Sometimes It Pays NOT to Be Part
…of the “higher education bubble”.
Dept. of Education breaks down Stockton man’s door
STOCKTON, CA – Kenneth Wright does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 a.m. on Tuesday.
“I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers,” Wright said.
Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.
“He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there,” Wright said.
…As it turned out, the person law enforcement was looking for was not there – Wright’s estranged wife.
“They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids,” Wright said.
…The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife’s defaulted student loans.
(Well, he got off lightly ~ they didn’t shoot him 60 times, right?)
Man, that H.S. diploma and my DD-214’s looking like GOLD to me right now.
Question of the Day: Now that we know even the Dept. of Ed. can have gun-toting Storm Troopers roust innocent citizens from their humble abodes at the drop of the hat…is there ANYBODY left who can’t?
(Thanks to Ben Domenech for the story and our Dan for putting it where I could find it.)
UPDATE: Well, well, well. The story’s changing now. The poor terrified fellow apparently babbled the only explanation he could scrabble at, having been TOLD it was the DoEd beating down his doorway and holding him hostage, BECAUSE the link’s been disabled and the DoEd is saying, while they did, indeed, wallop the hell out of his home, it wasn’t about “student loan defaults”. Of course, no one’s going to tell you what it WAS about. As Ed says:
Update: The television station that first reported this has updated their story to note that it wasn’t a SWAT team, but the federal Office of the Inspector General (OIG). The OIG disputes that the issue was a default, but refuses to explain further:
UPDATE REDUX: Oh, dearie me! Tatler is invoking the “Sheriff Dupnik defense”.
Humanity...or the Lack Thereof, Nanny State, People | tree hugging sister | 
June 8, 2011 9:26 am
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S.W.A.T. called for late student loan payments, S.W.A.T., W.T.F? You have got to be kidding me.
All together now…
They said that if we gave Bush two terms, that our civil liberties would be worthless…
What the f**King f**king f**kity f**k?!!?!?!?!!!
A midnight raid by SWAT for a f**king STUDENT LOAN!?!?!?!?!?!!??!
I’m glad I don’t have a student loan. But I’m wondering if the Treasury Department might be antsy about ex-wife’s tendency to ignore credit card bills.
I don’t think the Department of Sanitation is yet authorized to pull a SWAT raid on you for not sorting your garbage. Yet.
Come on JeffS, it wasn’t midnight, it was 6 a.m.! Even if this involves more than late payments say fraud S.W.A.T. or even an armed entry by the Feds is way overkill.
Well, it was midnight SOMEWHERE in the world, so I was close!
🙂
“Way overkill” is too kind by far. “Gross incompetence”, “jackbooted thuggery”, or maybe “government intimidation”….those are closer.
[…] via Hot Air, the Coalition of the Swilling asks: Now that we know even the Dept. of Ed. can have gun-toting Storm Troopers roust innocent citizens […]
Another all out assault just to serve a search warrant! What on earth would the OIG be working on to resort to tactics like that?
And if they’re looking for the guy’s wife, why do they treat him that way? Do they have a problem with product identification or something.
If they properly identified themselves we wouldn’t have this problem of trying to discover which agency was involved, would we?