A reporter declined to reveal his source. Then police showed up at his front door with guns.

[mfcorey1]

Bryan Carmody, a freelance reporter in San Francisco, awoke Friday to the sounds of someone trying to break into his house.

About 10 officers from the San Francisco Police Department were bashing the front gate of his home in the Outer Richmond neighborhood with a sledgehammer, he said. It was just after 8 o’clock in the morning.

Carmody called out and said he would let them into the house. The officers showed him a search warrant and proceeded to go through his home — from “top to bottom” he says — with their guns drawn.

“They treated me like I was some kind of drug dealer," he said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Carmody was being raided in connection with a criminal investigation.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-reporter-declined-to-reveal-his-source-then-police-showed-up-at-his-front-door-with-guns/ar-AABev4M?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

[triron]

1. Sketchy.

[Nuggets]

2. I don't believe we will ever

clean out all of the crooked people in law enforcement. It’s a monumental task. We’re up against the departments themselves, the state attorneys of each state, and many judges not to mention the public, who are inundated with the endless selling of the underpaid, under appreciated hero image for anyone who possesses a badge.

I appreciate the hard work of those officers who are genuinely doing the best job they can. Their reputations are being ruined by crooked police.

Plus how do we keep sadistic sociopaths out, and how do we expose and fire crooked career officers ?

[bitterross]

4. I grew up with the indoctrination that all cops were good. That was a lie.

In the South, in the era in which I grew up, ALL authority figures were heroes, good and not to be questioned.

That was a myth that I came to reject over time. One of the many reasons I came to reject it was due to my interactions with the police. And my getting to know several police officers personally. In my interactions with them they all, without exception, were people who believed nothing they said or did when they were on duty should ever be questioned. At no time did any single one of them ever allow for the possibility they were wrong or made a mistake in arresting a person. If they ever went to court and lost it was because the DA didn't prosecute the case properly or the judge was a liberal asshole.

They, without exception, felt the badge they wore made them better than everyone else. Not a servant to the community.

I know, I know, there are police officers out there who do not feel this way and who feel they are servants to their community. Who do wonderful things. I applaud them. Unfortunately, they are the exception in the bunch from what I have seen.

[Princess Turandot]

3. A commenter on the WaPo article described this situation...

...as "a slimeball vs goons".

This concerned the untimely death earlier this year of San Fran's 59 y.o. elected public defender, Jeff Adachi. (Its cause was reported preliminarily as a heart attack original.) Subsequently, a confidential police report, which included photos of the scene, made its way to this reporter/stringer, who then sold the info to media outlets:

On Feb. 24, ABC 7 published a story after it said it obtained a police report and photos about Adachi’s death, which included unflattering details about the public defender’s last hours. The story reported that he had been with a woman named Caterina — not his wife — and that he was found unresponsive in an apartment with “an unmade bed, empty bottles of alcohol, cannabis gummies, and two syringes that may have been left by paramedics.”

The publication of those details, which did little to illuminate the nature of Adachi’s death and more to call into question his character, prompted some to wonder if the police department was retaliating against Adachi, even after his death.

The criminal investigation referred to in the article is looking for the person who sent the confidential documents to this guy. The reporter has first amendment rights, of course; his use of them in this case perhaps helped sully a local hero's reputation. Since the SFPD as an organization is effectively being accused of being behind the leak, they're likely quite eager to figure out who actually did it.

The reporter also happens to be the registered owner of several guns, which may have contributed to the approach that the police took in executing the warrants.