I see the Third Amendment as being tied in with the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in one's home, and the Fifth Amendment right not to have private property taken for public use without just compensation. The action taken here by these corrupt police violates all three of these Amendments, at the point where all three overlap. They took over and occupied his home without his consent, they violated the security of his home without a warrant, and they took private property (albeit temporarily) for public use, without just compensation. I'm not swayed in the least by any argument that these corrupt police are not “soldiers” with regard to the meaning of the Third Amendment, nor that their temporary occupation of a home didn't constitute “quartering”. I think these are semantic arguments that have little to do with the abuses that the Third Amendment was intended to prohibit, and which clearly occurred in this instance.
Keep in mind that the founders, in general, had a strong antipathy toward the idea of a standing army, and in their mind, “soldiers” could just as easily be members of a civilian militia as they could be members of a formal, government-employed, standing army. Police officers would be more similar to formal “soldiers” than would the militia members to whom the Third Amendment was as well surely intended to apply.
And the security of a citizen's home would certainly be just as violated by militia members or police officers occupying it against the owner's wishes, as it would be by formal soldiers.
This was an entirely illegal act on the part of the police; and it should have been obvious to anyone who has enough of a grasp of Constitutional principles to be qualified to be a police officer that this action could not possibly be legal.
