re: #287 Mattand

Sorry, I think six cops was excessive. And Mr. Catalano should have asked for a warrant. Although as I wrote earlier, that probably would have pissed off the cops. They tend not to like it when you bring up rights to them.

I agree six cops is excessive from an efficiency perspective, but otherwise I care a lot more about how they acted, and they didn’t act in any unscrupulous manner. They were, in fact, very restrained. I’d rather have six cops wandering through my apartment looking at books but not going into the two locked rooms then one cop on the street patting my body down.

In this case, the guy got lucky by not asking for a warrant, because they weren’t pre-convinced he’d done something. As invasive searches go, this is nothing. Compared to a no-knock served on the wrong address, compared to one pot dealer getting his door kicked in on evidence given by another pot dealer, this is really not a big deal. It seems to me it’s only a big deal from a really, really middle-class perspective, and I’m not saying that to be harsh to you at all, just that the cops showing up and being super-polite and not searching all the rooms or all the people in the house is really not a very invasive or intimidating search.