In the early morning hours a team of local and federal law enforcement officers huddled in their swat van outside a seemingly innocent house in a quiet suburban Nashville Neighborhood. Inside the house, an unsuspecting mom, two teenage kids and their younger sister sat chattering at the breakfast table before heading off to school. The dad was already at work, and that’s probably a good thing because things would have likely ended much more tragically had he been there. The dog barks, the Ring doorbell alert on Mom’s phone goes off and as she reaches for her phone, the door is smashed open. A flash-bang grenade goes off, and the entire family screams as they dive for the floor.
That’s how events unfolded when authorities stormed the home of local photographer Barbara “Brownie” Click who was suspected of being a contract killer. Acting on intel gathered by a recent CIA hack of the popular platform TikTok, the DOJ issued a no-knock warrant. The contents of the warrant were released shortly after the incident and referenced voice recordings from one of the children’s phone. In the recordings Brownie was allegedly overheard planning an upcoming weekend massacre event where she planned to “shoot four families, and a bunch of kids.” In a particularly sinister segment of the recording, she bragged about how much she preferred headshots and how good she was at them.
After raiding the home and bringing all four occupants into police custody, agents searched the house and retrieved several firearms including rifles, handguns, and a shotgun. They also confiscated computers, cell phones, and photographic equipment. It wasn’t until after several hours of intense interrogation and computer forensics that federal prosecutors dropped the case and released the suspect and her children. Attorney General Merrick Garland personally apologized to Ms. Click following her release stating “This was purely a case of investigators misunderstanding the context of the information gathered. Agents had no way of knowing that Ms. Click was simply talking about her photography business when she planned on shooting families and children over the weekend. And I really don’t know how anyone in my organization would know that the term ‘headshot’ was standard lingo among photographers.”
While the suspect and her children were released without prejudice, federal agents decided to retain the firearms collected at the residence. Garland defended this move stating that “these weapons have no business in the hands of ordinary citizens,” and that they would be re-deployed to newly hired IRS agents in the near future.
In a related story, Damascus Dispatch reported earlier this week on the CIA’s efforts to hack TikTok to spy on U.S. citizens