Man who started anti-police Web site gets probation for weapons charge

[TheeBadOne]

LOWELL A Lowell man who created a Web site dedicated to reviling the Lowell Police Department has been sentenced to five years probation for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Lowell police found the gun in the Chase Street home of Brian White in June 2001 when they responded to a call from his wife reporting a domestic dispute. The wife told police that White had a gun, which was found by police after a SWAT team entered and searched his residence.

White created a Web site expressing his hatred of Lowell police and referring to their search of his home as "The Siege." He alleged that officers planted the gun in his home and stole thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment from him after searching his house.

Lowell Police Capt. William Taylor called the allegations "ridiculous."

According to Taylor, it was later discovered that White had several aliases and was a convicted felon who had served time in federal prison. Lowell police worked with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to bring a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm against White.

On Dec. 18, White was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Boston to 60 months probation, including six months home detention with electronic monitoring. He will not have to pay a fine.

"I do not anticipate that there is going to be an appeal," his attorney, Steven Rappaport, said this week. "The disposition is very fair."

White could not be reached for comment.

Taylor said his department will contact the federal probation department to see if it can be made a condition of White's probation that he shut down the Web site.

Among his concerns, Taylor said, is the fact that the Web site is registered under a number of domain names that are similar to the Lowell Police Department Web site's name, which could cause people to be directed to White's site when they are looking for the city's police department site.

White's Web site in the past has been filled with obscenities, anecdotes from unnamed individuals alleging abuse by the Lowell Police Department and cartoons involving Lowell police. It also had photographs of undercover police officers, Capt. Taylor said.

A recent visit to the Web site was redirected to a Web site that makes derogatory remarks about police in general, but did not specifically refer to Lowell.

http://www.lowellsun.com/Stories/0,1413,105~4761~1854084,00.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Gmac]

First amendment? Nah ,never heard of it.

 

[Pilgrim]

So, are he and his wife still together after this?

Pilgrim

 

[gunsmith]

Ah love!

"Domestic dispute"
oop's

 

[Standing Wolf]

...it was later discovered that White had several aliases and was a convicted felon who had served time in federal prison.

There are probably a few counts of aggravated stupidity on his rap sheet, too.

 

[Justin]

Sounds like this guy is a class A dirtbag.

Now, having said that I have to ask this:

A SWAT team gets called for a domestic dispute? Isn't this a bit of overkill?

Taylor said his department will contact the federal probation department to see if it can be made a condition of White's probation that he shut down the Web site.

So much for freedom of expression...

 

[TheeBadOne]

A SWAT team gets called for a domestic dispute? Isn't this a bit of overkill?

The way the article is worded, the domestic call could have been a gun call too, which would also explain why SWAT was involved.

TBO

 

[greyhound]

Lowell police worked with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to bring a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm against White.

Good Lord, a joint task force just to catch a felon in possession of a gun?

(The usual "may be more to it" applies, but if not....)

 

[clubsoda22]

A SWAT team gets called for a domestic dispute? Isn't this a bit of overkill?

If you've ever had to place yourself in the middle of someone elses domestic dispute, you'd be glad to have a swat team.

I responded to a domestic on christmas. The drunk father of the girls unborn child (wont go as far as to call him a boyfriend) busted her lip. I was glad to hear that the guy had fled prior to police arriving. I got there and there had to be a dozen squad cars there with at least that many cops. She needed a few stitches where she had bit through her lip and i was quite relieved that he didn't punch her in the gut because she was 3 months pregnant. Some guys are real scumbags. Glad she decided to press charges, a lot of women aren't strong enough to do that.

In other domestic disturbances where both parties are still on scene, you have to be very careful. They'll be at each others throats one second then at the cops for pulling them off one another. And then there's always the girl who "still loves him" even though he beats her every time he's drunk.

Even when i was in EMT school they trained us to be careful in domestics. Two of our female instructors played feuding lesbians in one scenario. Things started to get hot and police were still 20 minutes out. Next thing i knew she had her had in her purse that was on the table and i saw the grip of a 1911 (real gun that had been deactivated) in her palm. I yelled gun and hauled ??? out the door, my partner wasn't paying attention and almost wet herself when she looked up and was staring the barrel.

 

[Quartus]

Taylor said his department will contact the federal probation department to see if it can be made a condition of White's probation that he shut down the Web site.

I guess I'm just weird. If I could, I'd have them off the police force for life just for making that request.

There are probably a few counts of aggravated stupidity on his rap sheet, too.

Yup!

 

[lapidator]

The way the article is worded, the domestic call could have been a gun call too, which would also explain why SWAT was involved.

Wow... It seems there's no limit to what a SWAT team can do.

Lapidator

 

[standingbear]

a convicted felon with a gun of all things.say it isnt so.I think involving Special Weapons and Tactics was..overkill-like chasing a mouse with a sledgehammer maybe???

 

[TheeBadOne]

I think involving Special Weapons and Tactics was..overkill-like chasing a mouse with a sledgehammer maybe???

We really don't know since the article didn't bother with the domestic with weapons call details. Perhaps he had barricaded himself? Who knows? The Devil is in the details, which in this case, are completely lacking. All that was provided were specified charges and internet hate board info. The meat & potatos of the 911 call were left out.

JMHO

 

[clubsoda22]

Also, the news may not be totally accurate. They see 3 cops with the carbines from their trunks out they could just assume it was a swat team. You know how those reporters are.

 

[Publicola]

Of course I must point out that it was not mentioned what his alledged crime was. Some of you may assume it involved improper use of guns or drugs but given the size & complexity of the U.S. code it's entirely possible that his "felony" conviction involved a non-violent victimless crime. Hell, he could have put a flash hider on a post ban AR-15 in '98.

& the way the law is worded, a felon in possession is anyone convicted of a crime where they could have spent more than a year in jail. The judge could have decided that while technically guilty he deserved a sentence of 1 day with no probabtion, but if the charge was a felony he'd still be considered a dangerous felon in possession of a firearm.

Also, it said the call was for a domestic dispute, which could have been what most people assumed (he was violent or threatening violence towards his wife) or it could have been an argument w/o physical provocation on his part that frightened his wife. Hell, it's possible that his wife deliberately (i.e. to get back at him for something) or negligently (she was drunk & misinterpreted his trying to calm her down) made the call without any proper justification.

But considering that no domestic violence charges were filed & no mentions of spousal abuse have been made I'd say calling him a "scumbag" is jumping to a rather hasty conclusion.

But all of that should be irrelevant. Why you may ask? Because this man has been convicted of violating a prior restraint based gun control law. If it could be proved that he was threatening others with a firearm, or handling one in a criminally negligent manner, then I'd be all for him being punished.

But just because he owned a firearm???

What's worse is that no one here has made mention of that at all. It's too common for those who claim to be "pro-gun" to turn their backs on a gun owner who's Rights have been violated because they don't agree with this or that aspect of that persons life. It's almost as common for those who claim to be "pro-gun" to actively support gun control laws, such as the "no guns for felons or those who commit domestic violence misdemeanors' law.

Of course when it's you who has the press bring up every thing from your past to demonize you, or when you didn't realize the law changed & that jaywalking conviction made it illegal for you to own a firearm, perhaps then you'll see the light. Unfortunately by that time their won't be many "pro-gunners" who will listen to you, let alone help.

 

[Jeff White]

Well at least they didn't get the NRAs favorite program..Project Exile involved and send him up the river for 15 years.....

Jeff

 

[Mike Irwin]

Whoops.

 

[Quartus]

Also, it said the call was for a domestic dispute, which could have been what most people assumed (he was violent or threatening violence towards his wife) or it could have been an argument w/o physical provocation on his part that frightened his wife. Hell, it's possible that his wife deliberately (i.e. to get back at him for something) or negligently (she was drunk & misinterpreted his trying to calm her down) made the call without any proper justification.

Had some friends who kept life interesting. He'd get drunk and start calling her nasty names. Sitting in a chair, snarling nasty names. After a while, she'd decide he was dangerous and call the police. Police would arrive and he'd be sitting in the chair calling her nasty names. Police would chew them both out.

And THAT was a domestic disturbance call.


Publicola got it right.

 

[TRNewsome]

I guess I'm probably the last one in the door...

First, the newspaper has the guy's name wrong. It is Dennis Jordan.

I remember this couple when they moved in, one street over from me. I lived there while going to school at UML. They bought a drug house and put a bunch of money into fixing it up. It was a man, woman, and a child, and when they weren't spending their time with their kid they were working on the house.

They were different than everyone else I'd met in the city. They used to always pick up trash and glass in the park across the street from their house while they were watching their kid there. They treated all of the neighborhood kids really nice. Everyone liked them a lot and the man gave computers to some of the older kids in the neighborhood.

The only bad things I can remember was his wife always smoking pot in the park while she watched their kid, and once when she was obviously drunk and driving her car.

I think he worked out of the house, because UPS was there everyday picking up huge piles of boxes. I used to see him in the afternoon packing boxes and pouring those little plastic peanut things in them from big bags before taping them up.

When the man wasn't home his wife was messing around on him with a guy that lived across the park from them.

The Lowell police barricaded the streets, evacuated homes, shot teargas from what looked like shotguns into all the windows until their street, our street, and a couple of others were covered with it. People were getting sick everywhere. I remember hearing latter that they hadn't evacuated a yellow house next door to him (i laughed because they sold drugs) and some old lady got really sick from all the teargas.

I never saw so many cops in my life, they were everywhere. The SWAT team was in the house forever. They brought in dogs, the fire department was there with the thermal things they use to find people in smoke or darkness, cops just kept coming and coming, they even put a ladder up to shoot teargas into the attic.

Towards the end, the SWAT cops started coming out of the basement with computer stuff, that they were cramming into boxes, trashbags, under their uniforms, any place they could get it out of sight. A kid took a picture from behind the house, and the cops swarmed him, took his camera and smashed it, and they led him off. Three cops were counting money, and it looked like the were dividing it between them, and they all put it in their pockets when they were done. I remember one cop loading a bunch of laptop computers that all looked the same into a red van that was smashed on one side and driven by a girl that looked like she was 16 or 17. By this time cops were mostly just hanging around in the backyard, many of them smoking cigarettes and most of the SWAT cops had left.

2 or 3 hours latter a bunch of police showed up on our street, said we had to go inside, that they had to secure the area. The streets were still blocked, but there weren't any near the house. A few minutes latter the police dragged our neighbor out of a car, down a long driveway of the big house immediately behind his, over the fence and into the basement. He looked pretty beat up. About a half hour latter they dragged him out of the basement, around the front of the house, and put him in the Lowell police paddywagon as everyone on the street cheered.

All that night, cops kept coming back to their house and going down in the basement. Most of them were driving what looked like their personal cars. One cop, who had been there earlier in uniform, and another took what looked like a huge computer out of the basement and carried it to a pickup on the street. He also took a bunch of fluorescent light bulbs in a box, a huge craftsman toolbox, what looked like boxes of wire, a TV, and some laptop computers.

The whole thing turned from a SWAT raid into a burglary. All of the windows were knocked out, the doors broken, and left wide open. Days latter there were still people going in and getting stuff, some were cops that that already come and gone with stuff, and one was an a-hole traffic cop that had hassled me about my parking with one of my wheels about an inch on the curb on Bridge street.

I remember when they came back a couple of months latter, he was working on the house almost 24 hours a day to fix it again.

It was a year or two latter that the FBI and Lowell police came around talking to all of us in the neighborhood, telling people that we would be paid to testify against the guy, or if we had any kind of pending charges they would be taken care of if we would say what they wanted us to say in court. I asked them why they were going after that guy, when neighbors right next door to him in a yellow house were selling drugs? They said that the guy on Chase street had an illegal web site about them and that he was going to prison for it also.

I met the couple right before (I was told) they disappeared and while I was moving. He and a guy I knew helped me move some big stuff down stairs and they wouldn't take money I offered them when we were done - he said we were neighbors and you don't charge neighbors.

He said that his wife turned on him when he confronted her about her drug use in the house and in front of the kid. She decided she wanted him gone, hid a gun in his desk, and went to the police - except that he wasn't home when the cops got there. The cops found him dragged him back (from where I can't remember), but claimed they had found him hiding in a (kitchen?) cabinet after an 8 hour search.

The cops wouldn't let her back in the house right away, and when they did she found that they had all but destroyed it. They showed me pictures taken after the raid, and it looked like every wall, ceiling, some of the floors, furnace, and all of the windows were torn out or broken.

She said it took her a couple of months to get him out of jail, but she wouldn't fess up and admit where the gun came from. She said that the gun that the police charged him with wasn't the gun that she had left in the house that day, but was one that the cops showed her and told her she would have to identify in court. She said the cops had missed the one she had left and had to come up with something to charge him with.

She said they had to spend over 20 grand fixing the house, and he that the police had stolen between 60 and 120 grand worth of computer equipment and (I can't remember 12 or 20 grand) in cash that was locked in a file cabinet.

After she walked back over to the park, he said that not only did she set him up with a gun, that she called all of his suppliers and told them that he had been arrested, didn't live there anymore, and ruined his business.

He said that after she got him out of jail that he'd screwed up and married her, then she'd stolen a bunch of money that was supposed to have gone to his parents and paid off her credit card bills from before they were married. Then he found out that she was having a lesbian affair with one neighbor, and messing around with the guy across the park from them.

I asked them what he was going to do about the cops destroying their home and stealing stuff, and he said that he was leaving but would return when the time was right and *on second thought I'm not going to say what he said, but I hope he does it*.

> referring to their search of his home as "The Siege."

I still have the original newspaper clippings from the Lowell paper somewhere - who called the raid "The Siege", but it appears that they turned around their own words to make this guy look bad.

It's been years, but I was there, and this is the only site I've found that references that night. I will never forget seeing so many dirty cops in one place at one time. It was like a giant free-for-all as the officers grabbed whatever they could get up the basement stairs and loaded up their cruisers and personal cars and trucks. It was then that I decided that I would be moving on after I graduated from UMass, as far away from Lowell and Massachusetts as I could get.

 

[F4GIB]

From post #19:

The whole thing turned from a SWAT raid into a burglary.

Which leads to the First Amendment protected web site.
Which pi**es off the POLICE.
Which leads to ... .

Doesn't sound like it's as clear cut as the newspaper clipping implied.

 

[DMF]

Lowell police worked with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to bring a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm against White.

Good Lord, a joint task force just to catch a felon in possession of a gun?

(The usual "may be more to it" applies, but if not....)

There was no mention of a "task force" merely that they wanted to have him prosecuted in the federal system and asked ATF to help. Why do you feel the need to blow this out of proportion?

- - - -

Why did this thread get revived after 5 years, with no new new info, just some unsubstantiated anectdote? An anectdote from a newly registered one post wonder at that.

 

[Coronach]

Lowell police found the gun in the Chase Street home of Brian White in June 2001 when they responded to a call from his wife reporting a domestic dispute. The wife told police that White had a gun, which was found by police after a SWAT team entered and searched his residence.

A SWAT team gets called for a domestic dispute? Isn't this a bit of overkill?

ASSUMING that it went from a DV call to a guy with a gun holed up in his residence, this is textbook perfect use of SWAT. Notice that no one got killed? That's the way a vaaaaaaast majority of SWAT call-outs go.

Doesn't sound like it's as clear cut as the newspaper clipping implied.

Based upon the account of one guy, with one post, making him the original Random Guy on the Internet? Hmm. I dunno. IT may also be just as clearcut as the newspaper implies.

Mike

 

[hogshed]

and is it any wonder god bless the U.S.S.A.

 

[MarcusWendt]

TRNewsome wrote:

Towards the end, the SWAT cops started coming out of the basement with computer stuff, that they were cramming into boxes, trashbags, under their uniforms, any place they could get it out of sight. A kid took a picture from behind the house, and the cops swarmed him, took his camera and smashed it, and they led him off. Three cops were counting money, and it looked like the were dividing it between them, and they all put it in their pockets when they were done.

That's some funny stuff, do you really expect anyone to believe it?

I think this guy is just one more loser in a long line of loser's who's getting less than what he has coming to him.

Is posting pictures of undercover officers and compromising police investigations a protected right?

 

[divemedic]

Marcus

1 Without proof, I don't believe cops stealing computers. Nor would I believe anyone else is stealing without more than a statement I read on the internet.

2 Who knows if he was a loser. the fact remains that he has the right to have a website- he does not lose his 1A rights because he broke the law

3 Since when does a cop being undercover trump a citizen's right to take a picture and post it on the internet? How does taking a picture compromise an investigation? Secrecy is the handmaiden of tyranny. Secret police are the tools of a police state. If the cops have nothing to hide, they should not mind a little public attention.