North Texas hippie commune sues over failed SWAT raid
Quinn Eaker woke up naked on an early Friday morning to a 20-man SWAT team swarming his North Texas commune with weapons raised.
That was at 7:40 am on August 2, 2013. Eight hours later Eaker and seven others were still in handcuffs as various agencies from the City of Arlington continued to search for drugs and weapons listed in a search warrant. But they never found anything.
Now Eaker, 32, and four others are suing the city, claiming law enforcement violated Fourth Amendment protections of unreasonable search and seizure by raiding the home, forcibly detaining the residents and ripping up garden plants based on unsubstantiated intelligence and a flimsy search warrant.
"We were treated worse than criminals, like terrorists. But they didn't find a thing and not a single fact in their warrant was substantiated," said Eaker, a founder of the Garden of Eden commune and the person named on the search warrant. "They came in, machine guns in your face, no questions, just death or surrender immediately."
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/North-Texas-hippie-commune-sues-over-failed-SWAT-6431853.php
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