CRIMINAL BARBERING?!! Armed Orlando deputies storm barbershops, conduct searches w/o warrant

nashville_brook

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Sun Nov-07-10 09:44 AM
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CRIMINAL BARBERING?!! Armed Orlando deputies storm barbershops, conduct searches w/o warrant

Edited on Sun Nov-07-10 09:44 AM by nashville_brook

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/crime/os-illegal-barbering-arrests-20101107,0,2783682.story?page=1

Criminal barbering? Raids at Orange County shops lead to arrests, raise questions
NOTE: Raids happened just weeks before midterm elections
Orlando Sentinel

As many as 14 armed Orange County deputies, including narcotics agents, stormed Strictly Skillz barbershop during business hours on a Saturday in August, handcuffing barbers in front of customers during a busy back-to-school weekend. It was just one of a series of unprecedented raid-style inspections the Orange County Sheriff's Office recently conducted with a state regulating agency, targeting several predominantly black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Pine Hills area.

In "sweeps" on Aug. 21 and Sept. 17 targeting at least nine shops, deputies arrested 37 people � the majority charged with "barbering without a license," a misdemeanor that state records show only three other people have been jailed in Florida in the past 10 years. The operations were conducted without warrants, under the authority of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspectors, who can enter salons at will. Deputies said they found evidence of illegal activity, including guns, drugs and gambling. However, records show that during the two sweeps, and a smaller one in October, just three people were charged with anything other than a licensing violation.

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No ordinary inspection?

Brian Berry owns Strictly Skillz, a barbershop on Pine Hills Road. He says he's used to licensing inspections, but what happened in his shop Aug. 21 was something else.

Berry said deputies entered his store and told his barbers to stop cutting and put their hands behind their backs. As barbers sat on the ground in handcuffs, he said, deputies removed his customers � including children � from the store, and began searching workstations and checking licenses without explanation. Barbers and witnesses at several shops told the Orlando Sentinel that deputies shouted and cursed during the raids, demanding the location of illegal drugs, which they searched for extensively. They never found more than misdemeanor amounts of marijuana at eight of the nine shops they raided.

(snip)

'Cornerstone of the community'

To those who live in the communities they serve, these barbershops are more than places to get a haircut. "They are the centers of political discourse and political organization in black communities," said Melissa Harris-Perry, professor of African-American studies at Princeton University.

Harris-Perry, author of "Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought," called the idea of deputies invading shops during both a recession and an election year "pretty horrifying." She said by violating the barbershop's role as a "safe place" in the black community, deputies may have placed the community's trust in local law enforcement at risk. "It's exactly counterproductive," she said, adding that targeting minority barbershops sends a message about "which communities deserve to be disrupted and which don't."