What would your sitter do if a police officer forced entry without a warrant?
Officer Buccilli demanded to enter the home of Tim and LuAnn Batts, going so far as to stick his foot in the door and shove an 23-year-old sibling aside, threatening to arrest him and saying, “I don’t need no stinking warrant!”
When Joe stepped inside to call his policeman brother on his cell phone, Lt. Buccilli followed him. “Please don’t come in,” said Joe. “I am making a private call. You do not have permission to come in.”
Then it gets worse.
This is in the USA, friends.
The Batts are respectfully suing Lt. Buccilli.
Read more, here.
Home's Cool! 
Great jumping catfish. I am outraged!
Yes. Me too.
Check out the decisions about illegal entry, nationwide. You’ll be crawling. I’m sorta scared. Except we knew this was coming and we know Whom we have believed . . .
I’m not sure what your very first sentence has to do with the situation in the lawsuit other than possibly trying to scare people. There is a lot more to the story but we’ll have to let the courts work it out.
Very astute, Russel Ray. Just a bit of nervousness when police barge in without a warrant and shove a sitter aside, is appropriate, probably. The framers of our Constitution were motivated by that very nervousness and they paid high prices to prove it.
In several states, the 4th Amendment is currently either on trial or being ignored. I am sure you would not want certain biased police officers bursting through your door snarling “I don’t need no __________ warrant!” when you were asked to watch certain small ones you cared very much about. Would you?
Regardless of your feelings, though, that amendment exists to protect us all, not just the home-schooling, who are again enjoying a season of unpopularity, for some reason. As a member of the group at which such unconstitutional (illegal) police behavior is currently aimed, I have no trouble with keeping up a little guarded stance as I watch such dramas unfold. I am sure if you thought yourself a member of an unpopular group, you would have a bit more fear. Really.
And, yes, we are forced to take it to court. We, who are mostly single-income families, we who are raising the next generation, we who are trying to protect children, must constantly keep watch, constantly feel that nervous edge.
Surely you can relate. I know you are a brilliant thinker with the ability to express tenderness and great artistic skill . . . I should think someone like you would join in the alarm, the well-placed alarm.
We must demand warrants for our sakes and for yours. You must demand warrants for your sake and for ours. All of us must demand warrants.
The alternative is chilling.
In reading several articles about the situation, I only saw one screaming headline using _________, and it said “I don’t need no stinking warrant.” However, in reading the articles, that’s not what the officer said. “Stinking” was added by the writers of the stories.
When reading cases like this, it’s helpful to read several stories from several different sources in order to detect the bias that is placed in them by their writers. In this case, I actually found the lawsuit itself — it’s online — and it’s not near as bad as what you and the ultraright sources make it out to be. I think the Officer was wrong, but I don’t know anything else about the officer.
The other thing is that the lawsuit has absolutely nothing to do with sitters or homeschoolers. Where did you even pick that up? Concerned neighbors were saying that the elderly and sick father hadn’t been seen recently. I would be one of those concerned neighbors myself. After that, I have to let the authorities do their jobs. Do people sometimes make a bad decision in the performance of their jobs? Yes. I have myself.
Lastly, do you have some sources to back up your statement that “In several states, the 4th Amendment is currently either on trial or being ignored.” I could not find any. Again, people sometimes make bad decisions. When that happens in the United States, which is a nation governed by the rule of law, lawsuits, court decisions, and sometimes new legislation resolve the problem.
Normally, a deleted word is deleted because it’s not printable in most media.
A word can be added OR deleted, according to the reporter’s bias, I’d say. It probably all depends on whether a paper’s interests are better preserved by exposing or by defending errant police.
Okay, I’m finding it difficult to follow the logic that what you read somehow diminishes what the eyewitnesses reported. Someone else who was not there could not change what was said.
I did read the complaint document. Yes,the suit is online–it was filed by the source that I quoted.
But the fact that the suit is online does not prove or disprove anything about the verbal bullying that went on that afternoon. That the court documents are available online does not change anything. They could not begin to indicate anything about the trial itself.
The man threatened, used threatening words to force entry. We can insert any word you want in the blank, or leave it blank or remove the blank entirely, if it suits you, and the remaining facts point to total disregard for the law, by someone we pay to enforce the law.
Unacceptable, archaic attitude from a backward time we came to this country to escape.
The Batts family homeschools and the lawyers pressing the complaint are homeschool lawyers. Homeschoolers have been on the frontline for the last 25 years or so, in the battle for the front door. We know the protocols, we pay for the extra legal protection, we plan the escape routes for our children, we teach them exactly how and when to answer the door and the phone, specifically because this willful ignoring of the law among gov employees is rampant and usually feeds on homeschoolers. WHO ELSE IS AT HOME?!
If they tried these tricks with anyone else, it would be breaking and entering. They’re too scared to go there, so they pick on moms and kids. It is that incredibly simple, Friend. And now, as our populace becomes inordinately elderly, we find more and more of these families caring for their aged members at home, giving the SS one more angle, one more person to worry about.
The police had no reason to enter. None at all. They were loafing on the Batts property, just waiting for the SS to show, when the sitter questioned them to see if he could HELP them, for pity sake!
Why they attacked him the way they did is beyond me, totally beyond anyone’s ability to imagine. The entire Batts family nearly reveres the law enforcement community and has many laws nearly memorized, including parts of the Constitution. They were doing right. They were ultra-cooperative. Even nice. The SS even complimented them. Every report has emphasized this. The police were very close to violent with the footinthedoor and shoving this young man around. They threatened again, and boasted as they left. This was not a poor job decision; this was absolute and total insubordination to The Law.
I’m a rule-by-law gal from way back and, yes, the courts should decide. That is what this post was about.
Here are a couple of sources you asked for:
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/arnold-ahlert/the-indiana-supreme-court-guts-the-fourth-amendment/
http://www.erowid.org/freedom/courts/courts_decisions_privacy.shtml
Your frontpagemag.com article is a great example of using scarey headlines, usually to get readers and advertisers of the same ilk.
I happen to agree with the Indiana Supreme Court in that case. When we live in a civilized society, there are some things that must be sacrificed by the individual for the good of the whole. Officer safety in the act of performing the job is one of them.
If I were writing the headline (most likely for a non-ultraconservative right-wing publication), it would probably be something like “Indiana Supreme Court upholds officer safety while performing job.”
Who wouldn’t want to uphold officer safety? No one. Thus it won’t get as many readers as the scarey taking away the fourth amendment headline.
Many decades ago my wise old grandmother subscribed to a magazine called GRIT. It had nothing but good news in it. People aren’t enthralled by good news. Thus it went bankrupt in the early 1980s.
Thanks.
Officer safety? The officer was loafing on the front lawn and the sitter offered to help him?
From yesterday, originally commented by Russel Ray:
The Fourth Amendment has been under attack every since 9/11, in the interest of “security.” I couldn’t find anything about specific states attacking it, other than under the guise of the Bush 9/11 laws to begin with.
It’s a changed world and it’s only going to get worse as humanity continues to overpopulate the world and becomes more interconnected than ever via the Internet and the global economy.
I have no problem with being suspicious of government. However, it is necessary in one’s suspicious to dig deeper than the soundbites that appear on one’s favorite TV or Internet station.
In my opinion, Russel, the ideas behind the Fourth Amendment have been under attack since the 1600’s (actually, the problem is even mentioned in the Bible) causing those who desired to move away from chaos to put them in writing and make them legal and binding.
The world population is teetering on implosion. See my post:
https://katharinetrauger.wordpress.com/2012/05/12/not-enough-mothers-days/
I never watch TV, Internet or otherwise. We do not even own a TV.