Wisconsin Town Sends In The BearCat Tank To Collect Civil Fine From Seventy-Year-Old
from the tanks-for-nothing dept
So, hey, let's say you're an old guy in a tiny town in central Wisconsin. Old, like, seventy-five, let's say, and the tiny town is farm country where you have a twenty-acre plot of good old American heartland. Now, let's say that the municipality hasn't appreciated the fact that you've kept your tractors out on the land you own and even went so far as to get a judge to level thousands of dollars of fines on you for not putting your toys away, because that's apparently a thing that can happen. Now let's say you've been ignoring these civil fines for some time. Under those conditions, would you expect this to show up on your lawn?
Could you repeat that? I couldn't hear your answer over the sound of you crapping your pants...
Marathon County sheriff’s captain Greg Bean declined to answer multiple requests for comment, but told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the large police presence was called in because law enforcement officials expected they would have to seize large equipment.See, this is our fault. I don't think any of us realized that SWAT teams moonlight as large-format moving companies. I always thought they were for things involving tactics more complicated than the tactics of getting a tractor onto the hitch of a Mack truck. But, hey, what do I know? I'm sure Mr. Bean isn't prone to saying super ridiculous stuff or anything. So how about that BearCat?
“I’ve been involved in about five standoff situations where, as soon as the MARV showed up, the person gives up,” Bean told the Journal Sentinel.I don't think the fact that the BearCat makes your job super easy to do is the proper justification for its deployment. If it was, why bother with the BearCat? Why not just bring the perp's mother to the scene and threaten to put a bullet through her head if perp doesn't give up immediately. Sure, it would be wholly unethical and inappropriate, but I bet Bean could still use the quote above, so all's good, yes?
This is yet another obvious and gross misuse of tactical and/or military-grade equipment in a haphazard way. Hoeppner owes Stettin, his city of 2500 residents, $80,000 in fines for not keeping his property as clean as the city would like. In other words, he left his tractors out. As a result, he faced down a BearCat and a SWAT team, which then escorted him to the bank where he paid his fines and was escorted back out by SWAT. All of this because the authorities couldn't be bothered to come up with a creative way to get Hoeppner out of his house.
“I just don’t understand why a dollar and a half of postage on an envelope that I would have had to pick up at the Wausau post office wouldn’t have done the same thing as 24 officers and an armored vehicle,” Hoeppner told the Guardian. “The United States is not supposed to terrorize its hardworking people."Good one, sir.
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Filed Under: bearcat, fine, greg bean, marathon county, mrap, roger hoeppner, swat, wisconsin
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So when will the letter-soup agencies storm that local SWAT team and those who sent them for terrorism? Oh, it's not terrorism when the Government does it. Got it.
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/sarc (For the totalitarians who think the proposal is reasonable.)
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PAY THE FUCKING MONEY BACK!
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hmmm
And it wasn't just a tractor, there was several pieces of farm equipment and between "5,000 and 8,000" pallets. Because this was seizure, they couldn't use civilians, but it had to be officers of the law. Due to the scale of the amount of trash on this guy's lawn, the small town had no other option than to use the SWAT team because that was most of their man power.
They did make use of civilian services to handle towing and stuff, but the deciding of what to take and execution of the judge's orders had to be carried out by officers.
Mind you, they were going to write off the years and years of fines by liquidating the stuff that was causing the problem in the first place.
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But that was the fed, not local authorities. So, the fed is not as crazy as local cops.
Mind you, they have sort of just given up collecting the millions owed by Bundy, I'll bet other ranchers think he is an ass also.
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I would rather they didn't have these toys. Could they have, I don't know, watched the house for him to leave and nab him? Is there a LOT of things they could have done instead of this. No doubt. It does seem like overkill and lazy police work.
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But you are spot on with the question, was it drawn and I would further ask did he threaten to use it?
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There really are still towns like that in rural areas of the US.
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All dressed in swat gear and driving a tank...
"To be fair, the farmer did threaten, many times, to cause harm to anyone who showed up."
After reading several stories, even the police said he wasn't dangerous.. Sheriff's Capt. Greg Bean said during an interview that while Hoeppner was never considered dangerous, he was known to be argumentative.
So for argumentative you get a tank, what happens if you actually resist? Tactical nuke?
Why can't i seem to find where he was threatening people? There was alleged threats, but the charges were dropped. This whole thing wreaks of intimidation and state overreach on an old retired man that worked his whole life for his retirement.. that has now been seized.
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Carrot Top DVDs.
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I think we would have to question why a small town in WI has most of it's man power tied up in SWAT.
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So in this case, everyone in the town / county are criminals, including the judge.
Let's send in the feds to arrest those corrupt criminals.
When the farmer sues the city / county, he'll be getting all brand new farm equipment for the ones illegally stolen from his property, as well as permanent restraining orders for the local/county police, administrators, mayor, etc, barring all of those ass-clowns from ever getting within 10 miles of his place ever again.
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I'm sorry, this argument is just ridiculous. Just off the top of my head, I can think of a better way to handle it.
Send in a couple of cops to detain the guy. Have a cop or two on hand along with a moving company who has been deputized (if necessary) to remove the equipment. You know, like cops use to do before they decided that they were a military unit.
No SWAT team or military equipment was necessary, let alone there being "no other option".
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Having an AR-15 hanging on your back does not make moving heavy equipment any easier.
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These officers are complete and utter pansies.
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Just wish the farmer had had Iron-Man style defensive equipment to pound their "Car" into scrap metal.
Would have served them right.
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Or is this a case of the old fella just wasn't going to put up with this Marathon Count officials telling him how he should keep his tractors on HIS property in the damn country?
Was this bothering people on a scenic drive through the country that his tractor was out? Did it look out of place to have a tractor on the farm? I mean c'mon now.
Or is this a case of somebody with nothing better to do hassling some senior over a tractor being out and the fact they didn't like that the senior wasn't going to put up with something he thought was a bunch of nonsense
Your telling me that because he hadn't paid these escalating fines, they need to send SWAT to kidnap this guy and take him to a bank and coerce him to pay his fines?
Like there wasn't other ways to collect than with SWAT doing debt collection? I would love to see the e-mails of who thought SWAT was needed, because you can bet someone started this and demanded SWAT be involved to scare the old guy into paying.
Let's hope the ACLU takes up this old guys cause here, because this is blatantly an abuse of power and resources.
I guess they just couldn't lien his property or add it to his taxes? Nope no other remedies but kidnapping the old guy and taking him to the bank
I am amazed at this. The guy is 75!!!! What were they afraid he was going to make a run for it out the back door with his cat under his arm?
There ought to be some heads roll over this, cause you can't tell me there were no other remedies available to collect these fines other than SWAT
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They needed a SWAT teams because the town of 2,000 people didn't have 24 sheriffs employed. They needed a lot of officers of the law to execute the seizure of the *thousands* items scattered on his lawn.
The law needed help, and they got help. The SWAT always uses this vehicle. It was not a show of force but a result of an extraordinarily messy lawn with tractors that have been sitting for years. I couldn't only imagine the state they were in.
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Bullshit. They needed one cop and to hire the services of a moving company.
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One riot: one ranger
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Probably an overreacion caused by Bundy
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Playing the race card - but also being honest
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And heaven forbid those pesky Girl Guides should bother anyone with trying to sell cookies at someones door in town, that would probably end up with snipers and sharp shooters being deployed to quell that para military organization that was threatening the town with baked goods.
All that was missing was the joint press conference from the Sheriff Bean and the Mayor was how this was a terrorism operation that threatened the highway landscape sight lines.
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http://www.waow.com/story/26547096/2014/09/16/accidental-shooting-at-police-shooting-range-in-marath on-county
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/story/news/local/2014/09/16/captain-bean-shot-self-hand/15 728241/
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/marathon-county-sheriffs-captain-accidentally-shoots-s elf-b99353213z1-275355171.html
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In my state, unpaid municipal bills (water bills, fees incurred if the city has to mow your property, etc.) are added to the property taxes. If the property taxes go unpaid then that results in a lien on the property and then eventually foreclosure.
The only time law enforcement is involved is when the property is actually foreclosed on and the occupants have to be physically removed from the property. By that time the property owner has already had ample opportunities to resolve the issue.
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America?
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please, don't let the city of Asheville find out about this!
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intimidate and brutalize
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Nuff said
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Real reason
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we have met the terrorists
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The police response was overkill and the lie about the reasons for the fine is disappointments, and you do this very frequently. It is as if you are unable to see any reason you cannot do whatever you want except killing and raping.
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There's a follow up...
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Overkill?
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