This story nauseatingly reeks of a serious violation to 1st amendment rights and freedom of speech; very concerning for the Blogger Community. Once can only hope that there’s more to this that has not yet come to light, but regardless, the plot would make for a great made for TV mini series, for truth.
Sources reported that on March 12th, Phoenix police raided the home of Jeff Pataky, author of the blog Bad Phoenix Cops, confiscating three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and all equipment necessary to blogging. The search warrant allowed at least ten cops to raid his home in North Phoenix while handcuffing his female roommate for three hours as they tore the home asunder.
The 41-year-old software engineer was away on business during the raid and said officers also confiscated personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the Phoenix police department alleging harassment. Pataky believes that in addition to the pending case, police were retaliating against the content of his blog, much of it which comes from inside sources within the department. Pataky stated that police even broke into his safe and confiscated backups of backups of his blog and all documents required to file his taxes. The search warrant lists “petty theft” and “computer tampering with the intent to harass” as probable causes. Pataky has yet to see an affidavit that lists the probable cause and is doubtful that one exists.
The conflict between Pataky and the Phoenix Police Department began two years ago during “a nasty divorce” after moving out of the house he had shared with his wife. He alleges that she began filing false allegations against him, accusing him of stalking and harassment and that many of the reports she filed accused him of doing things when he was out of town, he said.
In response to this, Pataky began filing complaints with everybody from Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon down to Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris to no avail and he was eventually indicted for harassing his ex-wife. A month before the trial, he launched the website as a rant against the police department. When he went to trial in May 2008, his charges were immediately dismissed because of lack of evidence, he said.
“We were going to shut down the website after that but then all of a sudden all these good cops started hitting the site and sending us tips,” he said. Suddenly, local officers began to deliver internal documents from within the department exposing everything from a cop with multiple DUIs to another whose son was a child molester and was trying to get on the force (and was eventually arrested).
“We have about 50 to 100 retired and active cops who provide us information,” he said.
Pataky has since purchased a new laptop and continues blogging, taking the raid in stride and adding it to the allegations in his pending lawsuit. As it relates to my mental casting call for the mini-series, I’ve settled on RoDoJu to play Pataky. I’ll take suggestions with regard to casting members of the Phoenix Police Dept.; so far, I’m considering Harvey Keitel as the Phoenix Police Chief.
$@bs
PS. Click here to read a guest blog post about some of $@bs’ $ordid $excapades!
