i'm always suspicious of these kinds of raids, but i'm still seeing radically divergent accounts (http://volokh.com/posts/1220218012.shtml) of what was going on, so although i'm unnerved by the behavior of the police i'm a little hesitant to pass judgment until the dust settles and some actual facts emerge.
i'm also not sure what the list of searched and seized items shows. there are plenty of non-incriminating, legal, useful items that the police are still with in their rights to search for and seize (with a warrant, at least) if there's probable cause to think that the people or premises being searched are involved in putting those items to illegal uses. (to pick a simple example, in most places in the U.S. i'm permitted, subject to certain regulations, to keep a firearm in my residence, but, assuming i have a completely legal firearm, if i'm a suspect in a shooting then the state is pretty clearly within its rights to search for and seize said firearm to do some basic forensic stuff with it.)
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-31 10:41 pm (UTC)i'm also not sure what the list of searched and seized items shows. there are plenty of non-incriminating, legal, useful items that the police are still with in their rights to search for and seize (with a warrant, at least) if there's probable cause to think that the people or premises being searched are involved in putting those items to illegal uses. (to pick a simple example, in most places in the U.S. i'm permitted, subject to certain regulations, to keep a firearm in my residence, but, assuming i have a completely legal firearm, if i'm a suspect in a shooting then the state is pretty clearly within its rights to search for and seize said firearm to do some basic forensic stuff with it.)
that said, this does appear pretty creepy.