cannabisnews.com: Warrant Served At Wrong House  





Warrant Served At Wrong House  
Posted by FoM on March 10, 2000 at 14:26:14 PT
By The Associated Press 
Source: MSNBC
Four teen-agers got a surprise when law enforcement officers arrived at their house, handcuffed them and began a search for drugs. It turns out police had the wrong house.Now the Washington County District Attorney’s Office Drug Task Force is conducting an internal investigation to figure out what went wrong.
    The task force, with help from the Bartlesville Police Department and the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, arrived about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday at a home in northwest Bartlesville, sheriff’s spokesman Todd Mathes said.   The four teens in the home allowed the officers inside. Three of the occupants had been handcuffed before a sheriff’s deputy realized that the officers were in the wrong house, Mathes said.   “While they were handcuffing them, a deputy noticed the address on the house was not the address on the search warrant,” he said. “He went back inside and told them to uncuff them and then we explained the situation to them and went on our way.   No one was injured and no property was damaged, he said.  The occupant of the correct home, 21-year-old Kenneth Earl Dixon, surrendered to county authorities Thursday and was jailed on a complaint of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, Mathes said.   District Attorney Rick Esser said his office was analyzing the incident to see whether any policy changes are needed. Bartlesville, Okla. (AP) Published: March 10, 2000   © 2000 Associated Press. CannabisNews Articles On Search Related Topics Over 600:http://www.google.com/search?q=cannabisnews++search&num=10&sa=Google+Search
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Comment #3 posted by Tim Stone on March 10, 2000 at 21:22:19 PT
Heck, who knows what actually happened...
The article doesn't give much info really. It looks like it was written to sanitize and protect the cops. Usually when the cops screw up like this, they take their embarrassed frustration out on the innocent homeowner, sort of like getting really p.o.'d at yourself for making a mistake so you kick your dog. (No, I don't have a dog and if I did, I wouldn't kick it. It's a metaphor.) In this case, the cops are reported to have 'fessed up to their error very quickly and efficiently. Could be, but that's very un-cop-like. Cops are like banks: They don't make mistakes, even when they do. But the thing I love in the above report is the salient quote:"The four teens in the home allowed the officers inside."Yeah, right. If the cops had a search warrant, they didn't need permission to enter. So they probably had no warrant and used vague threats to get permission. The usual lazy cop tricks to get around the 4th Amendment against illegal search. The usual coerced "permission."This sort of bad bust is bad all around, for the citizens and the cops. And eventually the cops need to wise up and realize that the drug war brings them more woe than yo. 
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Comment #2 posted by dddd on March 10, 2000 at 18:47:32 PT
pizza
This just goes to prove how routine and wreckless these home invasions by law enforcment are.Even the pizza delivery guy can get an address right....dddd
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on March 10, 2000 at 18:27:19 PT:
See sheriff read. Read, sheriff, read... before 
you kill someone with your ignorant zealotry.'The four teens in the home allowed the officers inside. Three of the occupants had been handcuffed before a sheriff’s deputy realized that the officers were in the wrong house, Mathes said. “While they were handcuffing them, a deputy noticed the address on the house was not the address on the search warrant,” he said. “He went back inside and told them to uncuff them and then we explained the situation to them and went on our way.''Explained the situation'. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that one!The wrong address? The proper one was on the warrant and they did't catch it until they had the cuffs on the kids? My God, what if the sheriffs had the idea that the occupants were dangerous, and decided to barge in with guns blazing? This is why social promotion in public schools is such a bad thing; borderline illiterates (or perhaps dyslexics; either way, they shouldn't be allowed to have weapons if they are so afflicted!) are allowed to graduate into society. Some are placed in positions of authority where their mistakes could have tragic results. Given the propensity for DrugWarriors to resort to 'kill 'em all, let God decide' tactics, I hope those kids realize just how lucky they were not to end up as more 'collateral damage'. 
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