Drinking tea, shopping at a gardening store is probable cause for a SWAT raid on your home

SOURCE: The Washington Post
Snippet:

In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun. The family was then held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.

Land of the Free (to get on the floor while some gun toting goon stands over you) Home of the Brave (yea right). I am sick of seeing these stories but people will let the cops slide, the judges side with them and the press can be counted on to tell the story the way government wants it told. They found no growing operation or any signs of drug use, just wet loose leaf tea. Reasonable suspicion is just too easily cooked up these days. Got to keep the pay to play prisons full. Got to keep those department budgets fat.

Sounds like the cops are running out of work.

No, a federal judge did not rule that drinking tea and shopping at a gardening store amounts to probable cause

Fortunately, there was no such ruling. Yes, there was a legal decision, but it had nothing to do with visiting gardening stores or the culpability of drinking tea. Instead, the issue in the case was when the police can rely on positive field tests for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. The judge ruled that officers cannot be held personally liable for searching a home with a warrant based on two positive field tests for marijuana, a week apart, from plant materials found in the suspect’s discarded trash, at least when the officers did not know about the risks that the field tests results were false positives.

a reply to: Swills

So what led the police to be testing "plant matter" found in their garbage over several weeks?

Sounds like a bunch of BS to me.

I support giving the police lee way to do their jobs, but there is a fine line there between professional judgment and abuse.

Sounds like the cops use the testing kit as a tool to invade anyone's home, searching for the elusive "drugs".

The testing done at the press conference replicated that done earlier by the researchers, who found that a surprisingly large number of common substances generated false positive results for the presence of drugs. “While testing the specificity of the KN Reagent test kits with 42 non-marijuana substances, I observed that 70% of these tests rendered a false positive,” said Dr. Omar Bagasra, director of the Center for Biotechnology, who conducted the experiments.

Any testing with a 70% rate of false positives needs to be kitt shanned. Ridiculous. Ironic that they are ex employees of the CIA. Wondering if this might cause some uneasiness on the investigating parties.

While movies romanticize spies, it is the CIA analyst's job to interpret the information collected by agents in the field, determine what may or may not be useful....

.......hmmmm, karma??????

Test the trash, as someone mentioned. There is some money well spent. What's next, mobile labs on the trash trucks.

Ex-CIA. Maybe that is where it all started. Used to work in the drug import department

Ex-CIA analyst eh?

I wonder who this guy pissed off, or what this guy was digging into and needed a "reminder" of who's in charge...

Using tests with a 70% failure rate? That sounds like a great way to get a warant for a home you want to invade. Just keep using test after test until one comes up positive...or hell, fake it and test on real drugs and claim it came from the trash. That way, you can say, "Well the tests do have a 70% false positive rate, so that explains why it was wrong.."

Nah, this guy was being taught a lesson I think...I wonder what the cops were *really* looking for? Did they remove any computers?

This is how these things work. Plausible deniability under the pretenses of something innocent and in good faith.

a reply to: Swills
The 2 articles point to the fact that opinion pieces can often produce a bit of a slant, or perhaps are written to operate more effectively as click bait.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

That is the first thing that came to mind when I read the OP, the guy may have talk too much in the internet about his old job, he was taught a lesson.

a reply to: watchitburn

A sheriff was scoping out a garden store and taking tabs on people buying hydro equipment. This stupid practice happens all over the country. From there they began searching their trash and that's when the false positives began.

A sheriff was scoping out a garden store and taking tabs on people buying hydro equipment.

Here come the background checks in order to buy garden supplies.

I think this is more about the CIA letting them know they can "reach out and touch them"... at will... than anything else...

Sad to think that you are going to work to help protect the country, and end up leaving with a horrible taste in your mouth, and find out...

You can never leave?

I opened this thread because I drink tea and frequent the garden store too.
I guess I fit "their" profile.
But...

Because I live a few hundred miles west of their location we have none of those same dangers or fears because of a lifestyle choice. Having a gun pointed at your head over the suspected possession of a FLOWER does seem a bit silly on this side of the border these days.

So the former "Yeah put that guy on his stomach with a SWAT cop standing over him with a gun" was put on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun?

a reply to: Dumbass

Is that a reference to being formerly employed as a CIA analyst? I don't think that analysts do a lot of putting people on the ground.
www.criminaljusticedegreeschools.com...

I'd like to know more about this guy...what type of stuff his analyst position analyzed. . . what part of the CIA he worked in, ect...

You don't have to kill someone to shut them up.

a reply to: MystikMushroom

I'd like to know more about this guy...what type of stuff his analyst position analyzed. . . what part of the CIA he worked in, ect...

My guess is you won't get any of that. About any former CIA analysts.

a reply to: Phage

Aw come one now Phage good sir, some simply translate foreign languages!

a reply to: MystikMushroom
Right.
Secret foreign languages.

a reply to: Phage

That sounds cool as hell! I want to learn a secret foreign language...

Like Esperanto, do you know Esperanto? I kind of want to learn it.