The raid that rocked the Met

Dailymail ^ | Last updated at 11:23 PM on 24th October 2009 | By ADRIAN LEVY and CATHY SCOTT-CLARK

[RayTheSpook]

"More than 500 officers smashed their way into thousands of safety-deposit boxes to retrieve guns, drugs and millions of pounds of criminal assets. At least, that's what was supposed to happen. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark investigate"

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1222777/The-raid-rocked-Met-Why-gun-drugs-op-6-717-safety-deposit-boxes-cost-taxpayer-fortune.html#ixzz0VDacv0T6

[RayTheSpook]

Just as the Patriot Act in the US has thrust the search power far beyond the meager limits imposed by the Fourth Amendment, the Proceeds Of Crime Act (POCA) in the UK has enabled police to get away with what amount to general warrants for search. This new investigative article on the “Rize” raid of June 2, 2008 confirms that search is used primarily to ferret out the supposed crimes of firearms ownership, drug possession and trafficking, money laundering, holding cash, etc. But if that weren’t bad enough, ”the vast majority of those caught up in the raids were innocent.”

And, as with asset forfeiture laws in the US, victims of the search are locked in battles with “police lawyers and told they must prove how they came by the contents of their boxes.”

[dljordan]

I’m quite sure that our dedicated government employees wouldn’t use the Patriot Act to harm innocent Americans. Anyway, it’s the whole eggs, omelet thing. You want to be patriotic don’t you?

[Richard from IL]

Don’t give the Chicago folks ideas!

[wolfcreek]

Welcome to FR.

Pretty *heavy handed* article there.

I’m sure someone will be offended. LOL!

[wolfcreek]

“However, lawyers watching the police operation unfold were quick to warn that the strong-arming of these vaults and the crashing into each and every box was tantamount to the police having obtained permission to smash down the doors of an entire housing estate.

David Sonn, of Sonn Macmillan Walker, one of the largest criminal defence practices in London, says, ‘POCA was never intended for this. No one objects when criminals are caught and their assets seized - but shaking down everyone to get to them is specifically not what lawmakers wanted.”

Coming soon, America.

[bert]

There is a lot of smoke clouding the issue but the raids produced the desired results of finding the criminally obtained goods.

There were mentions of Indian and Jewish treasure migration but no mention of terrorist booty. The real but unmentioned reason for the operation was to find and sequester terrorist assets.

[wastoute]

Bring it!

Μολὼν λάβε

That is all I have to say. Slaves will live in tyrranny, free men never will.

[wolfcreek]

Yep. It took over 500 cops to *attack* 6500 lock boxes.

They need a lot more than that to put a dent in this country’s armory.

[dennisw]

Amazing. Wonder how many tax dodgers will get reamed out?

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

What good is a gun in a safe deposit box?

[RayTheSpook]

Maybe I am mistaken but why should the police in the UK walk around with machine guns while the citizens are criminalized for owning any firearms?

Something seems a little bit “fascist” about having the police just rummage through my “private property” on a fishing expedition because they need a reason to be in a “disabling profession”, that someone needs to make a living off of trying to disable perfectly law abiding citizens tells me all I need to know about the UK and the upcoming “Obamacare” since this whole healthcare insurance issue has more to do with criminalizing more and more people that refuse to live as victims dependent upon “Pharmacracy”. It just seems to me another way to micromanage everything we put into our bodies, in other words an extension of the war on “some” drugs.

If they get their way they will go further than just grab our property they will try to take our minds, by claiming we “need” counseling due to our “oppositional” disorder to government run healthcare or some other angelic service that “everybody knows we need”...once medicine gets politicized it will lead to worse crimes than just rummaging for criminalized objects. But what has been going on in the UK seems to me a warning to those that think it can’t happen here.

[dljordan]

“If they get their way they will go further than just grab our property they will try to take our minds, by claiming we “need” counseling due to our “oppositional” disorder to government run healthcare or some other angelic service that “everybody knows we need”...once medicine gets politicized it will lead to worse crimes than just rummaging for criminalized objects.”

The KGB did the same thing years ago. When they set up Homeland Security they imported a KGB and a STASI general to “advise” them on procedures. Many here on FR saw the creation of this monster as a GOOD thing. Never let a crisis go to waste.