“There will be a large presence of police in your neighbourhood. You will expect a knock at your door and police will keep knocking at your door,” Det. Sgt. Dan Nealon told a news conference Monday morning. “We’re also asking to be invited into your home just for a quick peek into areas of your home to ensure that there is no evidence in relation to this case with respect to you and we can move on.”
Police and public alike want to find out what happened to now 18 yr old Mariam Makhniashvili, who was last seen back on September 14. The police representative I heard on the radio early this morning said that they didn’t have any specific evidence or leads behind their latest tactic to knock on thousands of doors. They’re going back to the area of the disappearance and they’re looking at everything again.
I’m troubled, though, that police are asking to search homes without any cause. The fellow on the radio understood that some people might not like this. He said that if people refused to allow a search, they would have to consider why. In other words, if people want the police to observe their rights, those individuals might be subject to further investigation. The message is that we have rights and freedoms unless something serious happens. Then it’s OK to use extraordinary means, to forget the rules just for this one time.
I think if we are going to change the rules, it has to be done through legislation. That said, if the police came knocking, I think I would simply let them in. Still, I feel very uneasy about the whole business. We’re starting down an ugly path here.
27th Street 
There is a child missing. In a heartbeat I would let the police eliminate my house and my property as hiding/holding the missing child. I don’t see how helping an investigation for a missing person violates anything except doing the right thing. A community helps look for children.
Drug dealers and criminals can go fuck themselves…and they can turn away the police…proving they are not respectful of community.
The issue here is the rights and freedoms of the individual. I often think that the civil rights folks go way too far in protecting individual freedoms but I certainly understand why they draw a line and refuse to budge from it. There was a case in Toronto a few years ago where some black dude was driving his Lincoln through a ghetto in the middle of the night. The police pulled him over and found a serious stash of cocaine (I think a quarter million dollars of the stuff) so they charged him. The guy’s defense was that the only reason he was pulled over was because he was a black guy in a lincoln and that was racial profiling. He had no clue how all that cocaine got onto the front seat. The judge agreed and dismissed the charges but didnt give back the cocaine. That was an interesting case because it seemed clear that the cops had busted a drug dealer and it seemed totally wrong to just let the guy walk away. On the other hand it can not be right to allow the police to pull you over and search your car just because they don’t like the look of you. If we allow these infringements on our freedoms we will soon find our phones tapped. You could be talking to a close friend on the phone and half jokingly suggest that someone needs to nuke Iran. The guy listening to the call alerts the anti terror lads, your door gets broken down at 4 am and you are hauled off to rot in some prison cell without being charged because someone suspects you might be a terrorist. OK maybe that is s stretch but the civil rights folks worry about every single infringement. While it saddens me that a teenager is missing a line, has already been drawn and agreed to regarding search without cause and I am not at all certain that we should be crossing that line for individual cases. I suppose that to some extent I dont mind the police asking politely for folks to volunteer to let them come in for a look. The dude who made the veiled threat that the police might investigate anyone who doesnt volunteer needs to have his ass kicked from here to China after he is fired.
Wow, that is scary. The Germans do something similar: DNA testing for segments of the population in an entire town or area. All voluntary, of course, but if you refuse, it draws attention. This would never fly in the US, but I have to admit that they’ve caught a few murderers using the method. But house searches? Talk about needle in a haystack.
I likely would only let them in if they gave me a very good explanation of just what they hoped to find and exactly why they think looking through people’s homes would turn up any sort of clue. If they clammed up with a “we are asking the questions here” sort of attitude I likely would tell them to screw off. Surely if she had been kidnapped and was being held in the neighborhood the kidnappers would simply say “no thanks” to the police, so I don’t really understand what they hope to gain from the searches.
I suspect that the police believe she is both alive and free because they have done helicopter searches of parks with infrared. Dead folks don’t give off body heat. There is a pretty good chance all of this publicity is a ploy to get her to move (or perhaps get a kidnapper to move her). I would guess that there will be one of those vans that say Acme Plumbing on the side with a satellite dish on the roof keeping a close eye on the area at night. They might even invite Andy Sipowicz to help bust the case.
Perhaps she choked trying to pronounce her own surname?
….behave Dinners…
This is very disturbing and sets a dangerous precedent.
This worries me too. I understand the police are at a standstill with their case and are trying to get some help. And if you have nothing to hide, there should be no problem about letting them search. But what sort of precedent does this set? Is this the first step to allowing them to eventually search anywhere and anything they choose? Like you, I’d probably let them – nothing illegal going on inside my place but I’m wary of the consequences of this tactic.