Early one Saturday morning, 70-year old retired Air Force reservist and former state employee Joe Del Rio was awoken by a knock on his front door. It was the city of Austin’s local code enforcement team. One of the agents told Mr. Del Rio that he needed to speak to him right away.
After getting dressed Mr. Del Rio went and opened his front door. He was immediately bum rushed by the Austin Police Department’s SWAT Team and then detained and interrogated for over 10 hours.
What was this 70-year old mans crime?
It seems that the Mr. Del Rio had an underground bunker, and apparently in Austin, Texas that enough to have the SWAT team storm your home and hold you at gun point.
The bunker in question was previously built as a bomb shelter during the cold war. Mr Del Rio had recently renovated part of the old fall out shelter and had been using it as a makeshift workshop.
City of Austin Seizes Property
After his ordeal of being detained at gun point, Mr. Del Rio’s problems were far from over. First, the city fenced off his home and prohibited him from entering the residence. They then brought in contractors and completely filled in his entire basement and bunker with 264 tons of concrete.
To add insult to injury the city then sent Mr. Del Rio a bill for $90,000 in repairs, that they say were critical to make his home safe. Shortly later the City seized his property without a penny of compensation. Mr. Del Rio is now in the process of trying to sue the city for what he says is an unconstitutional seizure of his property. MORE HERE
Austin Steals Elderly Veteran’s House for Crime of Having Fallout Shelter
Reblogged this on Catholic Glasses and commented:
OMG!
See what happens when liberals are in control
Reblogged this on nebraskaenergyobserver and commented:
Welcome to the new property maitenance codes, if your safe from tornadoes, and such we’ll break you and steal your property.
Yea … cool thought, eh? So much for the survivalists!
Yeah, there pretty common out here, hope our code enforcement officer doesn’t read this, then again he hasn’t read the zoning laws either :-0
Did you catch the comment by RJDawson below? I agree with his argument, but not his conclusion. Makes it dicey@ lol
No, I didn’t, and those are some comment streams, can you summarize (or point me to it, please) I’m way behind all of a sudden.
Just makes you never want to file for a permit to do anything on your property. The less the government knows about what you have the safer from the government you are. Reading the article, it happened two years ago–that’s the other thing. Government moves fast for themselves, but justice for the citizen takes forever.