425
SWAT Team Raids Innocent Family Over Stolen AirPods Dropped on Their Street
(www.riverfronttimes.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
425 points (98.6% liked)
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Stolen airpods? The cops around here would not even look for a stolen car.
The article implies the swat team was sent due to an armed carjacking that morning. Someone got a warrant for search and seizure based on geolocation results from the airpods and they assumed the carjackers would be hanging out at this address.
It's a rental home. Nothing is mentioned about the identity of the owner of the home. After looking up the house on zillow though it's about 113k. It's a dead end street surrounded by homes that are valued under 100k. I didn't realize that federal minimum wage would be enough to pay a mortgage in 2024, but apparently it is possible. This isn't super relevant other than the fact i'm looking at buying a house near Boston and I did a double take that a home exists in this price range and isn't in a trailer park. 113k here won't even buy you a parking spot.
After looking up the address it looks like a group of juveniles were involved with the carjacking so names are impossible to find. The most bizzare thing though is that a couple hours after the carjacking the car was picked up 3.5 miles / an 8 minute drive from the house in wylin court with the suspects bailing from the car and the cops arresting them... I wonder when the swatting happened at 630pm who they thought they would find?
Fun fact, the murder rate in St Louis per capita is the 7th highest in the world, after six cities in Mexico. #1 in the US. 87.83 per 100k. https://www.statista.com/statistics/243797/ranking-of-the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-by-murder-rate-per-capita/
I'm not justifying anything. I learned a lot that I never knew about St Louis MO and holy fuck is it rough.
I didn’t know that about St Louis, I went there for a conference a few years ago and mostly stayed downtown but I drove around a bit one day and it just seemed like an old Southern city. I never felt unsafe but I also lived in an old Southern city with lots of crime for a while so things outside of downtown didn’t seem much different.
There are still many places in the US where you can get a decent house in the lower 100s but they are mostly all rural.
downtown st louis is actually pretty nice. i wouldn't recommend too many places in the south, but st louis seemed kinda nice.
Likely someone locally influential's business got hit. They're not here to protect your car, theyre here to keep the status quo for the rich.
Cops have, from their very foundation, been about protecting the money and the people who have it.
Swat must have gotten new military hardware they wanted to play with.