Pastor Beaten and Tazed by AZ Border Patrol ...

.....Asserting His 4th Amendment Rights!

I have alot of respect personally for the BP Officers, but this


This you're not going to believe!

Pastor Steven Anderson is stopped in Arizona at an internal border checkpoint. The drug dog sniffed around but didn't even flinch; he just walked off.

BP tells him they have probable cause there's either drugs or a person in his trunk. Pastor Anderson tells the Border Patrol they can't search his vehicle. Dept. of Public Safety officers say he's under arrest.

DPS even asks Border Patrol to bring out the dog to prove their assertion that the dog believes there's probable cause to search, BUT THEY REFUSE! Then DPS breaks the windows in and tazes Pastor Anderson repeatedly! See YouTube below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUzd7G875Hc
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I've been stopped while crossing the White Sands Missile Range in NM (US Hwy 79 eastbound out of Las Cruces NM towards Alamogordo NM.....public hwy). The BP stopped me (they got a BP checkpoint set up there just before the WSMR museum), and made me pull off to the side and unlock my trailer so they could search it.

After presenting them my CDL, they asked if I was a US citizen. I'm like, "DUH!! That's me in the pic on the license! Run my SSN and CDL #!" (gee, I had a top secret security clearance when I was in the army....I dealt with sensitive fire control systems for artillery, and currently have a clean criminal and driving record and have a HazMat endorsement...approved by the TSA......finger printed and everything ). I had my Black Lab in the truck with me at the time and they even asked if he was 'legal'. (I always carried his shot records and license registration with me since he rode along a lot).

The attitudes they had were more like "I'm the law, do as I say, or else!" than anything else. One held me (with hand on his pistol......in its holster where it should be), while the one kept an eye on my truck (the tractor/cab) and the other searched my trailer.

I did have to chuckle though when the officer that searched my trailer emerged covered in dust (the load was stacked high enough that he had to shimmy across the top of each pallet full of stuff, 'cuz there was no room for him to stand up or even 'duck walk').

Bastards 'tied me up' for dang near 2 hours for this crap.

I learned this leasson already. Your 4th amendment rights don't exist anymore.

A psycho (bonafide loon, on SSDI for mental illness and has been for a good long while) claimed that we weren't taking good enough care of our daughter (because mom wasn't spending enough time with the psycho and she was jealous) so DHS shows up and asks to search our joint. I explained the Constitution to the man. On 14 Dec 2007, we came home and found our house had been burglarized .. . called the police (MPD) and they found out MPD had done the full tactical and had a warrant to sieze our very healthy 1.5 month old daughter. So the police asked us a few questions, told us the good news is we weren't robbed, the bad news was they were going to have to kidnap our daughter. Of course they killed one of our dogs and did several hundred dollars in property damage, and oddly took some but not all of my guns (which weren't on the warrant) . .. but we'll never see a dime of recompense because the law says a DHS worker can lie to get a warrant if he does it in good faith. Of course our daughter was stolen from us, we missed our first Christmas as a family together (they wouldn't even let us look at her through a window on Christmas) and I am unempolyed (in this fabulous economy) because of the quantity of time I had to take off from work to make court dates to get my daughter back, but we got our daughter back because we had done absolutely nothing wrong and there was nothing lacking in her care. The DHS worker sure SHOWED me, taught me a civics lesson, the 4th amendment is dead. 3 days before the Khang incident and the same MPD team by the way. Glad we weren't home when they hit us. Glad we got our beautiful daughter back, but really, hugely disillusioned about the 4th amendment.

I just tell this story so that you can know where your 4th amendment rights stand. When I bitch about the MPD it is because of this, no charges were ever even filed, the case has been closed for over a year (because it was absolutely fabricated by a psycho and a DHS worker who wanted to "show me" and we proved that in court) but some of my property is still being held by the MPD despite a court order to release it. Your 4th amendment rights are dead. If you assert your 4th amendment rights, it gives them "probable cause" to abuse you and your family, break your doors, kill your dog, kidnap your child. . . .

I guess I should have made a youtube video while the terror was fresh.

The 4th amendment doesn't exist anymore.

I'm smelling civil rights lawsuits.

But more than that...

WHAT THE **** is an "internal" border checkpoint?

Screw those thugs. They can't protect us from the actual holes in our border, so they decide to harass citizens? Assholes.

Yeah, I'm feeling punchy today.

-Mark

Nah, BP probably has some "good faith" clause protecting them just like DHS. . . . that is what kills the 4th amendment.. .. an exception that allows the government to side step the 4th without repercussion when they feel they are acting in good faith. How do you prove "bad faith" . . . . if you can't you have no 4th amendment.

I posted some videos on that before somewhere around here. Completely nuts.

Here it is.

The BP checkpoints are no different than the Drunk Driving checkpoints. Since the DD CP's are Supreme Court approved, why should these be any different.

As MACX wrote, the 4th ammendment is dead. Soon to be followed by the 2nd, 1st and then maybe they will go after the 5th.

What a pity.

I believe this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFS7oZtE ... re=related is the prelude to the one posted by the OP. In this video the same person stops at the checkpoint and is there for quite some time and they refuse to let him through. At one point one of the agents is asked on camera what he suspects the driver of and his response is "no idea". He doesn't know what he suspects the driver of, just that he suspects him and that gives them probable cause to search his vehicle. Finally, after 1/2 hour or 45 minutes and threatening to arrest him, they let him go through. I think the OP's video is them getting their revenge.

From what I've read, these "border" patrol checkpoints are legal at any point within 100 miles of the border. IMHO they belong at the border only. They need to start taking our borders seriously not bothering people for random and illegal searches INSIDE our borders.

Come to think of it, they even run these checkpoints up along the Canada/MN border and the Canada/ND border.

Last year about this time, I was hauling chemicals outta Grand Forks ND to farmers co-ops all across ND and northern MN. I remember passing a couple of 'portable' checkpoints in the 2 weeks I spent up there.

I mean every goddamn word of it. I dont expect others to understand, but my dog is as close to having a child as I am ever going to get. The police have no reason to come to my house, no lawful reason, that is. If they broke in, trashed the place, and destroyed something I love in an unjustifiable act of jack-booted-thuggery, well, they have crossed the Rubicon as far as I am concerned. And if they feel like coming after me just for expressing that sentiment, then we are further down the road to a totalitarian state than the Founding Fathers ever would have allowed. I know where my 'line in the sand' is.


This is all hypothetical, of course. I just want to be clear. I dont sit around at night nursing imagined grudges or planning crazy shit. The subject came up, I made my feelings clear. Besides, I couldnt erase it if I wanted to. You guys have qouted it half a dozen times.

I understand how you feel, but it's ,this kind of a general statement that can be used by police and prosecutors to justify the next isolated incident. It could be construed as general threat against police instead of a justified self defense statement.

It would also destroy your credibility in case you do have to justify a self defense incident.

I'd reconsider and then modify or delete this if it was my post.....

Also a good way to end up dead. Defense tactics are difficult to conduct, from inside a pine box.

It was just luck only the dogs were home when the MPD hit. I am a verbal opponent of no-knock warrants because they do put officers in unneccessary danger of self defense injuries before a resident can realistically be expected to realize it is the police rather than an armed gang dressed like the police & stand down. Of course the police are apt to react in self defense and harm the occupants & so everybody is in danger. The danger posed by no-knocks, can be mitigated with a knock and announce . . . if an occupant still attacks the police, it is fairly clear they were a bad guy and if things go south, they got what they deserved. Knock and announce warrants make things fairly black and white . . . you let them in and cooperate with the warrant or they kick the door and you get something between arrested and dead. no-knocks have become an excuse for sloppy police work. If the police had done even marginal investigation they would have been able to close the case with no warrant ever being served, no danger to officers, dogs, antique doors and their frames, other doors, windows, lawyer fees, time. . . . . just a little marginal police work, I am not even asking for associates degree level police work . . . bottom of the barrel barely able to spell police work would have done just fine, but at least some investigation prior to going all "no knock" on the empty house and condo of a pair of Mental Health Professionals and their infant daughter being accused by someone with documented, acute, debilitating mental illness. (Of course all of this begs the question why would you do a no-knock on an empty house?)

I understand your sentiment QuiChenKane, but the time since the event has given me some clarity. It was heartbreaking to find out the 4th amendment isn't anymore, but just dewelling in the heartbreak and anger isn't enough. Activism, demand for reform, that is what needs to happen. Just fighting them when they come through your door isn't enough, or even the right way to go. . . you'll die, they'll get medals and for what? It isn't easy to choke down the rage, but a man has to. What happened was wrong and it will never be right until it never happens to anyone else again. I can't do that with a dramatic shootout. I may be able to get there with patience and political activism.

Dick Unger had it exactly right: Dick was right, but he stopped short of mentioning that such statements as could even be used by an agressive County Attn'y to go after "terroristic threat" charges and yank your firearms rights or a Sheriff to deny your permit renewal next go around. As much as these situations may suck, you have to be very careful about what you say.

The last vid I saw with this guy, the BP let him go.

Not to praise interior check points or anything like that, but this "Pastor" is a raving NUT JOB.

Steven Anderson is a guy who has that sort of personality that makes you want to change your church affiliation, or at least change his. He's out actively trying to get busted, then screams about it.

He has never been ordained, been to college or seminary, claims his whole right to being a pastor his memorization of chapters of the Bible.