The ATF Suggests You Call SWAT Raids on Your Exes for Valentine's Day

Ever wonder where people get the idea that police are thin-skinned bullies?

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is inviting you to celebrate Valentine's Day by getting your ex thrown in federal prison. How thoughtful:

Valentine's Day can still be fun even if you broke up. Do you have information about a former (or current) partner involved in illegal gun activity? Let us know, and we will make sure it's a Valentine's Day to remember! Call 1-888-ATF-TIPS or email [e-mail]. pic.twitter.com/OdDIPdIzkr

— ATF HQ (@ATFHQ) February 14, 2022

"Got an ex who buys or sells guns illegally?" the agency tweeted. "We would love to treat them to a Valentine's Day surprise!" Underneath it includes a hotline, an email address, and website for revenge-minded former lovers who want to give the gift of government-sanctioned violence.

To be completely clear here: The ATF doesn't respond to illegal gun sales with a polite knock on the door and questions. In January, for example, ATF agents swooped into Wilkes-Barre Township at the crack of dawn to raid a home, scaring the neighbors.

The ATF's irresponsible message today encourages people to try to get their ex-lovers hit with SWAT raids, as when "pranksters" call police and falsely claim a violent crime is taking place at their target's address, prompting officers to show up in force, weapons ready. In such cases, innocent people are terrorized—or worse. Cops killed a man in Wichita, Kansas, in 2017 when a caller pretended a hostage situation was underway.

The man responsible for that Wichita call was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 20 years. But now the ATF is encouraging people to use law enforcement officers as tools of revenge.

The ATF is not alone. The Rockmart Police Department in Georgia also turned to social media to encourage jilted lovers to use them for revenge. "Do you have an ex-Valentine and know they have outstanding warrants? Do you have information that they are driving with drugs in their car? Give us a call with their location and we'll take care of the rest," the department posted on Facebook and Instagram. They got the idea from the Robeson County Sheriff's Department in North Carolina. The same thing happened in North Carolina last year.

This isn't harmless. The potential for a vengeful former lover to target a completely innocent person should have given law enforcement agencies pause before posting these messages. The fact that it didn't speaks to an unpleasant mindset that has taken hold among some cops—the idea that their authority is an acceptable tool not just to stop crimes but to punish those who have done you wrong. Far too many cases of police abuse revolve around officers targeting those who expose their bad behavior, criticize them, or reject their advances.

Comments

[Longtobefree]

Fascists do fascism.
What a shock!

[VULGAR MADMAN]

They’re getting worse though.

[CE]

Pretty soon there'll be a "See Something, Say Something" app on your phone.

Which will morph into a "Suspect Something, Send Someone" app.

Or more like a "Why not just sic a SWAT team on someone you don't like"? Oh wait, that's what this story is about.

[Joelle C. Wexler]

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[Smack Daddy]

Sounds great! I'm sending a SWAT team to check it out.

[Don't look at me!]

This is how they got someone to rat out Anne Frank.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

"Caught you stealing; not looking good for you is it? Now what can you give us in return for a little consideration..."

[Mewalrus]

Seriously f'd up...

[Hank Ferrous]

The BATF aren't police, not even Federal police. And, that social media message is more concerning for its embrace of typical feminist resentment as the stupid means to solicit tips for more statist claptrap and potential malfeasance.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Well according to Shannon Watt's latest drivel, pro gun people are exclusively misogynistic men [because she has been called "cunt, bitch and whore" on social media]; seems the ATF is just following along.

[Fat Mike's Drug Habit]

She should be careful, the ATF has a troubled history with bitches.

[ElvisIsReal]

Women NEVER call another woman a bitch.

[Smack Daddy]

My wife uses all three.

[Agammamon]

BATF absolutely are Federal law enforcement officers.

[Hank Phillips]

Alexa, set my friend here up for Prime membership.

[Ragnarredbeard]

Not sure where you get that bullshit. ATF Special Agents are sworn federal law enforcement officers. They can and do arrest people all the time for violating federal gun laws.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

“Know someone who hasn’t had their pet spayed or neutered?
Call us and we’ll take care of it!” -ATF

[Compelled Speechless]

They will definitely accomplish the goal of making sure your little Fido doesn't procreate.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

STASI tactics. Tell on you neighbors, and if you've got a score to settle, so much the better.

[SQRLSY One]

Well, if y'all HARDENED CRIMINALS we're blowing on cheap plastic flutes WITHOUT PERMISSION, then I would NOT be forced to turn y'all in, dammit!!!! PLEASE try to be more RESPONSIBLE now!!!

To find precise details on what NOT to do, to avoid the flute police, please see http://www.churchofsqrls.com/DONT_DO_THIS/ … This has been a pubic service, courtesy of the Church of SQRLS!

[VULGAR MADMAN]

And before the STASI it was a NAZI tactic.

[Agammamon]

And before that it was a Soviet tactic.

[Nardz]

Totalitarian leftists gonna totalitarian leftist

[Hank Phillips]

Parsons had begun talking again. "Ear trumpets for listening through keyholes! My little girl brought one home the other night -- tried it out on our sitting-room door, and reckoned she could hear twice as much as with her ear to the hole. Of course it's only a toy, mind you. Still, gives 'em the right idea, eh?"

[Ajsloss]

"To be completely clear here: The ATF doesn't respond to illegal gun sales with a polite knock on the door and questions."

I thought they said that's how Waco started?

[Longtobefree]

Officially, it started when the brave ATF agents were brutally ambushed.
Also likely, it started when the ATF "dog team" fired to kill the Branch Davidian dogs in their kennel.
Either way, no one knocked on the door with anything but bullets.

(the local sheriff had been to the compound several times in response to complaints from neighbors. He arrived in a marked car, wearing his uniform, and did knock on the door. In each case, he was admitted, and the issue discussed. No one was killed, or shot, or hit, and all dogs survived.)

[Quo Usque Tandem]

All dogs survived? What kind of police work is that?

[Apollonius]

We are expected to believe that the FBI "misplaced" an 8-foot steel door, which was the one piece of evidence that would prove who shot first.

[Ragnarredbeard]

Hel, the local sheriff even told the ATF when and where the guy shopped, so they could have arrested the guy clean and easy outside the house.

That they didn't tells me the ATF was grandstanding and it backfired.

[Eeyore]

Here I thought SWATTING was illegal and they are encouraging it? Are they having a slow day/week/month/year?

How about we abolish the ATF instead? They seem board. Free them to find different jobs.

[Compelled Speechless]

There are just so many domestic terrorists that they can't figure out which ones to go after first. It's really stressing them out. They need to pop a few dogs to help them calm down and refocus.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

With their war on FRTs [forced reset triggers] pistol braces, 80 percents and ghost guns, not to mention the compiling of an ever increasing database of millions of albeit law abiding gun owners, the 5,000 member ATF [about half of whom are paper pushers] is already out of its depth. I cannot see how they will ever enforce what they desire to outlaw, except opportunistically and to make examples out of a relatively few hapless persons in order to instill fear into the rest of us.

[Hank Phillips]

...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

[mad.casual]

"I lost all my guns when my ex-wife, tragically, dumped them in a lake."

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Is your ex wife in the same lake?

[mad.casual]

What kind of moron buries all the evidence in the same spo... I mean, I don't even have an ex-wife.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

A friend of mine sent me this today, and I literally didn't believe it was real. I thought it had to be coming from the fever dreams of a Fox News Host with an overactive imagination.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

That fucking Poe again; he's every where nowadays.

[wingnutx]

Maybe someone can inform them about Eric Holder providing guns to Mexican drug cartels.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Trust me, it was mentioned early and often in the responses to the tweet. I think the ATF got "ratioed" as the young people say.

[Illocust]

Because encouraging people to use the usg as a method of revenge never results in false reports.

[Union of Concerned Socks]

Christ what assholes.

[Jerry B.]

Hey. They can’t let all that SWAT gear just sit around gathering dust.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

He dumped you. It wasn't him, it was you. Lose a few pounds, buy a nice dress, and move on.

[Hank Phillips]

And then when they are ambushed with unequal yet apposite counterforce, come the expressions of pained surprise and dewy-eyed innocence.
Until asset-forfeiture looting is by law a felony no matter who tries it, this entrapment is what to expect.

[Apollonius]

"We thought we were raiding a church!"

[Apollonius]

The ATF has a record of smashing into homes on the flimsiest suggestion, and spraying bullets around with abandon, going back to the early days of the agency.

Do a DuckDuckGo search for "Kenyon Ballew" -- no trials, no conviction, no justification. 1971.

This is what the ATF DOES.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

With immunity...

[Seamus]

Snitches get stitches.

[CopaGent]

The ATF is just below the FBI on the Federal Law enforcement scale. That would be the bottom...

[JohnZ]

It must be where people go when they're even too stupid for the FBI.
After that it's running the check out at a dollar store.

[mad.casual]

I'm sorry Mr. Holder, this is a for-profit business, you can't just lose track of inventory and give the merchandise away like that. I'm afraid we're gonna have to let you go.

[A Cynical Asshole]

I wish I was surprised by this, but sadly I'm not.

[Gwarrior]

Not exactly where I ever expected my hometown of Rockmart to get called out… Thankfully, most people saw it for the joke that it was.

[Utkonos]

BATF shits—CRAZY!!!!!

[JohnZ]

I was going to suggest to the bright lads at the ATF there was a gun running operation into Messyco several years back and that resulted in a number of unsolved murders and increased drug trafficking.
The person involved was Eric Holder and his accomplice, Barry Sortero.

[NOYB2]

If the model in the photo is representative of the employees of the ATF, maybe more people will call themselves in.