Police officers red flag confiscation order
(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

By Terry Spencer, Associated Press

The child pornography suspect who gunned down two South Florida FBI agents this week somehow knew exactly when they were approaching his apartment.

Authorities are investigating whether he may have used his doorbell’s security camera to time his ambush, firing a high-powered rifle through the door as their team neared to search his home and computer.

That’s a danger police nationwide are facing: As outdoor surveillance cameras now protect about half of U.S. homes from criminals, the criminals are using them to get a jump on officers about to raid theirs. Some doorbell cameras even have motion sensors that alert owners when anyone comes within 100 feet (30 meters).

The cameras, combined with the military-style weaponry many criminals possess, leave law enforcement offers particularly vulnerable. In such situations, the house’s doors and walls offer no protection, noted Ed Davis, Boston’s police commissioner from 2006 to 2013.

“You take a military assault rifle and you add to that a surveillance system that allows (the suspect) to identify where officers are as they approach the house — you are a sitting duck,” Davis said.

The FBI says David Huber, a 55-year-old computer technician with no criminal record, gunned down agents Laura Schwartzenberger and Daniel Alfin and wounded three others. He then killed himself. The agency hasn’t said whether Huber’s camera had a motion detector, but that could explain why he was awaiting the agents Tuesday before dawn — an hour officers often pick for raids because the suspect is likely asleep.

Miami FBI agents shot killed Alfin Schwartzenberger
These photo released by the FBI show agents Laura Schwartzenberger, left, and FBI agent Daniel Alfin. The two were fatally shot Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021, while serving a search warrant at the home of child pornography suspect David Huber, a 55-year-old computer technician in Sunrise, Fla. Three other agents were wounded. (FBi via AP)

“A child exploitation suspect, he is going to be on his toes all day long — he doesn’t want to get caught because he is going away for a long time,” said New York City Detective Robert Garland.

In the 1980s and ’90s, a home with outdoor surveillance cameras was often a sign the resident was a drug dealer or otherwise a criminal, according to Davis and retired SWAT officer David Thomas, now a criminal justice professor at Florida Gulf Coast University. A good system could cost thousands.

“They were the only ones who could afford it,” said Thomas, who worked for the Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Gainesville, Florida, police departments.

Davis said such cameras were so often an indication of criminality, some judges considered their presence when approving officers’ warrant requests.

The cameras were also large and hard to hide — officers could spot them during pre-raid surveillance and approached accordingly.

But today, a technically savvy person can install security cameras for a few hundred dollars and a good doorbell camera can be purchased for less than $200. Many cameras are small and easy to hide.

Thomas said police tactics often trail new technology and will need to be adjusted to deal with doorbell cameras and other home surveillance systems. He said departments may start having more warrants served by heavily armed tactical units and use diversions, such as breaking a side window before going to the door, to distract the suspect.

Departments might also ask judges to issue more “no-knock” warrants, which allow officers to break down the door immediately and without warning. That would fly in the face of growing calls in some cities to do away with such warrants after they have resulted in the deaths of innocent people.

It was while exercising a no-knock warrant that Louisville, Kentucky, police killed Breonna Taylor in her apartment 11 months ago, sparking nationwide protests.

“The issue is very complex, but the reality is there has to be something” for officers to protect themselves, Thomas said.

Davis said there are some countermeasures officers can take against surveillance cameras but they carry the risk of tipping off suspects, particularly when they believe a raid is imminent. Some police departments have devices that can jam the Bluetooth or other radio-wave systems some cameras use to send images to their monitor. And they can cut the home’s power, although many camera systems have battery backups.

Serving warrants has always been one of law enforcement’s most dangerous jobs, even before sophisticated home security cameras were commonplace. On the Grand Rapids SWAT team, Thomas was the door kicker — the officer who is directly in the line of fire if the suspect is waiting in ambush. He said the door is a particularly dangerous spot.

“You never know what is waiting on the other side,” he said.

Davis said the FBI will do a comprehensive report on the shooting. When other agencies receive it, they will pore over it so they can protect their own officers from gunmen with security cameras.

“It has to be reviewed — there are lessons to be learned from this terrible tragedy,” Davis said.

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223 COMMENTS

  1. Ok, let’s review:
    – surveillance cameras can warn residents of an impending visit by cops
    – surveillance cameras might allow residents to prepare for an encounter with police
    – surveillance cameras might have motion detectors to allow residents to prepare for an encounter with police
    – using a “no-knock” warrant/raid, police will be invisible until they actually enter through the door

      • What the flip?? I’m literally having a multi-cam system installed to the exterior of my home right now. As in, as I type this…the techs are outside right now. And I happen to stumble upon this article…

        Well, FWIW, when men came to the end of my street a few months ago and unloaded a mag into a nearby hill, the only question the responding LASD Deputies (who took 30 min to respond, even though the muzzle reports were caught on audio by the 911 operator) was “do you have security video of the perps?” I said no, and they said they’d “be in touch if they find anything”. Never heard back, even though there were multiple eye witnesses, a clear physical description and timeline, and the direction the perps left.

        So, now I’m getting a cam system installed. Hope I never find myself with eager LEOs at my door at 4am.

      • Because Chihuahuas are quiet and don’t make noise whenever someone knocks on the door or is near it. How is that for an alarm system? I guess they’ll make Chihuahuas illegal next.

        • I think I’s rather have the no-knock raid than a little yappy dog pissing all over the house. The only useful thing you can do with a chihuahua is ram a stick up it’s ass and dust the window blinds.

      • Having had the pleasure of taking a coffee break from work one day to watch a warrant being served at a condo across the apartment complex parking lot, the set up for the show was anything but stealth. Especially if one owns a dog, or window.

      • “In Kosovo the constant danger caused residents to turn their homes into strong-points.”

        Yeah, but those were Kosovokianskivichs. We are Americans. We are safe from those dangers.

      • I would ask Davis what is an “military assault rifle”? If he is referring to something that shoots 5.56NATO or 7.62×39, I would say there are firearms considerably more powerful.

        Technology doesn’t trump the Constitution.

    • Self installed CCTV cameras are the way to go. I would never go with the wireless app based stuff like ring or whatever, they are childsplay to hack remotely. We have seen situations where babycams in many cases have been hacked through the internet. The doorbell cameras are using similar software and hardware, they are basically just the same as laptop webcams.

      • This whole topic has amused me for a long time.

        If cops had any idea what people of normal intelligence could put together for a security system using a wired camera system and a few hundred bucks worth of other sensors cobbled together using meshed LoRa or even GoTenna the cops would shit their panties. Especially once they realized that such a system doesn’t have to be built solely around the idea of passive detection.

        Add in the occasional Pi, some commercially available batteries, maybe something like a GoalZero portable solar panel… you can build security systems that are self-contained, meshable, operate over long distances, can run off line power or passthrough charge a battery and fall back on solar as needed and which are essentially tamper proof and fit in a waterproof plastic box the size of a trail camera. Such devices can operate on their own for pretty long periods of time, like a year at least. These are the kind of things that for $1000 you could create a virtually impenetrable ring of security notification in a circle at 300m or even out much, much farther if you had enough units (that is, money for the hardware which isn’t exactly expensive at like $100 for the entire unit, the real guts are like $30).

        And they can do double duty as comms devices too because at root that’s what they are.

        Sure, they can be destroyed and tampered with if located but doing so would alert the owner that something had happened to that unit, so even that kind of attempt would tell you, if nothing else, what direction people were coming from, which is the entire point of building them; Advanced warning. Even if a jammer was deployed the owner would know something was going on with their outer ring of security and if they’re smart enough to build it they’d have a pretty good idea of what was going on.

        Completely removing the cops’ element of surprise isn’t really all that hard to do. Maybe this recognition will lead to smarter policing? I kinda doubt it but, hey, at heart I’m an optimist about people.

        • Go and get your FCC general and extra license, learn a bit more, and you can send still images over FM and even HF, weather permitting. Solar system wide zero infrastructure capability.

        • You can send compressed video live off a drone if you want, heck you send send it to up to 32 client Android devices should you choose to but the data rate is crap on most LoRa systems. GoTenna does it alright if you’re using a Pi to run a server but it chews through battery like crazy. Takes your run time on a 20,000-38,000mAh battery down by like 80% and stacking something like Omni 20+c’s gets expensive pretty quick.

          I fail to see the point in any of that if the idea is to be cheap though. You can get two passthrough chargeable battery packs in the 10k mAh range from Sam’s for like $35 and that’s more than enough if you want to keep it basic, cheap and still have 80% of the uses you might want in this vein.

          My sole point here is that you can do this kind of thing for cheap, very cheap, if you want to and that it’s not that hard to do if you join a group that plays with the stuff like Meshtastic where all the stuff you’d want to start with soft/firmware wise is github-ed and you can modify it yourself if you like and loads of people will even help you do it just for the funzies.

        • Exactly. We live/ranch in a very rural area on the border, and have had some sort of extended security perimeter for years. Between extended range driveway alarms and cellular game cameras, we not only know where someone is coming in from, we’ve probably received an HD picture of them that’s 5-10 seconds old. Then there’s the legit pack of roaming Pyrenees guard dogs in the pasture, and multiple Border Collies at the house. When the UPS guy pulls up, we’ve been standing outside waiting for a bit.

    • I would also like to know the difference between a “high-powered rifle” and a “normal powered rifle” – does a “normal powered rifle” even exist? What is it powered by? Happy thoughts?

      • “I would also like to know the difference between a “high-powered rifle” and a “normal powered rifle”

        Back in the day…..a normal powered rifle was .22, everything else was considered a hunting rifle (as opposed to varmint shooting), and “high powered”. For some reason, it seems that “modern times” looks at velocity, believing that .22 is a low velocity plinking round, that stays in the body of humans, rather than creating “through and through” wounds. Or, a rifle that fires a bullet creating a relatively tiny puncture wound. This means a .223/4 round that creates a big entry/exit wound is “high powered”. Now, “hunting rifles” are also considered to be only bolt action. Anything semi-automatic is approaching machine gun capability, thus “high powered”.

        In short, anything that one would expect a young teen to shoot for fun is low power, all else is high power.

        • I bought a 1903 Springfield, in .30-06, when I was 13. I was a young teen. Does that make it low powered?

          • “I bought a 1903 Springfield, in .30-06, when I was 13. I was a young teen. Does that make it low powered?”

            Of course not. The description given was related to a general notion of low powered rifle. One can always find an exception.

        • Do you have to move those goalposts by hand every time, or do you have some sort of machine to handle it?

          • “Do you have to move those goalposts by hand every time, or do you have some sort of machine to handle it?”

            Could you elaborate? Not quite understanding the comment.

      • Thanks for the comment, Sam, it makes sense. I was referring to the hyperbole of the media. Everything is high powered, poor cops don’t have any advantages, we need to remove doors so they don’t even have to have no knock warrants.

        Folks need to look up David Hooks and see how that turned out. He was murdered by a Georgia SWAT like police team on a “no-knock” warrant that wasn’t a no-knock warrant. They invaded the man’s home and murdered him on the word of a meth head in the dark of night. A little bit of actual research would have prevented this businessman’s needless death.

        Was it in the news? Were there any riots? No. David Hooks was white.

      • A “high-powered” rifle has a cord you plug in, a “normal-powered” rifle uses batteries. “Military-style” means it has a camo paint-job, possibly also a shoulder-thing that goes up.

        Also: TTAG, if you insist keeping this new, snazzy, less-functional layout, at least go back to the old font. Apple made the same mistake of switching to a visually harsh, thin-bodied font on a bright background a while back. Their resident twatwaffle, Jony Ives, waxed on about how “beautiful” and “elegant” it was so I recommended that he be sacked. That same recommendation will apply here.

    • This happened in Florida.
      It was not a no knock raid
      Florida has banned no knock raids for years.
      Bringing them back will only increase senseless gun battles between police and law abiding citizens due to police wrong house/bad information errors.
      Law enforcement has proven over and over again that they cannot get it right.

    • The whole idea of having a warrant is to serve notice that the police are at your home with the courts permission to effect a lawful search or arrest. How does having a door bell camera defeat that? It does not. What it does do is keep the police honest.

      • Like he said, wait for the target to leave the house and arrest them in the open. Had they done this to Steve Koresh, of Branch Dividian fame, when he went to town to get groceries there would have been “0” charred bodies of women and children in the Dividian Compound. But then our over testosterone-injused federal government likes to do things heavy handed. Common-sense was never a factor.

        • But if we stop doing all the warrantless raids and stop busting down doors they’ll cut our funding, SWAT will get boring and be just like any other job and they won’t buy us all this stuff.

        • While tactically sound, an uneventful arrest of Koresh wouldn’t have made the news, so it wouldn’t have served it’s intended purpose as a Clinton administration PR stunt. It would have been a waste of the news crews that accompanied the BATFE. They wanted visuals of jack-booted thugs charging the building and pulling out the bad man. It would be a warning that you can’t fight the government, and they were doing something about creepy gun owners. I remember reports of Koresh being forewarned because a news crew was asking around town for directions to the compound.

        • You can bet the same ATF raid would have happened if Daddy Bush had been reelected. Waco happened too soon in the Clinton regime for the wheels to have not already been in motion.

        • I hate to defend the indefensible, but that wouldn’t have worked with Koresh. He could send his disciples out for supplies. He could have stayed holed up in the compound indefinitely. Perhaps after nabbing a few of his followers they could have ultimately starved them out, but they couldn’t have just waited for Koresh to make a Walmart run.

        • Koresh could have sent followers out on his errands, I suppose. However, as I recall from news reports at the time, it was known that Koresh regularly went outside the compound alone for his morning jog. Sooo….

        • Jonathan nailed it, Koresh had a habit of jogging, there was zero excuse for the raid…

        • Not only did he go for a daily jog, but the McClennan county Sherrifs could provide the feds with Koresh’s schedule so we’ll because they got their coffee at the same place most mornings. They could have literally just told him to get in the car after his morning cup of joe.

          • “Not only did he go for a daily jog, but the McClennan county Sherrifs could provide the feds with Koresh’s schedule so we’ll because they got their coffee at the same place most mornings. They could have literally just told him to get in the car after his morning cup of joe.”

            Stationed in Fort Worth at the time, I remember hearing the Sheriff interviewed on the radio. It was just as you wrote. Don’t think I ever saw/heard any of that interview on national news outlets.

    • Technology is a 2 way street, law enforcement can use it as well. It’s not too difficult to put up their own motion sensing camera equipment or gps tracking and get someone when they leave the house. It also wouldn’t be too difficult to play dress up as package delivery or utilities company representative if they need someone to open the door. Each situation is going to be different, it might require a little thought to come up with good plans. I’m willing to accept sometimes plans will fall apart but at least something was tried before needlessly escalating to a shooting match.

      • And don’t forget IR cameras. They could see into a house (once they have a warrant) and determine where the adults are, if there are children, who’s lying down, etc.
        That would increase officer safety and bystander safety.

      • True, but there’s something about becoming a bureaucrat that shuts down creative thinking — and police chiefs are most definitely bureaucrats.

    • That’s what I have been saying. This raid was stupid ! Wait for the individual to go to WalMart or where ever and catch them out of the vehicle, not in their home where they have the advantage. Would be interesting if we found out that he didn’t download any of the stuff he was supposed to have, that maybe it was planted. if he was an Antifa member then he wouldn’t have anything to worry about.

      • I’ve thought about that since Waco. People always leave their house. Cheaper just to have someone watch for a day or so.
        But, ya know, guys have big cool toys that they’re itching to use on someone. It’s boring to sit and wait for someone to come out and get the mail.

    • But then you don’t get to shoot the dog or throw a flash-bang into a crib with a baby in it, you would take the fun out of the job of being a swat.

    • The problem with that is that staking out a house could take days and is just as boring for the officers as setting up speed traps, and lets face it, cops get bored. The primary reason for no knock raids is to get cops off their asses to run around and throw some flash bangs. Scratch their itchy index fingers. Get some exercise. Burn off a couple donuts. Take that away and they’ll probably have to go back to playing softball on weekends. And what are they supposed to do with all their tactical gear? No, shooting up residential neighborhoods makes WAY more sense.

      • And the flashbang companies would go broke and the commissioners and politicians wouldn’t get their kick backs and country club visits. Much easier to infringe on the lowly citizens than lose those juicy bennies.

    • Over my 71 yrs. I have seen the demoncrats sympathize with the criminals and demonize law abiding citizens as well as law enforcement.

      • You must have missed the Republicans pampering and protecting LEOs while demoning citizens at every chance. All the while putting more laws on the books so more citizens can be put into the justice system.

    • I see registration and approval requirements along with access to the feeds. We see them looking at ring doorbell cameras now. With access comes control so they can turn them off remotely.

  4. You know who else would like to see surveillance cameras be demonized and eliminated? Criminals.

    “Common sense” camera laws should be passed immediately, for the police. /s

  5. As an LE myself, I do find it unusual they went for the house. I’ve personally waited on a SUBJECT for over a week until he actually left his residence in order to serve the arrest. It’s a drain on resources, but if there’s no immediate risk to the public it’s a tried and true method that’s far safer for everyone than serving on a house. We won’t know how long they conducted surveillance or if there were exigent circumstances that caused them to go early unless they release a full report to the public, which is unlikely. All that aside, it’s a tragedy for both the fallen Agents and their families. I wish the shooter hadn’t taken his own life so he could face the consequences of his actions.

    • “I wish the shooter hadn’t taken his own life so he could face the consequences of his actions.”

      I don’t mean to be glib, but, doesn’t suicide prior to arrest and trial qualify as facing the consequences of his actions?

      Didn’t that murderous jerk of a criminal do society a favor of saving us the expense of incarceration and trial? Didn’t it also prevent forever the accused, if convicted from one day in the future possibly released from prison after his term was up?

      I’ll ignore for the moment the additional obvious fact that he was innocent until proven guilty, as it’s lilkely to be distasteful for some here that I might point out his Constitutional rights. In this comment section and on this particular case and even on The Truth About Guns where Constitutional rights are discussed and defended endlessly and rightfully I’m sure I’ll be pilloried for my post for pointing out that he still had rights.

      • He shot first and then offed himself. Case closed. He wouldn’t of been executed for the alleged crimes however he chose (badly) to do what he did. His rights were not in question nor infringed as far as i can see. Plenty of people in his edition chose to checkout on their own rather than face consequences.
        The actual case of CP against him won’t go through because he’s deceased. That investigation is closed and resolved.
        These things work themselves out.

    • I know it’s TV drama, but please tell me that in real life, officers get within arms reach of a suspect before attempting to grab him. It drives me nuts when the TV detective shouts out the bad guys name from a hundred yards away. No one in real life does that, right?

    • The other advantage of arresting somebody in public is that they can’t destroy the evidence. You don’t have to rush in to try and prevent drugs from being flushed or drives from being destroyed.

      • ” drugs from being flushed ”

        If the drug stash is so small that it can be flushed in time to keep the cops from getting it, it probably wasn’t really worth going after.

        In any case, obviously we need a law requiring everyone to get “smart” toilets that won’t flush drugs.

    • How is it a drain on resources when you get paid the same no matter how productive you are? Sitting on a suspect is a better use os resources than running speed traps or 90% of drug and vice arrests.

      • Speed traps and bs tickets make money. How else would they afford all those puppy poppers and baby blinders.

      • Most departments in America are currently understaffed for what the community expects them to do. Response times are getting longer and politicians are yelling for more patrols even as they talk about ‘defunding’. Even the feds have a finite amount of resources to use going after child diddlers.

        If you want to have an arrest team sit on a house and wait for someone to come out that’s cops or agents not doing other things- or you’re paying them overtime.

        I’m not saying they shouldn’t do that, but there’s always an opportunity cost.

    • I’m curious. The alleged child pornographer had no previous criminal record, but you had to send FBI agents to arrest him. Why not have local law enforcement arrest him? Seems like over kill to send Federal agents.

  6. Maybe not for long.

    There’s been some actual good faith bi-partisan discussions on capitol hill about eliminating ‘no-knock’ raids outright, or severely constraining them.

    This ‘every department has a SWAT team’ bullshit needs to be ended now, along with asset seizing while traveling…

    • If you ignore the fact that in the US there is about 1 SWAT team for every 20 police departments, the above comment is still inaccurate and stupid.

      • Counts of the number of departments is disingenuous. Just about every town has a police department, and they average less than 17 officers per 10k residents. Those officers are divided into shifts and include administration, jail duty, court, etc. Most departments don’t have a pool of officers large enough to support a tactical team, or any other specialty. A small town with a couple officers and one patrol car counts the same as major cities that have tens of thousands of officers. Any sizeable department will have a tactical team. I’d assert that almost all locations are covered by a tactical team. My town with 30-40k only has 7 officers on duty, but they can call on the sheriff’s department that has SWAT, bomb squad, mobile command center, etc.

      • Don’t forget, since facts matter, that every police department has had a corrupt cop or group of corrupt cops. So, that’s the facts that matter bub.

      • If the fbi wants to root out child porn, maybe they should cleanup the filth in their ranks first? It’s sad that there are people online that seem to be happy that 2 agents were gunned down. It really says a lot about how the average citizen feels about the to police agency in the USA. This can’t be good for anyone in this country.

      • ” 1 SWAT team for every 20 police departments ”

        Well, they must be very busy. SWAT teams get called out 80,000 times a year nationwide.

    • Well, in today’s environment where the .gov is looking to increase surveillance on all those nasty conservative/3 percenter/2A supporter/white nationalist/Trump supporting domestic terrorists, I’d guess they’ll be increasing their SWAT teams and no knocks.

      The oh so tolerant Libs have no problem with the police just so long as they’re enforcing the dictates of the Left.

      • Yeah just wait until the voting record of a citizen is enough justification to search their house. Should have probably gone that route with anybody voting for a communist about 50 years ago and we might not be here.

    • The naysayers below do not live in such urbanized and over-policed regions as Jeff and I.

      Anon stays strapped: FBI gets clapped.

  7. Maybe the government should consider not making tens of thousands of things felonies and then the need to make arrest would be reduced massively. The original purpose of law enforcement was to protect people from other people and not to protect people from making discretionary decisions that harm themselves.

    • Attorneys and police would rather that not happen. They seem content with the current arraignment.

  8. If the problem actually is child pronography then maybe the Post Master and the FBI shouldn’t be distributing it the way they are now. Those two entities are the largest providers of child pronography in the world and they do so to lure people in so they can make an arrest. They actually are the problem and not the solution to the problem.

      • Yeah tell that to probably half the “white supremacist” groups that made grand plans to attack xyz. Seems like they all have an agent in the midst that’s giving them ideas and weapons. Wouldn’t be surprised if the feds were running antifa and blm. Sure seems like they made out just fine with the outcome of some targeted political violence.

        • The CIA simply brought their tactics home. The other agencies have been doing it for decades, but the CIA was best so they asked, and got help. The military always shows up after the CIA destabilizes a government… hence their presence on inauguration day.

        • The feds have been big on this for years. Rather than find actual threats, they find some dummy, wind him up, then supply him with a plan and means.

    • I don’t believe those stats. They were probably true decades ago, but who would deal with mailing around Polaroids and VHS tapes today? Those technologies were used because an individual could create a finished product without outside assistance. Now, everything is digital, and the dark web and anonymous email/distributed file sharing/digital drop boxes can distribute it. I’m sure the FBI is still heavily involved in monitoring the online distribution.

      • Believe it or not the postal inspectors are still heavily involved in child pronography cases. If you read the way I do you will see them come up over and over in federal prosecutions of these sorts of things. The groups that distribute child pronography online are frequently fronts that were opened up by the FBI to begin with. They get a large following and then they track all the people down and arrest them after they’ve been feeding them stuff for a year to.

  9. Now it’s Dings Dongs zeroing in on doorbell cameras. Unless these former cops want marching and burning and lawsuits they better get the no-knock address right the first time. The 55 year old perp had no priors so why the FBI and not the local police? Something just doesn’t altogether pass the sniff test here and there could be more to the story. Usually people with no arrest history comply and perverts usually don’t jump from having computer kiddie porn to shooting it out with LE. Not saying it cannot happen but it is so rare it just leaves the door open for needing more evidence than what has been said thus far. IMO.

    • I agree with Debbie W., this incident does NOT pass the smell test. An individual with no priors shoots two FBI agents down with no warning? This is looking like a coverup of something else. Huber will never get his day in court as he was found “suicided”. The FBI agents could have been shot in the back for all we know and just used as patsys in something they knew nothing about. And of course, we all know we can trust the FBI to tell the truth and the FBI never engages in nefarious political acts?

      • You know, a few years ago I would have just written you off as another government hating nutcase.

        • I worked in the military as a Cryptologic Linguist and had mission tasking provided by the NSA. That was 50 years ago, when the rules were clear and protected American citizens from spying. The NSA only tasked missions relating to foreign military capabilities. The CIA only tasked agents to track foreign entities. And the FBI only tasked agents to track U.S. entities involved in criminal activities.

          Today, their respective roles have been expanded and overlap. I am appalled at what goes on. There was a day when I intercepted a communication between a U.S. businessman and a Chinese Communist person. I was instructed not only to stop the recording, but to immediately degauss the tape. Another time, I recorded a countdown in French, which turned out to be a French nuclear test in the South Pacific. I was ordered to degauss the tape, because the French were our allies. You might wonder why I started the tape recorder, but I was monitoring communications in Vietnam at the time, and some entities spoke French. I didn’t know the comms were coming from 180° from the direction I was monitoring until I performed an RDF on the signal. Anyway, today is a very different Intel community from the one I once served. It is appalling.

    • Word is that one of the FBI agents killed was in charge of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the raid in Florida was acting on information found on that laptop. With the sheer quantity of disinformation prevalent these days, that would require some verification.

      • Yeah and we never landed on the moon. Hillary faked it and killed the REAL Neil Armstrong.

        You guys are off the reservation. Not everything in the world is a conspiracy around some dumb coke-snorting dude.

        • “HannibaL” is still a shill for the elite. Back when Trump was President, he was on this board all the time trolling against Trump. The fact that he is throwing mud at any idea that the FBI was not what the media put out, is a strong proof that the “raid” and murder of Huber was not legitimate.

    • “The 55 year old perp had no priors so why the FBI and not the local police?”

      Because that’s not how this works. It’s not like a video game where you have to rack up a bunch of “stars” before the FBI shows up. They investigate federal crime. Little ones, big ones, whatever. Interstate transmission of CP- which is almost invariably how it happens- is a federal crime. Therefore the FBI will be the ones showing up at the door.

      The other reason is that the FBI actually has the resources to investigate cyber crimes. Local police departments, with the exception of a few (particularly the NYPD) simply don’t have the technological know-how and personnel to do so. They’re not looking for it.

  11. No knock warrants usually result in innocent people and or police being injured and or killed. No knock warrants should be used for the likes of terrorists only, Going after a meth cooker or pervert that way is silly, it’s just more fun for lazy cops who don’t want to do the hard work of surveillance and tracking, besides they get to shoot a few dogs. I am a big supporter of law enforcement, but this is where they lose me, they are not Gestapo, they are employees of the citizens.

    • This is an ignorant comment. There are thousands of warrants served every year that don’t result in any injuries. I’ve served hundreds of “no knock” warrants where no injuries occurred. That doesn’t mean that some in this country have messed up and should be held accountable, but don’t paint with such a wide brush. The use of a tactical team to serve any warrant is based on a valid threat assessment and is often the safest way to serve a warrant for all involved including the suspect. Get off your couch and go actually speak to your local police of sheriff about the use of a SWAT team.

      • How many “vicious” Cocker spaniels, Yorkshire terriers, Welsh Corgies, Brittany Spaniels, and Golden Retrievers have you murdered in the “line of duty”?

        • Better question is how many rights were trampled on.
          The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

        • “N6. Show me the case where a person has been charged with murdering an animal.”

          The Possum is correct, if you kill a police dog here in Florida, it’s a death sentence for whoever killed the dog.

          Sadly, a real-world ‘1984’ example of a cop’s dog actually being more equal than your dog…

        • “Sadly, a real-world ‘1984’ example of a cop’s dog actually being more equal than your dog…”

          And also more equal than you or your kids.

          One day they’ll pull that shit on someone who doesn’t play and the consequences for the families of the police involved will be horrific when that person decides that they were found guilty before the warrant was even executed.

          Is he in crit-i-cal?
          Retaliation for this one won’t be min-i-mal ’cause I’m a criminal…

      • @Yosemite Sam Unreasonable searches. If you invade someones home in the middle of the night, you are no better than the crooks. We have a Constitution for a reason, and I see those rights being eroded every day, by people like you who are “just following orders”. That excuse was invalidated in Nuremberg in 1945. It’s better if the police do police work, difficult yes, time consuming, yes, dangerous, sometimes yes, but you should be concerned of the rights of the citizens, good one as well as bad ones. How many times has it been the “wrong address”, or the “confidential informant” passes wrong information, accidentally or intentional. Too many times. I applaud the job you do, not necessarily the way you do it. Knock on door, show valid warrant, or wait until person exits home.

        • Every warrant has been signed and approved by a judge. What you may think is unreasonable search and seizure is not the same as the courts. I’ve already said those that make mistakes should be held accountable. If a tactical team hits the wrong house, they did not do their due diligence and should be held civilly and maybe (depending of the circumstance) criminally liable. We focus on the very few that went bad and not the thousands safely served. If it’s safer for the police, community and suspect, we do pick them off at home. Not every search warrant is Waco and Ruby Ridge. Don’t compare everything we do those epic screw ups. Every swat cop I have ever served and known with are die hard 2nd Amendment supporters, especially in the West and red states in general. Even some blue stater cops are pro 2A.

          It’s no wonder the pro 2nd Amendment community is so used to losing. We eat our own and don’t solidify our common goal of firearms freedom.

        • Sorry meant to say “pick them off away from home”. It’s all circumstantial. No one bad guy is taken into custody the same way, nor is every one warrant served the same way.

          I’m sure I will be called a Jack booted thug and troll. I am one of the staunchest 2A guys around. I visit this site everyday and have for years, I never comment but some on these forums have it out for the wrong people. And no, I have never violated someone’s civil rights; some of the guys on my team were in the military, including SF guys; I was not in the military and I am not a wannabe, But I’m also a realist and have seen there are truly bad and evil people in the world out to harm others.

        • @Yosemite Sam. I wasn’t saying your warrant was’t legal, what I said was your application of the warrant is unconstitutional. You have an arrest warrant, wait until it’s safe to confront suspect. You seem to forget that everyone is a suspect, they haven’t been convicted of the crime on your warrant. You need to be prepared for they to react poorly if they are criminals, imagine a innocent person’s reaction to a invasion. by armed intruders. I for one am not impressed by SWAT use in these situations. Active shooter, armed bank robbery, yea,, terrorist, certainly. I get it. Going after a pervert, drug dealer or Roger Stone, SWAT has no business being involved. https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/15/us/houston-police-officers-indicted-no-knock-warrant/index.html

        • In my state, the affidavit stipulates a tactical team will be used and a judge has to endorse the circumstances of warrant “at any time of the day or night without the requirement for knocking and announcing”. So again what you say is an unconstitutional method of service is not what the courts have stated are constitutional or not. In the case of the pedo in Florida, none of us know the intel the case agents had as to the safest way to serve the arrest warrant or whether or not he was known to be armed. Two agents were killed during a daytime, knock and announce with no tactical support, served the way you believe is constitutional and they were killed walking up to the door. A shoot out at Walmart or the gas station could have been deadlier had they attempted to grab him up outside his house while he was running errands.

          I’ve arrested drug dealers, child pornographers and pedo’s that were extremely violent individuals. Yes they were suspects and not convicted yet, but they still had to have their day in court and getting them into custody safely and to court is more ideal than a gun battle in the parking lot of Costco or during a traffic stop on a crowded road. Please go spend some time with your local PD or Sheriff. I guarantee you it will be enlightening. I didn’t know what I didn’t know before this job.

        • “If a tactical team hits the wrong house, they did not do their due diligence and should be held civilly and maybe (depending of the circumstance) criminally liable.”

          You know what it’s called when normal people kick in the door of a home they’ve no right to be in, threaten the occupants with guns and hold them against their will? A home invasion. Until cops go to jail for terrorizing citizens and citizens are protected from criminal and civil liability if they respond appropriately, tactical units shouldn’t be a thing.

  12. I don’t see how a no-knock entry would help in this case.
    Motion detecting cameras being a thing and all.
    You can’t hide your super-cool government vehicles coming down the street.
    You can’t evade cameras and sensors in the driveway or aimed into the street.
    If your target knows he’s a target (actual practicing criminal and not just some guy who mucked up paperwork) he’ll take steps to know when you’re coming in knocking or no.

    The only real way to avoid these situations is to nab him on the street discretely.
    But where’s the cool-guy-ooorah-points in that?

    Better let a pedo or crack dealer blast two of your buddies so you can have the bragging rights and a war story than do actual police work and make an uneventful arrest.

    • Almost like detective work is dead unless it’s behind a computer screen, cold case, or already deceased victim.

      Whatever, tyrants gonna infringe…

    • They are adamant about taking down perps at home. They want the jackpot of evidence with the glory of it all. The concept of getting a suspected criminal on the side of the road is more dangerous for some reason. I would think they face more danger from a building than a car.

    • This exactly. Knock or no-knock, unless you’re rappelling down from a silent helicopter, the suspect is going to know you’re approaching. Sounds more like a pretext to justify more no knock assaults.

  13. First they want your guns, then they want your security.

    The government thugs use security to get the drop on us all the time, can’t have you doing the same…

  14. The absurdity of it all…

    Cameras have nothing to do with anything.

    The type of firearm used by anyone there doesn’t mean anything either.

  15. Thanks to uptick in crime caused by government policies more people are putting cameras up than ever before. I guess the law considers us criminals for surveiling our own property, still.
    The next step in this process is to fortify the doors and windows. Put up fences several yards from the house if possible with motion lights and cameras. Have a plan to get the dogs into the basement quickly if something goes down.
    Perhaps signs in English and Spanish explaining the area is monitored. Just so they know.

    This is becoming necessary, especially if you are a registered R who they know used a credit card at a gun shop last year that mailed a ballot for Trump and happen to be Caucasian. Tack on a trip through the DC area for any reason and it’s clear what the justifications are.

    I think we see where this is going.

      • Most states have registration in a party if you want a say in the primaries. We are registering as D this year so we can support weaker democrats in the primary. Also gets us off a few mailing lists. Besides I need a laugh from the socialist propaganda mail.

        • In some places they actually want to know your party affiliation for things like building permits, business licenses and permits, wetlands permits, property tax assessments, things like that.

        • Huntmaster — In Minnesota, our Primary ballots are two-sided paper sheets. Democrats are on one side, and Republicans are on the other side. You can only mark the ballot on one side, and no one has to declare their party affiliation. I don’t know how third party candidates are handled. Maybe they don’t get to Primary.

          The General ballot has all candidates of all parties that met a certain level of support in the prior election season. The two major parties are always there, but third parties are ephemeral. The Libertarians, for example, have for decades been trying like hell to be relevant. The same thing will happen to anyone who wants to run for office in a GOP splinter party. As much as I want to see the GOP vanish and be replaced by the Patriot Party, the dues are too steep. The establishment elites have the two-party system locked down. It’s them or nothing.

      • Voting in a primary makes you “registered”. Hence I have NEVER voted in a primary. In ILLinoyed anyway!

  17. The “lesson to be learned” is to stop doing no-knock assaults. An actual warrant is delivered peacefully and the subject of the warrant is given time to read it and understand what it says and call his lawyer. There have been a few cases of officers conducting no-knock assaults and police officers being killed with no charges against the person who lived there. They shouldn’t be surprised when they break somebody’s door down that that person defends their Castle. Not to mention the multiple times that the law enforcement officers get the wrong address and assault someone who is not a criminal. Why would a law abiding citizen even believe it was the police breaking their door down in the middle of the night? There are criminals that say “police” as they’re breaking your door down.

  18. Ed Davis “You take a military assault rifle and you add to that a surveillance system…”

    Ed sounds like a real douchebag.
    Boston Police Commissioner.

    • Not banned. Just a software update that gives LE/SWAT the ability to remote disable. With a federal registration. Which is the kinda thing that gives the black hats and virus writers the perfect back door.

      • And then, of course, the blocking technology will promptly fall into the hands of criminals. . . Perhaps it might be a better idea to simply bring policing more in line with traditional values of liberty and freedom.

        • Gennies are nice.

          For this kind of application a largish ($200 or so from Sams) UPC will run such a system for at least a day. I mean, it will keep high end gaming rig up for 6+ hours and a wired cam system draws like 1/10th the power if it’s not powering its IR LEDs.

          Two in series and a recharge method of your choice can keep such a system up for weeks or months. Heck, do it right with solar in the right areas of the country and it can run until your solar panel or UPC die the permanent type of death.

        • You’d think since it was internet related, they would have done that first… somethings fuckey.

          Especially since these teams have been “tapping into security” since their existence. Phones lines, power, etc etc… From bank robberies to hostage situations to WACO… they have been doing it for a long time and know how to get in and cut their enemy off.

          I seriously doubt this dude was rocking VHS tapes recording kiddies off grid. I don’t believe it for a second. What I would believe more is the “domestic terrorist” story and was a threat to exposing the government, or state officials, or anything along those lines, so they took the “plant something” tactic and the media eats it up, stories get shared, we never hear from him again. Classic.

          Or, maybe it was child porn? Still, the same thing goes for how they should have done it. Especially if it was just some perv downloading shit online. Could have even been a mistake or clicked the wrong pop-up type deal, then boom… hacked and used as a child porn p2p server. I honestly don’t doubt the child porn case here, but I am just tired of these tyrants and their no-knock bullshit acting like they don’t deserve to be shot at. From drug dealers to illegals, and child porn rings. From innocents and “law abiding citizens”. You break and enter, expect combat.

        • Unless of course you built it yourself and kept it wired.

          Fucking sad how people who bitch about how everyone is lazy and doesn’t know how to do anythese these days are the same people who can’t figure out how to put in security cameras that don’t use a net connection.

  20. It might cost $200 for a ring camera I guess, but they are way cheaper than that. I never needed an IP cam till recently when my daughter’s cat got out. Since it was coming back into the garage late at night to eat the food we put out. I bought a Wyze cam and pointed it at the food bowl in the completely dark garage and when my phone beep notification at a quarter till 5 I looked at the live video feed and closed the door the rest of the way with the overhead door remote. Total cost $26 delivered. The tech is widely available, functional, and cheap.

    As far as cops getting to pretend they are some kind of military door kicker in a war zone, well dead cops are going to happen more often until they go back to arresting someone when they are away from their home and outside their car. Then while the bad guy is waiting his turn to seek bail they can get a real warrant and do their search without having to put themselves or anyone else in danger, and no need to play dress up!

  21. Oh no, what if a person looks out what’s called a “window”? We need to outlaw windows now!

  24. Well okay then…. no more door bell cameras. What if i have a full suite of cameras covering the entirely of my property? Are we going to ban those too just because some government prion wants to feel safe when they come up to bang on my door for not wearing 4 face masks in my own home?

    You know I really do believe in law and order. But this kind of government Karen-ism needs to go. It’s the same kind of mindset behind disposing of the 2A entirely.

  25. As much as most people WANT to trust the cops, they keep giving us vivid examples why they should NOT be trusted, from the FBI, the ATF and all the way down to local cops.

    I also believe that this was NOT a porn arrest attempt, but a cover for something else.

    I have read of quite a few instances recently where the FBI have been harassing whistleblowers in the voter fraud investigations and others who were at the DC protests.

    And to think that when I was young, most people, including myself, believed that the FBI was a good bunch of cops… 🙁

    • I, too, was raised to consider cops good guys — but that was before a tea who said they “just want to look around” trashed my house, overturning book shelves and tearing the stuffing from furniture, plus forging my handwriting to make a note that they used as the basis for heavy-duty questioning.

      As for the FBI, it’s been known for a long time that these days they’re better at manufacturing criminals than catching real ones.

  26. Awww those poor FBI boyz(oh wait they sent a chick!) RIP. Seriously TTAG you keep posting AP garbage? We will never know what really went down but no-knock raids are BS. I have no Ring or “smart” doorbell. And someone is usually home. Oh and since I’m getting over Covid my doctor wants to do a “teleconference”. Another tool for spying 😖

  27. Hey, Ed Davis, you fear mongering sack, the you and your minions are the ones with “military assault rifles,” so why don’t you stick one where the sun don’t shine.

    • Yes, but just about anybody off the street can walk into a gun shop and buy a military STYLE weapon!

      Perhaps all semi-auto weapons that look like full auto military (and police) weapons should require an orange tip on the barrel so that the authorities can easily determine whether the weapon is a military weapon or just a military STYLE weapon.

    • “Sorry, but has TTAG gotten so lazy that they just re-post AP “news” releases?”

      This is a problem, why?

      TTAG doesn’t employ a bevy of “investigative journalists”. Many of us do not consume anything from UPI, Reuters, AP or whatever political hackery. However, having TTAG present something that is “in the news”, intended for our analysis and consideration, it is up to each of us to ignore, comment, research, delete, reject, elect, select, detect. Don’t like what you see? Delete, and see it no more.

      • Shut up Sam.

        SIGINT is worthless crap pushed by shills. Like Antifa, just an idea. Everyone knows this. “Knowing what your enemy is doing because they told you” ROFL, that’s like, totally, literally never happened ever.

        And yes, for the smoothbrains, midwits and the easily triggered: /sarc.

  29. The FBI once again failed to follow the OODA principles. Poorly trained and equipped FBI agents without appropriate backup teams is the root cause of the failure. They clearly did not know the suspects dailyroutine, understand if he owned or purchased ammunition and guns, know of the active wi-fi devices in his residence, or did they use thermal cameras or radar to locate human movement. I wonder if the agents wore body armor of any kind.

    Most police today use their SWAT team to serve warrants because they know from experience that serving warrants go bad real quickly.

    We will never know the extent of the FBI failures or of the agents shortcommings as they will be never be made public. But we will soon know that a big bad IT specialist with superior firepower outsmarted and overpowered an underfunded FBI team who work for a billion dollar premiere law enforcement agency. The investigation will conclude more money is needed for training, and. heavy handed gun control is needed.

    The result from Congress is demands for more gun control, more money for the police state, and now we know denial of ones civil rights should they have security cameras on their home.

  30. Just seems like the place to discuss the armed federal government.

    In 2016, Freebeacon.com reported, “Open the Books found there are now over 200,000 non-military federal officers with arrest and firearm authority, surpassing the 182,100 personnel who are actively serving in the U.S. Marines Corps.”
    https://freebeacon.com/issues/now-bureaucrats-guns-u-s-marines/

    March of 2010, TTAG published a full list of armed federal agencies.
    https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/full-list-of-armed-federal-agencies/

    Just this month, Statista.com published an article declaring that in 2019, there were 626,942 full time law enforcement officers in the US (individuals who carry a fireamr, badge and power of arrest)
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/191694/number-of-law-enforcement-officers-in-the-us/

    Why isn’t this the safest nation on the planet?

    Makes for two standing ar

  31. I suspect that if this does transpire, if won’t for long. With home surveillance equipment becoming ubiquitous, a judge would be remiss in using that as an argument for no-knocks. It becomes an argument similar to “if they wouldn’t have had a door, we wouldn’t have needed a no-knock.” Lawyers will love it. But in the meantime, be vigilant.

  33. PRO N CON CON COMMENTS . THANKS
    HOWEVER IN NORTH KOREA THEY WOULD USE A LAW 72 TO OPEN THA DOOR , SOMETHING LIKE THAT .
    THE GUY WAS JUST EVIL N CRAZY . WISH HE HAD SHOT HIMSELF FIRST .
    OFFICERS WOULD STILL BE ALIVE .

  34. I wonder if we’re actually being told the truth on this matter. Labeling someone a “child pornography suspect” would be a good way to smear them and get the general public on the side of the Feds. I don’t know what happened here, nor does anyone else on this forum. I say that as someone who thinks Pedos should get the rope without exception.

    My trust in the FBI has been completely destroyed over the last decade. They are a tool of the party, henchmen of the political elites and have the same level of honesty as the MSM. I won’t believe anything they say out of hand.

    • Agree. The details slopped to the trough the media feeds out of is a free meal most ‘journalists’ only have the time to wolf down, much less fact check. The Waco situation was similarly fed to the press as a child abuse issue.

    • “My trust in the FBI has been completely destroyed over the last decade.”

      You ain’t alone, brother. I wouldn’t speak to any of those bolsheviks if my life depended upon it.

  35. Once again the collective comments here make more sense than AP ‘journalism’. Gee, almost as if the media sets up half-assed straw man arguments to justify what those interviewed, their editor, or a local agency want people to get used to as a future preferred policy. And, of course there’s those remarks in this make believe thought experiment of a story about the broader ownership of ‘military style’ weapons. The ones current body armor and siege shielding are designed to handle vs. high power hunting rifles. The problems back in the ’86 Miami shootout due to equipment advantage by the bad guys are now moot. I’ll also go with the notion most of the ’86 situation was a problem of training and preparation disparity.

  36. The FBI is being dishonest or incompetent to say cameras was the reason 2 dead and 3 wounded agents went down. Cameras like Ring have been around for many years. Miniature cameras abound. I take it as a article of faith a guy making his living as a computer guy and child predator would utilize motion detector cameras, some covert.

    So the FBI didn’t plan for this? We’re caught unaware? BS.

    This was bad planning and execution by the chain of command. The FBI bungled it.

  37. Fracking idiots. If they can figure out where he lives, can they deduce where he works? What car he drives? Or *when* he leaves for work? Or *when* he returns home?

    There’s a lot of easier places to execute an arrest, other than where he lives and has immediate access to his weapons.

    dummies.

  38. I guess having the cops in front equipped with ballistic shields makes sense with cameras but I can’t quite figure out why you would need a ‘no knock warrant’ because someone could see you coming with a doorbell camera. Isn’t the whole point of knocking so that they know you’re there?

    Unless, of course, you’re playing some squirrely game where you’re not actually knocking to alert someone to your lawful presence and are just doing it perfunctorily before you kick the door in.

    Geez, I’m surprised we have any cops left with those things called ‘peepholes’ and ‘windows’ out there. Maybe if it gets dangerous enough someone will think up a new tactic… like waiting until someone leaves the home or doing a call out.

    • Obvious reason is obvious. They want to cut down the amount of time the person inside has to prepare/get in position to defend an entry point and they don’t want you knowing which entry point(s) they plan to use. Surprise doesn’t work when it’s turned against the attacker.

      The longer the pause at the door the more time the person inside has to set up. If they saw the cops 100 yards out then speed is the cops’ friend because it cuts down the time the person inside has to get ready for the entry. While the cops are knocking the guy inside is putting on that PC and slapping a mag in a rifle. Now they’re sitting there with a rifle trained on the good ol’ fatal funnel while the cops are still knocking or have just now decided to knock that door down. And that’s if there’s just one guy inside.

      And if they’re some sort of nut they have time to arm booby traps that they’ve placed. Now the first guy in the stack takes 00 buck to the chest when he walks through the door and that’s before the guy inside even does anything in terms of shooting at you. A few properly placed traps will cover the back door and basically wipe out an entry team while the person blasts the shit out of the guys coming in the front.

      This is a discussion about moving “no knock warrants” and domestic police actions yet another step closer to dealing with actual terrorists. “Kinetic”, every time.

      You seriously have to have this explained to you?

  39. As a former cop myself, I call BS. Counter-surveillance by the bad guys is nothing new. And like others have already stated, the fibbies as well as just about every other alphabet agency with authority to knock down doors have lost considerable credibility.

  41. Just another example of how cops REALLY feel about citizens and where we rank vis a vis them in the caste system.

    You being murdered by private sector home invaders is a trivial price to paid to allow them to “go home safe at the end of the day”. YOUR life? Merely a cost of doing business.

    If we had real journalists, they’d ask those cops what they think about the SERIES of “wrong address” raids committed by the Chicago Police Department, and whether the victims had a right to be forewarned by video cameras. Again, just another cost of doing business…

  42. No-knock warrants don’t exist. When they kick in the door, the kick is the knock. I’m surprised they haven’t found some senile federal judge to back this up. Give ’em time, I guess.

  43. The FBI says David Huber, a 55-year-old computer technician with no criminal record….

    “A child exploitation suspect, he is going to be on his toes all day long….

    So no criminal record and then the F’n feds just declare that he’s a pedophile and that’s how every paper will note this unproven accusation.
    When was the trial that established that?
    Just keep poking that bear.

  44. Good grief. Get the guy when he goes out for food or gas. Cops don’t have any f*ing imagination.

  45. You can turn any old android smartphone into a wireless IP webcam (security cam) FOR FREE. Charge up that old no longer used android phone and get it working over your home WIFI, install the right free app (like IP Webcam), plug the smartphone into a charger with a long enough cord to set it up so it is looking out the window (or to monitor your baby’s room, just for example), run the IP Webcam app as per instructions, and then any other device on your home WIFI network can use an internet browser (Firefox, MS Edge, Chrome, etc.) to navigate to that phone’s local IP address, which is now acting as a webserver that you can even password lock, and just like that you have a free “security cam” you can monitor. Do a YouTube search for “IP Webcam” and see how this is done, then download and install the free app and have at it.

    I set an old android tablet to the right side of my computer monitor on my desk, and the tablet uses Chrome to monitor an old S7 android phone that is set up to look out the kitchen window at my front porch. (I also went into settings on the tablet and set it up so the screen never turns off while it is plugged in!) This way I can sit at my computer as per normal, and if I hear something I only need to look at the tablet setting to the right side of my monitor, to see if someone is at the door or if an expected UPS package has finally been delivered, and so forth. Very convenient, and free is easy to afford. Beats constantly getting up and walking out to the kitchen a zillion times a day to look outside and see if my package has arrived yet. 🙂

  46. So a 55 year old computer technician with no criminal record, shoots 5 FBI agents and kills two of them as they attempt to serve a warrant in a child pornography investigation? This occurred during a predawn raid? And then the subject kills himself? Other than the fact that this was an unmitigated disaster, what else aren’t they telling us? Maybe they should have used the team that arrested Roger Stone and taken CNN along to document the bust. At least might know what really happened.

    • What makes you think someone involved in child porn can’t blindfire a mag through a door and adjacent wall? That’s all it would take.

  48. 100 feet? Ring and such must be cheaping out on the hardware.

    You can do way, way, way better for 12 cameras and still come in around the MSRP of a new G17 if you do the install yourself.

    Wired is the way to go though.

  50. What a stupid article. It’s biased against law-abiding civilians trying to protect themselves from porch pirates by using doorbell cams, and even more biased against MSR guns. And it’s biased in favor of no-knock warrants that kill babies. When did policing become all about “protecting the police” instead of protecting the community, protecting taxpayers, protecting families?

    Look at the anti-gun idiocy in this part:

    “The cameras, combined with the military-style weaponry many criminals possess, leave law enforcement offers particularly vulnerable. In such situations, the house’s doors and walls offer no protection, noted Ed Davis, Boston’s police commissioner from 2006 to 2013.

    “You take a military assault rifle and you add to that a surveillance system that allows (the suspect) to identify where officers are as they approach the house — you are a sitting duck,” Davis said.

    Criminals never use “military assault rifles”, except on TV and in the movies.
    Assuming the by “military assault rifles” they really meant to say AR-15 rifles (which aren’t military and aren’t assault rifles), they are usually chambered in .223 or 5.56 mm, which is less likely to penetrate doors and walls than any other rifle round, 9mm handgun round, or even 00 buckshot. That’s right, your lowly 9mm pistol is more likely to penetrate walls and doors than the scary-looking AR-15, but reporters know jackshit about guns.

    • “No knock raids should be preformed after artillery saturates the LZ.”

      No need for all that. An Abrams will do the job nicely, and leave the building prepped for easy removal.

  52. I need a camera system inside my house. I couldn’t get a lawyer to help me.
    Two cops broke in and pointed guns at me. Wasn’t even the right address.

  53. I don’t understand why they can’t just pick these people up when they leave the house. After all the “investigating” they did surely they knew his work/shopping/going out habits. Why this obsession with raids, busting doors, etc. (I know they get off on that shit)

    Nothing in the story says he was holed up or barricading in. Just wait until he goes to the grocery store and pick him up.

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