Police want to seach our house! Fine us thousands of dollars! Conducted an illegal search thru windo

[OrpObsessed]

This is ridiculous. You poor thing! I wouldn't be able to put up with people treating me like that. Living country with no restrictions is the life for me. I just moved a single wide in an area where there are nice houses. I'm sure they don't like my goats, dogs, chickens, cats and rabbits I house on just one acre...but they can kiss it! In my humble opinion, if all you are worried about is improving your property value, then your heart isn't in the right place anyway. Yikes! What a nightmare! Get that lawyer!

 

[realsis]

I'm so sorry this is happening to you. I wish I knew how to help. Your in my prayers. Just trust God and hand this situation to him. He will work it out for you. I wish I knew what to do but I don't. However there is a lawyer on this site.in this forum. read some of the older posts in this forum and private message him with your situation. Im SURE he can help you!!!!

 

[realsis]

His email is [email protected]. I'm sure he can advise you.

 

[Fluffnpuff]

I'm sorry you're having to go through this. It seems like variations of this are happening with greater frequency. I agree about installing cameras and recording everything. Maybe then create a youtube channel and facebook page detailing the misconduct. Hopefully some media outfit might pick it up. Unfortunately when stuff like this happens, it's all but impossible to fight back unless you have the money to hire a team of lawyers.

This reminds me of a similar situation that happened in Pennsylvania a few years back. A property owner as constantly getting harassed and fined by the city for bogus reasons. A hacktivist group got involved and it was discovered a real estate developer who donated a ton of cash to the major wanted the property so the city was purposely trying to drive the owners off so he could get the property for cents on the dollar.

 

[realsis]

Any new developments with this?

 

[Meara]

Hi everyone,
I haven't signed in to my BYC account in ages so here is what happened:
We had a final hearing which did not go well. In retrospect we truly needed a lawyer, but I don't know how we would have paid for one. And I don't think lawyers should be necessary for community hearings!

It turns out that the elderly lady next door, while standing on her porch, was able to look through our windows at night while the light was on and she saw the chicks in my brooder bopping around. She in turn told a neighbor friend of hers down the black from us. That woman then called and reported what she had heard to the the community officer. The community officer then phoned our elderly neighbor who at the time was at the VA hospital by her husband's death bed. The officer pressed her into making a statement even though she didn't want to. This then resulted in the allegation that we were harboring illegal chickens in our home.

It never occurred to me that it was the brooder chicks that set off this chain of events. The police wanted to search out entire house for chickens. I took video to court showing my chickens in their legal chicken coop, but it didn't make any difference. I'm getting upset writing this. The hearing was awful and we were portrayed as criminals. The community officer read into the record every complaint on our property that she could find for the last six years. We could have objected to that, but we didn't realize it at the time. So she talked about the time our dogs were barking and someone called it in and the time we had a pile of wood by the garage that was deemed unsightly and of course the times my boyfriend was late in getting the lawn mowed and so on and so forth.

The hearing officer decided we needed to be taught a lesson for our continuing "crimes" and he fined my boyfriend and I a total of almost $1,500! sigh I still can't get over it. We aren't bad people or criminals or bad home owners. This entire process destroyed forever how I saw our justice system.

And we weren't the only folks in those hearings who were being taken advantage of. For instance English-as-a-second-language speakers were entitled to an interpreter but they did not understand that and those rights are explained in a pamphlet written in English. Those folks were showing up for the hearing with only their children to translate and then they would stand there visibly terrified and not even explain or defend themselves because they don't understand that is even allowed. One poor lady got fined a couple hundred dollars because the family dog got out the door while a sofa was being moved into their house. The dog was found trotting around the neighborhood. Of course she was instructed to get the dog licensed and provide proof of rabies vaccination, but was then given the maximum fine on top of that even though this was her one and only offense and the dog had never been found running loose before and was not a big or vicious dog or anything like that.

So...I'm kinda rambling on because I am still upset about it all even though that was last fall. The hearings were basically designed to make the city money by preying on those who could least afford it. We did find out that they had no authority to make us pay the fine and so we objected to it and refused payment. They couldn't do anything legal to us, but they did turn it in to a collection agency And my bf did indeed (to my dismay and against everyone's advice) allow the home to go into foreclosure. The only justice (?) is knowing that the neighbors who were so against us will be stuck living next to a foreclosed and abandoned house for the next couple years.