Don't turn on your lights... the police may think you're growing pot!
 

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...ws/8298678.htm

more can be found on the above link. It's crazy a high utility bill can be the cause of a warrant!

That is crazy ridiculous!

*waiting for the police*

I have 3 lights that I keep on 24/7. Since I'm not home just enough to worry (even though I have a security system), I figure that keeping the same lights on all the time will deter burglers.

Or attack pot growers, if would seem...

Whats really scary is . . .

How do the police know people's electric bills?

ETA: Big Brother is watching you . . .

Its like the Patriot Act. Giving up some rights, freedoms, & privacy to supposedly be safer. In this case, they noticed her utility bill was off the wall & they searched her house for anything suspicious. Had this women been living next door to someone that had a high utility bill but got caught selling weed to one of her kids she'd probably wonder what could've been done & why hadn't anything been done to prevent it?

You are right. People tend not to care until it effects them directly, and then its too late.

There is a story from the Holocaust (Not to use the Nazi Trump argument). The guys says, when they came to take away the first group we didn't say anything, and when they came for the second and third we stayed silent, when they finally came for us, there was no one left to protest.

Drug laws don't protect us from any imminent threat. They are highly ineffective, and counter productive.

The first Patriot Act was needed in light of an unknown, but tangible threat. Also, it had an expiration date so that we could consider its impact, and not be stuck with a diminishment of liberty.

I was really just trying to find a popular example that would help get my point across. Thats all. :)

The Patriot Act is an infringement of our Constitutional Rights in my opinion.

When you have lived through eras of "illegal" wiretapping, infiltration by law enforcement of unions and other "suspicious" groups (like political parties and anti-war groups who are operating totally within their rights), you may look back and not take this so lightly.

There is no "apples and apples" conparison between this case and the Patriot Act, but I can understand why someone would try to parrallel the two under the circumstances.

As for the original story in this thread, I'm just glad that the times are past when I was in college and students were being arrested in "no knock" raids and being sentenced to twenty year in the Ohio Penitentiary (not a nice place) for possession of marijuana.

I can't wait until I'm the puppet dictator, err I mean President.