So the video store I used to work at before I was fired got broken into a few days ago. a substantial sum of money and dvds were stolen. according to the gossip I've been hearing I am the prime suspect as evidence indicates that it was a former employee. a lot of people have been telling me to expect a full search of my residence. my question is; is that legal? since I didn't do it the only evidence that suggests me as a suspect is that it seemed to have been a former employee. Is the fact that I used to work at this place enough for them to obtain a search warrant and turn my place upside down?
Also, I live in an extremely corrupt county in wyoming. cheney has a house here. The cops are in bed with the judges are in bed with the attorneys etc.
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Who has told you to expect a search?
The scary part?
That friend telling you you're going to a picture about a cute kitten could be rickrolling your ass to prison.
The current manager was the first to have her place searched, but she has theft on her record.
aegis:
I kind of posted it here in hopes that it might develop into a debate about the legitimacy of such practices. I didn't want to start off the thread spouting out my own opinions since I'm somewhat of ignorant as to how these things work.
veevee:
holy shit.
I can understand that searching someone for evidence is effective but come on, there should be at least some evidence suggesting you could've done something wrong other than it could have been a former employee.
I just fail to see what they expect to find. The place was robbed, are they going to break into a suspect's house and find a big pile of money and a trail of footsteps back to the video store?
If you didn't want your house searched, maybe you shouldn't have stolen the DVDs in the first place.
Random drawers full of dildos.
Make the fuckers work for it.
Way to think like the Government Shryke!
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
When they look at you all 'WTF?', just stare at them and smile all creepy like.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
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"The power of the weirdness compels me."
where did I say I stole them? I didn't steal anything.
Sombody missed learning about sarcasm.
but they're listening to every word I say
I am of course uncomfortable with the idea that "authorities" can legally search my person or property, but I also know many people in law enforcement who serve these kinds of warrants. They're not interested in snooping into your private life. They don't want to be there. They want to be at home watching TV (and not even close-circuit TV where they're secretly watching you or monitoring your private thoughts but regular old human being TV). They also get denied on warrants with TONS of evidence and criminals end up being able to hurt more people because some judge was afraid that "only" mountains of evidence wouldn't be enough to potentially inconvenience a possibly innocent person.
There are some pretty good checks and balances in the system already, and as lame as some of the stuff that got railroaded through on the Patriot Act is, some of it finally got law enforcement out of the stone age - the way it had been done pre-Patriot Act for some wiretapping and surveillance was downright comical. Guys were LITERALLY getting away with murder and rubbing it in federal agents' faces because by the time they got a warrant for one phone, they had thrown it away, bought a new one and walked up and showed it to them, mentioning that by the time they got a warrant to hear about all the incriminating stuff they'd be talking about on it, they'd have gotten a new one, ad infinitum. I'm all for coming down hard on anybody that abuses that responsibility, but honestly, if some idiot former co-workers accused me of something, I wouldn't be all that worried about having a search warrant served on me. Especially if their accusations were particularly petty or unwarranted, which would only help my harassment lawsuit...
Dude, he's just covering his ass. You can't be too careful these days - Dick Cheney is just waiting to masturbate over records of your phone conversations. I bet he's already getting off on these posts... brrr! Chilling!
And grendel, you're misinformed; the cops can listen for 48 hours without a warrant, and it takes significantly less time than that to get a warrant.
The rules before were riddiculous for wiretaps, but now they are even worse. Especially for the foreign terrorist watching people. The FISA court I believe they had to go to? Anyway they could tap the phone, listen in and then get a warrant from a secret court, which had only turned down... very few if any if I remember correctly. And it was from a secret court, so no real oversight there. Now all they have to do is just say "Terrorism!" and then they skip the court and wiretap whoever they want.
but they're listening to every word I say
They've been able to get retro-active warrants since Watergate. FISA before now allowed 3 days of listening before you had to submit, and the court was practically a rubber stamp to begin with. It's kind of funny as Republicans were complaining about that very fact when Clinton was in office. Of course that was before 9-11 changed everything...
But in the time it takes to get that rubberstamp the terrorists could be winning!
but they're listening to every word I say
Reasonable suspicion is defined as "an objectively reasonable belief that a crime has been recently or is being committed."
Search warrants are largely governed by the 4th Amendment jurisprudence, and any evidence gathered in violation of the 4th Amendment (even if it is pursuant to a warrant) is tossed out via the Exclusionary Rule. That said, there are many exceptions (Leon's good-faith exception, for one) so it is a largely case-by-case determination whether the Exclusionary Rule applies or not.
kawaii
I'm not actually misinformed, because that doesn't really address anything I've claimed to be informed about. It's relevant and interesting information, so the fact that I was already aware of that doesn't take away from it's being worth posting.
And I misspoke with the "reasonable suspicion" vs. "probable cause" terminology. Despite how important terms and definitions are, I wasn't being all that careful with my terminology so take that into account before making the grave mistake of thinking anything I posted will save you from having to consult a lawyer or the law books. :P
But in all seriousness, if they have nothing else to do then it's relatively probable that they'll be looking into you so you should be prepared for that possibility.
How does that work?
And as for the police getting a warrant with just the fact that the suspect is a former employee from the store, thats not going to happen. They have to have PC to get the search warrant. They can't just get a warrant for every employee that used to work at the store. If the police could do that then when someone embezzled money from a business they would just get warrants for every single person in the company. Way too time consuming and they wouldn't get the warrants issued. And did the police serve a warrant on that other lady you were talking about or did she let them search the house? Remember the police can ASK to search anything. If she let them then they don't need a warrant.
The only time they ask for anything is if they know they can't just take it.
Don't let them leave unless they've found all of the goatses.