From: Natural News
J. D. Heyes
Natural News
August 15, 2013
August 15, 2013
A small, Texas-based group calling itself a “sustainability
community” says it was raided by a police SWAT team over suspicion that
members were growing and distributing marijuana, but officers were
unable to locate any contraband.
According to a press release from the group, which calls itself The
Garden of Eden, “a small Intentional Community based on Sustainability,”
Arlington P.D. SWAT officers raided the community the morning of Aug.
2, awakening inhabitants while executing a search warrant. But, says the
group in a press release, no pot was found.
“Ultimately only a single arrest was made based on unrelated
outstanding traffic violations, a handful of citations were given for
city code violations, and zero drug related violations were found,” said
the group.
Seriously, a SWAT team?
Officers were reportedly on scene for about 10 hours, group officials
said, conducting searches that “involved many dozens of city officials,
SWAT team [sic], police officers and code compliance employees.” The
group said “numerous official vehicles including dozens of police cars”
were involved in the operation, along with some “specialized” vehicles
that were involved in the “‘abatement’ operation.”
“Witnesses say that there were helicopters and unmanned flying drones
circling the property in the days prior to the raid that are presumed
to have been a part of the intelligence gathering,” said the release.
“The combined expenses for the raid itself and the collection of
information leading up to the fruitless raid are estimated in the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars.”
The Dallas Morning News reported that, despite finding nothing
but a few code violations, the city is defending the raid and,
especially, the raid utilizing SWAT officers.Arlington
Police Sgt. Christopher Cook says it’s not at all uncommon to use them
for drug raids, though it is becoming apparent that police departments all over the country are using them more often for any kind of raid.
He also said the department was “concerned” about how the group reacted to the raid on social media sites.
“That’s what concerns me about their social media allegations,” Cook
said. “Yes, they were initially handcuffed, however once it was
determined it was secure they were taken out of handcuffs. Typically we
wouldn’t do that, but they were compliant.”
‘We have been targeted’
The group’s press release confirms the handcuffing:
All 8 adults present in the house were initially handcuffed at the gunpoint of heavily armed SWAT officers, including the mother of a 22-month-old and a two-week-old baby who was separated from her children during the raid.
The group said that city code enforcement officials ordered members
to cut the grass, destroy some wild and cultivated plants including
blackberries, lamb’s quarters and okra, and remove “other varied
materials from around the premises such as pallets, tires and cardboard
that the Community members say they had collected for use in
sustainability projects.”
Shellie Smith, who owns the land the community sits on, says the rights of her and her members were violated.
“We have been targeted by the system because we are showing people how to live without it,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
“We are growing more than just tomatoes here, we are growing the
consciousness that will allow people to live freely and sustainably, and
the system doesn’t want that to be known.”
City officials said simply: “No cultivated marijuana plants were
located on the premises. Narcotics detectives and members of the
tactical unit cleared the scene within 45 minutes.”
‘They destroyed everything’
As we have oft reported here at Natural News, it is becoming far too
common for police departments large and small to resort to using
militarized SWAT teams inappropriately. What is quite obvious in this
case is that the group that police were dealing with was about as
non-violent as you can get. If in fact the Arlington P.D. conducted
surveillance of The Garden of Eden for days before the raid, officers
should have known this.
Therefore, is it unreasonable to expect a softer approach to carrying
out a search warrant? I don’t think so, given the fact that we are
talking about suspicion of growing marijuana, not cooking meth or pushing heroin.
Police know which groups in their communities are violent and which
ones aren’t. And they knew in this case, too. But they used a SWAT team
anyway.
“They came here under the guise that we were doing a drug
trafficking, marijuana-growing operation,” Smith told WFAA, a local ABC
affiliate. “They destroyed everything.”
Sources:
http://intothegardenofeden.comhttp://crimeblog.dallasnews.com
http://www.wfaa.com
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