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I agree with the poster who finds an anonymous call alone to be a creepy standard to lead to a search of this scale*, but coupled with other evidence, I think the search was the right thing is this instance.
*I'd be all about a DFACS review for suspicion of child abuse, but I don't think that an anonymous call about child abuse without any corroborating evidence ought to be enough to conduct a search of anyone's house or separate of children from their parents.
I think one of the many things that makes this case so strange is that because women and children so rarely if ever left the compound, the opportunities to do any kind of less invasive investigation were so limited. It would seem, though, that if the women were in fact receiving welfare benefits as unmarried parents with no source of outside income, as apparently is a pattern in these polygamous cults, that would give a way to investigate the circumstances of the children's lives without a full-on invasive police search. Then you could build a more legit-seeming case for a well-earned search warrant.
And that's the thing about the whole "police act on anonymous information all the time" argument. They do, but to come and search your home, you'd like to think it took more than one anonymous phone call that even after the search couldn't be substantiated or connected to real and specific person. Perhaps the police would serve their reputations well if they promoted the other facts that gave them cause to be suspicious in addition to the phone call.
Last edited by UGAalum94; 04-24-2008 at 05:26 PM.
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