Police State

Is it coming???
Boston police may soon be knocking on doors asking to allow searches of citizen’s homes and children’s bedrooms for firearms—without notice or warrants.

Fourth in a series
By de Andréa

Under the controversial “Home Safe” program, teams of police officers will be assigned to the city’s public schools and will interrogate students believed to have firearms in the home.

Officers would then show up at the student’s home and ask to immediately search the premises, confiscating any firearms they find. Officers are empowered to exercise their personal discretion should they encounter drugs or signs of other illegal activity. In other words they could go on a witch hunt.

While parents still have the right to refuse the search, concerns of constitutionality, intimidation, and civil liberties have rightly been raised.

According to a November 17, MSNBC.com article, Thomas Nolan, a former Boston police lieutenant who teaches criminology at Boston University, deemed the program “an end run around the Constitution.” Nolan further said, “The police have restrictions on their authority and ability to conduct searches. The Constitution was written with a very specific intent, and that was to keep the law out of private homes unless there is a written document again with specific intent signed by a judge and based on probable cause. Here, you don’t have that.” Therefore, if the Boston PD should receive permission to search the premises then anything becomes fair game, because there is no warrant and therefore no rules.

There is the probability that people may be too intimidated to deny police access to their homes, or may not understand the legal implications of their compliance with the search, which could include arrest and prosecution for anything they find.

A November 27, Boston.com article reported that Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner has called for hearings to further review the program. “We should not encourage our police department to engage in clever strategies that undercut the constitutional rights of every citizen,” Turner said in a statement.

Turner’s main concern is that police may not tell residents that they can refuse admittance. He also suggests that a visit by three uniformed police officers could be a “subtle coercion of permission.”

A November 21, BostonNOW.com article reports that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as well as the NRA has “serious concerns about this threat to ones civil liberties”.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Some may call this progress; I guess it depends on weather one values freedom or tyranny.

"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government.” -- Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, March 4, 1837

"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.” Thomas Paine

”In conclusion, one can only say that if one gives the government anything it will take everything”… de Andréa