In April 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte, their 7-year-old daughter and their 13-year-old son. The couple, both former CIA analysts, awoke to pounding at the door. When Robert Harte answered, SWAT agents flooded the home. He was told to lie on the floor. When Addie Harte came out to see what was going on, she saw her husband on his stomach as SWAT cop stood over him with a gun. The family was then held at gunpoint for more than two hours while the police searched their home. Though they claimed to be looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation, they later stated that they knew within about 20 minutes that they wouldn’t find any such operation. So they switched to search for evidence of “personal use.” They found no evidence of any criminal activity.
The investigation leading to the raid began at least seven months earlier, when Robert Harte and his son went to a gardening store to purchase supplies to grow hydroponic tomatoes for a school project. A state trooper had been positioned in the store parking lot to collect the license plate numbers of customers, compile them into a spreadsheet, then send the spreadsheets to local sheriff’s departments for further investigation. Yes, merely shopping at a gardening store could make you the target of a criminal drug investigation.
More than half a year later, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department began investigating the Hartes as part of “Operation Constant Gardener,” basically a PR stunt in which the agency conducts multiple pot raids on April 20, or “4/20.” On several occasions, the Sheriff’s Department sent deputies out to sort through the family’s garbage. (The police don’t need a warrant to sift through your trash.) The deputies repeatedly found “saturated plant material” that they thought could possibly be marijuana. On two occasions, a drug testing field kit inexplicably indicated the presence of THC, the active drug in marijuana. It was on the basis of those tests and Harte’s patronage of a gardening store that the police obtained the warrant for the SWAT raid.
The rest is at WaPo
I wonder what the significance of conducting the raids on Adolf Hitler’s birthday is?
In Chi., in the ’70, no knock, spray all the rooms with M16, kill everything and than search. cops love to kick in doors, shoot dogs and play macho. trooper are no better, mentality of the gastop. cannabis is very specific and in a routine check will cross with various OTC and medical products. mass spec and gas chromatography is the only way to determine a final result. state bci labs are npt the not the brightest rock in the box.
D.J. Is your point that Red State Conservatives and their elected officials got nothing better to do?
Up until I moved to Utah this would have surprised me.
But…..
The exact same thing is done near places that serve alcohol here in Utah, especially in Cottonwood Heights (near where I live.)
Police see people leaving these places and follow them.
They pull them over and test their alcohol blood level.
Eventually these businesses either move out of Cottonwood Heights or go out of business.
The courts side with the businesses that this is harassment. But these Mormon cops just cannot seem to help themselves. Their state is turning majority non-Mormon and it is killing them!