© Boston Globe
Police even have the right to smash down your door with a battering ram without a warrant and shoot you with pepper balls in order to take over your property, US District Court Judge Andrew Gordon concluded in a case called Anthony Mitchell v. City of Henderson. Mitchell and his parents sued the city of Henderson, a Las Vegas suburb, because of events on July 10, 2013.
The Mitchells' attorneys argued the events violated their clients' First, Third and Fourth Amendment rights. The Third Amendment makes it illegal for the government to seize private homes for use as quarters for soldiers and has rarely been the focus of a federal case. The attorneys contended that the Third Amendment applies to police as well as the military.
Does the Third Amendment Apply to SWAT teams?
Gordon dismissed the case.
"The relevant questions are thus whether municipal police should be considered soldiers, and whether the time they spent in the house could be considered quartering," he wrote. "To both questions, the answer must be no."
Judge Gordon's description of events as described by Mitchell and his parents, Michael and Linda, makes for some very disturbing reading. None of the Mitchells was suspected of a crime. Instead, police simply wanted to take over their homes to use as observation posts to watch a neighbor who was barricaded inside his house and who was refusing to leave. Police were investigating a domestic complaint against the neighbor.
Comment: It's one thing to have a SWAT Team ask to use your house to stage their forces. It's entirely different to treat the occupant of that house as a criminal and violate that individual's Constitutional rights. But, as this case proves, Americans have no real Constitutional rights anymore. They are living in a totalitarian police state where their rights are merely conditional, not given.