Police Raid, Detain Innocent Citizens

I thought the logo on the doors said "Protect and Serve," not "Don't Fuck With Us." I do hope that the law enforcement community can take constructive criticism better in the future. Otherwise, no knock warrants maybe become punishment for the slightest disobedience, maybe at random, somtimes with more nefarious intentions.
My favorite quote is at the end, where the Police Captain calls them a hate group and seems outright pained at having to let them go just because they didn't do anything legally wrong.

from the Philadelphia Daily News:

Four young residents of a North Philadelphia house who circulated petitions questioning police-surveillance cameras were rousted from their home Friday and detained 12 hours without charges while police searched their house.

Daniel Moffat, 28, a co-owner of the house, said police had no warrant when they entered. The house was examined by officials from several government agencies and then shuttered by the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections.

"This leaves me homeless, without access to things I need. My whole life is disrupted," Moffat said yesterday.

The raid on the property on Ridge Avenue near Parrish Street was led by 9th District Police Capt. Dennis Wilson, who was quoted in an online story by the City Paper as saying of the residents: "They're a hate group. We're trying to drum up charges against them, but unfortunately we'll probably have to let them go."

Police can raid your home without "absolute certainty"

Cops can force you out of bed, point guns at you (while you're naked), and look for seven guys who haven't lived there for three months. They can do this, and not violate your rights.

I'm putting in a moat.

from the Los Angeles Times:

In December 2001, Los Angeles County sheriffs were looking for four black suspects in an identity-theft scheme. One of them was known to have a gun. When the deputies set out to raid a home in Lancaster, they did not know the suspects had moved three months earlier. Rettele had bought the home in September and lived there with Sadler and her 17-year-old son.

SWAT team raids wrong house, woops

A North Carolina woman is filing a complaint after a SWAT team erroneously raided her house, forcing kids to the ground at gunpoint.

from citizen-times.com:

Sandra Braswell said the officers threw two smoke grenades into her house at 208 N. Oak St. around 1:30 a.m. Saturday while her 16-year-old grandson and six of his friends were having a party on the back porch.

She said the officers, with guns drawn, told the teenagers to get on the floor. When some of the teenagers tried to run, the officers forced them to the ground and pinned their hands behind their backs.

“They didn't show no warrant,” she said on Monday. “They didn’t have no warrant for this house. They made me lay in the floor, though. I couldn’t say nothing, with my hands up in the air and all these kids in here on the floor. One of the kids laying across form me, cop got a gun pointed to his head.”