Until a few days ago (when my computer was having some downtime and I was blogging erratically), I had never heard of Brett Kimberlin. (Just what he and the powers that be at Wikipedia want.) I have now read more about him than I care to read, and not only do I have a creepy feeling about people like that gaining influence and power (which reminds me of Bill Ayers/Bernadine Dohrn), but I also don’t like being told simultaneously that:
1. I have to write about Brett Kimberlin; and
2. If I do write about Brett Kimberlin, I will be raided by a SWAT team.
Excuse me?
I’ve been blogging for a little more than nine years, but I must ask a few basic questions.
This is the United States, right? I have an alleged life, right? This is my blog, right? I can write about whoever or whatever I want, whenever I want, right? No one has the right to dictate to me what to write about, what not to write about or when to write about it, right? I just want to be clear, because this morning I woke up with a galling feeling…
the United States is no longer a free country if I have to worry about being raided by a SWAT team because of something I said in a blog post.
As I said in an earlier post, this is a very serious situation, and it needs to be addressed. Brett Kimberlin is the issue right now, as Stacy McCain (who also says he was forced to leave his home because he wrote about Kimberlin) argues, but the idea that anyone who feels like doing so (anywhere in the world, apparently), should have the ability to sic a SWAT team on someone whose writing irritates them is an much larger underlying issue, and an utter outrage. It goes to the heart of our freedom. In that respect, I have a bone to pick with some people on the right, who think it’s perfectly OK for the police to raid your house on the basis of a phony phone call. It is not. Search warrants are supposed to be issued only on probable cause, and if these raids are conducted without proper verification (at a minimum, ensuring the identity of the person who made the call and that he is in fact the person he is claiming to be), then those raided — including Patterico, Erick Erickson, and a host of others who may be targeted in the future (and are making plans accordingly) — become victims of grossly improper police conduct. Police should not have the right to raid people’s houses because of a prank phone call, and if this is not nipped in the bud, it will get much worse.
Hell, it isn’t even June, and there’s an election in November.
What’s shocking about this is that the story has now become a major news item in the blogosphere. It can’t be ignored. I cannot ignore it, not just because it’s big news, but because I do not like being told that I risk a SWAT team raid by writing about it. Tell you what. If my writing this blog post brings on a SWAT team raid, then fine. Much as that would suck (and even though it is irresponsible of me to risk Coco getting shot), there is a larger duty to the First Amendment.
This is so simple it’s painful.
I am writing this blog post because it isn’t a free country if I can’t.
Comments
11 responses to “If they can SWAT free speech, our freedom is gone”
It’s a horrible thing. And worse, with the trickeries of telephone electronics (and the people that maintain them), it’s likely they’ll never figure out who actually hacked the calls. Unless they seriously slip up, and someone in law enforcement actually gives a proper damn about this.
I truly hope nothing happens to you and yours, Eric. I had harsh words in the other postings, but it was strictly to illustrate the point of how Evil this thing is to Simon. And it is Evil, with a capital E. Given the uncertainty of what a SWAT could do, it’s tantamount to attempted murder.
the United States is no longer a free country if I have to worry about being raided by a SWAT team because of something I said in a blog post.
Well, it would be so if the State sent a SWAT team to your house.
That some criminal jerk will commit a crime by falsely reporting a crime to get a good-faith response from the police to harrass you doesn’t make the nation not-free.
It makes him a criminal jerk, abusing anonymity (and endangering its future by, if this sort of thing continues, turning the public quite reasonably against it) to punish his opponents.
His terrorism (and it is a terror tactic) doesn’t make us not free; it makes him a terrorist (just as we were still free when people like Kimberlin were setting off bombs in terror attacks).
Sigivald:
There is a situation in which you would be incorrect, and the current brouhaha comes uncomfortably close to that.
If the powers-that-be are officially-unofficially utilizing the state’s monopoly on violence to silence anyone who may offend them, then that is the end of free speech. Kimberlin can keep this up because he receives money and encouragement from the establishment. All that is (apparently) lacking is for him to receive direction from that establishment.
If he gets away with this cleanly, that direction will eventually be forthcoming.
Sigivald, the problem lies with the system in which cops can raid citizens’ homes without search warrants based on probable cause. A phony phone call does not supply probable cause for a search, much less a SWAT Team. It might mean the police should attempt to verify whether the homeowner actually called, but it should never justify a raid. When I was a kid, if someone had tried something like this, a regular beat officer might have knocked on the door to ask whether everything is OK. But a full blown military style assault??? BTW, did you read Patterico’s account?
http://patterico.com/2012/05/25/convicted-bomber-brett-kimberlin-neal-rauhauser-ron-brynaert-and-their-campaign-of-political-terrorism/
***QUOTE***
THE NIGHT I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED BECAUSE OF MY BLOGGING
At 12:35 a.m. on July 1, 2011, sheriff’s deputies pounded on my front door and rang my doorbell. They shouted for me to open the door and come out with my hands up.
When I opened the door, deputies pointed guns at me and ordered me to put my hands in the air. I had a cell phone in my hand. Fortunately, they did not mistake it for a gun.
They ordered me to turn around and put my hands behind my back. They handcuffed me. They shouted questions at me: IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE HOUSE? and WHERE ARE THEY? and ARE THEY ALIVE?
I told them: Yes, my wife and my children are in the house. They’re upstairs in their bedrooms, sleeping. Of course they’re alive.
Deputies led me down the street to a patrol car parked about 2-3 houses away. At least one neighbor was watching out of her window as I was placed, handcuffed, in the back of the patrol car. I saw numerous patrol cars on my quiet street. There was a police helicopter flying overhead, shining a spotlight down on us as I walked towards the patrol car. Several neighbors later told us the helicopter woke them up. I saw a fire engine and an ambulance. A neighbor later told me they had a HazMat vehicle out on the street as well.
Meanwhile, police rushed into my home. They woke up my wife, led her downstairs and to the front porch, frisked her, and asked her where the children were. Then police ordered her to stand on the front porch with her hands against the wall while they entered my children’s bedrooms to make sure they were alive.
***END QUOTE***
You call that OK police conduct? I think it is outrageous. Every last officer involved should be fired. It is absolutely chilling that this could happen in a free country. Whoever called the cops is of course a criminal who should be sent to the joint for a long term. But for the cops to take an unverified caller at his word and raid an innocent citizen’s house like that shows that a man’s home is not his castle and the Fourth Amendment has been shredded.
For God’s sake, WHERE WAS THE WARRANT?
The police should not be allowed to behave this way. The fact is that they do, and that is a larger problem. Anyone who thinks this will end should think again. These calls could even be placed from foreign countries.
If some criminal tells the police to shoot someone and they do, the illegal behavior by the criminal does not exonerate the police. Likewise, if someone calls Child Protective Services with a false report of child abuse and they barge in without a warrant, and summarily take away a child, there are two guilty parties: the caller and CPS.
As to “it would be so if the State sent a SWAT team to your house,” well only the State can send SWAT team to your house. And if they don’t even bother to verify the identity of a criminal caller who is trying to prevent a citizen from exercising his First Amendment rights, as far as I’m concerned, they are ratifying criminal conduct and become a part of it.
Another point. This call was not made to local 911 (which would not have been easy for an out-of-the-area caller), but to the regular line of the Lomita Sheriff’s Station. The least they could have done would have been to ask the caller to use 911. Instead they dispatched a military assault team. Sorry, but no matter how much I might try to give them the theoretical benefit of the doubt,I can’t.
The infringement happened with the instigation of SWAT teams. Who they get used on is incidental. Unless it is some one you don’t care about. Then practice will be done on them until the policy is institutionalized. You know –
“First they came for….”
Eric – this is actually worse than a mere 4th amendment violation.
This is a criminal taking advantage of the often trigger-happy nature of SWAT teams to try to get his opponents killed in such a way that the opponents can be plausibly blamed for their own death, and therefore be discredited.
This Kimberlin fellow is nearly Stalinesque in his abuse of state power to silence and discredit critics.
The whole episode argues for both better verification by emergency services personnel AND against the militarization of civilian police forces.
Dogs are typically shot on sight after door is breached. I believe this even happened to a Virginia or Maryland mayor.
I believe it was USA Today, don’t quote me, but they did an article regarding the use of swat teams in the USA. For many years swat teams were used approx. two to three thousand times a year, nationwide. I believe it was 2011 that swat teams were used seventy to eighty thousand times nationwide, you have every reason to be afraid. If you really want to get upset read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Guerena_shooting
You hit on one of the very troubling points here: why the HELL was a assault team sent out solely on the basis of a phone call? No checking it out first to find out if there’s anything to it?
The idea behind SWAT was ‘barricaded suspects, hostage situations’ and such, they were called in WHEN THAT WAS THE CASE; now they’re being sent because “We got a phone call”?
I keep wondering why all of these attorneys haven’t countersued for civil rights violations. It’s pretty clear that Kimberlin IS involved in a conspiracy to deny the free exercise of constitutionally-protected civil rights. And if, as Patterico pointed out, he’d been killed as a result of the swatting, it’s a federal capital offense.
M