It’s cordite.

The good news is they always shoot the dog or anything that smells like one.

And the SWAT snipers have a range even farther (and if someone gets in the way, meh, collateral damage). At least we stopped those kids from smokin pot!

The 4th Amendment used to mean something and it has been erroded to nothing. And that is not a good thing.

That’s why.

I got yelled at by my mom because I told her I was going to teach my daughter not to trust police officers. The majority of people still think that the police are always right — even if they’re violating peoples’ rights, it’s okay, so long as they get the bad guy (just look at all the hand-wringing that goes on when someone “gets off on a technicality”).

We do we tollerate this abuse?

Regardless if they find weed or not.

Its all a total sham, the deck is completely stacked in the favor of the state.

Isn’t that redundant?

“In a fascinating opinion from Alaska, the U.S. District Court concludes that the defendant satisfied his burden of proof in a Franks challenge that an Alaska State Trooper could not have smelled a marijuana grow operation from at least 450′ away from the house in the Mat-Su valley at night in winter as alleged in the affidavit for a search warrant for defendant’s house. Without that information, the motion to suppress is granted, and Leon does not apply to Franks challenges. The USMJ’s R&R is rejected. [The defense called a human smell expert, and, reading between the lines, the government’s cross-examination of the smell expert likely inadvertently demolished the credibility of the Alaska State Trooper.] United States v. Thoms, 3:10-cr-00069 JWS (D. Alaska April 22, 2011) (order from Anchorage Daily News website, all thanks to a reader from Alaska):

Thoms also offered the testimony of Dr. David Doty (“Doty”). Doty is the director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has published over 170 peer-reviewed articles in various fields. He edited, contributed to, and is “best known” for The Handbook of Olfaction and Gustation, a highly regarded work in the “chemical sense field.” Doty helped develop the University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test, which is “sort of the gold standard for smell testing.” He was qualified as an expert on smell and taste detection and smell detection capabilities. Doty ultimately opined that there was a “zero” probability that Young smelled marijuana as he claimed.”

So the search may not be too hard to justify in hindsight (at least at a qi level), whether it turns out you had any drugs or not. The police will give you back your coffee and your camera and your computers after all the legal proceedings are concluded.

“I thought I saw a gun” and “I was afraid for my life so I emptied my clip into an unarmed man.

The police will lie, cheat, steal, intimidate and assault any one at any time to get a conviction. That is how they get paid…

Well, that is how they get their rocks off.