A federal appeals court ruled this week that the Colorado man who had his home destroyed by a police raid in 2015 is not entitled to compensation for the damage, which was severe enough to require a complete demolition of the house.
"Under no circumstances in this country should the government be able to blow up your house and render a family homeless," Leo Lech, the homeowner, told NPR after the court ruling on Wednesday.
The raid that left Lech and his family homeless had nothing to do with any of them. They weren't even home when an armed shoplifter broke into their house on South Alton Street in the leafy Denver suburb of Greenwood Village. Although the burglar was armed only with a handgun and was fully barricaded inside the home, local police responded as if they were confronting Osama bin Laden.
"Unleashing a display of force commonly reserved for the battlefield, the tactical team bombarded the building with high-caliber rifles, chemical agents, flash-bang grenades, remote-controlled robots, armored vehicles, and breaching rams—all to extract a petty thief with a handgun," wrote Jay Stooksberry in the December 2017 issue of Reason. At one point during the two-day operation, the cops drove an armored vehicle through the home's front door. When it was all over, the house was unlivable. Greenwood Village condemned the structure, forcing Lech to have it torn down, and the city offered a measly $5,000 to cover the damage.
They're talking about going to the SCOTUS, but I don't hold out much hope.
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Warren wrote: ↑31 Oct 2019, 21:23
Oh go crawl back into your hovel. There's nothing wrong with that house. It's not like you're going to live in it, or even near it.
I might hafta live near it and yeah there's a lot wrong with that house. But still fuck tha police. And this actually reinforces the travesty of the whole thing. If the cops had had a goddamned sense of proportion, this guy's neighbors wouldn't be blighted with that tacky piece of shit. Cops ruin everything.
"Dude she's the Purdue Pharma of the black pill." - JasonL
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Warren wrote: ↑31 Oct 2019, 21:23
Oh go crawl back into your hovel. There's nothing wrong with that house. It's not like you're going to live in it, or even near it.
It was a joke. Let's not make more of it than that.
Warren wrote: ↑31 Oct 2019, 21:23
Oh go crawl back into your hovel. There's nothing wrong with that house. It's not like you're going to live in it, or even near it.
It was a joke. Let's not make more of it than that.
Sry, should have stuck a on that. All in good fun. We're good bro.
That house wouldn't be at all unusual in the San Gabriel Valley.
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thoreau wrote: ↑01 Nov 2019, 12:05
That house wouldn't be at all unusual in the San Gabriel Valley.
It wouldn't be unusual anywhere. One of the features of McMansions is thier genericness.
It would be unusual everywhere I’ve ever lived. They’re probably in some of the suburbs around Chicagoland but not the ones I’ve been to.
That's more of an exurban design than suburban. Guarantee there's a Cabela's within reasonable distance of that house.
Yeah, you see that sort of architectural dogs-breakfast all over the DFW exurbs, except there'd be one ugly and pointless stonework section of the front facade.
Ultimately, whatever they look like on the outside, houses are boxes or, at most, a series of connected boxes. I think where one grows up drives what sort of houses look attractive. I grew up on center-hall colonials, so that's what I think a house should look like. If you grew up in the west, you probably have a different aesthetic.
The nearest one is north of I-70 so probably about 12 miles away, so it's almost perfectly equidistant between the two, which are on mostly-opposing sides of town. The funny thing is that because of a big notch in the suburban-rural interface cut by the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, the Bass Pro is only about 8 miles from the center of town.
"Dude she's the Purdue Pharma of the black pill." - JasonL
"This thread is like a dog park where everyone lets their preconceptions and biases run around and sniff each others butts." - Hugh Akston
Hmm. I think I've been to the home store of Rock Bottom Breweries and The Flying Saucer (one of the very early wall-o->100-taps micro/craftbrew-centric bars with no liquor, motto "DAFNGAT" meaning "Don't Ask For No Gin And Tonic") and El Fenix (which claims to be the originator of tex-mex).
"Dude she's the Purdue Pharma of the black pill." - JasonL
"This thread is like a dog park where everyone lets their preconceptions and biases run around and sniff each others butts." - Hugh Akston