Everything in life is a matter of priorities.... what matters more?
In this light, the so called "War on drugs" is a travisty and is largly responsiable for this pathatic degradation of rights and poorly planned and executed police practices.
While some police work has gotten better, other areas have gotten worse....It's not exactly the days of Police Reports that read : S.S.S.S (Saw Suspect Shot Same), but this is very bad... and I have experienced similar frist hand....
One evening in the early 90's when I was like 11 years old or so we got a loud knock on the front door, then another even louder... my dad had his headphones on listening to a Spurs game, and he's kind of hard of hearing anyway... so my sister goes to open the door as my mom and I are coming up the hall to the front of the house to see what all this noise is about. As she opens the door, my sister gets flung back about 8-10 feet to the upright piano and bench and falls onto it and the bench. Some crazy guy with a big white Texas mustache and some piece of paper comes charging into our living room...
By this time my mother and I get to the living room and my dad has noticed what it happening...I notice the 4 or so men behind him on our porch, a couple of them with some rather large guns, ... seemed like an assualt rifle to me, but I didn't know much about such guns at that age, but my memory put's a m-16 or m-4 there. So this 'crazy' guy starts rambling on about two guys he's looking for and waving around what I guess was some kind of wanted poster, or something,... there was a picture of two guys on it that I'd never seen, and of course didn't look like anyone I knew. I notice he has a badge of some sort, but not the shield I was used to seeing on cops (it was the Bexar county sheriff)...
So then my dad, with palms showing, approaches him and asks what this is all about. The sheriff talks about how he has a warrent for an address number that matches ours, but a street I've never heard of before. My dad attempts to explain that he has the wrong street, even though the number is the same.... The sheriff keeps asking about these guys as I notice other men with guns patroling the sides of our home. My dad countinues to explain that he has the wrong house as a couple of more guys enter our house, one with a big gun. They glance around our living room dining room and the hallway.
After another a minute or two, and a bunch of questions I don't recall, a local typical uniformed cop arrives. He makes his way through the men with guns to our living room and his explanation makes it clear to the sheriff that they have the wrong street. (I guess they couldn't even check the street signs, it is the second house from the corner). Anyway , a uniformed officers word seemed to finally convince them and they began to remove themselves from our home. However, on the way out, the sheriff still had the audacity to ask "have you seen these men?".
My sister was left with bruises from the experiance, being thrown back onto the piano and bench. I later discovered they had invaded the nehibors yards as well. Luckily they didn't invade the guest house where my visiting grandfather was. He is a retired bigtime cop for PA, I'm not sure if he would have been as.... understanding as my father (he is my mothers father) We never told my grandfather about it....
The house they had a warrent for we drove by a few months later just to try to understand (my parents proably dove by it before that, but it did help give me some peace of mind to understand...still a stupid mistake they made). The street they were looking for was across a set of railroad tracks, where there is no crossing... very residential. So the streets changes names at the tracks.... and heance there is another house with the same number "down the street" from where I grew up; accross the tracks and few more blocks. So they misread the map, and never even bothered to look at the street signs... like I said, it's the second house from the corner, and it has a sign.
To further explain how stupid it is in a 'class' context, though I try not to be a 'classist' or 'eliteist'.... you never see such things in the type of nehiborhood I grew up in. One of our nehibors yards they invaded was Col. Fuller's house, before he died(look him up with the battle of the bulge). I only barely remember his widow. But the pecan he planted in 1941 is AMAZING! It then belonged to a young couple with two very young daughters. I could proably name some other nehibors and have many texans know thier names.... but I say this to explain, raiding my families home like that was a horrible lapse of common sense and judgement.
This was bad enough as it was, if they had invaded my families home at 3am, I'm not sure my father wouldn't have found his .45 and shot them. It was only a couple of years before that we had been robbed, of family hierlooms from Germany, cameras, guns... and other random things.... we weren't exactly comfortable with people breaking in...and my father is hard of hearing.....
While my experiance was horrible IMHO and even THAT should be improved upon.... what is considered ok in a modren sense is pathetic.... and I fear if such policies had been in place when this happend to my family.... I wouldn't have the wonderful father I do........
You cops can tell me your experiance all you want.... but these methods are VERY, VERY bad.... What I've experianced was bad enough.
