In 2014, Pennsylvania’s top judges decided that cops don’t need to convince a judge to sign a warrant to search your car.
But as far as I know they still need a warrant to get around the Fourth Amendment and search your house without your permission.
And because we rely on the news media to be the watchdog for our rights, reporters who write about police searching homes should always find out why the police were allowed to do the search.
On June 16, the Reading Eagle had a story about Spring Township police arresting two 20-something brothers after finding 2 pounds of marijuana, guns and $3,000 in their home.
“Detective Steve Brock said the search of the residence was conducted June 2 after investigators responded to complaints from residents about suspected illegal drug activity.”
We’re all glad these pot dealers were busted, because their guns were really dangerous. Though now their disappointed customers might have to turn to smoking bath salts or toxic synthetic "marijuana," or alcohol or other Establishment-approved anti-depressants.
But this is where the rubber hits the road with respect to the Big Question of government: How to balance the rights of the individual with the good of society?
This is the exact spot where I want my local media to shine their lights upon, for us all to see exactly how public-safety policy is working. No need to remind you that police behavior is generally under scrutiny lately.
The Eagle reporter should have reported:
• Did the suspects give permission to search?
• Did the police get a search warrant?
• If they did, who was the judge?
• What was the “probable cause,” the reasons why the police believe a crime was probably committed?
• Are reports by suspicious neighbors enough to get a search warrant? The story suggests it is.
In an e-mail, Detective Brock told me: “The incident was based off citizen complaints about drug activity at the residence. The search of the residence was consensual.”
I bet he would have explained it to the Eagle reporter.
Of course, most of us are very law-abiding and never have contraband. So what’s the big fuss? An editor, Dave Warner, once told me it’s the oozing stories – where something slowly, apparently innocently creeps into the world – that are more important than the breaking-news stories.
By publicizing the oozing signs of the erosion of human rights, better journalism could have benefited many societies in the world that are in trouble now. But of course the Establishment leaders always get control of the media and use them for their agendas, not to publish truth.
In the New World Order, when I am appointed editor of the Reading Eagle, I will insist that reporters always ask police chiefs the reasons their officers search pockets, homes and vehicles.
Once I went, as the managing editor of bctv.org, to the state police headquarters for a forum on trooper-journalist relations. I told the room full of troopers and mostly TV reporters that news releases about vehicle stops should always include the probable cause.
I was quickly surrounded by in-leaning troopers decrying my attack on their ability to do their job. Later, one trooper more gently told me that frankly, people are ignorant of their rights and will quickly consent to a search of their vehicle, and that police depend on this to save themselves a lot of trouble.
I don’t really think the police in Berks are doing anything wrong. They are doing their jobs.
But the Reading Eagle newspaper is not doing its job.
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