Posted on 12/06/2008 10:33:11 PM PST by Inappropriate Laughter
Breathlessly awaiting the cop groupies....
I have a huge electric bill.
I have a part of my house (my office) that has to be cooled even in the winter...
Does that mean I’m going to get a visit by SWAT???
My understanding is that when there’s a suspicious grow house, the electric co is usually the first to pick it up due to suspicious power consumption curves. Sophisticated growers use their own power supplies to heat the place and light it. They use gas or diesel generators to keep the lights on. Thermal imaging might be used after the power co informs the cops.
No but the 200 empty 5 gal fertilizer buckets stacked against yer garage may draw attention to your home without a lawn.......
This is funny stuff on the videos.....:o)
****
My power consumption is 24-7 at the moment...
I have a lab in my office with lots of test equipment. I'm running parallel long term performance tests on equipment that I design and is sold by my business... My business offices are located about 170 miles from my home so few here know what I do. Sounds like a recipe for grief from the city police...
What’s with all the fat cops these days?
I think that the police have problems with violation of the law under color of authority and going beyond the scope of their duties. While they generally have immunity when a search warrant is issued, that immunity can be negated when there is deliberate deception. I think there will be terminations, criminal prosecutions and huge civil suits. And, assuming that the officers involved acted outside the scope of their duties, their department and municipality will not defend them.
Consider me to be a cop groupie, but not a cop apologist. A false swearing to get a search warrant deserves criminal prosecution.
I did not let them in. But they came back the next morning with 6 cruisers and about a dozen cops who surrounded my house and stayed there for about half the day. The police couldn't tell me what phone number this alleged phone call was made from, nor would the bail agents discuss it with me.
I doubt most jurisdictions really make it difficult on cops to get search warrants, no matter how bogus their info is.
1 ..2 ..3
i) They are generally very nice people who ensure that some modicum of law exists in society, and many a time they are heroes in every sense of the word.
ii) However, at the same time I am cognizant of the fact that they are human, and that just because someone wears a blue-suit, carries a badge, and open-carries a fire-arm, does not mean that they are as white as hysop. A cop can be just as dirty as any perp on the street, with the only difference being that the perp on the street has to watch out when they break into your house. A cop can simply go in through the front door, while the perp would probably try and jig a window in the back.
Thus, most cops are good people. However, there is nothing intrinsically present in a cop's badge that makes the holder of one immaculate. No oath can do that. In my profession (fund management) one of the highest milestones is the CFA designation, and one of the key cornerstones of it is ethics (one can get kicked out for the smallest infringement). However, that doesn't mean that there are people who are not ethical. Sadly, there will always be humans who do bad things.
And until the day that people who become policeofficers come fluttering down from heaven on angels' wings, there will always be some cops who will be worse than perps.
I collect NFA firearms. I have had many transfer and registration forms signed by the sheriff, and I always assumed there was some record of those forms kept by the sheriff's office. With those, they could potentially determine that I was "heavily armed" with "military-style weapons," thus necessitating a SWAT team dynamic entry at 2:00 AM. When the door's bashed in and flash bangs are going off, nothing good would come of that.
I can only thank God that didn't happen.
But the fact that they can get a signed search warrant, with no more investigative effort done than to take the word of some out of state bounty hunters, not even taking the time to cross-reference my address with the latest phone book or property tax records, should frighten anyone.
It takes a case like the one in the article to ferret out sloppy or unethical activity by some officers. And believe it or not, judges do not like to have their signatures on falsified warrants. The next time an officer from the agency requests one the judge will be a lot more attentive.
There are some suspicious inconsistencies in Barry Coopers story. He says that the Odessa narcotics unit arrived to find his attorney waiting in the house. However, the YouTube video shows the house being searched by three uniformed street cops armed with pistols (hardly a narcotics unit or SWAT team). The house is also obviously unoccupied at the time of the search (maybe the attorney showed up later?). These little lies could just be intended to make the story more dramatic, but they make me question Coopers credibility. According to the city website, Odessa has just 170 cops, and I find it difficult to believe that they would spend each night imaging their entire town via FLIR so that they could raid this house less than 24 hours after the trap was set.
Of course, if any Odessa officer lied in their search warrant affidavit, they should be prosecuted. But what if a neighbor saw out-of-state vehicles in the driveway, surveillance equipment and grow lights being installed, and aluminum foil being layered over the windows and decided to call it in? Just because the KopBusters crew faked their drug house doesnt mean the search warrant was obtained illegally. I dont want to be suckered into becoming part of the war on the war on crime before more of the facts come out.
Every man tends to exaggerate the size of his electric bill.
Especially when there are women around.
LOL
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