Pursuing drugs and guns on scant evidence, D.C. police sometimes raid wrong homes...

[PoliticAverse]

— terrifying the innocent

Sallie Taylor was sitting in her apartment in Northeast Washington one evening in January 2015 watching “Bible Talk” when her clock fell off the wall and broke. She turned and looked up. Nine D.C. police officers smashed through her door, pointed a shotgun at her face and ordered her to the floor.

“They came in like Rambo,” said Taylor, a soft-spoken 63-year-old grandmother who was dressed in a white nightgown and said she has never had even a speeding ticket.

The heavily armed squad thought they were searching the residence of a woman arrested two miles away the previous night for carrying a half-ounce vial of PCP.

Taylor, who did not know the woman, was terrified. Trembling, she told police that the woman did not live there. Officers spent 30 minutes searching the house anyway, going through her boxes and her underwear drawer. They found no drugs and left without making an arrest.

Read the rest at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2016/03/05/probable-cause/

[Igel]

1. Or relying on evidence and a wrong address ...

Which, as the article points out, was the problem.

Perhaps the woman they were after used to live at that address. Perhaps some litigator assumed that two people with similar names were the same person and used the address of the wrong person in a court filing. Perhaps somebody gave a false address.

If everybody who claimed to be innocent or have innocent offspring were telling the truth, there'd be zero arrests for pretty much anything. When I was a kid, a neighbor's boy shot somebody in his front yard. He said he was innocent. His mother said he was innocent--he'd never do anything like that, didn't even own a gun. In spite of the fingerprints, powder residue, the ammunition and holster found in the kid's room, witnesses that said he went into the house to get the gun only to return and pull the trigger. No, no, no. Her baby boy was innocent. She knew otherwise. But the police were the enemy and you don't tell the truth to the enemy, not when your first loyalty is to your clan.

When the person who opens the door very seldomtells the truth--or is perceived to very seldom tell the truth--you can't be surprised when it's assumed that the person opening the door isn't telling the truth.

[Major Nikon]

2. The problem is the drug war

Everything else is a symptom

[csziggy]

3. Under US law everyone is INNOCENT until proven guilty

So the claim by police and prosecutors that the erroneous home invasions and searches are permissible is wrong and unconstitutional. I don't care what the courts have said - it is WRONG.

Breaking down people's doors, tearing their houses apart and treating people who have never been accused of a crime as criminals is the performance of fascists.

[KentuckyWoman]

4. This is wrong.

The war on drugs is wrong.
The for profit prisons are wrong.
The militarized police is wrong.
The rubber stamp on search warrants is wrong.

They are wiping their butts with the Constitution and it must be stopped.

[NutmegYankee]

5. The oversight of warrants is broken.

As is the exercise of those search warrants. In the past the acceptable method was to knock and announce. Now they conduct these dressed like terrorists and smash into houses, causing unnecessary damage along the way.

We need a law to establish a new minimum standard for warrants.