TheAgitator.com
We’ve Come to Inspect Your Castle
Monday, July 21st, 2008A proposal in Britain would give authorities more than 1,000 reasons to enter private homes for regulatory/”behavioral” inspections.
In fact they’ve already tried this in a few places here in the U.S. And the general tactic of disguising criminal searches as regulatory inspections–particularly at bars and nightclubs–is increasingly common.
In NJ there is a talk of allowing police to go onto a property where a party is allegedly going on to determine if there is underage drinking and characterizing it as a “health and welfare” inspection. The scheme is to allow for this in a municipal ordinance so it will be a town by town thing. I found out about it by eavesdropping on two high ranking members of my county’s Republican and Democratic parties in a courthouse lounge room (the two party system, hooray!). I interrupted them to ask about the 4th Amendment considerations (and Article 1 Section 7 of the NJ Constitution). They both reacted like I had kicked their dog saying, “Oh those aren’t even implicated in an administrative action like this.” I just said, “Well, okay. If you say so.” Now I await my first case where this b.s. is used for an excuse to enter private property. I would be very surprised if a NJ Applellate Court let’s this fly.
The article on the Buffalo Clean Sweep operation was an absolute gem. Government goons caught in their own thinly-veiled pretexts, so-called journalists not doing their jobs, citizens knowing they are being trod upon, etc., etc., etc.
From that piece:
[quote]I told several people about Niederhoffer’s remark that the police were trying to send a message that this was “not the third world.”
“If this isn’t the third world,” said Jessica Ramirez, “then why are you violating my rights? This is America. You can’t do things like this.[/quote]
Bingo! I wonder how many of the government employees in that article have as firm a grasp on the fundamental issues? They didn’t do a poll, but it kinda sounded like zero…
is the site not working? my comment disappeared into hyperspace.
shoot, i wanted to post a link to a scanned document i received but it wouldnt post. lets try it without the htt…
bayimg.com/eajDjaabp
i came home to an apt i was living at 7 years ago and found that taped to my door.
[...] is what lack of respect for private property leads to. Link via Radley Balko’s blog. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and [...]
Reminds me of the euphemistically-dubbed “health and welfare” inspections of my Army days. While I was attending the Defense Language Institute, it was under the pretense of such an inspection that the Army was supposedly able to bust all those gay linguists, or so we believed.
Wow, I totally just wrote that before reading TomMil’s posting.
Read the article… it’s not a proposal. That’s how many laws there are, now, that let government goons to wander in and wander around warrantless.
Claude: that’s crazy! What was the outcome?
Steve’s right. It’s not a proposal, that’s the state of the law currently.
Some are entirely sensible (the gas company needs a policeman present to enter your home to check for a gas leak, but not a warrant) and others are not: the right to inspect your pot plants for odd insects.