imported post
1. Your friend invited them in. So they were given permission to enter. Since by your own admission, you were the only (legal)one at the crime scene that night, you are a logical place to start an investigation--both as a person of interest (possible suspect) and as a possible witness.
1a. Now, your friend can invite them in, but legally does not have standing to allow a search of your home.
1b. Apparently you never asked them to leave before (2), so they were still there legally.
2. The whole draw down because you're armed thing: I'll be honest, this is probably one of those grey areas where case law is made. You were both a possible suspect and a possible witness. There is basically two ways this could have been handled. a) They see your gun, and either ignore it or ask you to put it away [not likely since they are conducting a criminal investigation for which you are a person of interest]. b) They seize it for the duration of the encounter, becauseyou are aPofI for a crim investigation. Did they need to draw down on you? Not necessarily. Was it illegal? Not necessarily. Since you were at best a person of interest, and were not being belligerent, brandishing, etc, you can easily argue they overreacted. There is some good reasoning for a complaint.
3. Once they did disarm you, they conducted a 'protective sweep' of the rest of the residence, to make sure more armed people were not hiding to hurt them. This is because they were treating you as a person of interest in a criminal investigation. The protective sweep only allows them to search areas where a person could reasonably be expected to be hidden. No warrant is needed. THAT BEING SAID, I'm not so sure a protective sweep is even allowed when a self initiated contact is made for only a person of interest of a crime, especially if you did nothing to ratchet things up with agressive behavior. I'm lying in bed at this moment, and I'm not getting up to check my search&seizure books.
Basically there are two ways this whole thing could have been handled. Way one is to treat you like a possible witness, and let things "develope" to move you in to a person of interest catagory (a suspect). This would be the 'low key' approach, which obviously did not happen.
Way two is to go in to this thinking you are a person of interest (a suspect) and treat you as such from moment 1 (or at least moment 2, once they saw you were armed).
Way two is not illegal [barring the question of the protective sweep], but is counter productive to an investigation--since most likely if you were the suspect, things would develope (inconsistant stories, etc) anyway. If you are not the suspect, the investigator just created a hostile witness.
From your brief synopsis, I don't see anything illegal [again, barring the possibility of the protective sweep], but I sure don't see anything positive they did. Sorry it happened to you.
