Blogger's laptop confiscated in search of his home

Police in Phoenix searched and confiscated items from the home of a blogger who runs a Web site that is critical of the police department.

According to blogger Jeff Pataky, who runs the site BadPhoenixCops.com, the police confiscated his laptop,wireless router, and paper files includingtax documents and bills, when they searched his home in mid-March.Those items have not been returned. Pataky said the officers had a search warrant.

Pataky was out of town on a business trip when the authorities arrived, but he said his roommate was home andwaited in handcuffs for three hours while thepolicesearched the house. Her laptop was confiscated as well.

Pataky thinks the raid was in response to both his critical writing on the policeand to a civil rights lawsuit he filed against thedepartment after hefacedassault charges in an unrelated domestic case; those charges wereultimately dismissed last spring.

Since the raid, he’s been talking to his lawyer about adding to the suit another claim for the confiscation of his computer and files to the pending lawsuit. Searches and seizures of journalists’ work productviolatethefederalPrivacy Protection Act.

In the meantime, the ordeal hasn’tdissuaded Pataky fromworking on his blog.

“For about a day I was down,” he said. “Then I got a computer and was back up and running.”

Pataky has run the police site for about a year. He said it focuses on the chief, Jack Harris, and his management of the officers. Though Pataky is not connected to the police department, he says he has many confidential sources with whom he speaks on a regular basis. Despite the name, he sayshis blog offers a balanced perspective on the agency and its staff.

“The Web site provides a voice and outlet for the good cops to talk about what they want to talk about,” he said, while at the same time, “it exposes corruption and lets the public know about it.”

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