The fat lady hasn't sung yet!
Posted on 05/22/2008 10:46:31 AM PDT by ElkGroveDan
No problem! I love polite debate with my fellow FReepers!
” Authorities are not permitted the luxury of acting on their feelings. They are supposed to act with logic and reason and within the confines of the law.”
And assuming we are talking about the CPS, they did that very thing.
No, they didn't. The law states that children cannot be removed form the home unless there is in immediate threat to their *physical* safety. It's been very clearly established that there was not.
“They *felt* that the parent’s beliefs were a threat to the children and filed their paperwork to that effect. The appeals court said that this was against the law. Period.”
I believe what the appeals court said was that the CPS could not KEEP custody of the children, based on the evidence and the primary claim of overall endangerment.
So, taking the children, and keeping them for (IIRC) three days was completely legal.
I do believe that the appeals court did chastise the judge who ordered the removal based on CPS's and the judge's opinion that the parent's beliefs could not be classified as an immediate physical threat.
“In America, we don’t prosecute people for their beliefs. Only for their actions. CPS did NOT cite *actions* as their reasons for taking the children. They cited the parent’s *beliefs” as the crime.”
Yeah, and though I can see why , I think they are on thin ice. Just like the claim that CPS has told the FLDS members that they can’t discuss JEFFS with each other, or the children, as a condition of them being returned.
We agree on this point.
BTW, CPS has been working on returning the children, even before this appellate hearing.
I haven't heard of this until now. This is good news.
No it was not. The emergency taking is only allowed for imminent danger, not for long term danger. The appeals court ruled that their was no evidence presented of imminent danger, and thus the children were improperly taken. For long term danger, or non physical "danger", an adversarial court proceeding, not a mere issue of court order by a judge, is required to remove the children from the parents.
BTW, CPS has been working on returning the children, even before this appellate hearing.
And the check is in the mail.
It's actually two weeks, or was it 10 days? Hmm, no time to look it up again, But that's only if the children are found to be in "imminent" danger. Non imminent danger and other justifications requires a hearing where all sides are represented. Even the imminent danger cases require such a proceedings, but the kids can be taken out of the home first.
The warrant said that they called a county in Arizona (not the one in which Dale Evans Barlow [not quite so common a name] actually resided) and were told he wasn’t registered with their sex-offender registry in the county. This was evidently done as “evidence” that he was in the Texas compound.
Nothing in the warrant indicates they tried checking the Arizona state registry. Mr. Barlow’s crime threat level would have been low, so he wouldn’t be on the public website even if he had registered, but that information is available for law enforcement. By not checking (if they checked, wouldn’t they have mentioned that? If he hadn’t actually registered in AZ, wouldn’t they now have him charged for that?), it appears that the officers gave the judge a misleading impression that they had used sufficient care (dang, what’s the proper legal term here!?) in checking for the possibility he was in Texas.
It stinks of bad-faith. If they were investigating the place for years, and they were able to so easily find him so soon after the raid, why couldn’t they have done a proper check in advance.
It looks to me like deliberate deception. Of course, it could have been that the judge was in on the deception, too.
Reading those school threads on FreeRepublic one would come away thinking that "conservative" is defined by school uniforms (parental rights, we don't need no stinking parental rights), a love of "authority figures"(aka were from the government and were here to help), and making sure you call anyone under the age of 18 a ""brat", "punk", "hoodlum" or "little darling"(sarcasticly).
I have thought about your statement a little more : )
We know that the state did not believe a 27 year old who produced a DL and BC was who she claimed to be. They do now. In fact they may have illegally taken as many as 25 adult women (over 18). The state faced a dilemma if they accepted the word of the women that they were detaining, they would not have had any underage detainees.
I think that the State simply assumed that the women were lying to them and just took them all, figuring that they would sort it out later. They probably thought that the women would jump in joy at being liberated.
At this point I am inclined to believe that everything that the State claimed is a lie, including the claim that the women and children didn't cooperate. The evidence that I have seen presented to the court indicates that the women stated who they were and presented proof, but the State simply refused to believe them and the State got confused and blamed it on the women. For the longest time, the State was only claiming 400 detainees.
Sort of like rounding up the usual suspects?
‘If I had a warrant to arrest you, and I came to your house, was let in by your ?spouse, then are you telling me I couldn’t randomly search the rooms of the house?”
You have the power to search for the items noted on the warrant assuming the warrant was legally issued.
If you are reporting an offense regarding a child, you are told at the outset that the hot line must report the incident and that they must have a call back number before they take the call. I know, I’ve called one.
The whole point of the warrant was to get this guy. The hearsay of hearsay of claims of a crime were for this guy.
An anti-polygamist activist spent FORTY HOURS on the phone with "Sarah." They had the specifics on who they were after.
However, it now appears that the accusation of Dale Barlow was just a convenient excuse for doing what they wanted to do. So, it seems that they get a search and arrest warrant supposedly for him, but made sure that it appeared that they didn't already know officially that he wasn't there.
With this bogus warrant in hand, they were able to go in and then have the means to obtain more warrants. Problem is, the basis for it all was not only a lie...but also seems to go beyond the presu,mption of good faith. Kathryn Johnston's family can tell you the dangers of falsified warrants, and I don't believe the Leon exclusion applies for them! 'course, IANAL.
Exactly. But what it does tell you is that an 18-year-old with a 4-year-old kid doesn't mean a crime has been committed.
Yep, but I actually think that they thought that they were rescuing them from an abusive situation.
Reading between the lines, I think the State expected the mothers to instantly turn on the fathers who had been abusing them for years. When that didn't happen, they threatened to take the children away. When that didn't produce the desired effect I think that the State went into panic mode and dumped the kids into the foster program.
The CPS officials have to be wondering about what kind of tar baby they got tangled up with. This is precisely what happens when people start believing their own lies.
I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of this there are no underage Mothers at the FLDS compound and no evidence of abuse. I think the FLDS were ready and waiting for an investigation.
That's easy!
Jehovah's Witness are a cult. Scientology too. Seven Day Adventist are a little strange. Definitely Muslims. Hindus too. Some, if not all Souther Baptist are whacked. Those Hari Krishna orange robes are a fashion disaster, so their kids have to be protected. And Mormons, well their beliefs are over the top. Catholics are definably a cult. And I’m sure we can all agree on what to do with the Buddhist kids. Evangelicals sometimes speak in tongues, and handle snakes.”
The fat lady hasn't sung yet!
Maybe. Which begs the question: Why didn’t they take the men away?
Thought I would get back to you on this ... according to this article, Swinton remains a "person of interest" in the case, but has not been charged in connection to the raid.
Isn't that what the appellate court asked?
I really think that the CPS went into this thinking that Sarah was real and that they were rescuing her. That is why on the first day (if I recall correctly) they took 50 young girls. They were looking for Sarah. That was the basis for everything. The next day they expanded the search and finally took all of the children and women. They screwed up because their basic premise was a lie. That is why they didn't do it properly and take the men.
Now the CPS is stuck. If they can't manage to find a victim the State of Texas is going to be paying homage to the FLDS for a long long time.
When the CPS went in and didn't find Sarah they should have left.
You are incredibly ignorant about polygamy.. why don’t you look it up or educate yourself? Polygamy is not exclusively a religious practice, it is practiced all over the world by non relgious groups as well as religious ones.. it doesn’t mean slavery, or statutory rape or welfare fraud.. it means more than one spouse.. and lots of people do it who aren’t FLDS or even religious.. and lots of people like it... just because you can’t understand or tolerate it doesn’t make it evil in and of itself. Learn your terms.
Your comments reveal a distinct lack of knowledge of polygamy and why the Judaeo Christian world and its institutions has banished it.
You will find some respite from monogamy in Saudi Arabia or the tribal regions of Pakistan. Go there for relief.
Got it?
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