iPhone X Purchase Leads To Police, Battering Ram, and Handcuffs (cbslocal.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CBS SFBayArea: On one recent morning, Rick Garcia and his wife Shannon Knuth woke up to a posse of San Francisco police officers at their front door. "I peered through the peephole and I saw a police officer and a battering ram," Garcia said. "We heard 'SFPD' and 'warrant,' and I was like 'what's going on?'" Knuth remembers. It felt like a nightmare yet it was real. Garcia says that within seconds he was dragged into the hallway of his apartment complex, handcuffed, then whisked away to the Taraval Station.... Meanwhile Knuth, who had just got out of the shower, was ordered to sit on the couch... After rifling through the apartment Knuth says the officers finally told her what they were looking for: Her husband's iPhone X.

According to the warrant, it was stolen but Knuth showed them the receipt which proved her husband bought it. Once the officers realized their mistake they called the police station and a squad car brought Garcia home. "They gathered their pry bar and their battering ram and they left," he said. So how could a mistake like that happen? It's still unclear but it turns out Garcia and Knuth bought the iPhone at an Apple store at Stonestown Galleria just a few weeks after 300 iPhone Xs were stolen from a UPS truck in the mall parking lot.
One former police chief says the way it was handled "kind of boggles the mind...

"This was clearly an incident that should have just been a knock and talk, a couple detectives come to the door, knock on the door and they would have gathered the same info that they gathered after they put him in handcuffs and hauled him off to jail."

Comments

Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish the police would put this kind of effort in to recovering my stolen bike rather than a multi-billion dollar companies product.

But I guess that doesn't fit their mandate of protecting large corporations profits.

Re:Priorities

[BronsCon]

Yes, but you don't have to ARREST the buyers, unless you have grounds to believe they knew they were buying stolen goods; they've done nothing wrong. Find them, question them, let them point you in the right direction, but don't arrest innocent people.

Re:Priorities

[mysidia]

Breaking the door down is, counter-intuitively, a safety measure.

That's not a very good "safety measure"; innocent people have a right to be secure in their property, and seeing their door being bashed in without warning, basically gives the inhabitants carte blanche to pull out any guns they can find and open fire in the direction of intruders; the result could be fatalities of members of their "surprise raid team", and it will all be legally protected self-defense.

Re:Priorities

[cayenne8]

I agree completely that there is no reason to batter their doors down with a ram.

At the VERY least, I hope this couple has lawyered up and are preparing to sue the living shit out of the PD and the city if not state and whomever else they can.

The authorities need to take a hit on this one and learn the lesson that not every "house call" demands SWAT type levels of entry and treatment of the residents.

Re:Priorities

[toonces33]

Apple effed up as well. They were the ones that gave the info to the police. If it were me, that would be the last Apple product that I would ever buy.

Incompetence or improper training?

[QuietLagoon]

Instead of being trained not to over-react in situations, it appears as if police are being trained to over-react in situations.

Time to sue

[chromaexcursion]

Wrongful arrest, and a laundry list of other complaints,
This is SO blatant, it will settle out of court, for a lot of money.

Re: Proof of US police incompetence

[saloomy]

This. We elected and installed these asshats. The police are overbearing and overtly militarized. There's a reason you can't use the military for civil ip law enforcement, so they went around and created a "non-military military".

Tough on crime and tough on drugs is "weak on civil liberties".

Re:Proof of US police incompetence

[arth1]

But you can't have a police force using revolvers going up against criminals with fully automatic weapons.

You can have police that's unarmed until attacked go up against criminals with fully automatic weapons.
It is common practice in many countries, and works surprisingly well. Police knocks on the door, and informs them that they're under arrest, and surrounded. By police who are currently unarmed, but will get authorization to break out their sealed arms the minute they hear a gunshot.
When the criminals don't feel their lives are threatened, and no one points a weapon at them, there's no strong drive for them to start shooting. In fact, there's less, because they have a good chance go get a far lighter sentence. But when cops go in with drawn guns, their hands are forced and you do get shootouts.

I'm a law-abiding fellow, and the only reason I would want a gun is to be able to protect myself from the police. I have never had a "criminal" point a gun at me, but I have had cops do it twice. That's reality in the US these days.

Miranda warning

[BankRobberMBA]

Cops are not obligated to read you your rights until they begin an official interrogation. As such, it is in their interests to postpone that as long as possible so that you might incriminate yourself before you are Mirandized. Anything you say will be admissible as long as they were not 'questioning' you at the time. Yes, this does suck. No, you will not prevail on appeal.

Do not talk to cops in their official capacity. They are professionals at talking to you, you are an amateur at talking to them.

Further, if you are talking and it is not being actively recorded, cops can mis-remember what you said and how you said it. Nothing can stop the dishonest cop from lying, but silence will prevent the many honest cops from mis-remembering.

So, stop talking. Seriously.