SFPD breaks down wrong door looking for stolen iPhone X

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Also hauls off owner of legally owned iPhone X with no explanation or rights being read.
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) — If your cellphone is stolen, what are the chance the police will go after the thief? Pretty slim right?

But, when Apple loses a phone, it can be a different story altogether.

On one recent morning, Rick Garcia and his wife Shannon Knuth woke up to a posse of San Francisco police officers at their front door.

“I peered through the peephole and I saw a police officer and a battering ram,” Garcia said.

“We heard ‘SFPD’ and ‘warrant,’ and I was like ‘what’s going on?’” Knuth remembers.

It felt like a nightmare yet it was real.

Garcia says that within seconds he was dragged into the hallway of his apartment complex, handcuffed, then whisked away to the Taraval Station.

“All my instincts to defend myself, defend my wife, defend my dog, needed to be supressed in order to have the best outcome,” said Rick.

Meanwhile Knuth, who had just got out of the shower, was ordered to sit on the couch.

“I was just wrapped up in a towel,” Knuth said.

Even more humiliating was what the officers did when she asked for clothes.

“One officer went into my closet and they chose an outfit they got a bra and a thong and some stretchy pants and handed it to me and said ‘will this do?’” Knuth said.

Just one thought was racing through her mind: “That they had the wrong person,” she said.

After rifling through the apartment Knuth says the officers finally told her what they were looking for: Her husband’s iPhone X.

According to the warrant, it was stolen but Knuth showed them the receipt which proved her husband bought it.

Once the officers realized their mistake they called the police station and a squad car brought Garcia home.

“They gathered their pry bar and their battering ram and they left,” he said.

So how could a mistake like that happen?

It’s still unclear but it turns out Garcia and Knuth bought the iPhone at an Apple store at Stonestown Galleria just a few weeks after 300 iPhone Xs were stolen from a UPS truck in the mall parking lot.

“It kind of boggles the mind the way San Francisco police handled this,” said Tom Burns.

Tom Burns is a security consultant and former police chief. “Obviously there was some mix up on the original theft from November. The police should have realized this and done more due diligence,” Burns said.

Starting with the suspect descriptions in the actual UPS heist.

“Mr. Garcia is about 5 feet, 120 pounds. The three suspects were very big and husky according to the police report. This was clearly an incident that should have just been a knock and talk, a couple detectives come to the door, knock on the door and they would have gathered the same info that they gathered after they put him in handcuffs and hauled him off to jail,” Burns said.

In a statement to KPIX, San Francisco police confirm “there was an individual detained, upon further investigation it was determined no criminal misconduct had occurred and the individual was released.” But they offered no comment on what led to the mistake.

Apple had no comment either — an insult to Rick and Shannon, who are major fans of the company’s products. Rick over the years bought the first iPhone, the first iPad and the first Apple Watch. “We want Apple to recognize how harmful this was to us,” he says.

As for heavy-handed tactics by the San Francisco police: “I am not surprised. This has been their typical M.O. here in San Francisco,” Garcia said.

Garcia is still recovering from a wrist injury he received from the handcuffs. It’s affecting his design work as an architect for a prominent local firm — a firm that, ironically, does a lot of contract work for Apple.

“I realize how dangerous the situation was. If I had reacted differently it could have had a horrible outcome. I had dreams where I did react differently,” Garcia said.

He adds he didn’t even know what he was being accused of until the squad car brought him back home because the police wouldn’t tell him. And he says no one ever read him his rights.
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/0 ... st-iphone/

In Trump’s Shithole country the cops get to do as they want. At least they didn’t shoot him.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: SFPD breaks down wrong door looking for stolen iPhone X

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highdesert wrote:
senorgrand wrote:lawsuit...another big payout for SF...
Yes a good lawyer, a big lawsuit and the residents of the City and County of San Francisco pay out a big bundle of money. SFPD has some very fine officers, but this was a feckup. Shame it won't get to court, it will be settled quietly.
San Francisco's not alone. De Blasio's had NYC paying thru the nose for bad government - over $1B in recent years by some estimates.
"Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism. Our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction." ~ Alexander Solzhenitzyn

Re: SFPD breaks down wrong door looking for stolen iPhone X

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Horrible story. Yes, the shining light at the end was that nobody got shot. And that is a pathetically dim light.

A matter of police training and culture. Only give the police the mentality of a hammer and all people become nails.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: SFPD breaks down wrong door looking for stolen iPhone X

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TrueTexan wrote:
In Trump’s Shithole country the cops get to do as they want. At least they didn’t shoot him.
It ain't just in Trump's shithole country. A few years ago I had the county police bust in my door and drag me out into my own yard, in my damn birthday suit.
Why you might ask. Someone who lived at my house a year before I bought the place had a warrant for doing some really bad shit. I just happen to look similar to the bad dude. With the exception of I'm not a Latino, I'm a hundred pounds heavier, and about a foot taller.
This happened while Obama was still in office. It's not whichever jerk is in office. It's that the police just don't give a fuck about due process, civil liberties, or anyone's rights except theirs.
Maybe it'll be worse with trump in. I don't know, but they've been fuck tards for many years. I barely got an apology. Course I haven't gotten a ticket in years now. So there is that.
Screw communism

Re: SFPD breaks down wrong door looking for stolen iPhone X

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SpaceRanger42 wrote: Also, you'd think it would be a simple matter of checking sales records against serial numbers.
But that wouldn’t let them run around playing with their cool military toys subduing the enemy.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

Re: SFPD breaks down wrong door looking for stolen iPhone X

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Eris wrote:Petty theft suspects treated to militaristic raids and sexual degradation? Yet another nail in the coffin of trust in the police.
Umm...300 I-Phones that cost upwards of $1000 each isn't really "petty" theft... Regardless, probably someone read or wrote a serial number wrong in the original police report.

What tweaks my curiosity is, how did the police know that these people had an I-Phone X in the first place..?? Did Apple report them?
"In every generation there are those who want to rule well - but they mean to rule. They promise to be good masters - but they mean to be masters." — Daniel Webster

Re: SFPD breaks down wrong door looking for stolen iPhone X

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rascally wrote:
Eris wrote:Petty theft suspects treated to militaristic raids and sexual degradation? Yet another nail in the coffin of trust in the police.
Umm...300 I-Phones that cost upwards of $1000 each isn't really "petty" theft... Regardless, probably someone read or wrote a serial number wrong in the original police report.

What tweaks my curiosity is, how did the police know that these people had an I-Phone X in the first place..?? Did Apple report them?
Yes, petty theft. The police only suspected the couple of possessing a single stolen phone.
106+ recreational uses of firearms
1 defensive use
0 people injured
0 people killed

Re: SFPD breaks down wrong door looking for stolen iPhone X

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In truth, Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python fame, already included this skit in his film, "Brazil." In fact much of what we see today with police breaking down doors, terrorist/freedom fighters in society, the oligarchy, and environmental degradation, all of it in is already in that 1985 dark comedy. We are so pathetically uncreative these days it makes me sick.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

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