 So I recently stumbled across a story published in Vice News back in May that really, it disturbed me. Like the details of this story, after reading it, it stuck with me. And I wanted to talk about it, even if it's technically old news, because this isn't just some isolated incident. It is a growing trend that we're seeing in the United States. And if people don't actually make noise and call for accountability, then it's going to continue to get worse. So even though you may have already heard about this story, I don't think enough people have heard about this. And I want to talk about this because this story needs to blow up. So basically this woman, her name is Vicki Baker, her house was destroyed by a SWAT team and they did $50,000 worth of damages and she was expected to foot the entirety of that bill. So it's a very bizarre story and we don't have all of the details, but basically she was living out of state at the time that this happened. Her daughter Deanna was there at the property cleaning the house, I'm assuming prepping it for sale. And earlier that day, her daughter Deanna saw a Facebook post about this guy in the community who ran off with a 15 year old girl. Now what was bizarre to Deanna is that they previously knew this guy because he actually did odd jobs for them at this particular property. I don't know if he cleaned their gutters or mowed their lawns, but either way they were familiar with him, but they actually stopped hiring him because he was creepy and he gave them really bad vibes. So later on that day, as she's at her mom's home prepping it to sell it, that guy who she saw on social media shows up and he tells her, Hey, I need to park my car. I need somewhere to stay. And since he had previous report with her, I'm assuming that he thought that she would be like a friend and be concerned with him. But since she already saw that post on Facebook about him potentially committing a crime and kidnapping someone, she let him in. And then she gives her mom a call and she says, Mom, this guy who I saw on Facebook who we used to know, he just showed up to the house. So what do we do? They both agreed. Let's call the police. If he committed a crime, of course, it's easy. He's here at the home. We know where he is. We'll let the police know. They'll come arrest him and then it'll be over. Now one thing that Vicky said is, look, if you're going to show up and arrest this guy, please don't do any property damage because I'm trying to sell my home. And she tried to make their lives as easy as possible. She gave them the garage door opener so that way they can get in with, you know, easy access. But what happened was they did not respect her request. They destroyed her home. And the details of this story are just shocking. So Emma Ackerman of Vice Reports, Vicky Baker had an unusual plea for police officers in McKinney, Texas when she learned an armed fugitive had holed up in her home. Do not destroy the property. It didn't work. During an hours-long standoff with a man and a 15-year-old girl inside, SWAT officers shot approximately 30 tear gas canisters into Baker's property, blew up her garage door, and drove an armored vehicle over her fence. The teenager got out of the house, but by the time cops stormed the property, the fugitive had killed himself in Baker's bedroom. Baker's belongings, some of them irreplaceable, were ruined by tear gas. Even her daughter's dog, which came running out of the home during the standoff, ended up nearly blind and completely deaf. So while Baker had nothing to do with the events behind the police confrontation, she wasn't even in the state that day. She still suffered the punishment. There was two days that I couldn't get off the couch that I cried, she said. Baker recently signed a contract to sell the property, too. The 76-year-old needed the money to fund her retirement, but thanks to the extensive damage, the sale of the home quickly fell through. The city of McKinney refused to help her out financially, and Baker's insurance provider told her it also wouldn't cover any destruction caused by the government. Ultimately, Baker was stuck with approximately $50,000 in damages. Distraught, Baker later discovered that she wasn't alone. Other innocent people had seen their property torn up by the police, too, and gotten squat in compensation. Now Baker, in an effort to reverse that trend, is suing the city of McKinney for damages with the help of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm. So the city refused to cover the cost of the damages to her property. Her insurance wouldn't pay for any of the damage, except the insurance did say that they would clean up the blood from the suicide that took place in her home. So she is left with a $50,000 bill. And this is brazenly unconstitutional. This violates the Fifth Amendment, specifically the Takings Clause, which says, Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. Now they're not technically taking private property, but if solving crimes and catching criminals is a public good provided by the state, rather than if you do damage in that process, pursuant of this public good, then of course you have to foot the bill. You have to compensate residents when you damage their private property, except the problem is that more and more lower courts are carving out these exceptions to the Takings Clause, specifically for police officers that do damage to private property. And again, just to kind of put into context how destructive they were, she literally gave them the garage door opener and they blew up her garage door. So to say that they were at least a little bit careless, yeah, yeah, that'd be a bit of an understatement. But this isn't the only person who experienced this. So back in 2015, for example, Colorado cops blew up a man's home while trying to get to an armed shoplifting suspect. More than four years later, a federal appeals court decided the property owner wasn't entitled to compensation to cover the wreckage since police were preserving public safety according to NPR. The homeowner had no connection to the shoplifting suspect. The Institute for Justice petitioned the Supreme Court to review that case, which the High Court declined to do in June of last year. So this is happening and courts are saying, yeah, sorry, they're doing it for the public good. OK, they still have to compensate the people who they do this to. Again, this shouldn't happen in the first place. There's no reason why you blow up somebody's home or you blow up a garage door when you have a garage door opener. It's just, it's unacceptable. But if you're going to do this, which you shouldn't, at a minimum, you should be expected to foot the bill and not leave people with the cost of this damage. But they're, they're, they're allowing it. Now, some cities do foot the bill when it happens, but not all of them, and that's the issue here. And this is part of a larger trend of police just becoming more and more tyrannical. For example, the Dallas Police Department made a post on social media talking about how they compensated over $100,000 from a traveler after a police dog alerted them, but they literally didn't even say whether or not the person who they stole this money from committed a crime. It's not illegal to have $100,000 worth of cash on you. It's not illegal. Like you can, you can do that. But they took that money pretending as if there was some sort of a crime or implying that anyways. And this is a brazen violation of the takings clause. But civil asset forfeiture, different from this, but still similar, you know, it violates the takings clause. Again, let's read that. Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. So, you know, destroying people's property, civil asset forfeiture, these are things that really speak to a growing trend with police departments across the country. They are growing more and more tyrannical. So ask yourself this, are police there to serve us? Are they civil servants? Or are they more like occupying forces, disregarding the law, disregarding any sort of respect for the people who they're supposed to be serving? I mean, it's just ridiculous. So unless these types of stories go viral and get attention, this will continue to happen. There'll be no pressure for reform, but this shouldn't happen. If you damage someone's property, especially unnecessarily, you should put the bill for that. Not leave them with it. It's just truly insane. So spread this story far and wide. I'll link you to it in the description box. Again, this story is so disturbing to me. Like the details stood on my mind for days after reading it. So that's why I wanted to share it with you because I think that people need to know about this.