Don’t go seeking help. We don’t have that luxury:
A.B., an honorably discharged combat vet, called a veteran’s assistance hotline for someone to talk to. While the VA hotline worker did the right thing by having the police come out and check the situation, the police went too far. After he was taken in to custody and separated from his firearms, the police officers searched his home without a warrant or any exigent circumstance and illegally seized $20,000 worth of his firearms, bows, arrows, ammo, and first aid and protective equipment. Included was the Japanese Arisaka rifle that his grandfather brought back from WWII and the medical shears that this patriot used to cut two fellow Infantrymen from a HMMWV during an IED attack.
It’s not paranoia when they really are out to get you. The law be damned.
I’d love to know the rationale behind taking the first aid gear, beyond “because we could”.
Has he filed charges against them for the theft?
And who would prosecute those charges? This is why civil rights violations are almost always enforced through civil penalties rather than criminal ones.
Police who commit crimes are routinely arrested by other police.
If by routinely, you mean “hardly ever” and “only when they’re not doing it as part of their jobs” then sure.
I’ll echo Rob. If a cop knocks over a liquor store, sure, he can expect to be arrested. If a cop violates your civil rights in the course of his duties, you can expect the thing blue line to circle the wagons.
http://p.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2012/may/28/miller-swat-rampage-destroys-iraq-vets-home-over-g/
It all started a few hours earlier on Feb. 2, 2010, when Sgt. Corrigan called the National Veterans Crisis Hotline for advice on sleeping because of nightmares from his year training Iraqi soldiers to look for IEDs in Fallujah. Without his permission, the operator, Beth, called 911 and reported Sgt. Corrigan “has a gun and wants to kill himself.â€
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2012/may/28/miller-swat-rampage-destroys-iraq-vets-home-over-g/#ixzz2cRFlr027
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Does he have any recourse that would have teeth?
A federal civil rights suit, which is what the commenter mentions below. Theft isn’t so much the issue but the deprivation of rights under color of law. If the police take your property with no legal authority, they are violating your civil rights (and stealing from you, but the feds don’t have power to punish theft).
How’s ’bout sue everyone up to the mayor for theft under color of law?
This is pitiful. Who could honestly tell a veteran now that it’s okay to admit to needing help?
I think the VFW, and before it the Grand Army of the Republic, were the help and therapy before today. But America these days isn’t too big on civil society. Even if they were, I’m not sure there’s enough of them in a lot of places.
“the VA hotline worker did the right thing by having the police come out and check the situation, the police went too far.”
Isn’t this the case where the hotline worker called police and told them the veteran in question “has a gun and wants to kill himself?” If he did not actually say that, then it constitutes filing a false police report.
The veteran called a hotline to talk to someone, and the lazy SOB on the other end decided to file a false police report. I fail to see how the hotline operator “did the right thing” unless the quoted writer made a Freudian slip….