tfs

A house in Lakeland, in the Tampa Bay region of Florida, was discovered to be running a marijuana grow op. What’s disturbing, is the way that it was “uncovered”.

An Electric Company employee had gone to the house on Friday in order to turn the electricity off for non payment of the bill. As the employee entered the premisis, he noticed a generator that was running in a backyard shed. When he returned on Monday, the generator was still running. He tried to speak with the owner about the generator but he refused to talk with him and ran inside the house.

The employee then called the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, who in turn could not reach anyone as well. A search warrant was obtained and after another unsuccessful attempt to communicate with anyone in the house, the SWAT team launched tear gas into the house and quickly raided.

Nobody was found within the home, but police did discover three bedrooms that had been converted into a “sophisticated marijuana grow operation.” No arrests have been made.

Like I said this story is disturbing on a few levels. What business is it of the electric company employee that a generator is being run? If the bill wasn’t paid, maybe the owners couldn’t afford it and decided to power their house through means that they can control?

What right and probable cause does law enforcement have to issue a warrant to search a citizen’s home, just because they can’t be contacted and they are running a generator? The entire operation was based on an assumption that illegal activity was being conducted.

It doesn’t matter if the Obama Administration and the U.S. Attorney General take a step back and look at the destructive drug policy that has been the status quo for decades, if local government and cowboy cops keep trampling on American citizens’ rights. The act of raiding a citizen’s house without any intel of  the owners’ wrong doing is likened to the days of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany and if left unchecked, will destroy the very fabric of our Constitutional rights.