Militarized Policing Driving Cops Insane: Cops Used SWAT Team To Check On Barbershop Licenses — Cops Slammed by Judge

Your 'Friendly Neighborhood Police Officer'

By Steven Rosenfeld
Disney World is not the only fantasyland in Orange County, Florida, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals 11th Circuit, which Tuesday issued a remarkable ruling slamming the sheriff and a state barbershop inspector for imagining they needed—and then using— a SWAT team in a police raid to see if haircutting licenses were valid.

“It was a scene right out of a Hollywood movie,” the Court’s ruling began. “Teams from the OCSO [Orange County Sheriff’s Office] descended... with some team members dressed in ballistic vests and masks, and with guns drawn, the deputies rushed into their target destinations, handcuffed the stunned occupants—and demanded to see their barbers’ licenses. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office was providing muscle for the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s [DBPR] administrative inspection of barbershops to discover licensing violations.”

“It was a scene right out of a Hollywood movie,” the Court’s ruling began. “Teams from the OCSO [Orange County Sheriff’s Office] descended... with some team members dressed in ballistic vests and masks, and with guns drawn, the deputies rushed into their target destinations, handcuffed the stunned occupants—and demanded to see their barbers’ licenses. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office was providing muscle for the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s [DBPR] administrative inspection of barbershops to discover licensing violations.”

The Cout’s 44-page ruling, which will allow four barbers to proceed with a lawsuit that the cops violated their Fourth Amendment protection from unconstitutional searches, vividly describes how a team of local and state police ran amok—and then claimed immunity from prosecution, which the Court rejected, when the raid’s victims sued.

Notably, the ruling didn’t even talk about the blatant constitutional violations first, but instead snidely asked if the cops involved were complete idiots who thought they were so far above the law that they could ignore previous multiple rulings from the very same Court ordering cops not to conduct militarized SWAT raids as a routine tactic:

“We first held 19 years ago that conducting a run-of-the-mill administrative inspection as though it is a crminal raid... violates clearly established 4th Amendment rights. We reaffirmed that principle in 2007... Today, we repeat that same message again. We hope that the third time will be the charm.”

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