Got my front door open. Did some shoveling. Took some pictures. Today we have a bright winter sun. It’s beautiful on the snow, if a bit blinding. Hoping to get to Old Town before the Super Bowl this evening to snap some more pics.

On to the links . . .

• This picture should be a poster.
• From the files of great newspaper corrections.
• DEA agent accused of working with informant to frame innocent people is acquitted on all counts. Amazing how trustworthy these informants are when they’re being used against regular people, and how shady they become when they start accusing law enforcement of misconduct.
• New York City police no longer using flash bang grenades. This is a good thing.
• Puppycide in Colorado. I’ve made this point before, but how is that this “vicious” dog never bit or attacked a mailman, a deliver man, or a meter reader?
• Conjure your inner Paul Oakenfold. And waste an afternoon. The thing is pretty great, until it starts to drive you batty.
• Federal agent driving SUV hits blogger for The Daily Caller, breaks his knee. Cops then lie on police report. More here.

Capitol Hill residents David and Allyson Kitchel tell local TV station WJLA that MPDC police recently raided their home looking for a suspect wanted on weapons charges. They say the raid caused $3,000 in damage. THe Kitchels bought the home from the suspect’s family 18 months ago. Police apparently raided the home after getting an address from the suspect’s mother, but didn’t bother to check public records to see if the house had been sold.

The Kitchels say when they asked the city to compensate them for the damage, they were declined. The city explained that “the warrant was authorized and valid,” and that  “MPD officers determined there was sufficient probable cause.”

So I guess as long as all the proper procedures were followed, the physical damage to the house is all in the Kitchels’ imagination. Good thing they don’t have an imaginary dog, too.

I suspect that now that the Kitchels’ story has hit the media, they’ll eventually be compensated. But it makes you wonder how many times this sort of thing happens in less affluent parts of the city, where residents are less likely to have their stories covered by the local news.

My crime column this week looks at the deaths of Tarika Wilson, Jonathan Ayers, and Gonzalo Guizan.

All three are drug war collateral damage.

Someone should send him a copy of Overkill.

Reminds me of the time Michael Ledeen attempted to illustrate how evil the ruling government in Iran is because, holy crap!, their narco cops wear masks when they conduct drug raids. Imagine!

Ryan Frederick’s appeal has been denied.

That’s sad for Frederick. It also seems likely now that we’ll never get that investigation into whether Chesapeake police were sending drug informants to break into private homes to get probable cause for search warrants.

For ten years, Boulder residents have staged a spontaneous “naked pumpkin run” on Halloween, in which dozens of runners (150 last year) don only shoes and a pumpkin on their head, then jog a four-block route through the city.

This year, however, Boulder police put an end to the revelry, stationing 40 cops and two SWAT teams along the route, which police chief Mark Beckner promising that anyone showing their, er, treats would land on the state’s sex offender list.

Looks like it worked. Just a few people did the run this year, and with sufficient clothing to ward off an arrest.

(Thanks to Sean McMahon for the tip.)

In my column on the police crackdown at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, I noted that one video circulating around the Internet showed a police unit of about 20 officers decked out in paramilitary garb parading around what appears to be a handcuffed protester. The kid is then propped up in front of the cops, who then pose with him while another cop snaps a photo.

We now know the police unit was from Chicago. They’d taken vacation time to provide freelance security, paid for by the city of Pittsburgh. The protester is Kyle Kramer, who was charged with failure to disperse and disorderly conduct, although he says he has yet to be formally notified of the charges. Like many of those arrested, Kramer appears to have been observing, not rioting. Excerpts from his interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Shortly after being arrested at the intersection of Fifth and Tennyson avenues around 11:20 p.m. on Sept. 25, Mr. Kramer, an English and writing major who hopes to become a journalist one day, was asked by one officer what he was majoring in.

When he told them, he said “They laughed and someone joked, ‘We’re going to give you plenty to write about tonight.’”…

“Things were happening so fast, and I didn’t know how I was going to be treated. The atmosphere was edgy, ominous, a little spooky and pretty interesting.”

There was a “weird rapport” between him and his arresting officer, “a big dude. He was kind of up and down, angry and then friendly.” When the officer told him to pose for the photo, he said, “I kind of gave him a little bit of an argument, but I told him I would be in the picture. It’s kind of hard to say how they would have reacted if I had said no.” Indeed, he said, “the only time I was really mad was when I was made to kneel like that. That made me mad. It was kind of a natural response, I guess.” At one point, he found himself discussing Chicago jazz clubs with the officer. “I figured if you can have some friendly conversation it’s a lot less likely you’ll be charged with anything extra,” although when he asked for the police officers’ names, he said, they laughed.

Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper said he had no intention of looking into the video, explaining he had “more important things” to investigate. He added that the photo could merely have been “the Chicago PD’s way of documenting the fact that they effected this arrest.”

Chicago Police Chief Jody Weiss appears more concerned. Last week, he announced that his department’s internal affairs division would investigate the incident.

Last month, I posted about Johnathan Ayers, a minister in Georgia who was killed by police who confronted him in the parking lot of a convenience store. Police said the target of their investigation was a prostitute who had been in Ayers car shortly before the confrontation. They say they shot Ayers because he struck an officer with his car. The officers who confronted Ayers were in plain clothes, and emerged from a black, unmarked SUV.

Now the woman, who was later arrested on drug charges, is talking. Kayla Barrett, a 26-year-old admitted drug addict, says Ayers had no involvement in drug activity, had tried for several years to help her get her life straightened out, and was helping her get home on the day of his death. She says she isn’t a prostitute, has never been charged with that crime, and is refuting insinuation on some comment threads to news stories that Ayers was having an affair with her. Barrett says she’d had a miscarriage 11 days before Ayers was killed, and was “not capable” of sex.

Here’s her account of the day Ayers died:

Barrett said Ayers saw her walking from the Exxon station across from the Shell station (where he eventually was shot) back toward Relax Inn, where she and her fiancé were staying.

Since she had experienced a miscarriage 11 days prior and she visibly was having difficulty walking, Barrett said Ayers offered her a ride back to the motel.

“I was in his car for probably about five to seven minutes – and it was probably 20-30 minutes before he got shot,” Barrett said.

“When I got in the car, I was telling him about my recent miscarriage,” she said.

Barrett said she was paying $30 per day to stay at Relax Inn and, on Sept. 1, was three days behind. Her fiancé, who was staying there with her, had hurt his back and was unable to work, she said.

She said they had been doing “odd jobs” and “yard work” to make money.

Barrett said she asked Ayers if he could help her out with the back rent, and that he gave “all the money he had on him” – $23.

“His last words to me were I didn’t owe him anything,” Barrett said. “Probably 15-20 minutes after that I could hear the shots.”

Giving Barrett the last of his cash would explain why Ayers stopped off at the Exxon ATM in the moments before his death.

My crime column this week is on the police response to the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

MORE: Check out this video. Everything up to the macing is terrifying enough. But then there’s the macing.

So as it turns out, even the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has its own SWAT team.

You don’t need to know. You can’t know.” That’s what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search.

The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris’ longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with – get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.

That’s right. Orchids.

By March 2004, federal prosecutors were well on their way to turning 66-year-old retiree George Norris into an inmate in a federal penitentiary – based on his home-based business of cultivating, importing and selling orchids..

Mr. Norris ended up spending almost two years in prison because he didn’t have the proper paperwork for some of the many orchids he imported. The orchids were all legal – but Mr. Norris and the overseas shippers who had packaged the flowers had failed to properly navigate the many, often irrational, paperwork requirements the U.S. imposed when it implemented an arcane international treaty’s new restrictions on trade in flowers and other flora.

The judge who sentenced Mr. Norris had some advice for him and his wife: “Life sometimes presents us with lemons.” Their job was, yes, to “turn lemons into lemonade.”

Or just wait for the inevitable SWAT team to come and smash them for you.