Armed US Cops Terrorise Innocent Clubbers

Jack-booted gun wielding cops raided a dance party in Racine, Wisconsin last weekend, forcibly throwing revellers to the ground while one officer pointed a gun at the DJ's head for 30 minutes. Discovering drugs on just three individuals, the police nevertheless ticketed all 445 young people on the premises, fining them $968 (£600) each for being "patrons of a disorderly house".

"Rave parties are not going to be part of our community and are not going to be tolerated," the officer in charge of the raid Detective Robert Purdy told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Numerous people caught up in the incident subsequently wrote to local newspapers including Jessica Grey from Whitewater, whose friends attended the event.

"None of these friends bought drugs, sold drugs, did drugs, had drugs, or knew anyone who had, (yet) each of these innocents received a $968 ticket," she wrote in a letter to the Racine Journal Times.

"It would be understandable if they (the Racine Police Department) had searched people and ticketed those in possession or under the influence of drugs, but they didn't. They lined all the people against the walls, arrested a man for advising partygoers of their rights and issued tickets to everyone, without bothering to search most."

Sally R. Maurer, the mother of a 21 girl rounded up in the raid, was also outraged.


"The police made the assumption that all attending knew it was a drug party, (but) the fliers and the Internet specifically state that drugs will not be tolerated and that people will be searched," Ms Maurer told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"I would rather have my daughter attend a rave than go to bars and drink. That is where the fights and sexual assaults happen, not at raves." Tags