this liberal tax clown lied to police to involke revenge on this woman. What irritates me is that the police are no better than the liberal hack who called them. Power corrupts and those who have it had better get themselves under control or step out of the position of power. If anyone needs to be charged with "Terrorist" crimes, it is Colavecchio!!
NJ Mother Pressured to Turn Over Her Guns, Charged With ‘Terroristic Threats’ After Reading the Constitution at Tax Dispute Assembly
Eileen Hart and her daughter in Israel. (Photo courtesy of the Hart family)
Key Points:
- Eileen Hart objected to a mandatory re-evaluation of her property value that would drastically increase her tax rates
- She read the Constitution at a tax dispute forum and called one of the appraisers a “pencil-pusher”
- One of tax officials called 911 saying Hart threatened to return with a gun, but she unequivocally denies the claim
- Hart was charged with making “terroristic threats” and told that if she didn’t turn over her weapons, her bail would be prohibitively high and it was unclear how long she would have to remain in jail
–
A New Jersey mother was arrested and
told to turn over her guns after reading the Constitution and peacefully
protesting at a tax dispute forum, she says.
Eileen Hart was with her husband Keith
and her 7-year-old daughter on Saturday at the Gloucester Community
Center to dispute a mandatory home re-evaluation that would roughly
double her property value (and therefore dramatically increase her
rates), objecting on multiple grounds. As an Orthodox Jew, she refused
to have the inspectors in her home when her husband was away at work.
As an American citizen, she objected to the seemingly arbitrary
reappraisal, noting that she is not planning on selling her home and
hasn’t renovated her kitchen in 30 years.
But at the forum, Hart was allegedly
told that since she didn’t let the inspectors into her home, they had a
right to “assume” its value under the New Jersey state constitution.
“How could they assume that my value
had doubled when there is absolutely no housing market?” she asked
TheBlaze rhetorically over the phone. “There is basically no GDP
growth.”
After Hart started citing the Constitution, a representative of Appraisal Systems, Inc.– the company contracted by the state to conduct appraisals– started “freaking out,” she said, and called for Gloucester County tax assessor Robyn Glocker-Hammond.
“Sit down and shut up,” Hart said Glocker-Hammond told her, adding that she (Glocker-Hammond) was there to “enforce the law.”
“I didn’t see a badge,” Hart noted. “Her title is tax assessor, not law enforcement officer.”
Glocker-Hammond started speaking to
Hart’s husband like a “two-year-old,” Hart claimed, and after she
objected, Glocker-Hammond once again told her to be quiet.
“I have a right to speak out against
this, this is a public place, my tax dollars pay your salary,” Hart told
the tax assessor, already incredulous at the drastic increase in her
rates.
“I don’t work for you,” the assessor allegedly retorted.
At that point, Appraisal Systems, Inc.
representative Andrew Colavecchio started advancing towards her, she
said, like he was about to grab her arm. “Don’t you dare touch me,” she
said after he allegedly got so close he touched her coat.
Glocker-Hammond then told her she had
to leave the public forum and threatened to call the authorities, though
Hart swears she never cursed or acted inappropriately.
That’s when things got serious.
As Hart left the building she saw Colavecchio “sneering” at her and said to him in passing, “look at the little pencil-pusher.”
Hart said Colavecchio threatened to
call 911 and “ran after us in the parking lot like a banshee, his face
was purple, [he was] disheveled, [he] started to take down my license
plate and ran off. When he got to the doors of the building he screamed
at us, ‘let’s see if you can pay your taxes now!’”
Much to her surprise, Hart returned
home to numerous police cars, the officers asking if they could bring
her in for questioning even though they did not have a warrant. She was
not allowed to drive behind with her husband, but was forced to ride in
the police vehicle.
Colavecchio had apparently told the
police that Hart was “yelling and screaming” and threatened to return to
the meeting with a gun.
Here’s a copy of the police complaint:
This
document has been modified by TheBlaze to remove sensitive information.
(Image courtesy of Eileen Hart, via Harriet Baldwin)
But Hart told TheBlaze: “I did not use
one curse word, I didn’t say the word gun, I didn’t swear, none of
that. I aired my grievances in a public place to [tell] the government
that I did not agree with what they were doing to me or to anybody
else.”
Hart said she was doubly surprised when, instead of getting her side of the story, police handcuffed her to a chair and charged her with “terroristic threats.”
She told TheBlaze with conviction:
“I have a 7-year-old daughter, I homeschool her. I would never risk going to prison for the rest of my life and lose everything. I have no criminal history, I have no history of drug abuse, no history of alcohol abuse, I have no history of mental illness, I have never committed a crime a day in my life. And because I used my First Amendment right I was arrested for it.”
After trying to “coerce” her into
making a statement along the lines of “what he thinks happened,” Hart
said the police sergeant informed her that if she didn’t turn over her
firearms for “safe keeping,” her bail would be set prohibitively high
and it was unclear how long she would have to remain in custody.
“[So I] sit in jail and my daughter
doesn’t have a mother…?” she asked TheBlaze, implying that she didn’t
really have a choice in the matter.
Hart turned over her two firearms and associated equipment, and was told that she’ll get them back “when this is all over.”
This image has been modified by TheBlaze to remove sensitive information. (Image Courtesy of Eileen Hart, via Harriet Baldwin)
Hart says she has hired a “fantastic”
attorney to fight the claims, and he’ll likely reach out to the other
meeting attendees to corroborate her story. The group was small, so
presumably someone would recall a raving woman threatening to return
with a gun.
But the county’s public information
officer Deb Sellitto told TheBlaze in an email, without any specifics,
that Ms. Glocker-Hammond “has never experienced this type of extreme
behavior from a taxpayer.”
She added that the Appraisal Systems,
Inc. representative is the one who actually called police, though,
because “he perceived the resident’s statements as a threat.”
Hart is deeply distressed by the entire situation.
The daughter of Holocaust survivors,
Hart says she can’t help but recall the “massive gun registration [and]
invasion of private property” that occurred when Hitler invaded Poland.
“If quoting the Constitution makes me a terrorist, we are in Hitler’s America,” she said incredulously.
Andrew Colavecchio of Appraisal
Systems, Inc. has not responded to TheBlaze’s request for comment, and
the company’s CEO Ernest Del Gurecio told us they plan to wait for all
the facts before making a statement.
(H/T: Harriet Baldwin/The Examiner)
This post has been updated to include a comment from Deb Sellitto, the public information officer for Gloucester County.
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