Posted on 10/13/2012 6:45:22 AM PDT by marktwain
A Cranston gun owner will have his weapons returned to him along with $2,500 in damages and $2,000 for attorneys' fees after a settlement between the City of Cranston and the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU today announced that it has settled its lawsuit against the City of Cranston on behalf of Robert Machado, whose guns were seized by police last September after a rescue call to his house. A friend called 911 to report that Machado might be suicidal. Machado agreed to go to the hospital for a mental health evaluation, but insisted that his friend had misconstrued a conversation he had. He was subsequently released from the hospital and no problems were found.
Meanwhile police seized for safekeeping a variety of weapons from Machado's house, the ACLU said in a release, including firearms and a collection of samurai swords.
(Excerpt) Read more at cranston.patch.com ...
The ACLU represented him to get his guns back? Did hell freeze over?
For the record, other articles mention that he is a veteran.
I’ll bet we’re all wondering what that conversation with his friend was about.
Not much of a friend if you ask me. More like a backstabbin POS.
Did the "police" have a court order saying they could take the weapons? Where is it written that you need a court order to retrieve items seized by the "police"? If it is written, why?
Apparently it did. I would have never thought I would see the day where the ACLU considers gun ownership a civil right.
Many state chapters of the ACLU have been more conservative than the national organization. In some cases, there is a lot of friction between them.
But, I was surprised to see this happening in Rhode Island. Perhaps after all this time of hiding behind US v. Miller, the ACLU finally had to acknowledge that DC v. Heller forced their hand.
This is going to be a lot harder that it appears on the surface. The essence of the federal RICO statute is that the police may “arrest” and keep physical items with no concern to their owners, using the awful logic that physical items do not have constitutional rights.
These seizures are incredibly common in the US, and are done even when no one is charged with a crime. Property and cash money (greater than $100, as ‘suspected proceeds from a drug transaction’ I believe) can only be recovered in superior court, which takes years and can cost $100,000 for an easily decided case.
If it is a federal “arrest”, they give 10% of the take to the local police, whether they were involved or not. So local police departments have been getting millions of dollars they can spend on any police-y thing they want to, corrupting them terribly by giving them an outside source of revenue other than their local government.
And the seizure of guns is a big part of this. All they have to do is say they were taken in “suspicion of involvement in drug trafficking”, even if they were in the safe of a dentist with no trace of drugs in his house, after claiming “an anonymous source” said there was a drug deal in that house.
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