Based on the news reports a father was arrested and strip searched after his young daughter drew a picture of a gun at school and suggested her father used it to defend her from monsters. Apparently his house was searched. No gun was found and none existed.
It is most unclear to me how the police were to get a search warrant for the house. Certainly it does not seem close to reasonable and probable ground existed.
To my mind a malicious prosecution claim sounds to be very well founded; that might extend beyond the police to others who were instrumental in causing the arrest.
"Jessie Sansone, a 26-year-old father of four, was arrested at his children's school, strip searched and held by police, told he was being charged with illegal possession of a firearm. Three of his children were taken by Family and Child Services to be questioned and his pregnant wife, Stephanie, was hauled down to the police station after their four-year-old daughter drew a picture of her dad holding a gun.
Police searched their house and neighbours said cops were going through the house all afternoon."
5 comments:
http://www.therecord.com/news/local/article/676150--man-shocked-by-arrest-after-daughter-draws-picture-of-gun-at-school
"After he was released, Sansone was asked to sign a paper authorizing a search of his home. He signed, even though he didn’t have to, he said."
Seems like a pretty dumb thing for him to do, but, anyway, sounds like the police didn't get a warrant to search the house.
Dumb? The man had just been strip searched and had his family dragged through the ringer. Refusing to sign would have led them to believe he really did have something to hide, and he would have spent even more time locked up. This is a case of "process' run amok.
"From a public safety point of view, any child drawing a picture of guns and saying there’s guns in a home would warrant some further conversation with the parents and child,"
No... it means that guns probably exist in a home. It says nothing about how they're stored, or if they're dealt with responsibly. With the number of hunters in Canada, I don't understand how someone could make a comment like that with a straight face. Are they going to be raiding farms next and be horrified to find long guns used to deal with nuisance animals?
A child draws a picture and makes a comment, teachers feel forced to report it, Children's Services feel forced to investigate it, the police feel forced to help them, and it somehow ends in a full strip search, all based on just that original picture.
While in grade school, I drew pictures of lots of guns--I was interested in guns. But we didn't have a gun at home.
This was a massive overreach on everyone's part, and that father should sue the hell out of the police force, and the school.
It's dumb because the police could have found something in his house, however seemingly innocuous to pin him with. If the cops think they have the evidence to let them search your home, let them go get the warrant. If you just let them in your house you've just given them free reign to find any fragment of evidence to charge you, even if it's not the gun they were originally looking for.
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