Whatever You Do, Don't Call the Police

So, you're asleep and are awoken to the sound of your 10-year old daughter screaming from the next room. What do you do?

Mark and Cheryl Hunsberger said Mark Hunsberger bolted into their screaming daughter's bedroom at 1:16 a.m. Feb. 2 to find Deputy J.A. Wood, in uniform, aiming a flashlight at the girl while another man tried to yank the bed covers off her.

"The child was terrified, and Mrs. Hunsberger spent some time comforting their daughter," ..."When Mrs. Hunsberger said something about calling the police, Deputy Wood responded, chillingly, 'I am the police.'"

And the reason for the police being there? In a little girls room, at 1am? Holding a gun, and trying to take down her covers?

Botetourt Sheriff Ronnie Sprinkle said ... "We had a reason to be there, but I'm not going to say any more."

Oh, Sheriff Sprinkle, I suspect you're going to say a lot more. Well, he did say a little more.

"You're durned if you do and durned if you don't in this business," he said. "But I certainly can say we don't have anyone in this department who would intentionally do harm to anyone else."

"I don't believe Deputy Wood did anything wrong," the sheriff added.

Let's look at the alternatives, given that the police admit to being there, and in an official capacity.

1) They were in hot pursuit of someone nefarious. Well, I suppose they could have thought an escaped convict had broken into the house. Did they think he was under her covers? Maybe they thought she had a meth lab under there?

2) The family was the target, and the police action was completely on the up-and-up. You know, a warrant for probable cause naming the places to be searched and the things or persons to be seized, and all that legal stuff. If so, shouldn't someone have gotten arrested? Shouldn't they have shown their search warrant? Mr. Hunsberger ordered the men to leave, and apparently they did. If they had a reason to be there wouldn't they actually be quite happy to say why?

3) The police screwed up, and barged into the wrong house. Well, that happens pretty often it seems, and there never is an apology in these cases. If Sheriff Sprinkle (I just love that name.) thinks the next-door neighbors running the prostitution ring haven't been tipped off in the last three weeks, and are fooled by his "no comment" response, then he's even stupider than I think.

4) There was no warrant, there was no probable cause, there was no hot pursuit, it was pure harassment. At this early stage this sounds probable to me.

I'll leave out the fifth alternative, for now, which is that this was intentional and the Roanoke police are staffed by perverts, and Sheriff Sprinkle is the head perv.

Update (2/26): Now the state police are going to investigate what the local sheriff was up to -

Commonwealth's Attorney Joel Branscom said today that he asked state police to investigate the matter, which first became public last week in a lawsuit filed against the Sheriff's Office by Mark and Cheryl Hunsberger.

Branscom said that because some of the lawsuit's allegations differ from his understanding of what happened, he decided to call for an outside investigation. "I believe that public confidence in the sheriff's department will be best served by an independent investigation of the incident," he said.

Update (2/27): The papers have a criminal justice professor try to explain how and why the police might have felt duty bound to break into this house:

Generally speaking, police must obtain a search warrant before they enter a home or search a vehicle without the owner's consent. There are, however, exceptions. Among the ones cited by Burke: seizure of evidence within plain view, evidence seized within arm's reach immediately after an arrest, pat-downs of a suspect believed to be armed, and various "exigent circumstances," which could include a threat to a police officer's or citizen's safety.

With so little known about what happened in the Hunsberger home, Burke declined to speculate on whether one of the exceptions applied.

Well, let me help you. There was damn little plainly visible under this little girls covers in the middle of the night in her upstairs bedroom. No one was arrested, so there was no evidence at hand. No "suspect" was patted down as there has been no accusations that anyone in the house committed a crime. It is unclear what "exigent circumstances" might have endangered the deputy. Maybe her teddy bear? The only clear danger to a citizen's safety came when the homeowner unexpectedly came upon an armed man in his house.

The Hunsberger's attorney has a theory, but it is no more charitable.

According to that theory, a man -- possibly the one who accompanied Wood into the home -- had called authorities earlier in the night after his 16-year-old daughter did not come home on time. The man and Wood then entered the home to look for the girl. But it remained unclear under that theory why they believed she was in the Hunsberger home.

So the police broke into the house looking for a missing girl, and brought civilians to help? Since when do they do this?