Police Raid house meth lab? no worse, a fish tank!

[Osiris]

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_arti...storyid=509182


OMG, we knew someday it would happen, just matter of time lol.

At night while finding fellow reefers, do you look for address? no you look for the 20k light peering from the house windows

[sneasle]

omg. I smell a lawsuit coming...

[Baby_Baby]

"From a cursory view, it doesn't look like our officers did anything wrong,"

Chyea the officers didn't do anything wrong. It was just the detectives or whoever the freak didn't find any solid evidence. You can't always have, by itself, "probable cause" or a "good tip" in meth lab cases.
Oklahoma has more meth houses than most other states, and even here we havent had anything this dumb happen.

I understand them investigating it, but smashing the door?
Really?

I think I smell that lawsuit too, sneasle.

[sneasle]

yupyup... Sadly.. natural selection doesn't work as fast as it should... not enough meth labs blow up to keep the problem in check..

[lohachata]

i have been visited by the cleveland police and the DEA.
i came home from work one day and as i went up the porch steps 2 men in suits came up to me and asked if i lived there.i said yes.they then asked me to let them in to search the house.when i asked them why they were there they said that the electric company had informed them that i may be growing reefer because my bill was so high.the one guy got upset when i laughed..but i took them up and showed them why..then the angry one asked me about the plants."what kind of plants are those and where do they come from"sword plants from south america and crypts and aponogeton from asia..then he said that they needed to be tested to make sure they weren't reefer...
sometimes law enforcement people aren't very bright..
whenh the cleveland cops came and i showed them the tanks,they just laughed and left..

[s13]

I'm suprised no one has called the cops on me for seeing "grow lights" in my windows! haha. yes, I am a reefer... the legal kind!

[direlime]

HA! What was that water heater guy thinking? That chemical smell could have been from anything including a meth lab but really. You cannot assume things to quickly without evidence to support it. A smell is a small piece of evcidence but if you saw the things needed for a meth lab then maybe I'de report it! Isn't it funny how alot of real meth labs don't get caught while alot of innocent people get affected by things like this. Sad really!

[Ricker]

LOL I find it funny if they take them to court they aren't good guys lol. A mistake it happens. I would think it is funny after it happen of course.

[COM]

Note to self: short-sell Centerpoint stock Monday. Lawsuit pending; Wall Street will not like the news.

[GoodMike]

Originally Posted by Baby_Baby

It was just the detectives or whoever the freak didn't find any solid evidence. You can't always have, by itself, "probable cause" or a "good tip" in meth lab cases.
Oklahoma has more meth houses than most other states, and even here we havent had anything this dumb happen.

I understand them investigating it, but smashing the door?
Really?

I think I smell that lawsuit too, sneasle.

Hm..... ok well in your typical meth lab case, who do you think is behind that door? Are the people going to just open up and let you in with no problems? no. the police did NOTHING wrong in this case from the facts we have. Hell, they had a warrant, which is a document signed by a judge, so there was enough information to convince a judge to give them the right to go in there in the first place. Believe it or not, things like this happen alot, so many of the same warning signs for drugs are seen with people who have fish tanks. High electric bills, glowing lights, chemicals and chemical smells, boxes/bags of stuff being delivered or brought in.

probable cause, unlike many people think, is not a hard thing to obtain... it can be based on personal observations of an officer, or any form of hearsay evidence from another party... probable cause is just enough information to get passed the "reasonable suspicion" level. Sometimes you act on the only information you have, and 90% of the time you end up busting a meth house, or something of the sort. I dont see anyone posting on the good job busts, just the one incident where everyone can stand back and say how dumb or stupid it was. The real world isnt perfect, law isnt perfect, the water heater guy isnt perfect... I commend them on trying to do a very dangerous job. A meth lab is not a safe place to be, and those men and women who bring them down are being put at a very high risk of injury or death...

[emc7]

I don't like "no knock" warrants. They are still talking about the old woman who got shot dead by cops when a "confidential informant" lied about buying drugs at her house. I assume he did it because he got paid for every tip and was out of good info. In some neighborhoods, if someone breaks down your door, you assume "home invasion" and go for your gun. Is it really safer for the cops (to bust down the door) than ringing the doorbell with a 10 ft. pole?

[GoodMike]

you are joking...right? yes, lets ring the door bell of a suspected meth house, and announce that we are cops ready to raid the place and arrest everyone. sounds like a great idea, people who have meth labs are stand up citizens right, they will just open the door and let you in, no problem....*rolls eyes*

there is a time and a place for a knock and announce...not always though, and the courts seem to agree with me on that one.

[TheOldSalt]

Well, Mike already beat me to it, but yeah, this sort of thing happens fairly regularly, because, as Loha found out, the electric companies are required to report unusually high power usage to the cops.
I do have to wonder, however, just why the guys in Cleveland don't recognize weed when they see it and think it grows underwater.

[Baby_Baby]

Originally Posted by GoodMike

Hm..... ok well in your typical meth lab case, who do you think is behind that door? Are the people going to just open up and let you in with no problems? no. the police did NOTHING wrong in this case from the facts we have. Hell, they had a warrant, which is a document signed by a judge, so there was enough information to convince a judge to give them the right to go in there in the first place. Believe it or not, things like this happen alot, so many of the same warning signs for drugs are seen with people who have fish tanks. High electric bills, glowing lights, chemicals and chemical smells, boxes/bags of stuff being delivered or brought in.

probable cause, unlike many people think, is not a hard thing to obtain... it can be based on personal observations of an officer, or any form of hearsay evidence from another party... probable cause is just enough information to get passed the "reasonable suspicion" level. Sometimes you act on the only information you have, and 90% of the time you end up busting a meth house, or something of the sort. I dont see anyone posting on the good job busts, just the one incident where everyone can stand back and say how dumb or stupid it was. The real world isnt perfect, law isnt perfect, the water heater guy isnt perfect... I commend them on trying to do a very dangerous job. A meth lab is not a safe place to be, and those men and women who bring them down are being put at a very high risk of injury or death...

Re-read my post :]
First line says the low ranked police did nothing wrong.
Nice try

If they had the "information" they needed to obtain a warrant from a judge who had only been on the bench for less than a year, I don't exactly see how they would beat down a door in the middle of a night of two middle aged (40+ and 50+) people. Had it been daylight, I could possibly understand, however that just struck me as odd, espescially from living in Oklahoma where its worse here than in New York city. Almost all the cases we've seen/heard about have a more sturdy pile of evidence to stand on.

And if you see no one posting the good busts, why don't you go ahead and do that yourself? :]

[COM]

The police did everything wrong as far as I'm convinced.

1- We shouldn't have laws that restrict drug usage. This is a personal freedom issue. I don't use illegal drugs, I don't care for them. But there is no reason to condemn drugs or drug users. We could legalize them and create a corporate structure to sell them, possibly taxed, and that would solve a lot of our financial issues.

2- I don't believe in police. I'm a libertarian / anarchist. I believe in self defense. I don't believe that it is the role of the government to manage our behavior.

3- In this case, as in many meth-lab raid cases, the police got a warrant from a judge, so, no, they didn't do anything wrong themselves according to the law. However, this case demonstrates that the government doesn't need a substantial amount of evidence to have 'probable cause' to harass a citizen.

4- Electric companies are not required to provide customer information to the government. They are asked for it and they usually cooperate because they are almost always in bed with politicians. As for the service technician, shame on him. Mom always told me it isn't nice to be a tattle-tale. If he had encountered a meth lab, a brothel, or something else while he was an invited guest in someone's home, he needs to be a respectful person and keep it to himself. In this case, he was a big yenta and parlayed a funny smell into a meth lab for no reason.

[GoodMike]

Originally Posted by Baby_Baby

Re-read my post :]

I think you need to re-read my post....


and Com...
1) Drugs are at the soul of crime. Drugs cause harm not only to those who use them, but to innocent people. This is one of the more ignorant comments i've read lately. There is a reason we have the structure we do.

2) It is the role of the government to protect, create laws, and uphold laws...among many other things. Dont believe me? read the constitution.

3) We all give up freedoms for our protection. Does it sometimes work out badly? yes, but at the same time it works great many other times. We arent perfect.. no one is.

4) Again, ignorant. There is nothing wrong with trying to ensure the safety of others. It is a FACT that meth kills, meth labs kill.... Was he required to say anything? Are you required to report any crime? no... but some people (obviously not everyone) feels like they should if they can....

If you have a problem with how the government runs, and if you truely believe that they have no right in doing their job to protect, then i will buy you the plane ticket out of here, with a smile on my face

[Scuba Kid]

Anything made illegal is going to cause crime. If iced tea was outlawed tomorrow, it would become a "drug" and crime would result from it. I don't think its the substance that makes the crimes, its just the legality of it.
Look at underage drinking....where the minimum drinking age is 18 or even 16, there are much less crimes with alcohol and minors...less DUIs for example. Why? Because everybody wants to be a rebel. Because drinking at the age of 16 or even 18 is not a "norm" in the US, it just makes kids want to do it more, whereas in other countries where they don't have this problem, you don't see as much overuse and stupid decisions revolving around alcohol.

And not all drugs are illegal for health reasons.

But otherwise, I agree.

[GoodMike]

katie, there is so much more to it than the legality. you have to look at the who, the what, the how. manufacturing meth is a very dangerous process, that alone causes problems. another issue is the addictability of certain drugs, causing a need to stay on them, which causes people to get the drug at any cost. where i am at meth is a pretty big problem, in no way should it be legal, and in no way would that solve any of the problems. same goes for many other drugs. Many drugs cause people to react much differently than they would if they were not under the influence.... there wont be less crime if you just make the drugs legal (except for actually getting the drugs wont be a crime anymore).

there are factors that people just dont see. read through case law, the thousand upon thousand of cases that the supreme courts as well as the appellate courts have reviewed, it will change you perspective on the issue.

[Scuba Kid]

I'm not saying we should make the drugs legal, I'm just pointing out that when things are illegal, it makes the actions needed to do whatever the law prohibits much more dangerous, and sometimes unnecessarilly. If you could buy meth at the pharmacy, would you need to surround yourself with the dangerous chemicals needed to make it in order to obtain that product? No. If you could purchase any illegal drug as easily as a prescription drug, would people be shot over obtaining them? Probably not. I do believe there would be somewhat less crime if they were legal, but obviously meth, heroin, crack, etc should not be legalized for health reasons. Not the case with marijuana though, which isn't harmful (to the vast majority of people), like most people believe, and even has health benefits. No one has ever died from it and really its only illegal because the government can't tax it. Alcohol is much worse of a "drug," yet its legal. IMO, some things in our government are a little backwards (as I think we can all agree on...at least about one law or another) but in no way am I saying it should be legal for everyone to have a meth lab in their garage.

[TheOldSalt]

There is NOTHING good or safe about meth in any way. It is pure distilled evil, plain and simple, and even libertarians need to be kept away from it for their own good.

Weed? It's perfectly taxable, and taxed a lot more than most folks realize. The reason it's outlawed isn't because it's hard to tax. The reason is that it makes better paper than wood pulp makes. True. Look it up and see your tax dollars at work.

As fishkeepers we have bigger problems ahead than drugs, though. There is a bill in congress called HR 6311 which will likely make criminals out of all of us very soon. The PETA scum finally figured out a way to really sock it to us, and they went for it, and we're as good as finished. When all interstate transport of fishes effectively becomes impossible, then that's it for the whole industry.
No, that's not what the bill calls for specifically, but it's easy to see the insidious true intent of this bill and how it relies on the inability of the mail services to tell one fish from another to get it to stop all shipments.