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by smalltorch 15 days ago
Id have to re-listen as well for all the details. But I think this is slightly different than the headline here.

In this case, the county voted for an ordinance banning them. Ike was threatened saying your going to be charged this is potentially state property, he did a sunshine request to see that they were privately owned by flock. Then he requested flock take them down but they didn't. After a few months he decided he will enforce the ordinance as the sheriff refused too.

He took them down brought them to his office. Then later 5 state officers (4 in plain clothing, one in uniform) were looking for him at his house. He brought them to the cameras and said here have them back.

Still got charged with theft somehow...

Moral of the story, that doesn't really sound like democracy to me. That sounds like kinda the opposite of democracy.

Anyway it's worth a listen if you have time. This isn't how these things should go and shows there is a little more than meets the eye here. Even if citizens perfectly execute democracy, these things may not budge. And there is a larger net of protection keeping these in place.

4 comments

Didn't know about sunshine request - the website[1] - until I searched for this term!

[1]: https://www.sunshinerequest.com/

This is just FOIA. You don't need any special website or process; just Google [(your state) FOIA] or [(your municipality) FOIA officer]. In Illinois, you can simply email free-form requests for documents and start a 10-day clock on the public body's side.
The problem is following up. It's hard to understand the process, and what to do when the public body doesn't respond.

If nothing else, the Sunshine Request site is a good place to get form emails for these requests from.

What you do is: you sue. On my 13th FOIA lawsuit and I have a couple more in the works ;)

Depending on where you're from, it's pretty easy to find a pro bono attorney. In Illinois, the plaintiff's attorneys recoup their costs on a successful win.

Whatever Chaps says about this, take to the bank.
Im not sure if there is a way to verify that the one he is talking about, but for public records request muckrock is great.

https://www.muckrock.com

MuckRock is the gold standard for systematizing FOIA requests imho.
Thank you for sharing this!
Moral of the story: never talk to the police. Even if you yourself are police.
> he did a sunshine request to see that they were privately owned by flock. Then he requested flock take them down but they didn't. After a few months he decided he will enforce the ordinance as the sheriff refused too.

yeah that's basically theft then. The cameras are probably a lot of money and so the dollar number put it in felony territory.

>Still got charged with theft somehow...

More equal animal acting in his official capacity gets treated like less equal animal.... basically.