This guy was on parole and a convicted sex offender. They could have searched his house or his yard on their whim.
The car reported seen during the abduction was sitting in the front yard!
Why then does the blame go on the responding cops? Why not on the dispatcher, or whomever?
This is absolutely a, “shit happens” scenario, and I’m getting sick and tired of those who choose to believe that shit should never happen. Y’know, godamnit, it does.
I also agree with that.
BTW, if anyone is curious, the coordinates for checking the place are:
38° 0’30.93"N
121°46’15.11"W
To the left of it one can see the tents, but if I’m correct, the “false” backyard has a wall of sheds under the trees that gives the impression that the property is only as long as the neighbor’s property that is to the south.
Apparently, they met with, and spoke to, the crazy on his front step, never even going into the backyard.
I am aware that ‘stuff happens’, but this is bad police work. The report was ‘people w children living in tents in the back yard’.
At the home of a convicted sex offender on parole!
The reported vehicle sitting right there in the front yard!
Even the county sheriff is saying as much.
the sheds, tents, and tarps are not visible unless you are looking at it from above. if they searched from the air they would see it.
i’m still baffled on why he had the 2 girls with him giving out pamplets and why he brought the three of them to the “interview”. i’m thinking wanted to be caught and end the situation and didn’t know how to do it.
Or maybe he thought they were so completely under his control that there was no risk.
He hadn’t reported having any children to his parole officer.
When the police officers, who were suspicious, called his PO, and reported he had his two daughters with him, the PO decided to make him appear and produce them. That’s why he took them with him.
I realize the sheds and tarps were well disguised, but the responding officers never even looked in the back yard. And, at the access point to the hidden yard, there was only a tarp pulled across to keep them from discovering all.
They had the right to search. They didn’t even take the time to look in the back yard of a man on parole for abduction and sex crimes against children! After a report that specified there were children living in the yard!
I don’t think we should punish the police officers involved, (what could be worse than living with this?), but nor should we pretend this is just ‘stuff happens’, it WAS bad police work.
I thought it was extremely refreshing to hear a sheriff own that, without the normal dancing and equivocations.
Is a search warrant not required even for the premises of a convicted felon?
And it’s well known that cops don’t have Google Earth.
Yea, shit happens but the officer should have asked to look in the back yard. If denied he should have then followed up with and talked to the reporting party. You don’t need a search warrent to look over a fence.
That’s what I bet on. Those guys just don’t see anything wrong with what they’re doing and at the same time they think that everybody else wants the things they do - only, everybody else is too cowardly or too stupid to pull it off.
The notion that other people simply do not want those things doesn’t cross their minds. Thing is, the fact that most people can’t conceive of the crap they do is one of the things that assist them: normal people will disregard the utterly egregious claims of victims or witnesses thinking that they’re lying or have been drinking too much too early. It’s easier to believe that a teenager (either unknown, or one of your students) is lying than to believe that (s)he is being abused.
I would have to say there was an element of clumsy police work, though I would reserve final judgment until there is more information. For all we know, there may also bear on the police actions (or those of the court, if a search warrant is required – DO we KNOW if his terms of parole preserved his rights against searches?) the limitation of resources to pursue vigorously every report of something strange going on in a neighbor’s house. If from Garrido’s front yard you could not see what was going on in the back, the neighbor who reported unusual things could have taken the police to her back yard to corroborate what she saw; but that may have required someone to stay out there looking and listening for unusual activity (it’s not illegal to have sheds and tents in your property).
Quite true. And the opposite-cautionary strategy, which is to treat every single report or clue as worst-case-scenario true until proven otherwise, risks eventually overwhelming the system and creating backlash. Treading the path of reasonably verifying claims while keeping endangered minors safe is damn hard.
And yes, these people’s minds are just wired radically different from the norm. Heck, THIS dude seems to have been quite the loon (voice mind control?) even absent the rape, pedophilia and sex slavery angles.
Just like the guy in the Collector. He thought that more people would do stuff like that if they thought they could get way with it…it never crossed his mind that most people think the idea of imprisoning a living human being who’s only with you out of force is horrifying.
Also, another thing:
normally someone asking for help won’t directly go to Someone and say “help me, Uncle Toby touches me wrong!” Heck, people aren’t that straightforward when they need help with the footer of a Word document, they won’t be about something more complicated.
A more common scenario would be something like [looks both sides and whispers] “you know, I don’t like Uncle Toby.”
Now, Uncle Toby happens to be a jovial, congenial, charming fellow. At this point, some people will think it’s probably nothing but decide to humor the kid and ask “oh, and why don’t you like Uncle Toby?”; some will laugh and tell the kid “oh, but your uncle is such a charming guy, there’s nothing not to like!”
Most of the time it will be something ranging from the completely unimportant (“his voice is SO LOUD!”) to something the kid is right not to like but which isn’t that serious (“he’s mean, he lies to me and then laughs at me. Mom always tells me it’s wrong to lie, why doesn’t she tell him?” - because she’s tired of telling him, kiddo). Sometimes, and after a lot of time and a lot of questions and a lot of listening calmly, it turns out that Uncle Toby is a bit too eager to ensure that the kid passes his SexEd classes or gives him such slaps (“ah, here’s my little man!” SLAP!!!) that the poor kid tumbles halfway across the room. You know, the same slaps to the back that big, jovial, congenial, charming Uncle Toby gives to grown men, but to a five year old :smack:
I don’t know if it’s true in this case, but in many jurisdictions a condition of parole is an automatic consent to search the parolee’s home. No warrant needed. And there is another question of whether the cops who were sent to his home knew that he was a former sex offender and still on parole.
I’d like to apologize to Cubsfan, et al. I got overwrought last evening, and made my points more rudely than I should have.
Still… let’s remember that for a couple of thousand years in many of the cultures from which we who read this are descended, it was perfectly reasonable and normal to keep slaves. So for many of these people part of the mentality is reverting to that: “I have conquered you and captured you, you are mine, accept your fate and you’ll be treated well, I can be a kind master if pleased.” And they’ll believe it, themselves.
Man, can’t wait to hear what’s supposed to be the “heartwarming” part of the story :rolleyes:
I know, it’s like Fritzl, insisting he treated his family well (well, except for the ones he kidnapped, raped, abused and locked up most/all of their lives, but that’s a minor point). Hey, he let 3 of his kids with Elizabeth have a “normal” life! Gee, he let the downstairs family have a TV and videoplayer too! What a nice guy.
the FBI do - when they’re searching for Mr. Burns’s trillion dollar bill, they tell Homer that ‘All we’ve ascertained from the satellite pictures is that it’s not on the roof’ 
Yeah. Or like the guy in the Collector thinking what a swell guy he was because he could buy Miranda all the clothes and cosmetics and art and records and chocolates that her heart could desire. And then getting pissy that she was fighting her hardest to escape every chance she got. I guess guys like that just don’t realize that nothing is going to make up for the sheer hell that prison is. Even if it’s a comfortable prison.