Sudden Live Blog
Surprise! I decided to do a live blog.
If you haven’t done this yet, here’s how it works. You see the chat window below? Look at the bottom. Enter your name or pseudonym in the top window. Enter your comment in the second window, and hit send. I will have to approve your comment before it appears, but I’m online right now, and will approve most comments within a minute. Usually within seconds.
Let’s start. But I have to put the kids to bed soon, so if I bug out for a few minutes, don’t be shocked.
IMPORTANT: Note the buttons at the bottom. You will probably want to turn off “autoscroll.” It bothers a lot of people.
I managed to get moderated on an unmoderated thread.
JD (1517ae) — 8/28/2009 @ 10:49 pmthat’s because you’re an over-achiever…
and a racist
papertiger (74c635) — 8/28/2009 @ 11:29 pmI think you’ve made your point.
But so has Balko.
Given the extreme consequences of these raids we need to reconsider the criteria we use to justify them.
Is even a well founded suspicion that someone has drugs in his house and may flush them down the toilet if given a warning sufficient to justify smashing in his door in the middle of the night and holding him at gunpoint during a search?
Or should this kind of search be reserved for cases where there is a belief that there is a hostage in the house or that there is evidence that may help to prevent a major crime but could be easily destroyed (ie. a cell phone with the number of the next 9/11 mastermind stored on it)?
I’m not sure your position on this.
Mine is that minor amounts of drugs aren’t enough to justify this kind of raid and major amounts are probably too much to flush down the toilet very quickly. (And the cops can always shut down the water supply before serving their warrant).
Michael Friedman (0b7808) — 8/29/2009 @ 1:10 am