Quote:
Originally Posted by Drolefille
Again, how is this an anonymous phone call? "Hi, my name is Sarah and I'm married to ____ Barlow. I'm his 7th wife. I'm 16. I'm pregnant. I live on FLDS Ranch. They're going to hurt me if they find out I called you"
The woman who they suspect of making this call, who apparently has Dissociative Identity Disorder and a history of doing this, will still get in trouble. She doesn't get a pass. Although apparently she does an impressive scared teenager impression, the person who received the call was shocked.
If you got a phone call that included the following information: "My name is Jane and my daddy touches me at night. I'm going to have a baby. My address is 123 Main Street." WTF are you going to do but go to that house and find out if JANE is being abused or not!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1856
^^^Agree. It is NOT as if an officer went out side of the PH and called it in off of a pay phone or something.
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But I think you invite the level of officers or private individuals making such calls when they have suspicions, even if they aren't grounded in actual evidence.
If I got such a phone call, I'd call the cops. If the cops got such a phone call, I'd expect them to investigate the claim, but I wouldn't expect a judge to give them a search warrant to conduct a raid unless we could establish first that even such a person existed, which can't actually be done in this case.
I'm happy about the outcome here, but I'm not interested having the standard be something like "forget long established civil liberties*, as long as the outcome pays off."
*like: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It's not just a problem with the person who placed the phone call; it's a problem with allowing the use of a faulty standard of proof that eventually is likely to affect not just the guilty as in this case, but all of us. Look at the other thread about the cops shooting the innocent guy more than 50 times. It's really hard to make the general case that the big problem is that our standards for police action are too high.
ETA: the fact that the call wasn't placed by the person named in the call makes it worst than an anonymous call. It's actually a fraudulent call.
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