U.S. Marshals terrorize nurse in police state raid of her apartment

Friday, July 26, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: U.S. Marshalls, armed raid, police militarization

(NaturalNews) We here at Natural News have become more than a little concerned about the over-militarization of police and federal law enforcement, using helmet-clad, flak vest-wearing, automatic weapon-toting officers and agents when it is entirely unnecessary to do so. While most cops continue to "serve and protect" the populations they were sworn to keep safe, a growing number of police and federal agents are literally being transformed into combat soldiers with law enforcement privileges and rights.

Take the case of Florida resident Louise Goldsberry, a nurse at Doctor's Hospital in Sarasota. For lack of a better phrase, she was recently violently accosted by U.S. Marshals who wrongly showed up at her place recently to execute an arrest warrant.

According to the Sarasota Herald Tribune, Goldsberry - an operating room scrub nurse - left her place of employment recently and went home to her Hidden Lake Village apartment.

Shortly after she got home, her boyfriend, Craig Dorris, came over and after the two finished dinner - around 8 p.m. - Goldsberry went into her kitchen to wash the dinner dishes.

It was then that Dorris, a manager for a security alarm firm, heard her scream and drop to the kitchen floor. Goldsberry told the newspaper she looked up from the sink to see a man "wearing a hunting vest."

"I screamed and screamed," said Goldsberry, 59. But at the same time, she scrambled across her kitchen floor and grabbed her five-shot .38 caliber revolver; she has a concealed carry permit and told reporters the gun has made her feel safer because she lives alone.

Still, she said, she didn't feel very safe after she heard a man yelling at her to open her front door.

She said the man yelling was claiming to be a cop but she said the man she had seen resembled an armed thug. Dorris, she said, was much calmer, and yelled back that he wanted to see some identification.

F-bombs and demands from an unknown intruder

From the paper:

But the man just demanded they open the door. The actual words, the couple say, were, "We're the f------ police; open the f------ door."

Dorris said he moved away from the door, afraid bullets were about to rip through.

Goldsberry was terrified but thinking it just might really be the police. Except, she says she wondered, would police talk that way? She had never been arrested or even come close. She couldn't imagine why police would be there or want to come in. But even if they did, why would they act like that at her apartment? It didn't seem right.

To the couple's horror, the door they thought was locked pushed open as they huddled in the hallway, Goldsberry with her handgun. A man in gear edged around the corner and pointed a rifle at them, as well as an extremely bright light, yelling ever more.

"Drop the f------ gun or I'll f------ shoot you," he shouted, again and again, the two said.

While Goldsberry continued to scream, Dorris remained calm and said he could see the armed man held a tactical shield for protection. He figured that while an overzealous street thug could have such a device, he ultimately decided the man looked well-equipped enough to be a cop on a major felony raid.

Understanding the situation could get out of control he asked if he could come outside and talk. He got permission to do so, rising with his hands in plain sight, raised. He said he was amazed by what he saw as others quickly grabbed and handcuffed him.

The man at the door and some others had words on their clothing identifying them as federal marshals. There were many Sarasota police officers as well, and some others he couldn't identify. "More than two dozen officers, maybe more than 30, were bustling around, many in tactical jackets," the paper said. "It was like nothing he had ever seen."

Dorris described the scene as looking like a "Rambo movie."

Eventually Goldsberry dropped her gun and she, too, was quickly handcuffed. Then her apartment was searched.

In the end, the couple remained in cuffs for more than a half-hour. Then the agents and officers left. End of story.

The paper said cops were "tipped off" that a child rapist was loose in the apartment complex.

'I have to go home at night'

Matt Wiggins, an agent with the U.S. Marshal's fugitive division, arrogantly blamed Goldsberry. From the paper:

I asked him what happened. He said they had a tip that a child-rape suspect was at the complex.

That suspect, Kyle Riley, was arrested several hours later in another part of Sarasota.

The tip was never about Goldsberry's apartment, specifically, Wiggins acknowledged. It was about the complex.

But when the people in Goldsberry's apartment didn't open up, that told Wiggins he had probably found the right door. No one at other units had reacted that way, he said.

Maybe none of them had a gun pointed at them through the kitchen window, I suggested. But Wiggins didn't think that was much excuse for the woman's behavior. He said he acted with restraint and didn't like having that gun aimed at him.

"I went above and beyond," Wiggins said. "I have to go home at night."

Goldsberry was at home, I said. She had a gun pointed at her, too, and she wasn't wearing body armor and behind a shield. She had no reason to expect police or think police would ever aim into her kitchen and cuss at her through her door to get in. It seemed crazy. She was panicked.

"We were clearly the police," Wiggins insisted. "She can't say she didn't know."

She does say so, actually.

If this is the mindset of today's "average" federal agent - that even when they are wrong, they think they are right - something's got to change.

Sources:

http://www.infowars.com

http://www.heraldtribune.com

http://online.wsj.com