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Title: WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU
Subtitle: How Police and Government Are Trampling Our Liberties – and How to Take Them Back
Author: DAVID KIRBY
Publisher: ST. MARTINS PRESS
Release Date: OCTOBER 29, 2019
Rating: 4 OUT OF 5 STARS ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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DESCRIPTION:
A revealing book about how government, law enforcement, and bureaucratic interests are seizing our property, our children, our savings, and our fundamental American rights—and how to fight back.
Liberty and justice for all is the bedrock of American democracy, but has America betrayed our founders’ vision for the nation? In When They Come For You, New York Times bestselling author David Kirby exposes federal, state, and local violations of basic constitutional rights that should trouble every American, whether liberal, conservative, or libertarian. Free speech, privacy, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, due process, and equal protection under the law are rights that belong to every American citizen, but are being shredded at an alarming rate all across the country.
Police and prosecutorial misconduct, overzealous bureaucrats with virtually unchecked power, unwarranted searches, SWAT-style raids on the homes of innocent Americans, crackdowns on a free press and the right to protest, removing children from their parents without cause, “debtors prisons,” restricting freedom of health choice, seizing private assets for government profit, and much more demonstrate how deeply our rights and our national values are eroding. When They Come For You uses true stories of everyday citizens to reveal how our federal, state, and municipal governments, police, lawmakers, judges, revenue agents, unelected power brokers, and even government social workers are eviscerating our most fundamental liberties. And, it shows how people are fighting back—and winning.
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MY REVIEW:
WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU is a terrifying, yet hopeful look at what is going on currently in the United States.
Initially, readers may think the author is a Conspiracy Theorist, but will quickly discover that author David Kirby has definitely done his homework for this book.
WHEN THEY COME FOR YOU is incredibly well researched and every American needs to read it. If you thought you knew what the government and other large corporations are up to, you would be Dead-Wrong.
Although the discoveries he made are very scary, David Kirby does not just point out the issues/problems, he also offers up hope in the form of suggestions on how to live an informed and proactive life.
I have no idea who it was that originally said, “If you aren’t part of the solution, you are part of the problem,” but he/she/they were very much correct. However, it is very difficult to help fix an issue if you aren’t aware that the problem exists. Read this book and begin to be proactive rather than reactive.
I rate this book as
4 OUT OF 5 STARS ⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 OUT OF 5 STARS ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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*** Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book.***
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kirby has written for many national magazines, including Glamour, Redbook, Self and Mademoiselle. From 1986 to 1990, Kirby was a foreign correspondent for UPI, and Newsday (among others) in Latin America, covering wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and he covered politics, corruption and natural disasters in Mexico. It was during this time that he was also a reporter for OutWeek.
From 1990 to 1993, Kirby was director of public information at the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), worked for New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, and was a senior staff adviser to David Dinkins’ successful 1989 run for mayor of New York City.
In 1998, Kirby wrote a cover story for The Advocate, “Does coming out matter?”.[1] From 1998 to 2001, he wrote many articles for The Advocate, including one on the courage of young gay and lesbian scouts and service members.[2]
From 2000 to 2004, Kirby contributed several articles on travel to The New York Times, including “Rainbow Beach Towels on Mexican Sand”, an article on the gay tourism industry in Puerto Vallarta.[3] He has also written on topics other than travel and leisure, including on a new phenomenon, known as “dirty driving”, the playing pornography on DVD screens inside vehicles while they drive through traffic.[4] The article expressed concern for what children have been exposed to by these “dirty drivers”.
In 2005, Kirby’s book Evidence of Harm – Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy was published.
Since May 2005, Kirby has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.
To learn more about this author visit the following links:
OFFICIAL WEBSITE
https://davidkirbyauthor.com
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AMAZON
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KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!
How much do you really know about the Bill of Rights? Learn more about the most important amendments to the Constitution — and what they actually mean for ordinary US citizens.
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READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK BELOW:
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WHEN COPS BURST THROUGH YOUR DOOR: WARRANTLESS HOME RAIDS
You are relaxing with your family at home one evening when a band of armed thugs crashes through the door and invades your house. Their shouting is terrifying. Glass breaks, walls are smashed, and your children scream. When the men grab you, you resist, so they beat you and use a stun gun—or maybe even a real gun—against you. You are now battered and bloody, frightened and confused. The home invaders wrench you and your loved ones from your sanctuary and, in the dark of night, whisk you away in a car.
Now imagine these hooligans are wearing uniforms and badges.
Your home is your castle, impervious to entry by any agent of the state unless you grant them permission, or if they show up with a warrant signed by a judge—with the exception of certain emergency situations.
But some cops don’t see it that way. They all but ignore the Fourth Amendment and its protections against “unreasonable search and seizure.”
You may think you are safe in the security and privacy of your four walls. So did the people profiled here. As with so many issues concerning abridgment of civil liberties, you never know it can happen until it happens to you.
The nation’s founders wisely created the Fourth Amendment to act as a personal firewall against overzealous policing:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The amendment protects us against warrantless searches and raids of places where we have a “legitimate expectation of privacy”—legally defined as an expectation that is generally accepted by society as being “reasonable.”
But what is reasonable and what is not? That question has been rigorously litigated in U.S. courts for decades. In making a determination, courts must strike a balance between protecting privacy rights and maintaining the legitimate interests of the state, such as upholding public safety. Unfortunately, in recent decades marked by violent crime and the growing threat of terrorism, the needle seems to be gradually shifting away from privacy concerns and toward government interests.
In certain cases, police can search “persons, houses, papers, and effects” without a warrant. Chief among them is an “exigent circumstance”—an emergency situation where delaying action in order to obtain a warrant is not feasible, including when someone’s life or safety is at stake, when a suspect is about to escape, or when evidence is about to be removed or destroyed. Police also don’t need a warrant to search a person or property when the search is related to a lawful arrest or if the suspected illegal items to be seized are in plain sight.
But citizens still have the ability to demand that their Fourth Amendment rights be upheld when their expectation of privacy is being violated—and to seek redress from the courts when in fact it has been.
Consider the Magas family. When the police showed up at their Maryland home one night during a birthday party to investigate allegations of underage drinking, the family had every right to refuse the cops’ demand for entry. The officers, who had no warrant, had already entered onto their property, peered into the backyard area, and spotted young people drinking from plastic cups. In that rear space, protected from street view, the family had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
But the cops didn’t see it that way.
The Magases’ hometown of Damascus, Maryland, rests in a bucolic corner of Montgomery County, about forty miles northwest of Washington. On the outskirts rise some large custom-built houses, well spaced across towering trees and clipped lawns, including the Magas family home, a three-story, 5,900-square-foot residence with three acres, a pool, and a five-car garage, set far back from Damascus Road.
George Magas, a long-established member of the community with a successful at-home CPA practice, moved there in 2002 with his wife, Cathy, and their four sons, star football players at high school in the mostly white, mostly upper-middle-class town of eleven thousand.
The close-knit family spent a lot of time together, and George and Cathy were active in the community, supporting several youth groups with time and money. George had coached the high school football, baseball, and basketball teams, and Cathy kept busy with the football team’s booster club and served as team mother.
Life was good. But that all changed on one Saturday evening, January 4, 2014.
It was a punishing winter night, with plummeting temperatures and snow on the ground from a recent storm. But that didn’t deter about forty-five people from attending their son Nicholas’s twenty-first birthday party. The younger guests gathered downstairs in the large finished basement, where cold beer in cases and a half keg awaited them, even though some were under twenty-one.
Upstairs, George, Cathy, and about five friends—including Tom Stack, a seasoned detective for the Montgomery County Police Department—were watching football and enjoying pizza delivered from the local Papa John’s. This being a small town, they knew the delivery guy; he’d gone to school with their kids, and his father was an acquaintance. Just before midnight, they brought a cake downstairs, and everyone sang “Happy Birthday.”
George and Cathy had no idea that, as they headed down to the basement, a text was being delivered to the Montgomery County Police Department’s Alcohol Initiatives Section:
Hey man, not sure if your working but if your not busy there I just delivered a pizza to a party at [xxxx] Damascus rd and saw some young looking people with beer.
Yes, the pizza guy turned in his own customers.
The police department forwarded the tip to Officer Jeremy Smalley and Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy John Durham, who were both working on the Alcohol Initiatives Section’s Holiday Task Force.
No one saw Smalley and Durham as they pulled up in an unmarked black van and parked next door at Saint Paul’s Catholic Church. They quietly crossed onto the Magases’ property and moved toward the rear of the house, where an outdoor stairwell leads to the basement. The police could hear the sounds of a party. Through binoculars, Durham spotted young people laughing and drinking from red plastic cups. One young man was urinating in the bushes. Based solely on those observations, Smalley and Durham determined there was probable cause to suspect underage drinking.
The persistent lawmen made their way past the detached garage to the rear corner of the house. There they saw another young man urinating who, to them, appeared to be under twenty-one.
Durham walked to the top of the stairwell and peered down, spotting three individuals at the bottom, “appearing to be underage with half a keg and all holding solo cups with Amber beverage,” his partner Smalley wrote in the police report.1 “And they’re taking a selfie.” Durham demanded ID and determined all three were under twenty-one. He seized their smartphone as evidence.
They called in backup from the Alcohol Initiatives Section to cordon off the property, lest anyone tried to flee.
What happened after that is deeply disputed.
The Magases’ version of events differs wildly from the police report. George said that he and his wife, Cathy, had gone back upstairs when they saw a flashlight streaming through the windows. George walked into the kitchen and spotted two uniformed officers peering through the window. He opened the door, stepped outside, and asked what they were doing.
“They said they had a suspicion of an underage drinking party here and were very adamant about smelling marijuana,” George recalled.2 “And I said, ‘Well, there’s no marijuana, I can’t smell any here. And I don’t think any underage drinking’s going on, either.’”
To George, the men seemed to be itching for a confrontation. “I felt like I was in a boxing ring, and I started getting a little scared because they were rocking back and forth and trying to egg me on,” he said.
George had no stomach for a fight with the cops. Instead, he offered to fetch his driver’s license to identify himself. Walking back into the kitchen, he saw Nicholas and told him to lock the door. “I really don’t trust them. I’m scared,” he said. He got the license and rejoined the cops waiting out front.
Copyright © 2019 by David Kirby
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