The home of former Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff was the subject of a search warrant earlier this week, as various law enforcement agencies investigate alleged wrongdoing. Shurtleff accused the agents of “Dirty Harry” tactics on a local radio broadcast yesterday.

Shurtleff’s accusations are short on specifics, but what he does describe is not out of the ordinary. The officers were armed and wearing body armor. Shurtleff says they took his children’s computers and the memory cards from his wife’s camera, and that they trashed his house. It is standard operating procedure for law enforcement officers to be armed while on duty, and they are not careful about keeping a house orderly and clean when executing a search warrant. They confiscate anything that could hold relevant information such as computers or memory cards.

“I think if they’ll do that to me, with my entire life and career in service to law enforcement and public safety, they’ll do it to anybody,” he said. In today’s world, having a search warrant executed on one’s home is traumatizing. Imagine if Shurtleff had come to this realization when he was in a position to do something about it.