Monday, June 23, 2014
DHS ransacks Florida couple’s home without explanation, strips woman naked
A Florida couple was traumatized after a dozen heavily armed SWAT agents crashed through their front door, flash-banged their cat, aimed rifles at them and searched their home without explanation.
The raid took place in the pre-dawn hours of June 10th, 2014. At approximately 6:16 a.m., Kari Edwards and her live-in boyfriend were intruded upon by men dressed in full SWAT gear and wielding rifles. After smashing down the couple’s front door, agents tossed concussion grenades and proceeded into the home.
“They busted in like I was a terrorist or something,” said Ms. Edwards.
“[An officer] demanded that I drop the towel I was covering my naked body with,” Ms. Edwards said, “before snatching it off me physically and throwing me to the ground.”
“While I lay naked, I was cuffed so tightly I could not feel my hands. For no reason, at gunpoint,” Edwards said. “[Agents] refused to cover me, no matter how many times I asked.”
Ms. Edwards said her boyfriend told her that an agent holding an assault rifle to her back was gawking at her exposed body. “Eying me up and down like I was eye candy,” she said.
The house was equipped with a surveillance system, which captured video of the agents from a couple different angles.
…
“I have never been in any trouble before,” Ms. Edwards told Police State USA. “Haven’t even had a traffic ticket in over ten years.”
In fact, she said she used to work for the Department of Homeland Security, but became disabled from an on-the-job injury in 2006. She identified the raid as a DHS operation.
“I know I saw ‘ICE’ on one shirt and my boyfriend saw ‘Gang Task Force’ on another,” she told Police State USA. “Someone’s just said, ‘Special Agent.’”
Edwards requested to see the agents’ identification but was not obliged. One officer pointed to his uniform that read ‘POLICE’ and allegedly said, “Isn’t this enough ID for you?”
“When I told him that I could buy that [uniform] up in Miami, he called me ‘retarded’ and ‘f***ing stupid,’” Edwards recalled.
Edwards said that the SWAT team threw a flashbang at her cat, Dusty. She says that Dusty normally had a friendly personality and greets everyone, but now is “fearful and hard of hearing.”
When agents discovered that they were being recorded by home surveillance cameras, they forcefully twisted the cameras, saying that they “can’t be recorded.”
Full article: http://www.policesta … 4/kari-edwards-raid/
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