What I take away from this is that the bar for warrants is either too low or there's something afoot in the law enforcement sector.
4 x 30 (just easy rounding) = 120 days against 149 individuals.
This is not a small-scale surveillance operation and all of that time, money, and effort amounted to zero arrests? Then what was the justification for the warrant that was used to enact the wiretap, in the first place? "We kind of think that something maybe kind of sort is happening, potentially, with this possible group of possibly known individuals..."?
This doesn't add-up.
Aren't warrants supposed to be used to investigate for evidence of crimes where other evidence is presented with the warrant application that a crime has possibly been committed and, thus, such gathering is necessary to further collect information directly pertinent to the investigation?
This just sounds like rubber-stamping surveillance to maybe catch individuals that may be involved in some possibly nefarious actions that some officers suspect is going on but don't really have anything else to go on...
Otherwise, how can you go to a court and say, "Based on 'x', we think these 149 individuals are involved in 'y' crime and we need to gather evidence in support of that...", waste so much time, resources, man-hours, etc. and still come up empty-handed; especially, when you were supposed to have sufficient enough evidence against at least one individual to have the warrant granted in the first place?
The way this unfolded, it seems like it was more of a fishing expedition than anything worth-while and that is the most disconcerting part.
4 x 30 (just easy rounding) = 120 days against 149 individuals.
This is not a small-scale surveillance operation and all of that time, money, and effort amounted to zero arrests? Then what was the justification for the warrant that was used to enact the wiretap, in the first place? "We kind of think that something maybe kind of sort is happening, potentially, with this possible group of possibly known individuals..."?
This doesn't add-up.
Aren't warrants supposed to be used to investigate for evidence of crimes where other evidence is presented with the warrant application that a crime has possibly been committed and, thus, such gathering is necessary to further collect information directly pertinent to the investigation?
This just sounds like rubber-stamping surveillance to maybe catch individuals that may be involved in some possibly nefarious actions that some officers suspect is going on but don't really have anything else to go on...
Otherwise, how can you go to a court and say, "Based on 'x', we think these 149 individuals are involved in 'y' crime and we need to gather evidence in support of that...", waste so much time, resources, man-hours, etc. and still come up empty-handed; especially, when you were supposed to have sufficient enough evidence against at least one individual to have the warrant granted in the first place?
The way this unfolded, it seems like it was more of a fishing expedition than anything worth-while and that is the most disconcerting part.