High Utility Bill Sparks TSOG Raid, Grass Stains, Not a Pot Farm, Blamed for Bills

No, I am not trying to equate having any amount of any drug with planning a terrorist attack. outlaw and others (including you) made a big deal about the police getting the families electric bill (and then used the slippery slope argument to expand that to phone conversations and email), even though the utility bill was gotten in support of an ongoing investigation into criminal activity. You seemed to be saying that their would be no circumstance under which the electiric company should release your records to the police (or the phone company, or whoever) without your consent. My point was that the problem did not seem to be so much the behavior of the police (who in my opinion did nothing wrong) as the laws themselves. People were complaining about the behavior of the police in the article you posted because they don't support the drug war, not because the police actually did anything wrong. I also think prohibition is wrong, but that doesn't mean that I think laws currently on the books should not be enforced, or that there was anything that was inappropriate in this case.

The problem is your choice of article in support of your point that mar1juana should be legal. The article you posted is written to criticize the police procedure (which I think it failed miserably in doing) and not to show the harms of prohibition or the benefits of legalization. I realize this is your pet issue, but you don't need to post every article that is even tangentially related to your position.

 

support? what other evidence was there besides the utility bill? my point is that a high utility bill should not be enough to earn a warrant to search a persons home.

 

They got a tip of drug activity in the area, the dog marked their house a a positive for drug activity, and they noticed that the garbage was taken out the morning of pickup, something which is apparently an indicator for illegal activity. Based on 4 pieces of evidence (utitlity bill, tip, dog, trash) they got a search warrant. This methodology was good enough to catch 20 criminals on 26 searches. Unless 20 out of every 26 people have pot in their house (unlikely in my opinion) then there is some credibility to their methods. Further, only 1 of the 6 false positives complained. I think if something is successful 77% of the time, and when it returns a false positive only 17% of the people complain, then it is probably not a rediculously bad policy.