 Ready to give out parking tickets |
Patricia Pantano, education director of the Camino de Paz Montessori School and Farm in Cuarteles, between Española and Chimayó on N.M. 76, said the raid occurred Sept. 21 during the lunch hour.
“We were all as a group eating outside as we usually do, and this unmarked drab-green helicopter kept flying over and dropping lower,” she said. “Of course, the kids got all excited. They were telling me that they could see gun barrels outside the helicopter. I was telling them they were exaggerating.”
After 15 minutes, Pantano said, the helicopter left, then five minutes later a state police officer parked a van in the school’s driveway. Pantano said she asked the officer what was happening, but he only would say he was there as a law-enforcement representative.
Then other vehicles arrived and four men wearing bullet-proof vests, but without any visible insignias or uniforms, got out and said they wanted to inspect the school’s greenhouses. Pantano said she then turned the men over to the farm director, Greg Nussbaum.
“As we have nothing to hide, you know, they did the tour and they went in the greenhouses and they found it was tomato plants and so that was the story,” she said…
Some parents, who did not want to be named, said they, too, were concerned about the raid on their children’s school.
Pantano said she did not want to make too big an issue out of the raid, but questioned why such a commotion was necessary when anyone who asked would have been given a tour of the greenhouses.
“We’re sitting here as a teaching staff, always short on money, and we’re thinking, ‘Gosh, all the money it takes to fly that helicopter and hire all those people, it would be great to have this for education.’ ”
Let us all be glad we live in a nation that has its priorities in order.
Har!
Putting troops into a dangerous situation with potentially heavily armed school students – surely the entire target could have been surgically removed with a predator drone controlled safely form Afghanistan.
Some one should rein the police in. They could have shot or tazed a student.
If I go to Pot, I will eat green fried Tomatoes.
I lived close to that area for a a few years. Bullet Proof vest isnt such a bad idea. Espanola is the lowrider capital of the world. Remind me again who typically drives lowriders in gang territories? Oh yea, nice school children just peacefully having lunch. You’re right should have sent Barney Fife in there and asked the nice kids a few question about their school tomato project.
Cops can suck…but generally cause people give them a reason.
Sometimes you really have to stop and look at things from the perspective of the police.
Justifying next year’s budget is not always easy, and just one successful raid to find marijuana could actually fund several members of the local SWAT team as well as their equipment and supplies for an entire year.
So please think of the cops. These high tech toys granted by the federal Army in the Joint Task Force capacity may not be as inexpensive as your child’s textbooks or chalk for his teachers.
They need to raid you, so that they can continue to raid you.
And what would happen without these raids?
Think about it.
The part of this that bothers me personally most is no uniforms and no warrants.
The obvious implication is that civilians are expected to obey who ever shows up in combat gear and to bleep with the rule of law, due process, and crap like that.
#24 LowlyRider – You’re absolutely right. The should “Nip it in the bud. Nip it in the bud.” ~ B. Fife
remember they hate us for our freedom. actually I’m more scared of an economy that fails for lack of skills in the next generation than I am terrorists or pot smokers.
Well it wouldn’t be a raid unless the cops had black helicopters and balaclavas.