The road goes on forever and the party never ends, I reckon.

A friend of mine is a bank director in Belen, NM.  He owns a number of investment properties, which he rents out.

A couple of months ago, the State Police, Sheriff and city police kicked the doors down on one of his rent houses, did a drug search, tore everything up properly..... didn't find the meth lab the warrant had them searching for...

So Sid, my bud, did all the repairs himself.... door frames destroyed, cabinets torn off, doors broken, carpet, the works.

Materials only cost him $1200 to make the repairs to the damage they deliberately did to search for drugs that didn't exist.

They could have served the warrant by knocking on the door, having a cop watching the back door, covering all exits.  But it wouldn't have involved breaking anything.  Where's the fun of that.

Jack

  KYMY......I TOO hope "999" comes out for you in Kentuky.....(BTW...how much would you win)???

HAPPY MONDAY AUG...22ND TO ALL MY HAPPY FELLOW GAMBLERS....HOPE EVERYONE IS WELL...

RJOH....you sound great...."RIP and CHEWIE" are obviously doing very well.....I see you are still  ripping each other apart and chewing each other to death.......I'm LOVIN IT.....(BTW) "RIP" I must correct something you said about (caffeine free/decaffinated coffee) you called it fake coffee. Actually, it's not fake coffee at all, it's genuine coffee.....ie SANKA....it's still coffee, made with coffee beans, they simply removed 90-95% of the caffeine from it.  This applies to decaffeinated FOLDGERS, MAXWELL HOUSE....ect......And you can make them as strong as you like......

"RIP".......WHAT the Sheriff and Police did  to your Friends property was an absolute obomination......and "They should be held responsible by the LAW to reimburse him for ALL DAMAGES.......Afterall, how can they expect the civilian populaiton to respect the laws if they themseleves don't respect  and uphold it???????

Hi libra:

Sorry for the coffee faux pas ... or whatever it was.  I'm thinking of going to some sort of ersatz coffee I used to drink a long time ago.... I think it must be made from burned bread crumbs or something.  Postum, it was called.  But I'd like to get away from the high dollar end of caffeine addiction.  Those Columbian cartels will be drifting over into the coffee end of things if the price keeps skyrocketing.

I don't know whether Chewie's ripping me up, or he isn't.  I quit reading his posts so as to not be tempted to devote further thought to his world view.  Fired a Parthian arrow with a blog entry and sent an entire sphere of human opinion off to never-never land in one fell swoop.

I love that new feature.  It's a bit like wearing a surgical mask over your face when there's plague stalking the land.  The surgical mask also hides the grin underneath.

Jack

What they did was legal.  The war on drugs legislation of several years ago opened the door for a wider range of behavior in serving search warrants without announcing ones self.  The door opened further with various Patriot Act passages.

Nowadays they can do just about what they want.

.......Afterall, how can they expect the civilian populaiton to respect the laws if they themseleves don't respect  and uphold it???????

They're clearly expecting the apathy of the people who believe it will never happen to them to keep things firing on all eight.  In addition to that, there's the fear response that will kick in if they begin doing it enough to wake the sheep.  Nobody will want to say anything for fear they'll be next.  (This is actually fairly smart behavior, even today.  I wish I had sense enough to practice what I preach)

Then, there's the major segment of the population that just figures they wouldn't have kicked the door down if they didn't think something was in there, and you can't make an omlet without breaking some eggs.  Justifiable to sacrifice a few rights if we can catch a few more drug dealers.

That's the way my bud, Sid, felt until it happened to him.

Jack

rip is it true they are not responsible for damage for the breaking in to the wrong house"

it did not used to be that wway

The warrant was legal and they served it according to the current requirements of the law.  The fact they found nothing illegal going on after  they trashed the place had nothing to do with legality.  They didn't have any responsibility for putting it back the way it was before, nor for paying to do it.  Sid talked to his insurance agent, but this circumstance evidently wasn't covered.

Can't make an omlet without breaking some eggs.

Happens quite a bit along the interstate out here.  They'll stop a rental moving van, decide it needs searching, arrest the driver if they find anything, leave the guy with all his stuff piled around him beside the road if they don't.  They have more important things to do than loading moving vans.

That's life in the brave new world.

Jack

oh the sacrifices we make to live in a country such as this.

have lived in other countries like this one much better.

i think an earlier post said it  we keep quiet hoping they will not notice us

Pays off sometimes.

My old friend, Mel King, and I got over a hundred bales of hay from a deal of that sort once.

A tractor trailer rig was carrying a stash of jade under the hay, up toward the front of the trailer.  The cops unloaded all the hay to get to it, arrested the driver, confiscated the truck and left the hay piled beside the Interstate.

Mel and I were down at the cafe a few days later sitting at a booth across from a bunch of highway department guys who were arguing over who had to move that hay.  We joshed with them a while about it and finally offered to go get it if we could have it.

We got about a hundred bales before other people decided they'd like some.  Wasn't real good hay, but the price was right.  We came back for another load and there was nothing but straw.

I was at the State auction at Santa Fe when they auctioned off the truck..... it went cheap....$7000.  There was also a big late model confiscated RV that went for $5000 and some change.  But the newspaper told a week or two later about a guy who bought a van at that auction, drove it about a week and thought he was smelling weed.  Took out the seat and found 40 pounds of high grade the police had missed.

He took it to them, pretty miffed about it.  Asked them what they'd have done if he hadn't found it and they caught him with it.  They said he'd almost surely have gone to prison.

Life's full of ups and downs.

Jack

But, you're definitely right.

You don't have to go far outside US borders to find it worse, or as bad.  My impression is that Canada's okay, but I couldn't stand the cold.  Britain's probably not too bad, but you'd have to put up with Brits.  Aussies, even they don't like the politics down there.  Everywhere else is full of people from everywhere else....  I'll live out my years in the US if they let me.

Jack