" Major Ricky Gardner is the likely successor when the incumbent sheriff Mike Brown's term expires in 2011. It was Ricky Gardner who read a prepared statement soon after the botched raid on an innocent family's home. In it he stood by the Bedford County Sheriff's Office's actions! Can you believe it? He blamed an internet service provider for giving them the wrong address! And on that rather flimsy information a raid in which a totally innocent family could have been killed was carried out.

The innocent victim of the botched raid wrote his local paper describing his terrible ordeal.. Not only is he not a child-pornographer, the way he tells it.. "I am a local farmer; my wife teaches elementary school; our three children are well-adjusted, 'A' students.. On Saturday morning, Sept. 23, 2006, many police vehicles appeared in our driveway. Men in black with flak jackets ran to and around our house. My wife was at home alone. I drove up and asked, "What's going on?" Men ran at me, dropped into shooting position, double-handed semi-automatic pistols pointed at me, and made me put my hands against my truck."

Operation Blue Ridge BLUNDER is noted for aggressively enticing via computer would-be predators into meeting young victims in person. Of course the "victims" turn out not to be 13 year old girls (or boys in some cases) but sheriff's deputies, who get to play judge, jury and executioner based on such preposterous "evidence" like wrong IP addresses!

We, the taxpaying public shoud be outraged. Imagine the police surrounding your home, guns drawn, storming-in in the dark of night only to later find out that they came to your home by mistake; their mistake! The fear, humiliation, intimidation you would suffer; not to mention the emotional scars left upon young children awakened in the night forced to watch while their parents are handcuffed and interrogated! Unthinkable? Think again.

One would assume a heartfelt apology and some form of restitution would be forthcoming. Not so. A mere statement, as cold as ice is released to the media and that suffices.

These are the same folks who not long ago arrested a foreign diplomat in yet another botched online "sting" They handcuffed him, placed his personal vehicle on a flatbed towtruck, searched it and talked about a map he had in the car. As they often do, they had the media waiting and paraded him before the cameras in triumph. They took him to their police station for further interrogation. At last he was freed when they verified his staus as a diplomat. A five minute phone call from the scene could have done that! Apparently in their hysteria they overlooked the DIPLOMATIC TAGS on his vehicle and his repeated verbal assertions of his diplomatic status!

In no way would I defend the likely actions of this foreign diplomat. In fact it's pretty obvious what he was up to. But having a relative in the Foreign Service who was incredulous when she learned of this story, I now realize that the Bedford County Sheriff's Office was totally out of line in their actions. Two wrongs do not make a right. What we do to diplomats in our country is then replicated overseas to our US diplomats. I would not want my daughter to go through such an ordeal when international law prohibits the police from detaining, questioning or god forbid jailing them. They are a privileged class; not to permit them to break the law, but to prevent foreign governments' interference in any manner in their work. It's all about reciprocity and if we break international treaties by arresting diplomats, then our representatives abroad will have no protection at all. It's a concession we have to make to be able to insure the safety of our own government representatives abroad.

So in three years, when Mike Brown decides to run again, or throws his support to his next-in-command, Ricky Gardner be sure to remember how the rights of fellow citizens and and even foreign diplomats have been trampled during his administration.

I am in total agreement with the original story of the police having far too much power. This is not North Korea, Cuba nor the former Soviet Union. We live in the United States of America, the land of the FREE.

The sheriff of Bedford County would do well to read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights before ordering such raids on the innocent. Furthermore, in my opinion he needs to stop enticing potential child molesters to drive to Bedford from hundreds of miles away. They could smell a rat and have a change of mind along the way and go to some schoolyard or playground and abuct some poor unsuspecting child. "

" i get that the goverment has its downfalls but it has thier pros compared to other countries we are living in luxury not that it gives our goverment to do us wrong, "

" I fear the worst is yet to come, Mr. Nuckols. Before, during and after WW2, in Germany, people were subjected to the exact same treatment and no one spoke out. In that case, the government weasily took over and well, we all know those results. In our case? It's too soon to tell but I know exactly who is at fault: I have a mirror, do you? WE have voted in the politicians, who then vote for and establish new laws - which affect us immediately. And it was us who demanded those new laws - out of our fear. Our own FEAR has led us to demand more and more laws fr our 'security' yet when we do that, we give up our freedom. That fear is being further instilled in us by our own government, too. Isn't it time we took back what is ours? THIS NATION!? I'm afraid that the only way to get things back to where they were, back to two or more political parties is by forcing change. We don't have two parties now because the Dems are just a smokescreen for the Repubs, they are both the same, we may as well be a one party police state! And until WE make things change, nothing will happen except more and more incidents like your's. I also believe that our only way to make these changes is through force, through revolution against a tyrannical, unjust and oppressive government --- just as our ancestors did against the British government. We've tried calling, writing, emailing our representatives -- and get nothing back but form letters. We've had marches, sit-in's, and more. We've screamed at the horrors done in our name in other nations, and those done in our own nation, such as what happened to you and yet --- NOTHING CHANGES. We've tried the peaceful way. It didn't work. "