SEARCH ME

[Duncan Frissell <76630.3577@CompuServe.COM>]

(an12070)

It is rarely to one's advantage to "assist the police."  In fact in 
British English the sentence "Fred C. Schwartz is assisting the police 
in their investigation" means that Fred C. Schwartz is the prime suspect.

(Trivia contest for ex right wing nuts - Who was Fred C. Schwartz?)

My search warrant story need not use penet.fi.  In the early 80's I was 
residing in a rented house in a city located in a region of the country 
that was once Democratic Farm Labor Party territory.  Being an inveterate 
reader of the newspaper, I was one day surprised to discover that our 
house was to be searched by the authorities at some point in the next 
few weeks.

Specifically, the article said that the houses on <my> block of <my> 
street were going to be searched as part of a survey to determine how 
many had illegal basement drains.  Apparently the criminals who had 
constructed much of the housing in that neighborhood in the 1920s had 
connected basement drains to the *storm sewers* from whence who knows 
what hideous substances could drain into the navigable waters of the 
United States without undergoing tertiary, secondary, or even primary 
treatment.  What's more, they had not complied with the Water Quality 
Act of 1970, as amended.  Who could believe that such evil exists in 
the human heart.

My wife (who in many ways was just the sort of female Kipling had in 
mind when he penned 'Deadlier Than the Male') and I decided to resist 
this search.  Since I was away during the day, it would fall to here to 
deal with the authorities.  In due course, a sewer inspector rang our 
doorbell.  My wife demanded to see his warrant.  He was shocked and 
mortified.  He tried to talk her into allowing the search.  He used 
primate arguments like "everyone else is letting us in."  My wife used 
Northern European arguments like "I'm not everyone else."  He went away.

Over the next few weeks, various bureaucrats called my wife and tried to 
get her to change her mind.  They said, "You're not going to force us to 
waste all that time and money and get a warrant, are you?"  She 
replied, "Consider it a valuable education on the 4th amendment."

Eventually, they showed up with a warrant and some cops just in case we 
resisted.  My wife took her time reading the warrant.  It said they 
could search the basement so she led them around to the back door and 
led them down to the basement where they discovered our criminal drain.

If I hadn't been working 70 hours a week, maybe I would have had fun and 
tried to quash (not squash) the warrant and explored the modern case law 
involving regulatory searches - a nasty area.

When we told our neighbors what we had done they said that they didn't 
know that one could resist a warrantless search.  A good time was had by 
all.  Quo warranto?

This was also a town where the public and catholic schools all ended 
summer vacation on the same day.  After that day, my youngest daughter 
was going about from place to place without apparent lawful occupation 
when an officious intermeddler asked her why she wasn't in school.  She 
then told her questioner what I had told her to say, "My father doesn't 
believe in your schools, he says that they are all dominated by 
communists."  Shuts them up every time. 

Duncan Frissell

Who is writing this in the terrorist capital of the US - Jersey City, 
NJ - but who has been denied a tactically necessary assault rifle by 
Governor Jim Florio. 

When amonium nitrate and diesel fuel in a 16 to 1 ratio are outlawed 
only outlaws (and farmers) will have amonium nitrate and diesel fuel in 
a 16 to 1 ratio.