Tag Archive: Anonymous Tip


Nutmeg State SWAT Storms Gun Owner’s Home, Seizes Firearms

 

 

 

 

” Connecticut gun owner told Guns and Patriots that his civil rights were stripped from him by an anti-gun judicial branch and a soon-to-be ex-wife who is uncomfortable with him owning guns.

“ High risk SWAT team rolls in and takes all my guns,” said Edward F. Taupier the respondent in a two-year divorce action that has escalated to an all-out war. “It took two armadillo armored vehicles, 75 officers with weapons drawn, and 45 minutes to raid my house.”

  Although he said he posed no risk to the officers, Taupier was thrown to the ground and arrested.

  Taupier, who is a former Wall Street chief officer at Citibank, said he has no prior record of arrests or charges – not even a speeding ticket – yet his home was invaded and his guns stolen based on a false allegation made by a person he does not even know, he said.

  Linda J. Allard, a West Hartford family law attorney, contacted Superior Court Judge Elizabeth L. Bozzuto, the judge assigned in his divorce proceeding, to discuss a private email she never received directly, he said. “I have never met Linda Allard. I didn’t do anything wrong. I sent an email to seven people that did not include Allard.”

  That did not stop the Cromwell police and the judicial marshal, acting outside of a criminal jurisdiction, from having him violently arrested, he said. Allard’s statement to the police, which is missing from evidence, falsely accuses Taupier of threatening Bozzuto in that email, he said. “I never sent any threat to her or anyone.”

  After being bailed out of jail, costing his family a total of three-quarters of a million dollars in bond, Taupier said he is assigned to 27 new bail and bond conditions, wears two ankle bracelets, which includes a GPS tracker, and is not permitted to leave the house except for court appearances. This is all despite the fact that the initial risk warrant was determined to be invalid in criminal court, he said.

“ I am on 24-7 lockdown. All my freedoms have been denied,” he said. “This happens to people in North Korea or in the Russian Gulag.”

  One day after the arrest, his contract with Citigroup as a financial officer was terminated. The job that gave him the opportunity to be at home with his children after school, instead of warehoused in day care, was taken away from him too, he said.

  Taupier’s arrest happened just two days after Tanya A. Taupier initiated an ex parte emergency hearing on Aug. 29 in which Bozzuto ordered their two children, aged 9 and 10, be extracted from one elementary school to another elementary school of Mrs. Taupier’s choice, said Taupier.

“ I have had 50-50 percent custody of my children for the past nine years,” he said. “I am an active and engaged parent – I love my kids.” Her extreme action is a result of a disagreement concerning the best schooling and after-school environment for their children, he said. “That’s what led to the false arrest.”

  In court Taupier’s ex-wife  said she wanted the school transfer to be as unobtrusive to the children as possible, but at the same time she requested a police escort, to extract two children in the middle of a school day, he said. “It not only violated the children’s rights, it terrorized them.”

  Mrs. Taupier then filed a full protective order against him, even though there was no family threat, he said. In court, Mrs. Taupier said Taupier’s possession of guns exposes the children to potential, deadly thugs that can hurt them. She makes this claim without any evidence, said Taupier. “In all the 12 years we have lived together there has never been a domestic violence incident.”

  Nonetheless, he said his 50-50 percent custody of the children was unilaterally dissolved by Bozzuto. The new judge assigned, because of the long length of this case, Judge Jorge A. Simon, accepted the ex-wife’s demand to cease weekend visitation and limit any visitation to supervised at a court approved location. “My time with my children now consists of two six-minute phone conversations per week.”

  All this time, the ex-wife failed to tell the court that out of the 13 guns that were in her possession, eight of them were given to him by her deceased father, he said. “Guns are a hobby for me. I purchase and collect guns to upgrade them,” said Taupier. “I’m an electrical engineer – I have mechanical skills.”

  It was the court appointed guardian ad litem, who initiated the gun ban against him without any evidence his hobby was a threat, he said. At the advice of then-counsel, Taupier agreed to temporarily remove the firearms from the home in exchange for time with his children. Time with his children would not be what the GAL proposed and Taupier later retrieved the firearms with the intention of selling his collection to offset legal costs, he said. “I have $50,000 custom made gun work, with enhanced triggers on my own guns.”

  Attorneys’ fees, mediation costs and GAL services that are dragging out the divorce, racked up fees in excess of $30,000, he said. “I have no money, no job, and I’m still not divorced.”

  The Connecticut Bar Association dismissed a grievance complaint filed by Taupier against the GAL, Margaret Bozek, because he said her actions did not seek the best interest of the children. “The GAL was not doing her job,” he said. Bozek recommended a full summer of revoked parental rights for Taupier. “My children want to see me. I want to see my children. How is separating us in their best interest?

  Family court, a court of equity, is using the children to punish Taupier for his political activism against GAL services, said Taupier. In a criminal jurisdiction Taupier is entitled to a Fernando hearing which would give him the right to be presented with his accuser. Family court circumvented criminal law by issuing a criminal order in a civil court arena, he said. “The risk warrant allowed officials to take custody and employ the SWAT teams.” In the criminal court, the risk warrant was deemed invalid, he said.

  For a state known as the “Constitution State” it does not follow the Constitution very well, he said. “There are First, Second, and Fourth Amendment violations – even my right to vote has been taken away.”

  Taupier believes his case is not an isolated one, he said.

  The entire family court system is embedded with players in a scam designed to soak money from good parents in order to fund a system that is completely broken. “I come from a big Irish, Catholic family. Family is everything to us,” said Taupier. “My family has been destroyed by family court.” “

 

Thanks to Human Events

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE DARK STATE: Discarded Tea Leaves, False Positive Drug Tests Prompt Search Warrant Of Family Home

 

Dark State

 

 

” The Sunflower State has very little sunshine for law enforcement records. Most Kansans are unaware of their inability to see records collected about themselves or loved ones. They’re either forced to spend thousands of dollars to open them or can’t afford to even try. This story is part one of a three part investigation that shows what can happen when records are restricted in Kansas. Read about the other two and watch our documentary at KSHB.com/darkstate.

  Bob Harte groggily opened his front door and found a fully-armed Johnson County SWAT team in front of him early in the morning of April 20, 2012.

  It was 7:30 a.m. when he’d heard a knock at the door and pulled himself out of bed to answer it while his wife and two kids slept.  A SWAT team surrounded his home, and a deputy had a battering ram ready to charge through the door had Bob had not opened it.

  The deputies pushed Bob to the floor of the entry way of his home and stood over him with rifles screaming, “Where are the children in the home?” Bob told them they were in their rooms and the deputies ran to find them.

  The commotion woke his wife Addie Harte who came downstairs to find out what was going on.

“ We just kept saying ‘You’re in the wrong house!’ said Addie.

  Deputies searched the sofa and then allowed the family of four to sit on it, in front of their picture window, as armed deputies searched the home. For two hours, the family sat on that sofa, afraid and puzzled as to why deputies were in their home.

On television, they always come to the door and say ‘we have a search warrant’ and hold it up. Here it is. Let us in. We were told in Kansas, they don’t have to give you the search warrant until they leave,” Bob Harte said.

  The Hartes’ kept asking deputies why they were in their home but deputies would only say that they were looking for “narcotics.”

  At the end of the raid, deputies handed the warrant over to Bob. On it, they had written they hadn’t seized anything. They had not found anything illegal in the home. Bob would end up taking that warrant door to door in their neighborhood to convince his neighbors nothing inappropriate had happened at their home.

  After the raid, the couple thought they could access public records to find out why law enforcement suspected drugs were in their home. They told 41 Action News they were shocked to find out they could not access any of those records under Kansas law.

  EDITOR’S NOTE: HB 2555, which would’ve opened some records to the public, was all but killed the night of March 25, by the Kansas Legislature.

“ We were chosen more or less at random for this drug raid and we were like ‘what do you mean we can’t get the records? They raided our house,” said Addie.

  The Hartes spent $25,000 hiring an attorney to fight to get access to the records. It took a year, but the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office eventually released the records. The Hartes were surprised by what they read.

  Records showed on Aug. 9, 2011, a Missouri Highway Patrol trooper observed a man leaving the Green Circle hydroponics store in Kansas City, Mo., in a KIA with his children and a small bag.

  Bob said he had been to the store to get supplies for a science project he was working on with his son: a basement hydroponic garden.

  Troopers had been observing customers at the hydroponics store because hydroponic supplies are often used in cultivating indoor marijuana plants.

  The Missouri Highway Patrol didn’t turn over the information to Johnson County authorities until March 20, 2012—seven months after the initial tip was observed. The records contain no information about why MHP waited so long to contact Johnson County law enforcement and no information about what triggered them handing over this information.

  Records show Johnson County deputies traced the tag number on the KIA observed by MHP to Bob and Addie Harte. On April 3, 2012, investigators visited the Harte’s home at 5 a.m. They went through the Harte’s trash and found wet plant material. At this time, investigators reported they didn’t know what it was so they failed to test it.

  A week later, on April 10th, investigators returned to the home. Again, deputies searched through the trash. This time, when they found plant-like material, they performed a field test which indicated the substance was marijuana.

  Deputies went to the home a third time on April 17th, 2012. Again, deputies found plant material in the Harte’s trash. They performed another field test which again indicated a positive result for marijuana.

  The Hartes say they knew immediately what police had located.

“ Bob instantly said, ‘It’s your tea!’ because I drink loose tea and those are saturated leaves,” said Addie, who told 41 Action News she often threw the leaves in the kitchen trash.

  Though field tests are known to be unreliable, reports obtained from the Johnson County crime lab indicate the deputies did not send any of the samples to the crime lab for confirmation. The records also note that deputies did not intend to, but changed their minds when the Hartes started questioning why deputies raided their home.

  When the crime lab processed the evidence, their tests came back negative for marijuana. The results came back in May of 2012.  The Johnson County Sheriff’s office had that information months before the Hartes were able to get the records that the material was not marijuana.

  The embarrassing misstep for deputies would have remained hidden if the Hartes had not had the means to spend money to gain access to the records.

  Along with taking legal action in federal court over the incident, Bob and Addie Harte have also testified in Topeka to encourage Kansas lawmakers to open police records. Bob believes if police had known the media would be able to analyze the warrant information in their case, deputies never would have gone through with the raid.

“ Nobody wants to be on the nightly news or front page of the paper explaining a scandal, and they don’t worry about that in this state because they know the media isn’t going to get ahold of it,” Bob Harte said.

  The family has also been contacted by people across Kansas trying to figure out how to access records about themselves. Addie said many of the people who have reached out to her do not have the same resources financially to fight to get records released.

“This not what justice in the United States is supposed to be. You shouldn’t have to have $25,000, even $5,000. You shouldn’t have to have that kind of money to find out why people came raiding your house like some sort of police state,” Addie Harte said.”

 

Read the whole thing from kshb.com and be sure to watch the three part video on Kansas secrecy laws 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lawyer Weighs In On Arlington Man Sent To Nursing Home

 

 

 

” A lawyer weighed in Friday on the case of an 85-year-old North Texas man who said he couldn’t get out of a local hospital on Wednesday. Instead of going home, Charlie Fink ended up in a nursing home after he was detained against his will by the state under an emergency protective order. Fink called FOX 4 for help.

  While FOX 4 hasn’t seen the court documents in Fink’s case, we do know the state believes that not only is Fink potentially a threat to himself and others, but that he can no longer handle his responsibilities at home.

  Fink allowed FOX 4 to enter what he called his crowded home on Friday, where neighbors Kenny and Debra McIntosh were cleaning. Trash and treasure fill Fink and his wife Edith’s home.

” They’re getting older, so it’s hard for them to move everything where they need to be, and dust high and stuff like that, which I can understand,” said Debra. Fink and 87-year-old Edith are now together in a nursing home.

   Edith was removed by the state Feb. 5, and Charlie was removed this week after driving himself to Richardson Methodist Hospital for hernia surgery. A hearing was held Wednesday for the state to temporarily take custody of Fink after he was placed in the hospital’s psychiatric ward.

” One thing that troubled me about that protective hearing you’re talking about is, he wasn’t present,” said attorney Geoff Henley, unrelated to Fink’s case. “He was not present, according to your story, and he was entitled to be.”

   

    Answer me this : Why is it totally unacceptable for the State to harass , incarcerate or in any way molest the mentally ill homeless on every city’s streets that the ACLU are so eager to defend yet when it comes to the rights of an self-sufficient elderly man who keeps his own home , pays his bills and feeds himself or those of a teenaged girl who’s parents are eager to take proper care of her those rights and their defenders are nowhere to be found ?

     How did we get to such a topsy-turvy world that the street people , the winos and the homeless , some of whom are mentally unbalanced and may indeed pose a threat to society , have benefactors , protectors and unalienable rights while those who choose to be responsible members of the community can so readily be deemed “unfit” and carted off by the State “for their own good” without so much as a peep from the usual “civil libertarian” groups ?

 

 

Another State kidnapping by the protection nazis … HT/PoliceStateUSA 

 

 

     Post Script: A bit off topic , but we have one more thought . As we have been compiling a fairly voluminous list of violations of individual liberty by the authorities in the US it has surprised us a good bit that Texas , a state that prides itself on being a haven of civil liberty supplies us with a disproportionate amount of stories like the one above and many other even worse examples of police brutality , no-knock raids and all round Statist behavior . Odd that …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did The IRS Give Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns To Harry Reid?

 

 

 

 

” During the 2012 presidential campaign, Harry Reid claimed to have intimate knowledge of what was secretly inside Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

As President Obama’s campaign slammed Romney nearly every day for not releasing more tax returns, the Senate majority leader repeatedly made the unsubstantiated claim that, at one point in his life, Romney hadn’t paid taxes for almost a decade.

He even did so from the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Since the new IRS scandal broke, Republicans have found the question of who Reid got his information from — and from where — intriguing.

“We all wondered how Harry Reid had Mitt Romney’s taxes,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski told The Daily Caller. “The question is, will he call for a full investigation into the IRS?” ”