A small business owner is describing what happened when Homeland Security officers raided his printing shop in the Crossroads.
Eric Lindquist owns Lindquist Press, a small printing business near 20th and Baltimore.
He said on Tuesday, he finished a small order for Birdies, a boutique lingerie shop just a few blocks away. When he delivered it around noon, a man approached him on the street. Lindquist said the man asked if he printed the underwear with a Royals-related image on them. Lindquist said yes but declined the man’s request for a print job.
The underwear had the Royals' connected KC on the back of the women's and the front of the men's.
Lindquist said when he returned to his shop later in the day, the man was there and informed him that the underwear had been seized and Homeland Security had a warrant to search Lindquist’s shop. The image on the underwear was not licensed by Major League Baseball and therefore counterfeit.
Lindquist said eventually, 10 officers showed up, all armed with their weapons when he stepped outside.
“One of them, going for his gun, pushed me aside, said, ‘Take him,’”he said. “The second officer put me in cuffs, they filed past and stormed in here.”
Lindquist said he asked to see a warrant and they waved a phone with a message on it, saying they had a warrant from a judge.
Lindquist said he doesn’t know if they thought he was a larger operation, printing thousands of items with the hand-drawn image on it. But he said they relaxed after they realized he had only printed about 50 pairs of underwear.
Lindquist said he was cuffed for about 10 minutes and the entire ordeal lasted about an hour-and-a-half. He described it as terrifying and aggravating.
He told 41 Action News he doesn’t know what will happen from here, or whether he’ll face any fines or charges.
EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this story stated Lindquist had said his printing screens were confiscated. The screens were NOT confiscated, but Lindquist was unable to show them during our interview. We apologize for the error.
