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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> Having cops invade her home and hold her children at gunpoint didn’t scare her into becoming his scapegoat, so it’s important to escalate the campaign of violence against her.

You make it sound like the police broke into her home and deliberately pointed weapons at her children. That’s completely bullshit.

The police had a warrant signed by a judge. They repeatedly asked her to open the door, she refused. This went on for over 20 minutes. When they eventually did get inside, they’re entering a premise where the suspect had already demonstrated to not be cooperating and it’s standard practice to enter with your weapon drawn.

You could argue with whether the warrant itself is justified. But the police did everything the way they’re supposed to and the only person who put those children at risk was the mother who refused to cooperate with a legally signed warrant.

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The cops aren’t wild animals. They should have the ability to figure out whether or not a web developer/data scientist at home with warrants for nonviolent allegations is worth drawing a gun in a house with children in it.

We need to hold cops to a higher standard of behavior.

Fun fact: when the police needed to find a judge to evaluate the strength of their warrant, the one they found was a family court judge brand new to the bench, whose signature in her warrant literally being the first one he signed in his career. They understand it makes it abundantly clear that they are engaged in a witch hunt, but communicating threats of state violence against whistleblowers is a much more important priority than the semblance of justice.

> The cops aren’t wild animals.

Sadly, when you give people a stick and tell them they are allowed to beat other people with it, at least some of them tend to start behaving a bit like wild animals. It’s sad, but seemingly unavoidable.

Be that as it may, spinning the story as involving the cops "holding her children at gunpoint" is a wild distortion and indicates the low quality of discussion that this issue has generated.

In Florida, even web developers are allowed to own guns. It sounds like the cops kept a level head and didn't shoot anybody. This was probably pretty routine for Florida cops.

This particular warrant case is not being searched for any violent behavior and has no history of violence, with the warrant happening in a place with no history of violence or abuse. There is no reason to be pulling guns in a home with children as soon as one enters it.

It shouldn’t be routine to draw weapons in a place where there is no reason to presume weapons exist.

It being Florida is enough reason to presume guns might be present in the house. Note that contrary to the expectations of many foreigners, Florida does not have a list of all Floridians who own guns. In fact it's actually illegal for the state to create such a list.

The children seem to be irrelevant; if children weren't in the house I doubt you'd suddenly be fine with what the cops did, so the presence of children doesn't contribute to your point. Furthermore some of the narratives about what happened are greatly exaggerating the situation, claiming that cops pointed guns in the faces of children. I've seen no evidence of this happening, so I think some people are cynically pointing to the children in an attempt to emotionally manipulate others. I don't see any other reason to mention the kids. They simply aren't relevant to the story.

> In fact it's actually illegal for the state to create such a list.

To elaborate on this a little bit, NO state in the US has such a list - not one worth a damn, that is. For instance, NY recently mandated the registration of all "assault weapons" in the state, but compliance there is estimated to be in the single-digit percent range. (1m+ applicable weapons, ~45,000 registrations - the definition is really broad and includes essentially everything semiautomatic with a detachable magazine) These weapons were previously legal to own/buy/sell/transfer, and would continue to be legal to own if registered - and registration still didn't crack 10%.

Extrapolate to people that the police are likely to deal with in an adversarial manner, and you can see that a DB entry showing "no guns at 123 Main Street" is absolutely worthless.

She didn’t know if she was being arrested and was in pajamas. I’ve read of other famous people being given plenty of time (in FL) to get ready before a search warrant is executed. Considering what we know about Florida and what is happening there with COVID and it’s reporting, I am willing to give her the benefit of doubt. Plus the pretext of the warrant is bad. “Cops just doing their job” doesn’t matter when it is a politically motivated state actor. They are the state and a part of the machine being used to violate her rights.

Fighting against the state is like skipping boulders on water. You're gonna need a massive amount of momentum behind it to get it to work.

>I’ve read of other famous people being given plenty of time (in FL)

I wouldn't call it an injustice that she wasn't granted some sort of special treatment that's normally reserved for "famous people".

It’s more about fair and equal treatment, whatever that is. The hypocrisy of modern policing is extreme. Should she have been given more or less time? Clearly give different treatment to some people. The law is supposed to be impartial. And in a case that is already political suppression of first amendment rights, it stands out.

The only person who put those children at risk was the mother who refused to cooperate with a legally signed warrant.

Wow, let's extend that reasoning just a bit further. If someone SWATs me (or pulls strings to get a warrant for my arrest), and I don't open the door immediately, I bear the responsibility for putting my family at risk?

Swatting first of all is a crime. Secondly yes, you do need to comply, even if you are innocent. Otherwise you will get shot.

Nobody is denying it's government overreach, blatant disregard to our rights, and breaks the 4th amendment. But wool should've been over everyone's eyes like 10 years ago. The US acts no different than China in how the state allows government abuse of power to fuck you bureaucratically. Unlike places like Germany where the state compensates you for your time and money if they can't prove your criminality, also reserving your job as well unless convicted; The US just says fuck you but only with slightly more rights than China gives their citizens.

Immediately? She had over 20 minutes of knocking and a few phone calls in that period. People should watch the video and think about how long of a time 20 minutes is. They’ll most likely even find it boring and start skipping ahead to more knocking without a response.

> She had over 20 minutes of knocking and a few phone calls in that period.

So what? If somebody is knocking on my door, in the middle of the night, claiming to be a police officer, then making phone calls to verify that is 100% reasonable. If I had just been fired for politically motivated reasons, then making phone calls to alert the media when your home is being raided is 100% reasonable.

> They’ll most likely even find it boring and start skipping ahead to more knocking without a response.

Police are allowed to be bored. Police are allowed to sit outside a house and wait. It does them no harm, and does not justify them using additional force when serving the warrant.

It was a sunny morning, not the middle of the night. Obviously that's a minor detail, but it's indicative of a larger problem - there's been a big game of telephone on the actual circumstances of this raid, so your mental image of what happened may be different than what the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of7ITokML-A) shows.

Is the timestamp on that video accurate? T13:26 sounds like the early afternoon, not even the morning let alone late at night.

T13:26:00Z

Z is for "Zulu" time zone (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9706688/what-does-the-z-...)

So hour 13:00 in Z would be 8:00 am in Florida.

Good point, and thank you. The relevant pieces that I had remembered were that there was a police raid for a non-violent crime, and was emphasizing that that is not an urgent issue. It's the same way that if you see police lights pulling you over on a deserted road, you should call to verify that it is a legitimate officer.

Don't Americans have the right for their lawyer or a trusted witness to be present during search warrants? If they do, why would police ever expect to enter without delay?

No, they don’t.

Are there other countries where it works that way? It's hard for me to see how a standard where you don't even have to come outside until your lawyer gets there would work; what would stop people from using the waiting time to destroy all the evidence the police came for?

Because the burden is on the State and we're under no obligation to help them. They're job is not supposed to be easy.

Coming from a place where search warrants do have be executed with the oversight of the owner or their representative, police would still expect to enter without delay.

In a situation like this there may be a pause until the owner or lawyer arrives, but during that pause the people would not be permitted to be in the to-be-searched location without police supervision; the owner has the right to supervise police while they are searching, but they don't have any privacy right to do stuff there before letting the police in; if the lawyer's presence is required then whoever is in that location would let the police in and wait for the lawyer together with the police officers with neither doing anything until the search commences. If noone is present, then the police may seal the door while they wait for the owner or their representative to arrive; or, alternatively (e.g. if the owner is on the run), there is a process to recruit neutral witnesses from the community, e.g. having your neighbours supervise the search and sign off on what was taken out during the search.

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