I went home after meeting with my attorney and tried to play a computer game in order to get my mind off of things a bit. No such luck. Around 9:00pm, I saw two police cars pull up outside the house.. It was the detective that interviewed me along with 3 other police officers, one a supervisor. I opened the door, and she informed me that they had a search warrant to search the house. I told them our children were asleep and that it was late. They searched our house anyway. Primarily focusing on our bedroom and the downstairs area of the home.
A rather large officer was assigned to keep an eye on me. I was sternly told to sit down and to not move or get up. The officer watched me the whole time.
They took all 3 of our computers: our main home computer, my wife’s laptop, and even my work laptop (which I didn’t own). They also took a CD container with backups of family photos, a wireless LAN card I had, and video tapes containing family vacations, births of our children and other life events.
After completing their search, the detective asked me if I had any additional “thumb drives”? I told her no, that I didn’t own any thumb drives. She said “Yes you do, I found one in the bag in your office.” I told her it was a USB wireless network card. She replied “I use thumb drives all the time, I know what they look like, and that was a thumb drive”. I told her that it wasn’t, but she ignored me.
She also asked if we had any documentation or member information in the house for our parenting website. I told her no that it was all on the website. In hindsight I shouldn’t have said a word the whole time, but even then I was still trying to cooperate.
Before they left, I pleaded with the detective that if they decided to arrest me that she would be respectful enough to do it discretely or at least allow me to turn myself in. I didn’t want my kids to have to endure that. She asked me in turn if I was going to take a polygraph that I had declined during the interview. I told her that she needed to talk to my attorney. She said she didn’t want to talk my attorney and that she was asking me, not my attorney. I repeated “you need to talk to my attorney”. She said since I wouldn’t do what she asked, that she “didn’t owe me anything about how I would be arrested”. Here I am at one of the most difficult times of my life, and the police offer zero compassion for me or my family. Nice huh? The icing on the cake occurred when the officer in charge on the way out the door turned, looked at me and said “Just remember, you are the reason we are here”. So much for innocent until proven guilty.
They left, and we sat around in complete shock for more than 30 minutes before finally going to bed. Little did we know we wouldn’t see our computers, video tapes, or photos for 2 years.
