Deputies Entered My Home and Arrested Me for Support Arrears

[ciabatoni]

My question involves child support in the State of: New Jersey

Im from NJ, But my support order is out of PA. My sons mother recently lost custody,and due to that I had my child support payments dropped.
However I still have to pay the rears. The rears are $100 a month but I am currently not working and sometimes I fall behind on my payments they send a sheriffs officers to come pick me up. If I am two months behind that is $200 but instead of them making me pay the $200 they always wants more which makes it even harder to catch up to save for the next payment that is due. But my real question here is today the sheriffs knocked on my door me my fiance and daughter were sleeping and they just walked right in are home and arrested me. Now as far as I know the have, Warrants, Body Warrants, and No Knock Warrants. I would believe that mine should fall under a body warrant, another words the would have to physically see me. Do I have a case here to file a lawsuit against the sheriffs office???
Thank You

[Dogmatique]

No lawsuit against the sheriffs.

Even if the arrest was questionable, all you'd be doing is prolonging the inevitable.

[Mr. Knowitall]

Something happened between their knocking on your door, and their entering to arrest you. Do you care to fill in those important details?

Have you investigated the warrant they were executing when they arrested you, or are you speculating?

[ciabatoni]

I SWEAR nothing happen, We were in bed sleeping, I heard the knocking but didnt wanna get out of bed to answer the door...bc I work a grave yard shift. tThen out of no wheres I here someone saying, sheriffs officers we have a warrant. The only problem is warrant or no warrant. A child support warrant is considered to be like a body warrant they have to see me, in order to make the arrest. like if my wife opens the door and they see me sitting there on the couch or something, but they cant just walk in my place and start searching rooms...Sounds illegal to me...

[davidmcbeth3]

I always advise folks not to open the door to LEO .. make them break the door down, now you have proof of forceful entry.

If they were OK to come in, then you lost the cost of the door of course .. but if they are wrong to have entered then they can no longer claim "he let me in".

I don't even go to the door when I know LEO's are there .... they either knock, no answer, go away or knock, no answer, bust the door in. (never had them bust the door in)

Beats me if they can arrest you for being behind in child support in your state - maybe they can.

[cdwjava]

What makes you think that a "body warrant" only limits the officers to an arrest in a public place?

From what I am reading, these are what we would call a "bench warrant" out here - still an arrest warrant permitting entry to the defendant's residence if there is cause to believe he is at home.

So, you can mention this to your attorney, but if he doesn't do cart wheels, it's time to figure out how to make good on your court order so as to avoid custody time.

And, even IF for some reason the arrest was bad, so what? You'd STILL have to deal with the underlying offense, and they could easily just re-arrest you. In the event of a bad arrest only any evidence seized as a result of that arrest would be suppressed - you wouldn't be given a pass on the underlying offense.