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Comment by ss108 | Hacker News Reader

More true at the local level than the Federal.

It very much can be. The sheriff in the county I grew up in used to search people's property without a warrant and they weren't home. I remember my buddy's dad when I was a teen was growing a little marijuana deep in his cornfield. Buddy and I were home, his parents gone. Sheriff knocks on the door with the plants at his feet to tell us to tell his dad that he better not catch him growing anymore. I also remember others having similar experiences with them coming home to the sheriff looking through their sheds for a stolen ATV. No warrant, no nothing. And nobody ever did anything about him because he was too well connected with town leadership and county leadership. Small and rural areas can be heavily screwed up because the sheriff and many of the county commissioners or city councilmen or other people in local governance all went to highschool together. Nothing like an old good ol' boys network.

The sheriff definitely had the right to search the farm field, and possibly had the right to search in sheds without a warrant. I’m not a lawyer, but there is a Supreme Court case that defines what is and isn’t protected on someone’s property, the result of the case is the open fields doctrine. [0] Open fields are not protected by the 4th amendment, the shed may or may not have been protected.

This is related to the common law concept of ‘curtilage’. [1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hester_v._United_States

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtilage

It also sounds like the sherrif chose NOT to prosecute, and tried to handle the matter informally - I think this is just good policing unless it's only certain social or ethnic groups that get the benefit of the doubt in these kind of circumstances

The thing about that is at least you have the feds to report to. If you have enough people file complaints with the FBI and DOJ, they should end up looking into it. Usually the local guys don't have connections that deep.

On the other side, if it's just one or two complaints, then they won't do anything.

Absolutely, most likely nobody can make a call on corruption % but the FBI seems to make arrests in the low 10s of thousands / year max at the highest[0] while the total number of arrests tends to be ~10M minimum in a normal year

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/745456/number-of-fbi-arr... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191261/number-of-arrests...

Here’s a story about the FBI stealing $80 million after lying to a judge:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-23/fbi-beve...

Here is one anecdote in contradiction? ok

(fair enough, since it's not like I provided any support either lol)

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