PUBLIC SAFETY NOTICE: If you are stockpiling firearms and/or considering constructing explosive devices as adjuncts to a planned act of political intimidation, then in order to protect public safety please be sure you’re not white so law enforcement will be able to curtail your activities in a timely manner.
Yes, the cops acted stupidly when they actually arrested him. Again, see incoming Congress-bigot Beth Van Duyne for further background on why the family justifiably felt discriminated against due to their faith, even though they pretty obviously were seeking to provoke some kind of incident and showed themselves to be bad actors in the aftermath.
Not only did the police not investigate the bomb-maker. Oh, it gets even better. Guess who got taken in for a psychological examination - the girlfriend. Nice touch.
If someone reported that the Nashville bomber’s name was Omar, they would have had the premises searched and him either arrested or shot resisting arrest within an hour.
Well, a guy has to find something to occupy his spare hours. I, for example, very much enjoy killing and eating small children. I find it very relaxing. And filling. There’s an extensive online community of fellow hobbyists, who swap hilarious stories and just laugh and laugh and laugh. ETA: Great source for recipes, too.
IDK anything about Tennessee’s explosives laws, or their willingness to investigate someone’s experimentation with explosives. But one of my neighbors, a recluse also, was accumulating weapons and making bombs in his home a few years back. A relative reported him and the police took it seriously. He was arrested and the bomb squad came and confiscated the materials. He went to prison, his house was sold. We don’t miss him
When I was Ahmed’s age in the early 70’s I would bring my crystal radio kit from Radio Shack as well as a transistor kit from the local hobby shop to my school in suburban NYC for science class.
None of the teachers gave it much thought that these could dangerous devices at a time when the Weather Underground and other radical groups were regularly setting off bombs across the country. Maybe there was just more discretion, the public was less afraid or we just laughed off this stuff as a passing fad in the Nixon era.
In the post-9/11 era of see-something-say-something, not to mention dozens and dozens of school shooting incidents, bringing a crystal radio kit to school would definitely be inviting at least a school administrative inquiry and quite possibly some law enforcement involvement too.
Domestic reports are always dicey, plenty of reason to not take everything at face value absent any actual evidence. We do have the fourth amendment, after all, don’t see that the cops did anything wrong here.
The legal standard for obtaining a search warrant is “probable cause.” Search warrants are routinely granted on the basis of a single witness’s report. Two such witnesses – a suspect’s distraught romantic partner and his former attorney who confirms that he is very much interested in and capable of constructing illegal explosive devices – will easily get you a search warrant from any judge in the country.
Yes, and it requires “probable cause.” Reports by two people - both the girlfriend and the attorney - that the guy was making bombs is usually considered enough to take a quick look around, at least. The report by the attorney takes it out of purely “domestic dispute” territory, unless the attorney was also living with the future bomber.
To be clear, probable cause is what it takes to get a search warrant issued. Even if they had probable cause (which they obviously did), the cops cannot enter onto the property without a warrant, at least in the absence of an applicable exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for a search warrant. When they didn’t get an answer to their knocks at the front door, they dropped the ball by not requesting a search warrant. They plainly thought the matter was important enough to pay a visit. They should have followed up with a warrant when the property owner did not give them access voluntarily.
“Should” being the debatable term. The girlfriend who made the claims was upset and potentially suicidal or something, given the guns with her, her attorney was the one who backed up the claims, but he had also been the guy’s attorney, so it’s kind of messy if they didn’t have anything to really go off of.
There’s no obligation for people to open the door and let the cops have a look around the place, and them declining to should not be taken as them hiding something, or there’s no point to the Fourth Amendment.