Search Warrants And Sex Toys

 

If you've been a police officer for any length of time you know there are certain truths to the job.

There are slackers on every shift in every police department. Everywhere. Guys who work harder at avoiding calls than actually handling them. We had one guy on night shift, years ago, who we started referring to as ALMO....Always the Last Man Out. On Friday and Saturday nights when the streets were hopping and we had calls backed up due to watch change, this guy would poke around on station until every other officer had signed on as 'in service' and been dispatched to waiting calls before he signed on. Whether it was taking an extended dump after roll call and jail shakedown or immediately pulling his cruiser into the wash bay to spray it off, he was always the last one out. Every time.

Your lunch breaks, at points in your career, will be interrupted by A). radio calls, and B). people with stupid questions. Take those two to the bank.

Everyone sitting in Mom's basement in front of a keyboard knows how to do your job, even as they chow down on tater tots and pizza rolls....and probably showerless for the sixth day in a row.

There will always, always, be people in command positions that have no business holding rank; some should never have become police officers but took the job for the steady paycheck and benefits and were somehow able to slip in the back door. Great test-takers, bad at street sense and interacting with common citizens....and, generally, arrogant and self-centered.

And then there's the search warrants and...uhh...'marital aids'.

Throughout my thirty-plus years as a copper I was involved in countless search warrant executions, for everything from drugs to stolen property to evidence of illegal gambling to illegal weapons...and one homicide. On easily half of those warrants, while looking through drawers, in closets and under mattresses we would invariably come across any manner of sex toys, both AC and DC powered. Some didn't even need power. Every size and shape imaginable, and the property of folks you'd never dream used them. 

We executed a search warrant years ago in an apartment, in which a dealer, who'd also been a user, had been found dead of a heroin overdose. Items in plain view inside the home and in the decedent's car were the basis of the warrant; for the uninitiated, there's this term, 'probable' cause', that is central in search warrants. You have to draw up the warrant and list reasons why you need it. You have to describe, in detail, exactly where you intend to search and what you're searching for. You then take it to a judge and, after reviewing it, if he feels you have enough valid reasons for needing to invade someone's domain in search of evidence of crimes, the judge will sign it. 

In this particular case there were needles and a cook spoon laying in plain view; in taking a look at his car, which had a couple of windows opened about an inch ( and it was a hot August day to boot) I could smell an extremely strong odor of marijuana coming from the inside. I remember telling a supervisor on scene that he could have my next paycheck if there wasn't at least ten pounds of marijuana inside the vehicle.

The total was 13 pounds, so I got to keep my paycheck.

In the bedroom, while looking through a dirty laundry basket (with gloves!), we located an under-clothing-worn mini-vibrator. We also recovered over $2300 in cash and another two pounds of wild weed and a couple of bindles of heroin. Apparently the dead man sold marijuana to support his heroin addiction.

His on-again, off-again girlfriend, in whose apartment he'd died, left this earth a few years later. She, too, died of a heroin overdose, tragically leaving behind their little girl, who would have to grow up without either parent.

In another incident, a young guy thought he could beat detection by having U.S. prescription-required phenobarbitol mailed to him from a South American country. He lived with his mother, her boyfriend and his two younger sisters in a rather affluent area. During the warrant execution, a vibrator was found under the mattress in his thirteen-year-old sister's room; in the master bedroom, nude  photos of his mother were located. We ended up seizing drugs, cash, a .50 caliber Desert Eagle handgun and an AK-47 rifle. Disgustingly, we had to leave an on-duty officer completely out of the loop on that one because he commonly rode motorcycles with the mope responsible for having his now-embarrassed family's home invaded by police.

Lastly, while working in the Special Investigations Unit, we raided a home in which two middle-agers lived, as the male had been running an illegal gambling operation by phone. I was upstairs searching what evidently was the master bedroom in this home, a rather tidy two-story, well-kept place. As I opened the bottom dresser drawer I was shocked to find it completely full of vibrators and rubber male appendages.

Then, from the bottom of the stairway, the woman of the house pleads, "PLEASE don't open the bottom dresser drawer!".

"Too late", I replied, which was followed by the woman's wail of embarrassment.

Now, sex toys in and of themselves are not illegal to posses or own; in all of the instances mentioned, none were taken as evidence of a crime. However, if you're going to be involved in crimes which might subject your home, office, apartment or car to being searched by law enforcement, save yourself from embarrassment by NOT having sex toys on hand.

...though there was the time a plastic vibrator had been thrown by a wife, which struck her husband in the head, during a domestic dispute; THAT one was taken as evidence.