| I have a story similar to this, though it didn't involve the police actually searching my home. In March of 2011, my St. Louis hosted an Occupy convention - which was mostly workshops/lectures and some very tame marches due to out-of-town folks. My roommates and I had been involved for a bit and some had given our address out when arrests were made. This was prime-time for police intimidation (including of witnesses) and undercover agents. We were aggressively tailed by unmarked cars, had police writing down license-plates of those at our house, and had a constant police presence circling the block and down the alley. Aside from very close friends being intensely beaten for participating in a march that was staying on the sidewalk (a scene that still haunts most of us) - the most corrupt thing that happened to us was when they worked with the local Electric company (Ameren UE) to have our electricity shut off. We called the electric company to find out why it was shut off when the bill had been up-to-date and were told they were ordered to by the police due to the house being declared Condemned and us being labeled as squatters. We had some pro-bono lawyers who advised me to threaten the electric company with legal action - which made their representatives quickly make up a legal excuse as to why our electric was shut off. I informed the landlord, who checked into it and found that it involved a Sergeant with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. The conversation between then went something along the lines of:
- Landlord: Why has the house been declared condemned and the electric shut off?
- Police: This house has been involved with Occupy and often serves as a meeting place for it.
- Landlord: Ok... Is it illegal to hold meetings in a house?
- Police: Well... No...
- Landlord: Then we shouldn't have a problem. Probably helped that the landlord is a high-ranking official in the nearby Air Force base. Within 24 hours, our electric was reconnected. My take-away from all of this, and the current events, is that the best course of action in dealing with aggressive and usually illegal police activities is to fight back with an even more aggressive legal campaign as well as establishing a very close and open relationship with all surrounding neighbors. Their fraternity acts as an organizational bully that constantly pushes what they can get away with until they sense actual danger to themselves/their jobs in terms of legal ramifications, etc. |