"The scope of the case - the largest of its kind in U.S. history - should make it easier to understand why the investigation was carried out imperfectly, beginning with the fact it originated from a phone call alleging abuse now believed to be a hoax. That doesn't exonerate the perpetrators any more than if police responding to a shoplifting complaint went to the wrong address and found a bank robbery in progress."
This is precisely the formulation that would make prosecution of the FLDS valid. Except, it's not true. If they would read opinions and research critical of CPS, they would not draw such conclusions. I have only to point to my own work, here at this blog. Yes, I understand the issue, for I have made the same comparisons to both bank robbery and murder found while investigating other crimes.
We now know that a considerable force was assembled prior to the raid, which was in essence, a domestic violence call.
We now know that the basis of that response, overwrought or not, was eroded while the police were at the gate with considerable force backing them up, dictating a near apocalyptic outcome, had the FLDS correctly chosen to resist an illegal entry into their own homes. By "correctly" I mean that they were entirely within their rights to resist. They were being invaded, illegally. Sheriff David Doran had a small military force at his disposal and he was going in. Doran contacted the alleged perpetrator while at the gate and had every reason to believe that the call was in fact a hoax, the perpetrator was not, and had not been at the Ranch, ever, and furthermore, Law Enforcement believed that. They are quoted as saying "Well, that takes care of half the problem. Now we need to find this Sarah Jessop Barlow." If you believe that the alleged victim hasn't given you accurate information about who her husband is, why do you believe she has given you accurate information about who she is, or even where she is? In the meantime FLDS men are pointing out that the call should be traced. These are men that believe that a traced call will exonerate them. Sheriff Doran must believe it will too, because he proceeds, time now, is not his friend.
Sheriff Doran wanted to believe something was "going on." This is the KoolAid of the YFZ raid. The only thing accurate about the San Angelo Standard-Times editorial analysis is the idea that Law Enforcement was at the wrong address. If the perp is correctly identified, and is correctly believed to be out of state and never in the state, the only logical conclusion about Sarah Jessop Barlow's story is that she sincerely thinks she's in Texas, but isn't. Furthermore they have the now increasingly reliable testimony of the men at the gate that she isn't there. They correctly have told you the perp isn't there, and they're telling you the victim is not there.
Next, there is the Eldorado Report itself. This gives further lie to the idea that a bank robbery was in progress. Since the report does not cite seeing pregnant teenage girls, or children with children, but instead interviews as setting up the basis for continued police action, the progress of the raid is now described like this. I can do no more than to cite the report in it's entirety. The claim of such a basis is not there.
- False premise for entry, believed but not properly investigated.
- Massive confrontation, planned for, but not needed. There was no violence at the Ranch.
- Belated investigation at the gate of the Ranch where the story begins to fall apart.
- Entry based on overwhelming force that cannot be contested. The FLDS have no private army or security force.
- A subsequent failure to find anything pertaining to the cause for entry.
- Refusing to leave Law Enforcement begins to ask questions that have nothing to do with the raid. This is not a crime seen while at the Ranch, this is looking for a crime not the subject of the warrant and not in evidence.
- The destruction of property.
- Forced armed entry into private residences.
- Forced entry into a place of worship.
- Forcible confiscation of private records, to form the basis for crimes not in evidence that Texas now desperately needs to justify it's baseless raid.
What is disgusting about this editorial claim is that it makes no case. It simply asserts that if any wrongdoing is ultimately alleged with any basis whatsoever, that Law Enforcement can be excused for anything they did. It makes no attempt to prove any point, it simply asserts that it, is The San Angelo Standard-Times. It knows. You don't need to question them. Accept that it is true. After all, they got everything from The Government, it must be true.
The title of the opinion piece states "CPS Report Clearly Shows FLDS Abuse." At this point what the report shows is that the Pregnancy Rate among FLDS teen girls is lower than the national average. It's lower than that of Texas. It's probably lower than that of San Angelo or Scheicher county.
Stalin is said to have made the trains run on time. I'm sure Hitler, or Mussolini or Tito or Castro could all have found the abuses of any group had they wished to find them. If your family, or mine looked "suspicious" then those all powerful states could produce their kind of justice, any time.
The FLDS could not survive in Castro's Cuba by keeping what they do out of sight, the mere suspicion that the FLDS were engaged in child abuse would produce a midnight raid where everyone was turned out of their homes, isolated from one another, their houses ransacked, their children placed in foster care, their parents jailed, questioned, and everything searched. DNA evidence would not be asked for, it would be taken. Why are we not outraged that this is almost precisely what happened? In the end, the FLDS could hope that it would not have been an object of a political arrest, because it would be all over. Their crimes, if any, would be discovered. Their crimes, if not those suspected, would be found. The Standard-Times is concluding that there was abuse because the CPS report says so. Because, ultimately, Texas Wildcat Evidence Drilling project hit an oil pocket, the whole raid is justified.
In our country, searching for crimes is not Wildcatting. Searching for crimes by Wildcat searching is the province of dictatorships. Somewhere, Stalin is smiling. More →
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