A blogger in Phoenix, AZ has been raided, all of his computer equipment taken, in what some people (including me!) believe was a retaliatory raid against him due to critical comments he's made with inside sources about the Phoenix police department.
This has been extensively blogged elsewhere, but I haven't yet seen it here.
Pataky, who was out of town on a business trip during the raid, also believes police were retaliating against him for the content of his blog, much of it which comes from inside sources within the department.
“They broke into my safe and took the backups of my backups,” he said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime on Wednesday.
“I can’t even file my taxes because all my business plans are gone. They took everything.”
The search warrant lists “petty theft” and “computer tampering with the intent to harass” as probable causes. He has yet to see an actual affidavit that lists in detail the probable cause and is skeptical that one even exists.
“They say everything has been sealed,” he said.
Here's an entry from the blog [badphoenixcops.blogspot.com] that I think demonstrates the important work they're doing:
Thanks so much to the fine officer that gave us a whole stack of Disciplinary Review Board Logs. Here's a photo of all of them.
This is great material and while it will take us quite a while to go through the 100+ pages, we did find some interesting info on your now Commander Jeffeory Hynes in FIB. Jeffeory (yeah that's how he spells his first name) is best known for being investigated in the Steyr-AUG incident.
According to his discipline report dated 5/21/96 Jeffeory Hynes, "Acted outside of the scope of his authority" (kind of like when he commanded FIB - SID to raid a citizen's homes - way outside of his scope of authority)....by signing an official department letter authorizing the purchasing of 8 steyr-AUG assault rifles for 4 officers. He attested that all 4 officers were authorized to use these weapons, when in fact none of the officers were authorized to use the steyr-AUG.
Now we aren't cops but we think the technical term for what Hynes did is called, LYING.
Anyone from Phoenix know if this has been covered in the local press there?
First diary! Please be kind...
EDIT: nailbender has been kind enough to link to an actual news article about the case.