the day is coming... 
Posted on 10/31/2014 2:50:39 PM PDT by Teotwawki
Police officers in Stettin, Wisconsin, recently sent a militarized 24-man SWAT team and an armored vehicle to collect fines from a 75-year-old man whose property was deemed untidy by local officials.
Following what his lawyer, Ryan Lister, described as a “long-running, heavily litigated dispute” over how he used his 20-acre property, Roger Hoeppner was ordered to clean up his land or face a $500-a-day fine.
Here’s a little background on the case, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Hoeppner owns about 20 acres along Packer Drive, which runs nearly parallel with Highway 29 west of Wausau, where he restores antique tractors and runs a pallet repair business. The latter at times featured giant piles of the wooden pallets visible from Packer Drive.
In 2008, the town sued Hoeppner over claimed violations of ordinances about zoning, signs, rubbish and vehicles. About a year later, the two sides settled; Hoeppner was supposed to clean up his property, and the town was supposed to open discussions about its zoning.
The town felt Hoeppner had not complied, and it brought a motion for contempt and enforcement. In September 2010, a judge ordered Hoeppner to remove certain items from his land.
The following May, the judge found Hoeppner had still not complied and authorized the town to seize assets. In the summer of 2011, the town hauled away several tractors, pallets, equipment and other items and auctioned them off for “pennies on the dollar,” according to Lister.
The fine went into effect after the elderly man lost a final appeal in March. By October, without notifying Hoeppner or his attorney, the county’s jack-boot brigade was sent to his home to collect $86,000 they say he owed.
“Rather than provide Mr. Hoeppner or his counsel notice… and attempt to collect without spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on the military-style maneuvers, the town unilaterally decided to enforce its civil judgment [with a show of force],” the man’s lawyer told the local newspaper.
That’s right, 24 armed men and a military vehicle stormed the man’s property while his lawyer, after being notified that the police had arrived and heading to the scene, was detained at a nearby roadblock — all in order to collect a civil judgment.
The elderly Hoeppner must be known locally as one bad S.O.B., huh? Well, not exactly, but local Sheriff’s Capt. Greg Bean explained that he had been known to be argumentative. Also, the official said, officers didn’t bring out the military vehicle until Hoeppner refused to come out of his house.
“People may not always understand why, but an armored vehicle is almost a necessity now,” Bean said.
(No doubt, if towns are going to be in the business of telling hardworking Americans how they are allowed to use their personal property, confiscating their belongs and robbing them of their retirement savings, military vehicles could come in handy.)
The argumentative elderly man eventually gave in to the police demands.
“The $86,000 figure is enough to shock most men,” he said. “And they wanted it now, today.”
Hoeppner eventually settled with the town for $80,000 after officials graciously allowed him to keep $6,000 to cover the cost of removing remaining items from his property.
the day is coming...
S.W.A.T. apparently means Repo men...
Bengie, Oct 31st, 2014 @ 5:04am
hmmm
To be fair, the farmer did threaten, many times, to cause harm to anyone who showed up.
And it wasn’t just a tractor, there was several pieces of farm equipment and between “5,000 and 8,000” pallets. Because this was seizure, they couldn’t use civilians, but it had to be officers of the law. Due to the scale of the amount of trash on this guy’s lawn, the small town had no other option than to use the SWAT team because that was most of their man power.
They did make use of civilian services to handle towing and stuff, but the deciding of what to take and execution of the judge’s orders had to be carried out by officers.
Mind you, they were going to write off the years and years of fines by liquidating the stuff that was causing the problem in the first place.
You tell me how a little town of 2500 population has the tax base for this sort of vehicle and have a SWAT team? They either owe hussein big time or they make elderly citizens pay for it. Imagine, being denied his attorney and being driven by the deputies to the bank and ordered to withdraw his retirement to pay the fine right then. Well, folks, there's hussein's army and it's coming soon to your neighborhood.
” They need a 24-man SWAT team with snipers and an armored vehicle because a 75-year old man might call them names?”
The feds are arming local cops to the hilt. The cops are out of control, all over the country.
Being argumentative with a cop. Did anyone know that was a law?
These thugs, and they’re all thugs, are all on power trips. Nobody becomes a cop to “protect and serve”. They become a cop to push people around. I think everyone of them was probably picked on when they were little. Every cop I ever knew fell into this category.
“The feds are arming local cops to the hilt. The cops are out of control, all over the country.”
Quote of the day.
“Being argumentative with a cop. Did anyone know that was a law?”
Probably falls more under “it’s not a good idea.” This should be something settled in the courts, not on the guy’s front lawn at gun point. But if he was somehow a total arse like Ferguson thugs or something....
It’s not just the cops either.
I defend the police quite often, but on the issue of overly zealous swat teams I can’t.
And then there is the issue of College campus swat teams, businesses who basically have a swat team, and other entities that do.
We have swat team saturation at this point, and it’s not getting better.
We nsed one or two swat teams per jurisdiction. We don’t need 5 to 20 overlapping, needing to get field experience to maintain a threat level readiness 24/7/365.
Ramp it down. Reduce the number of times these teams roll.
Get a perspective on this.
I hate the Ferguson trouble-makers, but it’s THIS kind of stuff that makes me go, MEH!, when those idiots make the cops’ jobs harder.
10, 15 years ago I would have AUTOMATICALLY stood up for the cops, come what may.
Now?
NAH..!
Thats all I’m asking.
i believe the vehicle and Swat was from Milwaukee or Madison. A little excessive force. So the county spent what 100,000 for 80,000. This makes no sense.
SWAT was designed for LIFE or Death situations. Now they use it to collect overdue fines.
FINES??
Insanity
And that’s why your desires are reasoned IMO.
You recognize a need, but you also recognize that we’ve lost touch with reality when it comes to SWAT teams.
Let’s follow the same arguments they use when talking about the right for citizens to be armed.
They talk about the amazingly few instances of violence, compared to the need to defend.
Gosh, if that’s a good rule of thumb, then apply it to SWAT teams.
We hardly ever have a need of a SWAT team. And SWAT team rights weren’t spelled out in the U. S. Constitution.
Insanity it is. No argument here.
Let’s keep it real.
Whatever happened to “one riot, one Mountie?”
I would like to ask Mr. Bean for more details on that statement.
Even Andy and Barney would get fed up with the guy after at least 6 years goes by. He just had to clean up the mess on his property and that would be the end of it.
http://blogs.denverpost.com/library/files/2012/07/Andy-Griffith.jpg
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“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Barack Hussein Obama, 7/2/2008They don’t call it a Civil Defense force, that would imply we need (or perhaps that we deserve) defense. The official name is National Civilian Community Corps.
I think of it as the NatCCC, or more simply, as the NatCs...
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