Fucking Cops: Volume II

[The Grand Nudger]

“Law-abiding tea drinkers and gardeners beware: One visit to a garden store and some loose tea leaves in your trash may subject you to an early morning, SWAT-style raid, complete with battering ram, bulletproof vests, and assault rifles,” Lucero wrote. “Perhaps the officers will intentionally conduct the terrifying raid while your children are home, and keep the entire family under armed guard for 2 ½ hours while concerned residents of your quiet, family-oriented neighborhood wonder what nefarious crime you have committed. This is neither hyperbole nor metaphor – it is precisely what happened to the Harte family in the case before us on appeal.”

So sayeth the Tenth Circuit Judge in a Kansas appeal. More gems from the story....

The Hartes don’t fit the profile of typical neighborhood weed dealers. In fact, both were former CIA employees with high-level security clearance. Robert took on the role of a stay-at-home dad while Adlynn worked as an attorney. Lucero made note of the officers’ lack of investigation into the couple before the raid.

“The ‘investigation’ of the Hartes was nominal at best: Despite believing the Hartes had a marijuana grow operation somewhere in their home, the JCSO did not conduct surveillance, check utility records, look for fans or other alterations typically used to conceal grow operations, or notice the tomato garden readily visible through a front-facing basement window,” Lucero wrote. “There is also no evidence, aside from the apparent discovery of a traffic ticket, that anyone at the JCSO even conducted a background check on the Harte family.”
Officers searched the home for 2 ½ hours, holding the couple and their two children against their will. When they couldn’t find any drugs or paraphernalia, the officers suggested that the couple’s teenaged son may have a drug problem. And the field test used on the tea leaves turned out to have a 70 percent false positive rate.

The Hartes claim that officers lied about the field test results showing the tea leaves tested positive for THC, the principal ingredient in marijuana. Police failed to photograph the results and did not send the samples to a lab for confirmation, given the pressure to obtain warrants for the April 20 crackdown – facts not lost on Moritz.

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/kansas-swa...ral-judges
We're obviously dealing with professionals here......  So, initially, the fed shut them down on the grounds of "qualified immunity" in a 7 million dollar suit for damages and greivance, their appeal found a more sympathetic court.