TexasCHLforum.com

A depressed Army reservist who made a phone call for help says dozens of police responded by surrounding his home and arresting him, vandalizing and searching his place without a warrant, seizing his dog and killing his tropical fish.

Matthew Corrigan, who lives alone with his dog, sued the District of Columbia in D.C. Federal Court.

Confronted with a massive police presence after his plea for help, Corrigan says, he denied officers permission to enter his house, but they entered and trashed it anyway, saying, “I don’t have time to play this constitutional nonsense!” Corrigan says the debacle started on Feb. 2, 2010.

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The story is ridiculous, what could have prompted that sort of reaction in response to his call?
Did they have to kill the fish? Unbelievable.

I agree, this was so over the top

As with any other story that seems far too incredible to be accurate, this one is probably lacking some key info.

Well, if he wasn't depressed before - he is now.

If he called for help I don't think they need a warrant.

That's disgusting!!!

DC, right? I hope all those guns were legal.

boba wrote:If he called for help I don't think they need a warrant.

He called a wrong number.

I'm curious what he was charged with post hospital release. That may fill in some holes in the story.

Apparently he resided in the District of Columbia, since DC police responded. He admitted over the telephone that he had firearms. It would have been a simple matter for DC police to see if he had them registered. If they were not registered, that would seem to constitute probable cause for a search.

After he was released from the hospital and determined not to be a suicide risk, Corrigan says, police arrested him and put him in jail, where he remained for almost 2 weeks.
"When Corrigan returned to his apartment 16 days after being seized, he found that John Does I-XV had left the front door unlocked and unsecured, had left the electric stove on, had cut open every zipped bag, had dumped every box and drawer, had broken locked boxes from under the bed and the closet, and emptied shelves into piles in each room. All his tropical fish in his 150 gallon aquarium were dead."

This is just plain flat wrong. Sounds more like Hitler's Germany than the United States I grew up in. Unfortunately, the United States I grew up in no longer exists.

gigag04 wrote:I'm curious what he was charged with post hospital release. That may fill in some holes in the story.

That's why I'm curious about the legality of his guns in DC according to their insane laws.

They didn't kill his fish. His fish died from starvation after not eating for 2 weeks.

If you call for help, that is not the same as authorizing the police to search your house. All that does is give them permission to forcibly enter the house if you are unable to let them in. Of course, I guess once they're inside the house they can then search it if they see something they don't like.

This is a terrible story! If this is all of the info, and there are not other contributing factors we are not hearing, then I sincerely hope that he wins his lawsuit. Shameful that a veteran is treated this way. I hope he includes the suicide hotline in his lawsuit. Why did they even call the police? It is not a crime to own weapons if you are depressed. If he had said something implying he planned to use those weapons on innocent people then that would be a different story.

MoJoeWrkn wrote: Shameful that a veteran is treated this way.

Shameful that anyone is treated this way, but it happens more often than you'd think. Poh-leece will tell you that they are not responsible for cleaning up after they execute a search. That's your problem.

The police response was over the top, but I am going to guess that he loses the case. Police may enter your house without a warrant when based on probable cause. I believe the police had probable cause to search for illegal weapons. D.C. has very strict weapons laws still, despite Heller. The victim called a national suicide hotline and admitted he was depressed and had firearms. He then took pills and went to bed. From the article, he had to turn on his phone when he awoke, so he must have turned it off. I am going to guess that the hotline called the D.C. police to check on him when he did not answer their calls back to see if he was still okay. If the hotline mentioned the guns to Metro PD, which is very probable as part of their concern about him, a quick check would have shown that there were no registered guns at that address.

So, there was probable cause for belief that there were illegal guns inside the house. A search may be made based on exigent circumstances, which his health issue created. thus the search was legal.

Overall, I think the cops overreacted but there is also more to this story than the papers reported. If it came from his pleadings in a lawsuit, it was just one side of the story - his. There is no indication that the media even contacted the police for their version, if they would have commented. Before we make up our minds, we really need both sides of the story.