So turns out, my roommate was arrested. Cops ransacked my place, did a forensic search of all the computers in the apartment, confiscated his laptop, and won’t release any info on what he’s charged with.
Oh, joy.
Well, that sucks. He’s been a friend of mine since grade school. On the purely pragmatic side, I can’t afford rent, utilities and food without him contributing. So in other words, it looks like I’m probably moving, and my circle of social contact is dwindling by the second. My friend’s life is probably ruined, and nobody knows why. This has been a great week.
16 comments
Do keep us informed. This sounds awful.
I have no clue what he could possibly have done to warrant arrest, much less the digital forensics. But now my head hurts and I have no clue what to do. And I’m paranoid because a gang of armed men were rifling through everything in the apartment. Will they come back? Arrest me for living here? Ugh. I guess it’s a good sign they didn’t take any of my hard drives.
My first thought when you mentioned hard drives was child porno. It can be seen with out penalty (hell, I have had it pop up on rare occasions) but if downloaded it can result in prosecution and with a conviction can come some years. As for them coming back, they would have to obtain yet another search warrant. I would like to think they were thorough enough the first time. Keeping in mind that search warrants are usually written in an open ended fashion and yet your computer(s) were not taken, this is a good sign that this is not about you.
Again, keep us informed.
The worst thing they found on my hard drives would be a pirated copy of windows and some terrible videos of cats attacking a camera. I talked to his sister and she’s hiring a pretty good lawyer for him tomorrow. I’m still kind of shocked and disgusted that armed men were rifling through the intimate details of my life, and my roommate’s life like that. I always knew there was a reason I didn’t like police officers.
@rivets I have been consistently amazed at what can be a crime in the realm of sex. All I can say to this is we better be ever so sure all parties are able to give consent, did give consent, would give consent, are of legal age and damn sure no videos period, produced by us or downloaded by us. Yeah I am about paranoid on this.
The other one is with animals. I keep hearing of people, including veterinarians, being charged with animal abuse when they try to rescue an abused animal.
OK, maybe i am paranoid, but until I know that for sure, I will keep this stuff in mind. Damn.
Wow. That sucks. Sorry. So they didn’t provide any info as to why?
I googled his name and my town and found an article about it – apparently the charge is pandering obscenity (police dept wouldn’t even tell me if he’s seen a judge yet). Which breaks my brain a little bit. There was another guy involved who was also arrested, who I think worked with my roommate. I honestly can’t even wrap my head around what he could have on his laptop that’s so bad it deserves this. Well, I suppose life never did make much sense.
“Pandering Obscenity is a very complex crime that has many different forms. What this means is Pandering Obscenity can also be called Pandering Obscenity Involving a Minor, Pandering Sexually Oriented Material Involving a Minor, Illegal Use of a Minor in Nudity-Oriented Material or performance.”
So it appears it could be child pornography?
Could be anything, honestly. A woman from a town near here was arrested for posting a video of her getting frisky with her dog – charged with the same offense. I’m kind of creeped out thinking about this.
@rivets – Good point there. When an overzealous persecutor (er, prosecutor) is your county it is amazing what turns into porn.
You’ll know what’s happening soon enough. What a trip.
After reading into the legal statutes in my state, and aside from all the other deeply absurd insanity involved in this particular statute, if you have in your possession a video that depicts a girl who is clearly above the statutory limit, but who is dressed in a schoolgirl uniform, that’s a felony. Don’t get me started on cartoons or literature – that’s even worse. Well, at least we don’t have the biggest prison population on earth, so it’s unlikely that anyone ever gets arrested for things like that.
That doesn’t make any sense. How can it be a felony if the girl is over 18 (or whatever the legal age is). I mean, if a 69 yo woman dresses in a school girl outfit, according to what you wrote, would be a felony. Okay, that might be a “felony” in other ways lol but in no way can that beillegal. If it were, practically all porn would be illegal. I mean, how much (legal) porn has girls dressed in schoolgirl outfits? Like 80% of them.
The statute only says the actress/actor has to portray someone who’s underage, and a uniform implies an age below the statutory limit. People have been arrested for that. Not watching it on a website or buying it from a shop, but downloading it from a p2p network – that seems to be the common denominator.
Holy shit rivets! When all it takes is juvenile clothing on an actor to land a viewer in the pokey, well hell, I am not paranoid after all. A reasonable person would not think these behaviors unlawful and thus not expect such a law to exist. What a trap. I hope you can move out of that state someday.
I used to live in Florida. It’s not much better. My only hope is to someday relocate to Antarctica, where nation-states can never follow. All of this nonsense is PR for the police department. They issue notices about catching these dangerous criminals to the press to shine their badges and make the proles feel like they’re being protected from the bad men lurking in dark alleyways. The reality is a little different.