Wednesday, June 08, 2011

The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

... are the Department of Education (?) SWAT team goons who broke down Stockton, California resident Kenneth Wright's door at 6 a.m. yesterday morning while apparently looking for his student loan-defaulting estranged wife (who doesn't even live there), traumatizing this innocent man and his three young children:

"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."

Mr. Wright was handcuffed and he and his kids were made to sit in a patrol car for six hours, after which they were finally released without so much as an apology or explanation.

Think about all the myriad implications of this incident for a second and try hard to not let the rage build:

1.  The Department of Education, of all government agencies, somehow "needs" a taxpayer-funded SWAT team that is equipped and willing to perform dynamic entries.  How many of these sorts of unnecessary raids do they do each year, for Pete's sake?

2.  The Department of Education convinced a judge to sign a dangerous (for all parties) "no-knock" warrant allowing said SWAT team to kick in the door of an innocent private citizen solely because his spouse has an unpaid tuition loan.  Does that sound even remotely like the kind of emergency or imminent deadly threat situation that would nominally require such drastic measures?

Here's the most incredibly stupid description of such a warrant service we've ever read:

"The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife's defaulted student loans." 

Utterly infuriating madness.

3.  Even if the above circumstances were somehow justified, the idiots on the SWAT team didn't even bother to perform the expected surveillance or investigation to ascertain whether the target of their little operation even lived at the address, much less if there were innocent children around that could be terrorized or injured by their unbelievably hazardous and stupid cowboy raid.

4.  The idiots on the SWAT team manhandled, abused and mechanically restrained a person who presented no threat and offered no resistance, and then forced him and his frightened kids to sit in a hot police cruiser for hours in front of all their neighbors, no doubt causing the entire family enormous stress, fear and humiliation.

5.  Once the idiots on the SWAT team figured out they had screwed up, the arrogant officers basically uncuffed Mr. Wright, shoved him towards his smashed front door and took off without any sort of apology whatsoever.  Federal cops are never wrong, you know.

Enough is enough.  This is one of the most egregious abuses of official police powers we have ever documented here, and we've recorded some doozies.  Those thugs (and their incompetent and abusive martinet bosses who unleashed them, as well as the judge who allowed this travesty to occur) need to be separated from their government jobs in short order, and every freedom-loving American must contact their representatives in Congress to demand that all funding for these Federal goon squads be immediately cut off.

Please don't let this challenge to our independence and liberty go unanswered.  The next innocent person's door to be kicked in could be your own.  Are you paid up on your student loans?


(Many thanks to our good friend and fellow blogger Bike Bubba for the heads-up on this story)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree that there is no need for the DOE, or 99% of other "police" agencies, to have a SWAT team. But there are several inaccuracies in your report.

The warrant does specify that they were to look for papers relating to fraud.

The victim also says that the thugs did knock, they just used the "if you don't open the door in 30 seconds, we are kicking it in method".

There was no need for this to be a dynamic entry. Two officers knocking on the door and showing the warrant would have been the proper way to do this.

For a copy of the warrant:
http://www.news10.net/news/pdf/Ed-dept-Wright-warrant-060711.pdf

Bike Bubba said...

Anon, yes, but the key issues are:

1. Is there a risk that evidence will be lost with ordinary entry? (here the answer is clearly no)

2. Do the suspects pose a credible risk to officers? (again, the answer is NO)

So even if it were a matter of triple murder, the dynamic entry is NOT justified.

Collin Shannon said...

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