Thinking about getting behind on paying back your student loan? Think again:
Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.
“I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers,” Wright said.
Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.
After the public humiliation, he was then handcuffed and chucked into the back of a police car for 6 hours, along with his three young children. He’ll think twice before getting behind on his student loans, right?
Perhaps not: they weren’t even his loans: the SWAT team was looking for his estranged wife.
There is an update to the story:
http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/08/dept-of-education-swat-team-up
The “SWAT” team wasn’t a real SWAT team. “…morning federal agents with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), not local S.W.A.T., served the search warrant.”
Hard to imagine that eh OIG for the US Dept of Education needs a paramilitary force to pursue white collar crimes, eh? Scary stuff in the USA.
Comment by Dwayne — June 8, 2011 @ 15:09
The best part? These weren’t local cops or the Sheriff. Not the FBI. These were bozos working for the Department of Education.
That’s right: the education bureaucrats have cops who think they can be soldiers.
Comment by Brian Dunbar — June 8, 2011 @ 15:11
Well, given the ongoing militarization problem with police forces generally, I guess it was inevitable that just about every federal branch will get their own “police” force. When the regular police are too busy tooling around in their armoured personnel carriers and practicing their break-a-hippie’s-head riot and anti-dancing-at-the-Jefferson-Monument tactics, you need the US Patent Office police or the Bureau of Weights and Measures police to go after dangerous might-be-criminals like this guys’ estranged wife.
Comment by Nicholas — June 8, 2011 @ 15:25
Intentional or not, it’s all part of a long campaign to cause people to hate their government, distrust the cop on the corner, to shut one’s mouth and shuffle along obedient as sheep.
After all, the sheep don’t think the sheep dog is their friend – he’s just a wolf that doesn’t eat sheep, is all.
Baa.
Comment by Brian Dunbar — June 9, 2011 @ 11:27
You think they’re working on Tiberius Caesar’s notion that it’s okay to be hated as long as you’re obeyed? Or are they already into Caligula’s embellished version that it’s okay to hate him as long as they fear him?
In Europe or in Canada that might work: there are not enough ways for the quelled-into-obedience populace to express their displeasure. In the United States, however, even the poorest peasants(1) have access to firearms and vehicles. Getting them to hate and fear you is setting alight the fuse on an old, old keg of gunpowder.
(1) Using the terminology of the enlightened, urban intelligentsia of the east and west coasts.
Comment by Nicholas — June 9, 2011 @ 13:18
There are no conspiracies. All the cops, the rules, the arbitrary foolishness are rational actors doing their thing.
The end result could well be a keg of gunpowder. I don’t have a crystal ball, and Americans are notorious for hoping for the best and letting problems go until they’re huge issues. Sometimes we kick the can down the road and muddle through. Less often everything explodes and we get a Revolution or a Civil War or a New Deal.
Comment by Brian Dunbar — June 9, 2011 @ 16:28
“
AmericansHumans are notorious for hoping for the best and letting problems go until they’re huge issues”Fixed that for you. 😉
Comment by Nicholas — June 9, 2011 @ 17:47
Some cultures seem more pragmatic about stuff like ‘planning for the future’ and ‘making hard choices now or worse choices later’. I recall a large hall at Oxford where the builders planted a small forest nearby. By the time the ridgepole needed replacing there were numerous suitable large trees next door.
Probably an outlier. Certainly apocryphal.
Comment by Brian Dunbar — June 9, 2011 @ 22:08