On 20 April 2012 the Leawood, KS home of Bob Harte's family was raided by a SWAT team who told him they were looking for drugs. None was found.
"On television, they always come to the door and say 'we have a search warrant' and hold it up. Here it is. Let us in. We were told in Kansas, they don't have to give you the search warrant until they leave," Bob Harte said...
At the end of the raid, deputies handed the warrant over to Bob. On it, they had written they hadn't seized anything. They had not found anything illegal in the home. Bob would end up taking that warrant door to door in their neighborhood to convince his neighbors nothing inappropriate had happened at their home.
After the raid, the couple thought they could access public records to find out why law enforcement suspected drugs were in their home. They told 41 Action News they were shocked to find out they could not access any of those records under Kansas law.
"We were chosen more or less at random for this drug raid and we were like 'what do you mean we can't get the records? They raided our house," said Addie.
The Hartes spent $25,000 hiring an attorney to fight to get access to the records. It took a year, but the Johnson County Sheriff's Office eventually released the records. The Hartes were surprised by what they read.
A blog on reason.com summarizes: "Eventually the Hartes learned that a Missouri Highway Patrol trooper saw Bob at the hydroponics store on August 9, 2011. Seven months later, state police passed on this hot tip to the sheriff's office, which sprang into action (after a few weeks), rummaging through the Hartes' garbage three times in April 2012. On all three occasions, they found "wet plant material" that a field test supposedly identified as marijuana...When the Hartes starting asking questions about the raid, the sheriff's office suddenly decided to test that wet plant material, which it turned out was not marijuana after all. The Hartes figure it must have been the loose tea that Addie favors, which she tends to toss into the trash after brewing."
"This not what justice in the United States is supposed to be. You shouldn't have to have $25,000, even $5,000. You shouldn't have to have that kind of money to find out why people came raiding your house like some sort of police state," Addie Harte said.
Not even Kansas is Kansas any more. At least no one was killed. |