Here’s the latest analysis on the developing situation in Wisconsin with Vernon Hershberger, from David E. Gumpert of the Complete Patient blog, along with pictures from local TV station, Channel 3000.com:

“Erma Hershberger was explaining to me today’s episode of “Life on an Idyllic Wisconsin Dairy Farm”.

Around 8 a.m., she and her husband, Vernon, were finishing up a late breakfast, when a couple of cop cars and a car with two inspectors from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection pulled into the driveway. The sheriff’s deputies surrounded the store and asked three of the couple’s teenage children, who were outside, to open the locked doors.

Vernon got on the phone, reached the sheriff’s office, and complained that the deputies were on private property, and he wanted them removed immediately . A few minutes later, they sped away, DATCP inspectors in tow. And a few minutes after that, a DATCP inspector telephone Vernon and asked to set up an appointment to return. All agreed the DATCP inspectors would come at 10 a.m.

At 10, Jackie Owens and Cathy Anderson, the DATCP inspectors, were back. By now, a handful of customers were there, along with Max Kane, the Wisconsin buying club owner whose own civil disobedience case is under appeal. The DATCP inspectors said they had an “inspection warrant” and wanted to enter the store.

The store was locked. Vernon sat on a camping chair outside the store and relaxed. “If you show me where it says in the warrant I have to assist you, I will,” he told them.

As Max Kane filmed the exchange, Jackie Owens reprimanded him for holding the video camera too close to her. “You’re violating my personal space,” she told him.

“So, sue me,” Max responded. “Oh wait, I forgot, you already are suing me.” Jackie Owens seemed not to appreciate Max’s humor.

She then told Vernon her crew would be leaving, but promised to return to a state judge and tell him the dairy owner refused to help them do their inspection. And off the posse went, having been at the dairy less than ten minutes.

“These repeated visits are very stressful,” Erma Hershberger told me.

Definitely so. Normal hard-working citizens like the Hershbergers aren’t used to being targeted by the cops. Talk about role-reversal. The Hershbergers, like most of us, expect to call on the police to go after the bad guys. The police aren’t supposed to be going after the good guys.

And that is a big part of the problem confronting DATCP. Indeed, this seeming cat-and-mouse game being played out between DATCP and the Hershbergers has a number of intriguing subplots.

First, there’s the issue of a search warrant. Now, DATCP has to go back to a judge and try to justify breaking down the doors to the Hershberger farm store. An alert judge might inquire as to the urgency of such a drastic step. He might well wonder, are we talking about illegal firearms, or a heroin stash? Now, DATCP ideally would love to be able to say that the milk samples they took during their raid last week showed pathogens–a clear danger. But surely the samples showed nothing, or DATCP would have used that excuse already. So what do they say now to justify breaking in? They may well come up with something about some sort of legal violation of Wisconsin restrictions on raw milk, and get their warrant, but each step up the “force” ladder tends to receive ever more judicial examination.

Then there’s the matter of media attention. The Madison, WI, area media are following this situation closely, and one Madison TV station seems to have a regular reporter assigned to the case. …”

Read the whole story on The Complete Patient blog.