D.C.: Police to Ask Residents for Permission to Search Homes for Guns
March 25th, 2008Oh sure.
Via: NBC News:
A crackdown on guns is meeting some resistance in the District.
Police are asking residents to submit to voluntary searches in exchange for amnesty under the District’s gun ban. They passed out fliers requesting cooperation on Monday.
The program will begin in a couple of weeks in the Washington Highlands neighborhood of southeast Washington and will later expand to other neighborhoods. Officers will go door to door asking residents for permission to search their homes.
Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the “safe homes initiative” is aimed at residents who want to cooperate with police. She gave the example of parents or grandparents who know or suspect their children have guns in the home.
Community leaders went door to door in Ward 8 Monday to advise residents not to invite police into their homes to search for weapons.
“Bad idea,” said D.C. School Board member William Lockridge. “I think the people should not open your doors under any circumstances, don’t even crack your door, unless someone has a warrant for your arrest.”
Ron Hampton, of the Black Police Officers Association, said he doesn’t expect many in the community to comply.
“This is one of those communities where the police even have problems getting information about crimes that are going on in the community, so to suggest, now, that the police have enough community capital in their hand that the community is going to cooperate with them, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Hampton said.
Sure, you can search my house for guns.
As soon as you show me a valid warrant.
Otherwise, get the f*** off my property.
I wonder how many people there will actually have the brass to say that? Not many, I’ll bet.
My question is: what happens to a resident who refuses to let the police search his/her home? Is that resident put on an “uncooperative” list, later to be scrutinized? Is this just another data-gathering tool? Okay, that’s three questions but I’m sure there are more, like; May we search your home for hoards of food, fuel, ammunition, and medicine?
Notice this is in Washington DC. Sounds like a half-assed attempt by the city to pre-empt the current US Supreme Court case on its 30-year-old (and likely un-Constitutional) handgun ban.
If the police and local governments 50 miles west of DC outside the northern Virginia suburbs tried this, they’d be told to go to hell, and then would get run out of town on a rail in the next November election.
Washington, D.C. was for me, an interesting city to go to live in the early 1970’s. I grew up in BF (bum fuck) rural PA Egypt and, well, wow. My parents and grandparents were Slovaks. Grandma got a sponsor in the US cause she made great noodles(?). I remember my Dad saying the N word once, and when I mimicked him, he slapped me across the head. I said to him you said it! Why can’t I? Dad was pretty smart, he never uttered the N word in my presence again.
Anyways, I’ll never forget driving down Georgia Avenue in Washington, D.C. on an errand to get my new/used VW Beetle inspected. I felt like my face was the full Moon shining bright, when all around me was the crowd of dark skinned people.
I never will forget my shock and awe. Me personally, I think that living in DC enriched my life.
Washington, D.C. – I will never “get” why black people have built such a community there as they have. Maybe because its not a “state” of the union.
But this voluntary searching of houses for handguns, reminds me all too well of Hurricane Katrina and how the blacks of this nation have been mauled and chewed and mauled and chewed and eaten up by this white power racist regime. Didn’t they take their guns in Louisiana, their food stores etc., even while their world was drowning?
I agree @thucydides: ten feet from the D.C. border, a “friendly” knock on the door of the attendant police ( be they of any race) would get nasty responses. And it is due to the Supremes upcoming ruling. Who can tell where that argument will go.
But I think this effort bodes a bad omen for D.C. I’m thinking its an effort to figure out who has guns prior to the “next terrorist attack” or the next Hurricane Katrina.Isn’t it funny how all the weather wars, impending doom in housing etc. seems to be directed towards the non-uh, Texas bluebloods? Heil Bank Balance! What a joke.
Sheesh. I feel “real good” right now thinking that I will have to travel to D.C.
Dick “So?” Cheney has his bunker.I’ll be in a freaking hotel room.