Justice for Mac McNeely

This account is being set up on behalf of Mac McNeely, my son. He has given me his writings to put up, and I will leave them here, as future updates. There are photos of damages and there will be photos here to document things as they happen.  

****


Okay, this one. This one's not for you guys. This one's for me. This one's the long winded tangent that doesn't have an inspirational message behind it. This is the call to action. This is the cleansing. This is the one where we talk about where I've been and why.

The catalyst here, more concisely, is that my home was recently raided in what initially appeared to be a warrantless search and seizure. Upon closer inspection, there was a warrant left at the scene, but I still feel a great deal of protocol was violated, and will continue to be, until something is done about it. The primary target of this raid was not me, but a friend of mine who the police believed to be operating a large scale drug operation from my home.

Obviously this isn't the case. They didn't find a “trap house.” they didn't find “bricks” laying around, piles of illicit substances, or tons of people milling out illegal products. They found my home. They found cabinets filled with ramen, raisins, saltines. They found cleaning supplies beneath my sink. They found my pets. They found my video game collection, my clothing, and my dishes. They found items I have been preparing to sell to pay my bills. They didn't appear to be interested in my firearms (for good reason, they're legal) and they didn't appear to bother with the majority of the house. It's clear that they're pushing and bending the rules to attempt to stick something to my friend, and my rights are being trampled underfoot.

This isn't new. I'm under the poverty bracket, I've got a record, I'm not exactly a boy scout. I fit every stigma the media and authorities could possibly use to downplay a person's rights, but I'm drawing my line in the sand. I'm not going to be intimidated. I'm not going to be browbeaten into throwing my people under the bus. I'm not going to run from this situation because that is not the kind of weak that runs in my veins. If it were, I wouldn't have anywhere to run to anyhow.

I recently blew a few of my bills. I buy and sell items for profit at times, to make ends meet. It's so slight and so inconsistent that it doesn't affect my income. The last few hits I've taken have made my situation fall into a pretty bad state. Both of them have involved sketchy interactions with the law.

One of them, involved a dodgy purchase. I bought a quad-bike for an extremely low price from a person I didn't know well. I was introduced through a mutual acquaintance, and his story about the bike being a repo checked out well enough. The sale was legit. It WAS a repo. He sold the quad for extremely cheap and I knew I could make a profit off it. He seemed to be hard up for money at the last second (it was Christmas eve) and so I jumped on it. Turns out, the guy later reports the thing for insurance purposes as stolen, and the whole situation blew back in my face. I lost the bike, I didn't get my money back.

Then, following this incident, I discovered another recent profitable purchase I'd made (a 70” LG TV, which was being stored in my dining room) had been damaged during the raid. I had planned to use the money from this sale to fix my bills, reconnect my phone service and pay my truck payment. I lost out again. In this instance, I've been unable to make contact with attorneys, investigators, the department... no one, because my phone was hinged upon a sale that was never made.

Why is this over the line? Because it's been a long time building up. My rights have been eroded away for quite some time over the years, and it's just been a slow bleed. Now, though, it appears I'm also not safe in my home. I'm not able to have privacy, or be free from sketchy searches. They have shown no intention of stopping. No intention of recovering damages.They're essentially shoving a disabled, impoverished, struggling man further down, simply because they can get away with it.

We'll start from the beginning. I moved to this town not long after a few traumatic events in my life. I was a teenager, and I was trying to reconnect with part of my family I'd been at odds with for some time.

When I came here, I was still a bright, intelligent, starry eyed kid with a good amount of potential. I had seen some hardships. I had been through some things, but I was far from crippled in the grand scheme of things. I had the capacity to have been anything I wanted to, with the proper opportunities.

..then I found this town. Like a lot of towns across the US, it was a small hole with a big problem. There were no resources for addiction, there was rampant mental illness and poverty. The police force seemed more interested in traffic violations and drug revenue than community service and outreach. I've seen it worsen with time, but this cancer was here from the gate. I love the area. I love the people in it, but there's a sickness here that has gone untreated for some time.

I began to get into trouble. I had an alternative appearance. I was a little grungy, I wore dark clothes, I had piercings, long hair. The usual edgy, trying-too-hard-to-be-cool-and-say-shit-to-push-the-envelope white guy stuff. It didn't take me long to draw a lot of attention to myself. This is where the story gets tricky. While it must be clear that this isn't a story of victimhood, there is real wrongdoing at play. I'm not to deny that I may have made bad choices at times, but the following series of events were unfathomably disproportionate to my own hand in things.

I, like many teenagers with mental health problems, drank and experimented with low end drugs. I found myself being all too familiar with a few cops who seemed to enjoy repeatedly busting me for silly, petty bullshit charges. Some of which were legitimate (I did drink underage) and some of which were not so legitimate. I was once arrested at a Walmart for stealing makeup, because I had my own makeup in my pocket (I carried concealer around all the time to hide scars on my face.) when the police arrived. I was arrested a few times for disorderly, resisting, et cetera because these fellows didn't like my attitude. In fact, I'd wager the vast majority of my record stems back to the same two officers. I was essentially given a nice long series of misdemeanors for being a rowdy teenager. Something that would have been swept under the rug in other time frames. Something that would have been ignored in different circumstances.

But in a small bible belt town, a little obnoxious "goth" kid, with charisma and a mischievous side, minus the money to adequately represent himself? Not so much.

When I was seventeen I met a girl. I met a girl at a venue with a 16 to enter policy. I met a girl claiming to be a few months younger than me. We started dating, long distance. It wasn't that long of a distance, but we were a little further away than feasible for two teenagers to see each other often and didn't share any mutual friends. I had no one to clear up the next bombshell.

She turned out to be much younger than she said she was. Uncomfortably so. Maybe 14, or so. I'm unsure. I was never given the information properly. In the throes of the emo kid era, where half of these brats had dyed hair, tattoos, piercings, it got a little hard to identify age. Everyone obscured their youth with a thick veneer of Manic Panic and Hot Topic gear. I'm not happy with the fact that we were sleeping together in retrospect, but at the time I was just uninformed. Her parents knew something about the situation, and a few months after I had turned 18 the whole thing came to a head.

I was informed of her age for the first time in a rapid sequence of events shortly after her mother verified for certain that we were sleeping together. Immediately following this, she talked about the situation with a therapist, who she had with her. The scene blew up. I left, and was picked up by the police. All this within the span of less than an hour. Therapists are required by law to file reports in situations like that. By the time the parents realized how far it would go, it was too late. I was in a holding cell, being charged by a magistrate on third hand eyewitness accounts of mismatched facts.

The circumstances were far outweighed by the charge, by the time it was issued. They charged me with a true statutory. Like... Roy Moore statutory. Felony statutory. NC maximum 261 months statutory. Ask me how I remember that number so well. I walked into a courtroom three months after turning 18 and was informed that I was looking at over 20 years worth of time, should I receive a maximum sentencing. I was given a bond far too high to be released. I waited for trial for 3 months. At trial, I plead out for a lighter sentence, out of fear and naivety.

It was a mistake. I was unaware of how court processes worked at the time. I didn't know that a guilty plea makes a conviction all but irreversible. I'd been plea-ing out to minor infractions for some time and avoiding major time. In this instance, the judge appeared to understand that the circumstances were not as bad as they seemed. They gave me 60 days (with time already served) and let me go, on the DA's request that I register anyway. I was put under a misdemeanor conviction, with a registry order.

For those who don't know, the registry is arguably one of the most useless pieces of red tape in our legal system. It creates a complex system of hoops for ex convicts to hop through, and adds an extra stigma on top of being an ex con, that associates you with pedophiles and rapists. It doesn't prevent crime. True predators target people they know. Placing someone in the public domain isn't going to stop the “stranger danger” down the street. If you're going to be sexually assaulted, if your children are going to be abducted, it's more likely to be by a friend, relative, or someone they see every day than the sex offender three blocks over. What it does instead is makes it hard for people to find work. It places them on the radar of wannabe vigilantes (I get anonymous death threats on the regular. I've run off people attempting to vandalize my property) and it also promotes them to do illegal activities to get by. Sex offenders have an extremely low recividism rates and those rates are often skewed by the fact that the most common way to re-offend is to be unemployed and lose your home, causing a failure to register.

I was on probation at the time for drinking under the age of 19. Upon my return home I was promptly sent back on an order to go to state DOC. 18 years old, on the way to prison. I ended up being processed as a potential gang member (because of my tattoos) and that gang tag for white folks usually draws “white supremacist” all over you in a place where white people are a staunch minority. We won't be political about it, but let's say I made it my job to draw a clear line between myself and the only people that most people would have seen as potential for safety. I don't care much for safety. I handle myself. I managed to do just fine living in prison and coming home in one piece.

Upon my return home, I made it a big priority to stay on the clear side of the registry. The last thing I wanted was to be sent away for more time, because I didn't do what I was supposed to. I stayed off the radar and did everything in my power to obtain a stable living environment. It was a struggle. There was depression and hardship involved. There were stumbles. There were failings. I live on benefits that are given to veteran child disablement cases, doing everything I can to cut costs and make it. It's my way of playing it safe but I hate it. I'm actively trying to find a trucking company that will take me, and sponsor training, but the whole sex offender thing makes it a nightmare. The closest company I've dealt with to a “yes” had to investigate it and dropped the ball due to lack of cooperation from the county in which I was convicted in. They let me fall through the cracks.

The original victim could blow this conviction out of the water, if she came to the DA and said she believed I plead guilty wrongly. She expressed interest in doing so, at one point. Then she promptly disappeared off the radar for a while, and last I heard she's got a nasty little heroin problem and an entitlement complex so big, she's essentially putting it off because she's "too busy." So much for that break.

So here I am. Struggling. I do temp contracts, under the table. The temp contracts are never a guaranteed income, and they are never much so they don't affect the bottom line enough to report. The ability to find steady work has been a maze. Bills ran off. I found a home that was on a RTO lease, tentatively and when the plan changed, I now find myself in a race to fix my credit and buy it out, or lose my home. I've been putting it off as long as I can. I've made little progress with the credit, because I'm on such a fixed income that I don't have the ability to keep up things, and slipping on my bills may do more harm than the last few years has done good.

I bought a truck, and a lot of RTO furniture. Those loans are at risk. My credit card is at risk. My phone is disconnected, potentially waiting for collections. I may be about to lose all that I've worked for. I had $5 when I got out of prison. I managed to claw my way here and I'm slipping. I've been marked as a problem by a broken system and find myself in a place where no one really cares that much. I'm just another white trashy farm boy that couldn't possibly have anything of substance to offer to society. That's the way people will see it. That's how these things keep happening.

The truck still has tags that are wonky and needs work. I can't get a clear title because the original title isn't accepted by the DMV (the wife of the prior owner had a replacement that's newer) and the DMV inspector hasn't responded to contact in months. I'm essentially sitting on a vehicle I can't fix or drive because no one is helping me finalize the sale, despite the fact that the money is gone and the exchange has been made.

The lease on the house needs to be bought out, but I can't obtain a loan for that amount without much better credit or a huge hit in closing costs and interest from a shadier lender. I've got no way of putting together closing costs like that.

Then, this shit happens: I begin to take on room mates to help with the bills. I have a string of bad luck because again, this town is filled with otherwise good people with major problems and drug issues. One such room mate was a girl getting herself clean and I made her a promise to help her get on her feet. I try to keep my promises, so she stayed far longer than she would have had I not tried so hard to stand by my word. She was not a significant other. She was not a spouse. She was just someone I said something to once and refused to go back on.

She started to make poor choices that affected me. Three people she introduced to me had to be removed from the premises because of drug issues. Eventually she relapsed and became unpredictable and I had to throw her out. There was too much unnecessary attention involved. It was a liability. Recently she was in an altercation with another room mate that frequents here, and the situation had a big backlash that affected me.

In the interim since I've lived here, my home was raided 3 times by the police. The first time, there was paraphernalia in a room mates room. That room mate is no longer here, but a year later, that paraphernalia, for which no one was charged, was cited as probable cause along side a traffic stop of one of my associates (who was in possession of drugs) in the warrant for the second raid.

I wasn't home during the second raid. Later, it was revealed that one of the factors leading up to that raid was cooperation from a relapsing addict who had sold me a firearm, and later chose to report it stolen (because I refused to sell it back for less than I paid for it) and that firearm was confiscated along with another of mine, withheld and presumably gone for good. I really liked both of them, they were historically significant and I took good care of them.

They also took a Les Paul out of my home. They didn't put it in their items siezed report so apparently I'll never see that again either. They claim it must have been taken after they left. Either the police stole my guitar, or they left my home open to intruders while I was gone, and my dogs were locked in the restroom. Shady either way. That warrant turned up a small amount of marijuana and “white substance” that belonged to the aforementioned wildcard room mate.

Between then and now, a lot of drama came from her. She stopped contributing around the house. She stopped helping me to get from place to place. Her original “rent” was to help me get around while I worked out transportation issues, and she began to fall short on that. She eventually arranged to sell me a vehicle in exchange for board, but backed out, totaled the vehicle and refused to part with the replacement. The amount of excess bullshit I've dealt with for being a good person on this particular one is incredible. I let it go.

This past week, I'm not letting it go. She wrote a statement about a known associate. I'm not commenting on what that statement was for, or if it were true (Edit: Yes I am. She's since dropped all charges, stating that she faced pressure from the people she was living with and the police in writing them. She does not wish to pursue any charges.) That's for the court to decide. What I will say is that she included in that statement information that could have resulted in serious harm or death to me. She implied that I had my home packed with illegal firearms (I don't. They're legal, as stated.) and shortly thereafter, another sloppy warrant was issued citing a previous sloppy warrant's (One which produced no convictions as of yet) findings, which also was obtained by citing another previous warrant. Their press statements continue to refer to non-conviction arrests made nearly a year ago, and call my home “a well known drug house,” as though I'm fucking Pablo Escobar or some shit, and they've not charged me. Perhaps they're throwing me a bone thinking I won't push the issue.

The police kicked open and broke two doors that I can't replace. The doors were unlocked. They broke both of my doors, in the dead of winter, and left me with no barrier against thieves. They broke the only item I had to make my bills for this month. I'm told the only items they found were four prescription painkillers and a withdrawal medication.

When I spoke with investigators, they told me to "Stop selling drugs out of my house." and refused to file the report. They were argumentative and dismissive. They claimed that the warrant is proof of illegal activity (it's not. It's a writ of reasonable suspicion, and permission to attempt to attain proof. Literally what a warrant is. Proof would be a conviction) and that it's MY problem to replace things broken in the warrant, because they're so sure of themselves that my friend is living with me and selling drugs on a large scale, despite three failed warrants resulting in no current convictions. I've yet to be charged. They are refusing to replace the damaged property because they've decided for themselves that I'm guilty and deserve everything that I can catch. It also appears that they are betting on my inability to obtain a lawyer or pursue the issue. I hope to prove them wrong.

This is unjust. They watch my home, harass my visitors, stalk my guests, break my shit, and repeatedly hit my house like they're re-enacting some goddamn SWAT video every year like clockwork for this petty shit? They have more than enough times seen that the lack of evidence and abundance of cooperation they've had from me does NOT warrant this kind of shit. They claim that they've stopped people leaving my home with "crack" and yet they've never found any crack in my home. Essentially, they're basing these warrants off the fact that I am "associated" with people who have drugs on them in a town where every other person has drugs on them, and where I buy and sell secondhand goods.

I want to feel safe in my home. I want to be able to live my life and not deal with the one set of hostile intruders I can't shoot and be done with it kicking my door in and fucking robbing me. We are in that place in the US. Our rights are being violated and it's not a new trend. It's been going on for years, but they were, until recently, just doing it to people like me who no one cares about. I'm speaking up.

Now am I perfect? Fuck no. I curse. I drink and I get rowdy. I drive a little over the limit sometimes. I may or may not pee in the shower occasionally. I used to smoke marijuana. I quit last June but I still don't see why it's illegal despite being a potential cash cow in every aspect of our economy save the one they're currently exploiting to keep prisons full and police militarized. People die in raids like this. People get killed by police, pets get shot. This gung ho bullshit needs to stop. I don't claim to be the innocent little angel in this situation but I'm damn sure not the big fish that needs to have a task force rip my house apart every year during the goddamn playoffs. I'm trying to watch the Justice League try to stop LeBron again. I'm trying to sort out my life from injustices that I've put up with for decades, and these people are consistently and forcefully fucking me over.

I'm placing this writing in the hands of a trusted person for the purpose of creating a GoFundMe account.

I'm not using my own name, because while the NC laws surrounding my conviction no longer bar people from social media (It's become apparent that these are violations of the first amendment, and social media is a staple of modern life, pertinent to employment in places) I don't put it past these folks to try to out me and pursue further convictions based upon some odd technicalities.

The goal of this campaign will be set incredibly low. I've got other campaigns for more tangible things such as pet enclosures and a donation for my dog. This campaign will have a low limit, because while I'm certain that taking legal action (something I'm completely lost on) will be extremely costly, I have no fucking clue what those costs will ballpark at. I'm out of my element on it, and would likely need someone to help me navigate that sort of thing. Donations will be extremely welcome but the money isn't the point here. I need awareness. I need exposure. I need people to see what's been going on under our noses and the way things are getting to be, in our country. The people we pay to protect us are the most dangerous force in our lives in some places and people are swept up in it.

I could have been very successful, were it not for the way these chips fell. I still will, with or without help, but for now I'm hoping this will get shared around A LOT. I'm hoping it will be read, a lot. I'm hoping people will see what's been happening and see that it's not uncommon. I'm hoping people will give me legal advice. Resources. Help. I'm hoping people will point me in the right direction. I'm hoping a 4th amendment lawyer or two reads it. I'm hoping that some actual change comes from this. I'm hoping that in 2018 people aren't too busy eating laundry detergent, and listening to musicians mutter about drinking cough syrup to do the right thing. I'm hoping people will see this, speak up, discuss, share, make this story a thing. Put it out there. If you have something to contribute, do it. If you can donate, do it. If you know a lawyer, if you ARE a lawyer that will take my broke ass to court with this, do it. If you have advice or resources that will help, put it out there. If you think this shit is fucked up, and want to share it, and be all edgy like #FTP, do it. I need it. Make it happen. If you make a donation for a particular reason, type it out. If you want me to try to put it toward something, put it in your comments. I'm leaving this wide open.

I'm aware I've outed myself. I'm aware that I've placed a target on my back. I'm aware of the criticism I'm about to draw. I'm even aware of the risk. I'm hoping this may be that one last crazy thing I have to do in the movie right before the success montage where shit turns around and I get that inspirational ending we all think is so cheesy. I might just cause myself more trouble, but at this point I'm not even scared. I know that I'm about to publicize some skeletons. Some of them are even my own. I'm ready. How 'bout you?



*

This was the hardware on door 2.

This is door 1.


This is door 2, as it was found when he came home.


This was the television he'd bought second hand. He was going to pay his bills with the profits of it's sale. 


There will be updates to follow up with the situation.