Make fun of the Peoria Mayor with a parody twitter account...That's a swat raid...

Parody Twitter account @peoriamayor pissed off mayor of Peoria, who sent SWAT; college kid now facing drug charges. http://t.co/j9XQSdxZ9z
— Nameless Cynic (@NamelessCynic) September 20, 2014

This is what it has come to in America. Sadly, an activist judge ruled this swat raid was legal. 

The police hadn’t even come for him. When four fully-armed officers of a Swat team burst into Jacob Elliott’s house in Peoria, Illinois in April they were looking for the source of a parody Twitter feed that had upset the town’s mayor by poking fun at him.
It transpired that one of Elliott’s housemates, Jon Daniel, had created the fake Twitter account, @peoriamayor, and so incensed the real-life official, Jim Ardis, with his make-believe account of drug binges and sex orgies that the police were dispatched. Elliott was just a bystander in the affair, but that didn’t stop the Swat team searching his bedroom, looking under his pillow and in a closet where they discovered a bag of marijuana and dope-smoking paraphernalia.
Elliott now faces charges of felony marijuana possession.[snip]
A Peoria judge this week ruled that the police were entitled to raid the house on North University Street on 15 April under the town’s “false personation” law which makes it illegal to pass yourself off as a public official.

Video of the Day: Swat Team Raids Innocent Woman's Home; Lawsuit Filed

 This is a shocking example of the militarization of police and their excessive tactics. In this case, someone used a connection to the innocent woman's wireless router to post a treat against the police chief. Apparently, they really pissed him off. This could be your house someday.

A terrifying helmet cam video, released to the public Wednesday, depicts a SWAT team executing a search warrant on the home of a 68-year-old woman and her 18-year-old adopted daughter.
The video is raising questions of privacy, reasonable force and police due diligence. They had the wrong place.
The raid of Louise Milan and daughter Stephanie Milan’s Evansville, Ind. home was accompanied by the sound of shattering glass and multiple flash-bang grenades. It was all due to the Milan’s non-password protected Internet router, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.

Swat Team Raids Innocent Woman's Home; Lawsuit Filed

 

 

What do the Dept. Ag., Railroad Ret. Board, TVA, Office of Personnel Management, CPSC, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have in common?

They have their own SWAT teams...

Via NRO: 

Regardless of how people feel about Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management over his cattle’s grazing rights, a lot of Americans were surprised to see TV images of an armed-to-the-teeth paramilitary wing of the BLM deployed around Bundy’s ranch.
They shouldn’t have been. Dozens of federal agencies now have Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to further an expanding definition of their missions. It’s not controversial that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Prisons have them. But what about the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service? All of these have their own SWAT units and are part of a worrying trend towards the militarization of federal agencies — not to mention local police forces.
“Law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier,” journalist Radley Balko writes in his 2013 bookRise of the Warrior Cop. “The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop — armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.”

Obama Sending SWAT Teams to Gulf Oil Rigs?

A SWAT Team? He must be expecting some more grandmas to hold a Tea Party protest.

Earlier today, DHS Secretary Napolitano announced that this incident is of national significance and the Department of Interior has announced that they will be sending SWAT teams to the Gulf to inspect all platforms and rigs. And I have ordered the Secretaries of Interior and Homeland Security as well as Administrator Lisa Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency to visit the site on Friday to ensure that BP and the entire U.S. government is doing everything possible, not just to respond to this incident, but also to determine its cause. And I've been in contact with all the governors of the states that may be affected by this accident.