS UP. DON'T **** WITH ME MR BLACK SUIT OR I'LL....
Come to think of it, SWAT raids *might* be justified if zucchini was involved.... :^)
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