Posted on 06/26/2014 9:43:47 AM PDT by Altariel
HOMESTEAD, FL — EXCLUSIVE — A Florida couple was traumatized after a dozen heavily armed SWAT agents crashed through their front door, flash-banged their cat, aimed rifles at them and searched their home without explanation.
* * * * *
The raid took place in the pre-dawn hours of June 10th, 2014. At approximately 6:16 a.m., Kari Edwards and her live-in boyfriend were intruded upon by men dressed in full SWAT gear and wielding rifles. After smashing down the couple’s front door, agents tossed concussion grenades and proceeded into the home.
“They busted in like I was a terrorist or something,” said Ms. Edwards.
SWAT enters Kari Edwards’ residence with rifles drawn. HOMESTEAD, FL — EXCLUSIVE — A Florida couple was traumatized after a dozen heavily armed SWAT agents crashed through their front door, flash-banged their cat, aimed rifles at them and searched their home without explanation.
* * * * *
The raid took place in the pre-dawn hours of June 10th, 2014. At approximately 6:16 a.m., Kari Edwards and her live-in boyfriend were intruded upon by men dressed in full SWAT gear and wielding rifles. After smashing down the couple’s front door, agents tossed concussion grenades and proceeded into the home.
“They busted in like I was a terrorist or something,” said Ms. Edwards.
Broken door. (Source: Kari Edwards) Personal belongings tossed everywhere. (Source: Kari Edwards) “[An officer] demanded that I drop the towel I was covering my naked body with,” Ms. Edwards said, “before snatching it off me physically and throwing me to the ground.”
“While I lay naked, I was cuffed so tightly I could not feel my hands. For no reason, at gunpoint,” Edwards said. “[Agents] refused to cover me, no matter how many times I asked.”
Ms. Edwards said her boyfriend told her that an agent holding an assault rifle to her back was gawking at her exposed body. “Eying me up and down like I was eye candy,” she said.
The house was equipped with a surveillance system, which captured video of the agents from a couple different angles. Here is the first angle of the exterior of the property:
“I have never been in any trouble before,” Ms. Edwards told Police State USA. “Haven’t even had a traffic ticket in over ten years.”
In fact, she said she used to work for the Department of Homeland Security, but became disabled from an on-the-job injury in 2006. She identified the raid as a DHS operation.
“I know I saw ‘ICE’ on one shirt and my boyfriend saw ‘Gang Task Force’ on another,” she told Police State USA. “Someone’s just said, ‘Special Agent.’”
Edwards requested to see the agents’ identification but was not obliged. One officer pointed to his uniform that read ‘POLICE’ and allegedly said, “Isn’t this enough ID for you?”
“When I told him that I could buy that [uniform] up in Miami, he called me ‘retarded’ and ‘f***ing stupid,’” Edwards recalled.
Shattered shower door. (Source: Kari Edwards) A scorch-mark from the flashbang. (Source: Kari Edwards) Edwards said that the SWAT team threw a flashbang at her cat, Dusty. She says that Dusty normally had a friendly personality and greets everyone, but now is “fearful and hard of hearing.”
When agents discovered that they were being recorded by home surveillance cameras, they forcefully twisted the cameras, saying that they “can’t be recorded.”
In the below clip, a flashbang was detected and an agent is seen spotting the camera and jarring it so it faced a wall.
“My boyfriend, who is asthmatic, started having trouble breathing from the lingering smoke created by the flashbang grenade, and asked for his inhaler. The agent said, ‘Do I need to call paramedics?’ My boyfriend said, ‘No, I just need my inhaler, can someone to get it for me?’ Again he was answered with the paramedic offer,” Edwards said. Finally another officer gave him his inhaler.
The agents “trashed the house,” and reportedly smashed some clear glass shower doors and broke a vintage statue.
Broken door jam. (Source: Kari Edwards) Broken door jam. (Source: Kari Edwards) A broken statue. (Source: Kari Edwards) Ms. Edwards said a warrant was finally given to them after 2 hours. She said it lists her address and was signed by Jonathan Goodman, a federal magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The warrant says the agents were authorized to look for computers & electronic media.
Curiously, Ms. Edwards said the agents ignored most of the electronics in the home. “They didn’t take any and didn’t even look at most of it,” she said. “We have a lot [of electronics] because my boyfriend fixes up broken computers to resell.”
“I still don’t know why,” Ms. Edwards told Police State USA. “I called the judge’s chambers today and the secretary said he or someone else would get back to me.”
Ping
Oh, look, those who are cruel to animals have no regard for their fellow man, case #658392....
....and grenades their cat for good measure.
I guess they did not have a dog to shoot. This was a pervert raid.
If this was a raid at the wrong address, every agent involved should be jailed for a couple of years. This is unbelievable.
Obviously not registered Democrats...
Was there ever a reason given for the raid? The article doesn’t mention anything in this regard.
These thugs need to me hunted down and dealt with individually.
Thus the need for obvious cameras for them to destroy and hidden cameras to record their actual activities.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Because they felt like terrifying innocent people, ogling a naked woman and grenading the cat.
“but there must have been a reason” is an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.
“When agents discovered that they were being recorded by home surveillance cameras, they forcefully twisted the cameras, saying that they “can’t be recorded.” “
Lawless thugs act this way. They should be fired, in prison and the couple should get a good payout.
More complete coverage and more pics at
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2669254/DHS-forced-terrified-woman-strip-naked-gunpoint-ogled-dawn-raid.html
Naturally, you need to go to the Brit press to find these things out.
I don’t know exactly why, but “flashed banged the cat” made me laugh out loud. I can picture these government stooges lined up for their turn with the kitty. Oh, it was pyrotechnics? Well, that’s funny too. Surprized cat can do 50 feet in a single bound.
If you aren’t guilty of anything why would you ever ask things like “what am I being accused of?” and “where’s your warrant?” and “who are you guys, anyway?”. It isn’t good to ask too many questions, citizen. There’s a List of people who ask too many questions. A police state is a safe state.
“flash-banged their cat”
that’s just.... really odd.
“For scientists, the outgoing of animal cruelty fascination draws a thread through the lives of serial rapists and killers.”
http://www.examiner.com/article/animal-abuse-indicates-high-risk-of-psychopathic-disorder
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