Free Republic

Government officials do some really crazy things in the name of law enforcement.I recently wrote about an armed raid on an animal shelter in order to execute a baby deer.That was paramilitary overkill (pun intended), though it probably didn’t waste as many tax dollars as the regulatory overkill of the year-long sting operation by the Food and Drug Administration against an Amish farm for the horrible crime of selling unpasteurized milk to consenting adults who prefer unpasteurized milk.And let’s not forget Robert Norlander, the thuggish, dumpster-diving IRS agent, who sought to ruin the life of an innocent man because…well, for...

ROSSFORD, Ohio - A training exercise this Rossford Wednesday morning left students literally hanging on to the edge of their seats. In the scenario: A school bus is en route to an event when suddenly it's hijacked! A camera inside the bus captured the whole thing while an audience of school teachers, administrators and transportation directors watched it all unfold on a live feed.

Every day it seems more like the "war on terror" is at home in the U.S. rather than abroad in a foreign country. Whether it's the NSA denying they scoop domestic communications while their chief tells hackers "we're looking for the terrorist among us," or it's the growing militarization and equipping of domestic police forces, it seems more and more crows keep coming home to roost. Well, one former Marine colonel has had about enough. In a rousing confrontation at a local council meeting in Concord, NH, he calls out his government for facilitating what he feels is a needless...

Several residents at the “Garden of Eden” sustainability garden in Arlington, Texas, claim that local police raided their farm because they thought tomato plants were marijuana plants. The police reportedly damaged the garden's property and the crops during the Aug. 2 raid, which included a SWAT team (video below). “They came here under the guise that we were doing a drug trafficking, marijuana-growing operation. They destroyed everything,” said garden owner Shellie Smith to WFAA-TV. Apparently, an undercover officer and a helicopter surveillance crew believed there was probable cause that the wrong kind of plant was being grown in the garden and...

Arlington, Texas — A family with a passion for gardening and conscious living was raided by the Arlington SWAT team early Friday morning. All 8 adults present in the house were initially handcuffed at the gunpoint of heavily armed SWAT officers, including the mother of a 22 month old and a two week old baby who was separated from her children during the raid. I had a chance to interview Quinn who gave me his first hand account of the raid and the background behind it all.

Once upon a time, the police were one of the most respected institutions in America, but now most Americans fear them. Almost every single day there are multiple stories of police brutality or misconduct that make the national news. Just this week, there have been stories about police killing a baby deer at an animal shelter, about police killing a 95-year-old World War II veteran in a retirement home, and about police using legal technicalities to “legally” steal massive amounts of money from innocent citizens. Why are police acting like this? Why have police in America turned into such ruthless...

The Fourth Amendment protects us from random invasions of our homes by police, right? We know we're secure in our "persons, houses, papers, and effects" unless the cops demonstrate probable cause to a judge and get a warrant. Except... Except when they don't. The fact of the matter is that police have a lot of leeway to bust your door down and take a look around if they fear that waiting for a warrant could lead to loss of evidence or danger to people. Or lead to something, anyway. That end run around the Fourth Amendment is called "exigent circumstances,"...

Abuse of law enforcement officers and even officers not intended forlaw enforcement by the current administration is reachingunprecedented levels. Despite campaign promises of greatertransparency, clear violations of accepted practices and even lawbreaking are stonewalled or spun away by the current Democratic administration. While the legal and constitutional controversies seem to be popping up with an ever increasing frequency, scandals are nothing new to this administration.

KENOSHA, Wis. —WISN 12 News investigates an operation raising questions about the use of government resources and the state policy that meant a death sentence for a fawn. "It was like a SWAT team," shelter employee Ray Schulze said. Two weeks ago, Schulze was working in the barn at the Society of St. Francis on the Kenosha-Illinois border when a swarm of squad cars arrived and officers unloaded with a search warrant. "(There were) nine DNR agents and four deputy sheriffs, and they were all armed to the teeth," Schulze said. The focus of their search was a baby fawn...

Very bad boys! When Detroit citizens found themselves held up at gunpoint by officers who demanded their valuables, they thought they were impersonators. But they were wrong. Some Detroit police officers are being accused of robbing citizens at gun point, in uniform. So what do you do if you are pulled over and don’t believe the officer has good intentions? Local police have issued a statement saying that you have permission not to stop if you don’t believe a real police officer is trying to pull you over. They say to call 911 and ask a dispatcher for assistance. But...

SWAT officers shot and killed a gunman early Saturday after he killed 6 people, ending an hours-long standoff near Miami, Fla., police said. Two people were rescued alive and unharmed from an apartment building where they were being held hostage ... [Snip] The SWAT team found the gunman barricaded on the fourth floor of the building, where they killed him and saved the two hostages. [Snip] This is a breaking news story. Please check back for more updates.

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol. (I don't know is we can copy and paste from WSJ, so I just copied the first paragraph...

On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke, naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol. himself in his jail cell. Sean McCabe The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr....

After leaving her operating room scrub nurse duties at Sarasota's Doctors Hospital on Wednesday, Louise Goldsberry went to her Hidden Lake Village apartment. Her boyfriend came over, and after dinner — about 8 p.m. — Goldsberry went to her kitchen sink to wash some dishes. That's when her boyfriend, Craig Dorris — a manager for a security alarm company — heard her scream and saw her drop to the floor. Goldsberry, 59, said she had looked up from the sink to see a man “wearing a hunting vest.” He was aiming a gun at her face, with a red light...

In 2010 the LAPD completed an investigation into alleged gun purchases made by SWAT team members for the purposes of reselling the guns at a profit. Now the FBI has been called in to determine if any laws were violated. The investigation will attempt to determine why the LAPD's SWAT team, which has around 60 members, purchased over 300 specialized handguns from Kimber Manufacturing. The LAPD has a longstanding agreement with Kimber which allows the company to brand weapons with LAPD insignia and market them as "identical to" the ones used by LAPD's SWAT team. On the open market these...

Steve Forrest, who starred as Lt. Dan “Hondo” Harrelson on the 1970s ABC action series S.W.A.T., died peacefully surrounded by family on May 18 in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 87. In a career spanning more than 60 years, Forrest frequently was cast as a leading man or “heavy.” An aficionado of the American Western, he delighted in roles that glorified the genre, including guest-starring appearances on such television classics as The Virginian, Bonanza and Gunsmoke. But it was his role as the hard-hitting yet warmhearted Harrelson on the Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg-produced S.W.A.T. that most endeared Forrest to...

Driving in the early morning hours to his job at a metal shop in Buda, Miguel Montanez at first thought the approaching lights were a school bus or a tow truck. But Montanez says it was a Hays County SWAT truck that rammed his car head-on. As they collided, another police vehicle pinned him from behind, he says. He heard a shot. “I saw my windshield crack, and I ducked down as low as possible,” Montanez said. “I really thought I was going to die.” Seconds later, he says, three deputies were pointing assault rifles at him. “That’s when I...

The YouTube channel Patriot News Organization on Thursday uploaded a training video from the Department of Homeland Security that depicts a fake news broadcast about a police SWAT team raiding an American house and arresting "extremist" members of a “local militia group” for possession of illegal firearms and planning to commit terrorist attacks. “Very disturbing video straight from DHS website - they use it to help train all of the deputized agencies during a crisis, even hospital administrators, media faces, everything and everyone that would be involved in such an event,” reads the Patriot News Organization’s description of the video....

The terrorist attack in Boston and ensuing events in Watertown had everyone on edge, but shocking new home video from Massachusetts show law enforcement officers trampling over the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution – which guarantees “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures… and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” A video recently uploaded to YouTube by residents whose home was searched...

How is it at all legal for the police to have coerced people from their homes during the house to house search that was conducted in Watertown MA last week? By 'coerced', I mean being told to leave their residence by police SWAT teams. When you have 10 police pointing rifles at you, yelling at your to get out of your house, I'd consider that coersion. These people were removed from their homes and forced to go someplace else. It appears that they were not 'allowed' back into their homes for hours. How is that possible in America? Were homeowners...