Update on Department of Education SWAT raid in Stockton
KXTV published another update, with an excellent video, on the Department of Education’s raid on Kenneth Wright’s home in Stockton, California. Neighbors are coming forward to corroborate Wright’s claims.
One witness said: “They all had guns. They dragged him out in his boxer shorts, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him.”
KXTV published the entire search warrant.
Page 4 notes that authorities were looking for evidence related to Financial Aid Fraud, Conspiracy, Theft of Government Funds, False Statement to Government Agency, and Wire Fraud. None of these are violent crimes.
Page 5 shows the judge specifically deleted the line authorizing the search for “Contraband or any other item that is immediately apparent to be evidence of a crime.” Authorities expected to NOT encounter criminal behavior. So why the forced entry with deadly force in play?
It also is chilling to know that if you are accused of lying to the federal government, you can expect an early morning SWAT-like raid, get handcuffed and dragged across the yard in your boxer shorts, and have your children terrorized. Orwell’s 1984 was not a work of fiction, but a how-to manual for bureaucrats.
Wright was not arrested, and authorities admitted they were looking for his estranged wife.
All previous questions remain unanswered.
keep pushing this story and those related to it
exposing not just the “socialist” aspects of our society (even “in vogue” in many circles) but the totalitarian ones as well– the ones that are more similar to the nazis or soviets– reflected in this department of education swat team mission will go far in differentiating liberty and tyranny in america
Can someone explain why the DoE needs a paramilitary squad, rather than having local law enforcement perform these operations? Seems like idle hands are tools of the devil.
perfect question that leads to: no need for any government agency other than maybe: department of defense; department of justice; department of state; department of treasury
the point is that any reason for the government to “enforce” its laws against a violating citizen needs to be filtered through the department of justice
these fiefdoms within the labyrinth of the federal government acting autonomously is an obvious threat to liberty that even the uninformed/dullards might be able to grasp if these stories ever get through the fog
I’m not sure State or Treasury need their own set of storm troopers.
Justice, Defense, Secret Service maybe, Marshalls ok, Border Patrol yes, DEA & ATF maybe. The rest can use local police or agents from one of the other branches. Even if we expand those units, we still only need one set of administrators, and one set of bureaucrats deciding where and when.
There’s no need for each cabinet to have it’s own police force at it’s disposal.
I’ve never understood why Treasury or even the DEA exist armed. The most I can see with Treasury is guards around the various branches of the Mint. I *know* that ATFE and DEA could be folded into the FBI and their bureaucracies eliminated, but of course that right there tells you why they won’t. Those bureaucracies have lots of money in them, people who’ve put in whole careers there, and they’re not going to be pushed out now, they’ve got too many connections and they can pull too many strings. Government agencies don’t go away, they grow, period.
i didnt mean to suggest the treasury be “armed”
as you point out the arming need only be limited to justice and defense
the main issue i had was the need to bring all these autocratic entities under the umbrella of the “major government departments” (justice,state,defense,etc…) and get rid of the ones that dont fit
Secret Service is part of Treasury. Remove armed personnel from Treasury, you disarm the Secret Service.
Same reason the SBA, RR Retirement board and the DOE need weapons.
It’s expanding, see here: http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/06/09/weaponizing-the-small-business-administration-and-railroad-retirement-board/
Yes, please don’t let this story die out. This needs to stay in front of people and ultimately, someone should resign over this.
If only they would treat drug runners and dealers with this amount of passion! What brave men! They are after wife (ex-wife) and nail the hubby! I can only imagine what they would have done to wifey if she had actually been there!! And then they might have actually shot the hubby if he had tried to defend his wife, as I would have done!! And there is absolutely no recourse here. This is one of those major signs of tyranny. Absolute power without accountability. i can thank of several eras in recent history where this sort of thing took place. How about Krystalnacht? Boy how things have changed.
As I posted in the main article on SWAT teams, I don’t believe they are needed at all, and if they exist they create pressure to use them, lest they be deleted from the budget because they are unused. These units are creating one major bad incident after another. Enough is enough.
For a century police managed to take down all manner of criminals using regular police officers armed with .38 spl revolvers and pump shotguns. There is no reason they could not continue to use that method. SWAT teams are just aggrandizement.
We also do not need each government agency to have its own police force. The regular police forces at the local, state, and national level are perfectly capable of serving warrants and arresting criminals.
We need to disband all SWAT teams and administrative department police forces. It will save lives and money, reduce the size of government, and improve our liberty and our safety. One innocent America terrorized or accidentally killed by these rouges is one too many.
A friend a retired Federal Marshall explained that many of the smaller federal law enforcement agencies have their officers trained at central federal facilities. So the training is probably good and professional. They also have few opportunities to use their skills, so when one comes along they may likely overreact. Seems the case here.
A group of armed paramilitary government agents raided Kenneth Wright’s home in Stockton, California at 6am because of STUDENT LOANS owed to the Dept. of Education by the man’s estranged wife! They were looking for paperwork [!!!] to be used as evidence in a **suspected** case of fraud! Not armed robbery, not murder, but white-collar, non-violent crime. How is that legal? Or justified? Are we going to have SWAT teams knocking down people’s doors and arresting them for mortgage defaults or mistakes they make filling out government forms? Why is Congress allowing our country to turn into a police state? What happened to the rule of law, or even common sense and decency? One commenter on an opinion piece at the Huffpost said that they knocked first and gave him 15 seconds to open the door, so everything that happened after that was OK. Imagine waking up at 6am in the morning to a knock at the door, and you look out the window to find that your home is surrounded by a dozen or so armed men. Are you going to try to rush down the stairs within that 15 second period to open the door for armed men? Yeah, sure.
Well, at 6:30 a.m., I opened the door for them because I am conditioned to believe that the cops are the good guys. I figured they had the wrong house or maybe they were looking for a baddie hiding in our basement…the second guess makes no sense because they wouldn’t have had a warrant for something like that but the hammering at the door was insistent, the yelling was loud, and opening the door seemed the thing to do. Part of me was thinking, “Shhh, you’ll wake the neighbors,” and opening the door was a way to make the noise stop. It was chaotic. Nobody makes good decisions in that kind of chaos, which is why the cops prefer it that way. Why a judge would approve a warrant served by a SWAT team for a non-violent crime…I’d like the answer to that.
Our attorney explained that the feds ‘contract out’ searches to the DHS, and the ICE agents are part of that. My explanation is not clear, I know. If someone else has a better explanation, I would appreciate the clarification. I love George W for many reasons but he really screwed up by putting the DHS in place.
Our attorney, highly regarded, shoots down any argument I make that the search should be considered illegal. He says 99% of searches are done this way now. I don’t know if he means 99% of child porn searches (yeah, that’s what they were after at my house), or 99% of all searches.
OMG, the ignorance of those posting on this issue. The Department of Education Office of Inspector General are not storm troopers, they are Special Agents investigating a crime involving fraud directed against the taxpayers.
There was no SWAT team, search warrants authorize detaining those present, a judge reviewed and signed off on the probably cause necessary for the warrant.
Kenneth Wright refused to open the door for the agents and that tells me that he knew about the crime. How else does one explain why he refused the agents entry when they knocked and announced their presence and lawful purpose.
Grow up. There is not tyranny here. Just the Department of Education Office of Inspector General acting to enforce the laws against defrauding the taxpayers.
Actually, the warrant never authorized a forced entry. It specified serving the warrant during the daytime. It didn’t need 15 armed federal agents, which does not exactly constitute a SWAT team, but 15 for non-violent crimes is a little bit overkill. However, they are dealing with black people, which tends to always get an overreaction when it comes to serving warrants (coming from a white man). The frequency of low light raids conducted by armed entry teams has been increasing every year.
Kenneth Wright would have been justified to shoot dead every one of those agents.
They were armed. They were not identifiable as law enforcement officers. They did not present a search warrant to him before acting. They broke into his home. They assaulted him and his children. They committed an act of terror on this family. They kidnapped him and his children (that’s what holding people against their will is.)
This is precisely the reason there is collapse to 45 cal diplomacy in many nations of the world today. It comes from both sides, right and wrong.
The terrorization of the general population is required for the sake of the taxpayers. BS. That makes it easier for the political control.
As a result of the above we have more of the nuts coming out of the woodwork to take shots at congresswomen or men.
The politicians have an agenda and it’s more control. Any thing goes wrong, and they need another law and controls.
The real downside is that the government never has it all together. Morality can not be legislated or enforced. Eventually there is a total collapse from which a nation will require a minimum of 20 years to recover. Some never seem to make it back. Argentina as an example.
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