So SWAT barges in with some animal crimes officers, go through all this hullabaloo and take 2 people and 4 dogs away for misdemeanors?
No wonder people are pissed at the cops. All of this time and money spent to bring in 2 people on misdemeanor animal cruelty/abuse charges? Sad.
NAZIs.
The War on Drugs is increasingly lookiing like Prohibition on steroids.
Innocent Americans are being harassed and devastated by a law-enforcement establishment drunk with power and Federal Funds
These cops REALLY hate dogs, don’t they?
The Harris family appear to be a nexus of bad news in an otherwise-gentrifying neighborhood. Some neighbors finally decided that they were bad for property values and had to go.The "facts" in your article- -at least 3 dogs were malnourished in this kindly home -a veterinarian reported the situation to authorities, not neighbors -a public park was co-opted as the "yard" of some adult Harris children -two with current criminal records -a house full of adults had major building code and sanitation violations Please tell me what neighborhood would ignore the obvious problems here? Why should they? Mr. Harris had long ceased to be neighborly and had retreated into his own troubled world. Taxpayer money developed the park and maintains it. Neighbors clean it. But only the Harris' use it.
Something seems to be missing from this article. 40 officers do not gas-bomb a house and storm it at night, over misdemeanor offenses listed. Futhermore, you cannot seize a home, over housing violations; there is this little thing called ‘due process’. If there were violations, you would simply arrest the violators; not seize the home. If there are dozens of housing violations - you provide sifficient time to address these violations (clogged gutters? really?)
Did the parents not pay their mortgage; and this was a raid/eviction effort? This article seems biased, in the extreme.
This is disgusting. I hope there is a happy ending to this and they get appropriate $ for this obviously desirable location.
Is there any recourse for this family?
98% of cops give the other 2% a bad reputation.
Like most other cities there are just too damned many police that have too damned much time on their hands!
This would never had happened if there was a good community organizer on board like our esteemed president.
Chicago thuggery at it’s finest.
You know it's coming, because even the Mexican border drug gangs aren't totally stupid.
I think this cuts to the heart of the issue...
Desperados!
Mike
How did this end up in the Tribune?
The Tribune loves the police state.
Wow, Chicago is bad enough but many of the responses are even worse. This is nothing but goverment approved theft, it is worse than the Kelo case.
Ok, this story stinks, on several levels. But this is what I don’t understand. The owner of the homes is black. The story has gone national now. So why can’t the good Rev. Al, or Jesse Jackass Jackson, or Jimmy Habitat for Humanity Carter, get a group together to fix the code violations?
It says the friends of the family are getting together to throw a going away party. Why don’t they all donate a few materials, get together, and fix up the house?
It says in the story they can stay if they get the two homes up to code. In a city the size of Chicago, you can’t tell me there isn’t ONE group that couldn’t/wouldn’t help these people. Hell, all it would take is ONE church. In my little chunk of Texas, it’s not at all unusual for a church to help out in a situation like this, even if the people don’t go to church.
I admit, the homeowner has some real winners living in his house, but I do understand that he feels he has to help out his kids. He should also get out of the dog-pet thing, since no one in that house knows that you are supposed to feed your pets once in great while.
I just don’t understand....
I’m confused.
They DIDN’T shoot the dogs and threaten the lives of children and old people as they lay face down and handcuffed for hours?
They then followed up through the inspections dept. and destroyed the lives of the family by proxy?
The tactics are changing.