Brickbat: Shining a Light
Robert and Adlynn Hart have sued Johnson County and the city of Leawood, Kansas, seeking to find out why armed law enforcement officers seeking drugs raided their home. The raid uncovered no drugs, and the Harts were not charged with any crime. The couple sued after officials responded to an open records request by saying they had no relevant documents on the case. Their attorney says the Harts may have been targeted because they'd purchased hydroponic equipment to grow vegetables in their basement.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
They should sue the rubber stamp factory where the judge who signed the warrant shops.
He doesn’t shop there. He’s the owner.
Their attorney says the Harts may have been targeted because they’d purchased hydroponic equipment to grow vegetables in their basement.
Look, they may claim it’s tomacco they’re growing but we all know it’s that wacky tomaccy.
A feature, not a bug.
You have nothing to worry about if you’ve done nothing wrong!
I got raided for buying a box of cold pills a month.
Is a new detox-ing product?
officials responded to an open records request by saying they had no relevant documents on the case.
Then simply provide *all* documents on the case.
Buying something legal from a legally operated store is now probable cause? A hammer or a knife could be used to kill someone; prepare for your house to be raided.
prepare for your house to be raided.
“But Officer, I filled out the required form indicating my intended use for the hammer!”
Yup. My question is how do they know what you bought?
Haven’t there been stories in the recent past of cops sitting in the parking lot of the hydroponic dealer writing down license plate numbers?
Here’s one.
I would imagine they traced the equipment back to the seller after they busted a real grow, and then leaned on the store to surrender all their records.
Or, knowing how they love to waste money, they stakeout every grow shop in America. Or maybe they set up one of Tulpa’s beloved robot cameras to record everyone’s license plate.
And were then too fucking lazy to do any investigative work and see if the person was actually just gardening. Their attitude is fuck it they can prove they are innocent.
Well, they face no consequences for lying to get a warrant or terrorizing the innocent. Why not crack some skulls? It’s all about the overtime.
Its a war out there man. It is just like Afghanistan. Those yuppie gardeners are probably dangerous.
Raid them all and let Justice sort them out.
Cameras, credit cards, snitching child, … — Let me count the ways.
Nah. That’s a crime with a victim. They only care about crimes against the state.
Or crimes with seizure provisions in the law.
Like I said, crimes against the state.
Sweet deal, ain’t it?
Yes. And anyone should have saw that coming when they started going after cold medicine. They switched from going after drugs to going after “precursers”, which is a fancy way of saying they were going to arrest people for lawful activity.
“It’s made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar!”
Three felonies a day. Or are we up to five now?
I expect it to be up to thirty by the time the decade is out.
It is worth it to note how many of these cases are arising in lily white upper middle class suburbs. Leewood is one of the nicer suburbs of Kansas City. It is a bedroom community of nearly all white professionals. It should be the kind of place where the police department writes tickets, arrests drunk drivers and deals with the occasional burglary or the once in a decade domestic soap opera murder. Yet, here they are with a SWAT team and a police department doing major drug investigations like they are Compton or something.
Leewood is exactly the kind of rich white place where you would expect the cops to be reasonable and at most just assholes to the occasional black youth who drives through town. Instead, they are just as out of control as any other department. If the police are out of control in a place like Leewood, they are out of control everywhere.
you know who else wrote a book?
Barack Obama?
Is there anybody on the H&R staff who didn’t write a book?
Luc….oh, current staff.
Never mind.
Lucy should write a book. I would read it. Especially if it was about how comment boards on blogs are societal indicators… also DONT TALK ABOUT LUCY!!!…aaaannnd She was my favorite
It is the product of careerism and our society’s seemingly unending narcissism. It used to be that people would go be a cop in a place like Leewood and be happy with a career and a paycheck. Someone who worked in a place like that either had ambition and moved to a big city police department or stayed there content to write tickets and harass teenagers. But the second type don’t exist anymore. People are too self absorbed to have that kind of humility. So if they can’t get a job in metro KC, they invent metro KC in Leewood. They make sure their department has all the same toys and uses all of the same tactics as the big city ones do. And if there are no criminals around to justify that, no worries, we will just pretend the suburban gardeners are the same as the Mexican Mafia and the Crips. It is all about them and their career and their personal actualization. Reality is supposed to conform to that.
On the bright side, not enough people care when poor blacks are harassed by the cops. Hopefully wealthy white people being hit where they live will actually result in people trying to fix the problem.
HAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry. I couldn’t keep that up. They’ll just say ‘yes officer, no officer’ and go about their days.
I don’t think so. I have a feeling that as cops start to harass more and more people, they will eventually run into a real problem.
Not so sure. I’ve got too many friends, some of them even somewhat intelligent, that think bigger government will solve all problems. It was 7 on 2 in our last epic Facebook thread. Shit, I gotta get off Facebook. Or just kill myself.
It is worth it to note how many of these cases are arising in lily white upper middle class suburbs.
But, John, it’s only the thin blue camo line that prevents these suburbs from degenerating into fucking Newark.
They have to make sure they have a drug problem to get in on all the federal money and toys.
Yes. See above concerning narcissism and careerism. No one is content with having just a small police department anymore. They are all too important for that.
See Concord NH and the need for a BEARCAT armored personnel carrier to address the “daily challenges” they face.
The couple sued after officials responded to an open records request by saying they had no relevant documents on the case.
No documents means no support for the warrant, which makes this search a civil rights violation?