the Common Place

Here’s what I encountered  walking home last night. Literally a swarm of cop cars , 7 or 8 cops standing in the front yard of a home, and a crowd of college-age kids. A drug bust, or a really heavy response to a noisy party? I asked a cop, and he said the raid was “part of an ongoing investigation of activities at this residence.” From someone I knew in the crowd, I got the info that the police had followed some of the people home from a protest, and were refused admittance to the house. The police then blockaded the house, while waiting for a search warrant to be prepared.

From this report, it appears that the earlier incident was neither peaceful nor legal but, of course, this is the SC Senile we’re talking about, so who knows what actually happened. For one thing, the reporter seems very willing to take the police spokesperson’s word that the crowd last night was “agitated” and were “taunting” officers. The one thing that struck me in fact was that it seemed so oddly quiet for such a dramatic scene. And since when is asking for a badge number a “taunt?”

The actual raid occurred about 45 minutes after I left. At that point, the landlord had arrived, and provided the police with a key. But they still broke in with a battering ram. Why? Lots of reasons, but mainly I think because battering rams must justify their own existence by being used.

Right now I feel very weird about what’s going on around the corner from my house. I have a lot of unanswered questions.

Photos from indybay.org (As usual, the photos are the most interesting thing about the post on indymedia. The verbiage is long on attitude, short on information. Also, a comment from a neighbor there makes it seem like the atmosphere changed after I left.)