Aggressive , violent house to house raids in Watertown...POLICE STATE !

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
--Ronald Reagan

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A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.

Sir Winston Churchill[

One observation from the video.....there sure were a great many folks in that house. I thought about myself not being entirely healthy being told to put my hands up.......GET THEM UP......as a gun is being pointed at me......we really have a problem. I give T crap all the time because he pushes his envelope too far, but at the base of his viewpoint, is a complete roadblock of discussions in regard to the expansion of government control of citizens and exceptions to our bill of rights, and the fourth Amendment. I think about the British Troops going into a house searching for a terrorist.....who we now call patriots.....from a distance......I do not see much difference.

I understand necessity. However, this was a huge fail. First, why instead of standing in the streets, or marching down the streets was there not a comprehensive 4 mile perimeter which involved announcements that citizens are to meet officers on their porch and allow voluntary searches if there are no problems. They should have saved SWAT for nobody at home or suspicious areas......The citizens became the enemy.....this is the part that T has been warning us......first they delay a day, not trusting the people on the release of the photos, and then they lock up the citizens and close the community without a game plan to use our greatest strength.

The truth is that the applause was a spontaneous reaction to deep fear which was instilled in a major metropolitan area.....not by terrorists......but by the very people we depend on to use their brains, and in that process.....completely different from earlier in the week when proud Boston residents declared they would get back to normal......no they terrorized a population, destroyed the local economy, failed to id the perps, and created near panic without soliciting the cooperation of the city.....huge fail, and absolutely no discussions of this fail......the biggest fail is the American media.

That looked like a police raid, all right...on one house with a lot of people in it.

Maybe they were having a bunco party . . . .

knothead wrote:Maybe they were having a bunco party . . . .

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Snortin' crank and playin' bunco.

What could go wrong....?

If you have nothing to hide and have done nothing wrong... you should have no problem giving up your rights.

Exigent circumstance

Main article: Exigent circumstance in United States law

There are also "exigent circumstances" exceptions to the warrant requirement. Exigent circumstances arise when the law enforcement officers have reasonable grounds to believe that there is an immediate need to protect their lives, the lives of others, their property, or that of others, the search is not motivated by an intent to arrest and seize evidence, and there is some reasonable basis, to associate an emergency with the area or place to be searched.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Exigent_circumstance



The footage is reminiscent of the way students were removed from Columbine High after the shootings there. This is vastly different from the way I've seen the searches covered on network news. This looks like Americans giving up their rights.

We are not certain that they had not received warrants. Normally, an area wide search warrant lacks the required specificity, but warrants could have easily been secured. With simple specific addresses and names of owners and a reasonable suspicion that the perp could be in the house.

Exigent circumstances exception does not let someone kick a door down 20 hours later without some immediate viewing of the defendant and pursuit. This is a slippery slope. I do not know that they did not have warrants. The further they got away from the abandoned car in time and distance......the exception really is being stretched. A judge could have walked down the sidewalk with officers writing warrants for signature without interfering with the capture. I know few judges which would have said no to issuing these warrants in light of the gun battle, bomb, and immediate threat to others........when we allow officers to make this decision.....how many days and how many miles from the event will be exigent?

2seaoat wrote: I know few judges which would have said no to issuing these warrants in light of the gun battle, bomb, and immediate threat to others...

Some times you need to actually read the words you write. Yes there was a threat to others and yes it was immediate.
These bombers had just unleashed a weapon of mass destruction. And 180 people killed and maimed and some still in critical condition is mass destruction in my book. And it would be to you too if it was you or your loved one lying there dead or with no legs. And when the perps are running around loose in a residential neighborhood they absolutely do present "an immediate threat to others".
If that punk hadn't been wounded and become physically impaired, there's a VERY good chance he would have barged into a house and taken the occupants hostage to conceal his whereabouts. That would have been the only way he could have escaped detection while inside that perimeter of cops. The cops of course knew that and knew they had to do a house to house search to find him which is exactly what they did.
If the people who live there were all upset by police tactics they would be telling you that now. But they are not. And no if they were telling you that, there is no big media conspiracy to hide that from you. That's a crock of shit. The media loves a public outcry of any kind. That's what sells commercial time.

No, we don't want to swing the pendulum too far in the direction of having our basic rights and freedoms compromised because of terrorism.
But what you and others here are doing is swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. Because I don't want to tie the cops hands when we are now living with all this violence.
In this case the cops came in heavy handed because the situation called for that. And now the cops are gone and the neighborhood is back to normal again. I repeat, the people who were subjected to this aren't bitching about it.

FEAR... next to hunger it is the best social control tool. I put religion after that... but it is just a tangent.

Fear is not an evil boogeyman, Pkr. It's a very valid and important and useful human emotion. For the same reason that every animal in the wild exhibits fear (from the weakest to the strongest) and uses it to his advantage, so do we.
When nutters are running around blowing peoples' legs off with no warning whatsoever, believe me fear is a natural and healthy reaction.

Fear only becomes a detriment when it's so pronounced that it paralyzes us from employing any other behaviour.
The debate here is over whether a police lockdown and house to house search can be characterized as that kind of fear.
You and the rest here are on one side of that debate. I'm on the other. But that's all this is.

Bob says "I repeat, the people who were subjected to this aren't bitching about it. "

For the same reason the people in Brownsville keep quiet. They dont want the Bastards coming back and starting more crap.

Whenever there is crime in Brownsville, all I ever hear is the people in Brownsville saying they want a bigger law enforcement presence.
With maybe only one exception. And that was when the kid on the bicycle was run over by the city cop.
But that kid HAD NOT JUST KILLED AND MAIMED 180 PEOPLE ON SOUTH PALAFOX STREET for christ sakes. If he had, I assure you that not only the people in Brownsville, but everyone who lives in this fucking town would have had a different opinion about it.

Think of all the compromises we've accepted to our rights over the last dozen years... and why.

Hallmarkgrad1 wrote:My point is "The law is the law" You can not come in and kick my damn door in and roust all my people because Ted Bundy has run from the cops in Brownsville and they "think" we might be hiding in my attic. . I call Bull shit and over reaction.

As I said, this all comes down to what is reaction and what is overreaction.

For both of us to really understand what either is arguing, I would have had to been in your shoes when that happened, and you woulda had to be living in Watertown when a bomber was running loose who had killed and maimed 180 people.

I acknowledge that deciding what is reaction and what is overreaction is often a difficult thing to judge and inspires legitimate debate. And I could be wrong in how I'm observing all this.
I'm fine with that until it gets turned into a big conspiracy which involves false flags and the authorities intentionally killing and maiming us to convince us it's okay for them to take our rights away.
Then it's no longer legitimate debate, just childish paranoid horseshit.

One thing that's been left out of this. The bombers, who had already killed and maimed 180 people with bombs, were still throwing bombs out the window of a car. And they had more bombs in their possession which could have been used to blow up more people.
Maybe some of you think it would have been better for the cops to have backed off, let them escape, and more people be blown to hell with more bombs.

And that leads to a question I've now had for days.
Why are Wayne Lapierre and Fox News and talk radio not emphasizing the bombs? This incident goes a long way to demonstrating that gun control will not stop mass murder and maiming. I don't know why the right-wing has stayed mum on that point. Hell I thought about it two minutes after I learned the scope of the horror rendered by "bombers", not snipers. Is the right-wing brain dead or what?

People love power. From hall monitors in high school to armed SWAT team guys. Power is a narcotic. People, Counties, Kings and Queens all fight for the right to control things as they see it. I have been in the Army and it is a strong surreal feeling to be marching with 1000s of others with weapons, all in step, knowing you and your buddies could kick anyone's ass that dares say anything to you. And the people of your country will back you up, right or wrong. Law enforcement is no different.