on the cover / By HSU Investigative Reporting students

Permission to Enter

The total lowdown on search warrants issued and served in Humboldt County

(May 13, 2010)  Something was off.

One day last year, Sheriff’s Deputy Mark Peterson was patrolling Ettersburg, an area in Southern Humboldt, when he noticed a newly constructed driveway. An unmarked metal livestock gate sat open a few yards from the road. Peterson plugged his GPS coordinates into the computer in his squad car and checked out the property on Google Earth. He called the Humboldt County Assessor’s office and realized the neighboring address was not “1640,” as it read when he drove by just minutes earlier, but 1460. The foot of the gravel path he stared at: 1470 Blue Slide Creek Rd.

Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen PHOTO BY SATOSHI KONDO

GALLERY >

So it began.

Before police can enter someone’s home or business without permission, they need a search warrant signed by a judge. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects our privacy and property against “unreasonable” search and seizure. It doesn’t say police need a warrant; it only requires that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” Over time, legislatures and the courts turned this skimpy phrasing into a complex process police must follow.

And it works, according to District Attorney Chief Investigator Mike Hislop. “The law is in place to protect people from unlawful search and seizure so that they are not abused by the government,” Hislop told us recently.

^^^^^

We wanted to see how often police execute search warrants in Humboldt County and for what purpose, so back in January we requested the latest search warrant filed in the county courthouse. It told how special agents from the Humboldt County Drug Task Force watched a text message come through on a phone they found while searching an apartment near HSU. It read: “Yo bro I need your address again trying to get that out.” Officers texted back the address of the Arcata Police Department. The next day a package arrived at the station, and they got a search warrant to open and seize the money they found inside.

That warrant whetted our appetite, so we filed a request for every search warrant filed last year. We were given access to about 300 warrants. Not all were issued for residences. Many were for PG&E records, cars, phone records, bank accounts and even Internet accounts. Some read like movie scripts: There was a case involving a MySpace page created by a suspected dog-murderer who then sent a friend request to the owner of the dog — his ex-girlfriend. In another, police requested a search warrant for AT&T phone records after a subscriber made 58 prank calls to Humboldt County 911. And another: A woman told 911 she had shot a man and needed medical attention because her eye was popped out of her head. There was a high speed car chase on 299, an undercover stakeout in Rio Dell, a skeleton found in an abandoned house in Loleta, eight marijuana plants found in a dorm room at HSU and a marijuana grow in McKinleyville discovered when an informant told police he found a trash heap filled with bear hides.

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