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Jan 26 2012 FITCHBURG, Mass. — A Massachusetts mother says the FBI used a chain saw to cut through her door and then held her at gunpoint for at least 30 minutes before agents realized they were conducting a raid at the wrong home. Judy Sanchez, of Fitchburg, says she awoke to heavy footsteps in the stairwell on Jan. 26 and walked into her kitchen in time to see a blade chop through her door.
She says she was held face down, on the floor, at gunpoint while her 3-year-old daughter cried in another room. It turns out agents were after the other tenant on the same floor of the multi-unit building. That tenant was suspected of dealing drugs. An FBI spokesman in Boston said Wednesday that the agency is paying for the damage. He said the arrest team was only in the wrong apartment for about 15 minutes, and that the special agent in charge at the scene repeatedly apologized for the mistake.
9/4/2001 Campground owner shot by FBI
May 28 2014 Baby blown up when swat team throws stun grenade into playpen
2/21/2011 An Oklahoma woman has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling $31 of marijuana. Patricia Marilyn Spottedcrow, a 25-year-old mother of four, and her mother, Delita Starr, 50, sold an $11 dime bag to a police informant in Oklahoma on Dec. 31, 2009. The informant returned two weeks later to buy $20 of marijuana. Spottedcrow, who worked in nursing homes before her arrest, told The Oklahoman she did it to get some extra money. She has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling $31 of marijuana. The women were charged with drug distribution and possession of a dangerous substance in the presence of a minor, because Spottedcrow's children were in the house during the transaction. They were offered plea deals of two years in prison but decided to enter a guilty plea instead, a gamble they took because neither had prior convictions and because the amount of drugs sold was so small. The gamble did not pay off. Spottedcrow was given sentences of 10 years in prison for distribution and two years for possession, to run concurrently. Her mother mother received 30 years, with suspended sentence and five years of probation.NEW JERSEY FAMILY SUES After BOGUS RAID
11/1/1995 David and Carolyn McKinney of East Orange, NJ, have been granted a new trial in their suit against local police who they say "abused and terrorized" their family in a bogus marijuana raid. Their door was sledge-hammered down, their home ransacked, and their two teenage sons handcuffed and held at gun point face down on the kitchen floor in their pajamas during the raid. They also say police threatened to shoot their small pet terrier if it wouldn't stop barking. The police were seeking a young woman who had sold marijuana to an informant. The McKinneys' lawyer says that after tearing the place apart "the police decided they had made a mistake, but they offered no apology or anything else." A jury ruled against the McKinneys, but state appellate Judge Sylvia Pressler granted a new trial. Newark Star-Ledger
September 3 1995. Mark Askin a twenty five year old white man was riding with his mother through a predominately black section of Pittsburgh Pa. after visiting his grandparents. While stopped at a red light four men in street clothes jumped out of a red sedan and identified themselves as police officers. They dragged Mark out of the car and kept shouting where's the drugs, where did you put the drugs. The "officers searched Mark and the car and found no drugs, weapons or contraband. however Mark was arrested for aggravated assault and resisting arrest. After a bench trial he was found not guilty.
Genesee County New York A small businessman who operated a wholesale restaurant supply, was driving home after a long 18 hour day of deliveries during near blizzard conditions. His usual road closed he followed a unfamiliar posted detour route. Along the way he passed a Sheriff car which was parked at an intersection. The car pulled out and began to follow him, knowing he had done nothing wrong he continued along his way. After a couple of miles he came across a slow moving car and when he reached a passing zone proceeded to pass. The police car passed also and turned on it's flashing lights. The man pulled over and asked, "why he was being stopped?" The officer said he had crossed the center line while passing the slower vehicle. "So?" he replied. The sheriff informed him under State law She was allowed to pull over any vehicle which crossed the center line regardless of why. She then asked him if he had been drinking. The man replied that he had had exactly one drink an hour or so ago at his last delivery stop. She then asked him to exit the truck and told him he was under arrest. "For what?" he replied. She responded that he had just confessed to driving under the influence, she handcuffed him and placed him in the back seat of her police car.
Meanwhile several other officers had arrived and began to search the delivery van opening all the boxes of product still in the truck. The officer returned with his money pouch with his daily collection of cash and checks totaling a couple thousand dollars and questioned him about where the funds had come from. He told her his trip sheet and invoices were in the van but she said she wasn't interested, and that he would have his chance in court to prove where the money came from as she was confiscating it. . Mean while he was given a remote breathalyzer test by another officer, which detected no alcohol on his breath. He was then told he was being arrested for carrying a concealed weapon because they had found a baseball bat behind the seat. Eventually after being detained for two hours and talking to her superior and threatening to sue everybody involved in this fiasco he was released and all his property returned.
NEW MEXICO FAMILY SUES IN BOGUS RAID
Mary Schultz and Leland Elder, retired florists of Mountainair, NM, are seeking an apology from authorities who issued a search warrant for their home. The warrant pointed to an "irrigation system," "marijuana-like" foliage and thermal imaging surveillance as evidence of a "massive marijuana-production operation." The DEA, BATF, Forest Service and National Guard descended on the property with automatic weapons, a helicopter and a "tank-like vehicle." Elder and Schultz were handcuffed and thrown to the ground. A half-mile away, the door to a trailer they rent out was kicked in, and tenant Sina Brush and her young daughter were rousted from their beds half-naked, handcuffed and held face down at gun point. After an extensive search, the suspicious foliage turned out to be sunflowers, geraniums and marigolds. Elder and Schultz sued for $1 million, but a federal court ruled that the agencies involved were immune from prosecution. The court held that the couple could sue the specific agents who assaulted them, if they could identify them - and they couldn't. With legal redress blocked, the couple is still seeking an apology. "We're angry as hell, and hurt that our government can do this - but after what happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco, I guess we should be glad to be alive," says Elder. Scripps-Howard News Service, Sept. 14, 1995..
Post by Ronald E. Gascon.
Pot smokers find themselves increasingly confronted with the indignity of mandatory drug testing, One hopes that our airline pilots aren't flying whacked out on sinsemilla, but the piss testing of video-store clerks is absurd. What's more, testing can have terrible consequences. When 24-year-old Angela Jenkins of Houston, Texas, was in labor with her second child, Sylvan, last September she was given a drug test which came up positive for pot. (Her doctor, she says, explained that blood tests for drug use were standard procedure for expectant mothers lacking insurance or prenatal care. ) Jenkins had admitted to using marijuana once during her pregnancy to relieve stomach cramps, two days before going into labor. Both Sylvan and his 15-month-old brother Bishop were taken from Jenkins and her common-law husband, Aaron Asher, 23, by Children's Protective Services. This was on the grounds of child abuse, based on the blood test.
March 29 1997 MCKEES ROCKS Pa. Fully armed DEA agents terrified around 30 young children when they burst through the bushes during an Easter egg hunt in progress on the way to a drug bust. None of the children age 4-10 were charged. Police said the raid was by the book. It seems there are no rules against traumatizing grade school children during a drug bust.
Nancy Wall, is one of the best/worst examples I know of abuse of forfeiture laws. Her husband and son were forced to plea bargain with no drugs in evidence.
PARAPLEGIC HOSPITALIZED AFTER RAID
Florida paraplegic Charles Inscor was breathing through an oxygen machine when a Pinellas County SWAT team shattered his window, put a gun to his head and - despite a "No Smoking" sign warning that an oxygen machine was in use - blew up a smoke bomb. Then they realized they were at the wrong house. The suspect was black: Inscor is white. Gasping for breath, Inscor was taken to the hospital. The sheriff's dept. agreed to pay the hospital bill. Tampa Tribune, March 18, 1995.Charles and Dorothy Smith of Valparaiso, IN, are suing a local multi-county drug task force for $1 million for ransacking their empty home while they were away on vacation. Police left the house open with smashed-down doors after realizing that they were at the wrong address.
Munster Times, Feb. 11, 1995
Karen Messer of Springfield, OH, is suing for $1 million after local and state police with drawn guns raided her home and threatened to take her two children away if they found anything. Police obtained the warrant on the basis of high electricity usage and thermal imaging surveillance at the Messer home, but found no pot. Messer attributes the electricity usage to four air conditioners, four TV's and a washer and dryer. Police insist the warrant was valid. Cox News Service, Aug. 13, 1995Cop admits they are not looking for drugs, they want Cash...
12/27/95, Los Angeles, CA, LA Times. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, beset in recent years by charges of racial discrimination and harassment, was accused Tuesday of falsely arresting and routinely planting evidence on minority group members in heavily black and Latino communities. Aurora Alonso Mellado, a five-year deputy says that in seven weeks of being trained as a patrol deputy last summer, she found that her trainer was "engaging in illegal activities, including planting evidence, using throwaway guns, transferring drugs, assaulting and battery of civilians, and violating of suspects' civil rights." The race- related allegations are reminiscent of testimony by a lead prosecution witness in a string of federal cases in recent years involving drug money skimming. Robert R Sobel testified that as a former sheriff's sergeant in Lynwood and nearby communities, he frequently arrested African Americans who were simply walking the streets and had committed no crime. Sobel later acknowledged in court lying more than 100 times in his testimony in such cases.
