Drug WarRant

By now, the entire internet knows about the SWAT raid in Missouri that ended up with a dead dog. It woke up a lot of people, and angered a lot more who were already awake.

Almost nobody believed that it was right, regardless of political viewpoint. In this sense, the video (which was obtained by the Columbia Daily Tribune through a public records request) has served an incredibly important function.

It also got a lot of people wanting to blame someone. The question was “Who?”.

Von at Obsidian Wings writes

Folks talk about the banality of evil. It’s one of those cliches that you hear from time time. But I don’t think that folks stop very often to think about what that phrase means. Or what it looks like in action. Evil becomes banal when people — good people — stop recognizing it, stop appreciating it, and come to accept it as normal. When evil becomes so routine that good people accept it as the way of doing business.

I am not comparing the cops in the video to Nazis (whence the phrase comes). But it’s hard for me to see their actions, here, as anything other than evil. […]

This is what evil looks like. On this night, these cops decided to be thugs.

John Cole at Balloon Juice says:

I Hope These People Go to Hell […]

This is what happens when you give a bunch of cowboy assholes heavy weapons and fill them with a God complex.

Megan McArdle in The Atlantic takes a different focus

Short of multiple homicide, I’m having trouble coming up with anything that justifies that kind of police action. And you know, I doubt the police could either. But they weren’t busy trying to figure out if they were maximizing the welfare of their larger society. They were, in that most terrifying of phrases, just doing their jobs.

And in the end, that is our shame, not theirs.

Jonathan Perri of SSDP points out that the law is to blame:

“By making it illegal, you are making it criminal,” Perri said. “If a local liquor store breaks a law, you are not going to see a SWAT team raid the place and kill a dog. … You still have the alcohol abuse but don’t have people killing each other over it.”

And David Bordon points out the excesses of SWAT use today:

“The idea of SWAT was created for hostage situations and when military-style power is required and there is no other choice,” he said. “When going into a situation that the purpose is to preserve evidence, it’s not a good enough reason to put these thousands of people that are served search warrants each year through the aggressive and traumatic experience of a para-militarized police squadron entering your home.”

So who is responsible?

The answer is… everyone. And it’s complicated.

The politicians are to blame. Every day, they pass more bad laws, and refuse to correct the mistakes of the past, turning a blind eye to the destruction they cause. All the while, they fret about some non-existent 30-second attack ad, and take campaign contributions from drug war profiteers. Without the bad laws, the vast majority of these paramilitary raids wouldn’t have a reason to exist.

The federal bureaucrats are to blame. Every time they tell another lie about the drug war, they provide cover for the craven politicians, and blunt the outrage from the citizenry.

Local leadership is to blame. Seduced by the gift of toys from the military, local officials have gleefully accepted the tools of warfare in the hopes that people would think they had big dicks. Worse yet, they’ve actively made the decision to use SWAT-style raids in situations that are absolutely wrong. Their decisions have made it more dangerous for police, suspects, and the general citizenry.

They have failed to learn the difference between fighting a war and having a functioning police force. Once you decide to fight a war instead of policing, you have decided that the residents are acceptable collateral casualties of war.

The proof of this failure is evident in the statement by Deputy Police Chief Tom Dresner:

“If we were searching for stolen televisions in his house, there is no reason for SWAT,” he said. “He can’t flush televisions.”

He doesn’t even get the wrongness underlying his statement.

The entire philosophy behind SWAT-style drug raids is that the death of a mother, a child, or the family pet is an acceptable risk to prevent flushing. (Deep Thoughts)

What makes it worse is that you can’t actually flush large amounts of marijuana.

Local cops and SWAT officers are to blame. It can be convenient to say they’re just following orders, but the truth is that they do have some choice in not only choosing their job, but in how they actually perform that job. Even in the midst of a SWAT raid (even when it shouldn’t have happened to begin with), it’s possible to be safe and firm while still treating the suspects like human beings who are going through a traumatic experience and minimize both the trauma and the collateral damage.

The automatic shooting of a dog that is merely doing its job isn’t the sign of a cop that’s trying to balance safety with serving the public. A responsible cop could ask for better tools in dealing with such situations.

Unfortunately, too many of these cops have had the “war” mentality reinforced non-stop for them, like the cops that are part of the Illinois Task Force 6 in my area. When you see yourself this way every day at work, it’s hard to think of the citizenry as anything but the enemy.

Even without the reinforcement imagery, there’s a natural problem that crops up when you’re a cop doing mostly drug busts (and it does get compartmentalized that way). It’s the same problem that many treatment professionals have — generalization based on skewed personal experience.

My dad is a retired minister. He never used alcohol or went to places where alcohol was used or served. His total experience with alcohol was from those who were at the end of their rope and were coming to him for counseling and help. Alcoholics, domestic violence, etc. He didn’t really realize that there were people who used alcohol responsibly and was understandably upset when I started playing the piano in bars.

For drug cops, it’s too easy to get in the mindset that all drug suspects are non-human scum, and that affects how they do their job.

We’re all to blame. By not rising up and forcing change, we’re at fault for the death of that family member.

Yep. And that’s one of the reasons that I continue to spend so much time on this blog after almost 7 years.

It’s complicated.

In addition to calmly analyzing blame (and realizing that there’s plenty to go around), it’s also important to take a look at where focusing blame assignment will do the most good. That’s simple reality.

While it’s easiest to react viscerally to the images in that video and blame the specific cops in that house, that is the least valuable approach toward achieving real change — change that will save someone else’s family member in the future.

Whenever one of these tragedies happens — Tarika Wilson, Kathryn Johnston, Jonathan Ayers — I find myself torn when it’s announced that an investigation has been opened into one or more of the cops involved. The problem is, as soon as a cop is being investigated for wrong-doing, it generally means that the policy itself, and those who implemented it, will get a free pass.

Even if a cop rightly gets in trouble for his or her actions, it does very little to prevent future abuse.

I’m guardedly optimistic about the fact that, in the case of Columbia, the Tribune is talking about policy instead of individual cops, partly due to the efforts of SSDP and David Borden, among others. If we can keep the policy in the spotlight, we might do some good.

So yes, the answer is that pretty much everyone is at fault, but if we want it to change, we need to focus our blame on the policies and the laws.

We need local politicians besieged by concerned citizens who are afraid their homes will be invaded and their pets or children killed. And we need federal politicians fearing the votes of a motivated and concerned block of constituents.

We’ve talked often about the importance of jury nullification — the power of individual jurors to judge the law as well as the guilt of the defendant. It’s not an easy task — the court system is often stacked against the would-be nullifier.

But there’s another kind of nullification — judicial nullification. This is essentially when a judge says that he or she has had enough.

Of course, judges don’t have the same kind of power as a jury. They’re constrained by mandatory minimums and other limits on their ability to reduce or eliminate sentences. But they can still make a powerful statement.

A case in point is Federal Judge George Wu (thanks to Salem-News).

Federal District Judge George H. Wu issued a revised 41-page written sentencing order this week for former medical cannabis provider, Charles C. Lynch. In addition, the Judge also granted the defense’s request for reduced supervised restrictions as Lynch remains out on $400,000 bail pending appeal. Lynch’s Federal Public Defender filed an appeal Thursday, May 6.

“[T]his case is not like that of a common drug dealer buying and selling drugs without regulation, government oversight, and with no other concern other than making profits. In this case, the defendant opened a marijuana dispensary under the guidelines set forth by the State of California . . . . His purpose for opening the dispensary was to provide marijuana to those who, under California law, [were] qualified to receive it for medical reasons.”

The sentencing order states that Lynch was “caught in the middle of shifting positions” on the issue and that, “Much of the problems could be ameliorated…by the reclassification of marijuana from schedule I”

Of course, the feds don’t want to recognize that there’s a difference between Charlie Lynch and a criminal, but once a real human knows the facts, it’s hard to remain silent in the face of such injustice, and George Wu couldn’t.

There’s another important aspect to this case. Smart judges know the history of law, and understand that some bad laws end up living long after they have ceased to be supported by the country.

So what we do as individuals can have an impact here as well.

“While simple popularity is not a factor to be considered, the Court notes that it has received more letters in support of Lynch in this matter than in any other case in the undersigned judicial officer’s 16 years on the federal and state benches.”

Moms for Marijuana are proud women who are calling for the educated regulation of marijuana. Kudos to them.

Now remember, it’s Moms for Marijuana, not Marijuana for Moms. Don’t show up to dinner tomorrow with an eighth for her, unless she’s expecting it. I recommend lillies — that’s what I gave my mom.

A City Attorney who really knows his stuff. City Attorney John Russo from Oakland has an outstanding OpEd on the legalization of marijuana in California.

He hits a whole range of important points in a very clear way.

The Drug Czar will be talking about the new National Drug Control Strategy (to be officially released Monday) at the National Press Club on Wednesday.

R. Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, will address a Speakers Press Conference at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, May 12 in the Fourth Estate Restaurant.

Kerlikowske will speak on the Obama administration’s new national drug control strategy, due to be announced May 10. His remarks will be followed by a moderated question-and-answer session.

I wonder if any of the press will be willing to ask the tough questions, and who will be moderating.

If you don’t buy this drug war, we’ll kill this dog.

Really strange thinking from across the pond. Kathy Gyngell calls for stopping the reliance on evidence and science-based drug policy, and instead using your personal experience and reason to create policy.

Evidence is over-rated, experience and reason underrated. These are the clues to the poisoned chalice of secular, morally unimpeachable thought that the Conservatives must avoid drinking from if they are to make real change.

Of course, the mere notion that drug policy has been based on science and needs to change is absurd. That’s the problem. It hasn’t been evidence-based at all. Yet she wants to throw out what we need to do and instead advocate “for policy makers to draw on the real life, non laboratory, experience of those who have recovered from addiction.”

Yeah, that’ll work.

Drug War Chronicle – weekly update of drug war news and analysis from Stop the Drug War.org.

This is an open thread.

So sometimes us bloggers post something that really should resonate with the general public, and it just sits there. Certainly, this site and Radley’s and others have posted plenty of Drug War Victim stories. Some got some traction, others didn’t. Long term, they do very well (my Drug War Victims page is a heavy hitter, as is Radley’s Cato Raidmap page).

Then again, sometimes something hits just right viscerally, and it spreads like wildfire. Such was the case with the video of the drug raid in Missouri that I posted a couple of days ago. Radley had already posted it, Scott Morgan added his two cents, then it got picked up at FireDogLake, Boing-Boing, Opposing Views, Huffington, HorsesAss, Transform, NORML, etc. and went nuts on messageboards.

It built up so strong so fast, that the Mayor and Police Chief had to hold a press conference yesterday afternoon to address the issues.

In response to widespread “misinformation” developing on message boards and blogs, as well as a death threat toward Columbia police officers, Columbia Mayor Bob McDavid and Burton held a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Bloggers and others from around the world have bombarded the Columbia Police Department this week with phone calls, e-mails, and even a threatening fax concerning the search warrant. McDavid said it is important that the city’s police department continue to have the confidence of residents. An internal review is scheduled for completion in two weeks.

A couple of points…

1. Regardless of what one may feel about the officers involved in this case or any other, if someone issue death threats againg them, then that person is no friend of drug policy reform or justice.
2. They didn’t get misinformation from this site.

Anytime something goes viral, it happens so fast that some of the participants in the spread don’t take the time to sort through the details properly. (Remember the telephone game?) So yes, I saw comments that there were kids (plural), that there was a girl (it was a boy), that the dog was shot while in a cage, that the Corgi was killed, that both dogs were killed, etc. So I appreciate that the Mayor and Chief came forward to clarify some of those misconceptions that existed.

The real story isn’t any better.

The chief, who is personally conducting the internal investigation, walked reporters through his understanding of the incident. Three officers shot at the pit bull, and the first missed completely, which is when the corgi is believed to have been shot in the paw, he said. The pit bull acted aggressively toward a SWAT member again as they pushed into the home, which resulted in the animal being shot, he said. After being shot, it moved to attack a SWAT member, which is when the dog was killed.

One of the results of the viral video showing is that the Police Chief is now publicly saying that the warrant should not have been executed. That’s pretty huge.

The reason is a little bizarre.

Burton said the state of Missouri allows police 10 days to execute a signed warrant and that he thinks Columbia officers should have done so immediately in this case.

Investigators believed Whitworth was in possession of a large amount of marijuana and was considered a distributor. The raid ended with a misdemeanor amount of marijuana discovered and two of Whitworth’s dogs shot.

“It’s my opinion that it needs to be served as soon as possible,” Burton said of the warrant. “The contraband can be disposed of. If they are going to do that, there is not much point in serving the warrant.”

Burton said as of Feb. 12, the day after the SWAT team’s entry at Whitworth’s home, warrants have been ordered to be executed immediately.

They waited 8 days to serve the warrant.

Interestingly, an earlier report said:

Because the SWAT team acts on the most updated information available, the team wanted to enter the house before marijuana believed to be at the location could be distributed, she said.

“If you let too much time go by, then the drugs are not there,” she said.

Drug distributors traditionally have a history with firearms, which is why the SWAT team is used when executing such warrants, [police spokeswoman Officer Jessie] Haden said. If the SWAT team believed they could have executed the warrant successfully during the daytime when the wife and child were not present, they would have, she said.

So they waited 8 days, but couldn’t wait a few more hours until the wife and child weren’t present.

Something stinks. But that’s always true when you use SWAT to go after a plant.

Used to be, we had all these “drug free” goals — you know, like the 1986 crime bill that said we’d be drug free by 1995. Then Newt Gingrich said we’d be drug free by 2001. The U.N. said the whole world would be drug free by 2008. And two years ago, the Governor of West Virginia was going to make the state drug free.

Of course, none of these dim bulbs even knows what they mean by “drug free.”

But recently, we haven’t been hearing “drug free” very often. Even the stupid ones have come to realize that not only is “drug free” a meaningless impossibility, but that the public ain’t buyin’ it.

No, you have to travel to crazy-land to find someone selling that line these days.

A spokesperson for Church of Scientology International, Rev. Adams said that despite billions poured into “the drug problem” by governments, meaningful demand reduction will only come about “by involving everyone and bringing on all solutions, starting with education. No single group or government can do it alone, but together we can rid our communities of drugs in a single generation.” (PRWeb)

Sometimes I wonder if Drug Czar Kerlikowske is even able to hear his own words.

Link

Under drug and racketeering statutes and extradition agreements, 10 Mexican cartel leaders have been convicted in U.S. courts in the last two years but they’re quickly replaced by junior lieutenants willing to use violence to fight one another for control, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

“In Mexico, there are hundreds of thousands of young men who are in organized crime and are … ready to step up when a leader at any level is captured and taken prisoner,” said Tony Payan, a political science professor at the University of Texas-El Paso and who studies border violence.

Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy R. Gil Kerlikowske agreed but says law enforcement efforts are making a difference.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt there are people who will replace those folks,” Kerlikowske said. “But it is the disruption of the cartels that is helpful and the chilling effect it causes.”

OK, maybe you can interpret him better than I can, but it appears that he just said: “Well it’s true that what we’re doing doesn’t make a difference, but at least it makes a difference.”

And apparently he has his own definition of “chilling effect,” which is something like “all that violence and death,” as in “they were chilling those guys by chopping their heads off.”

I think they did a good job of narrowing down the 800 submissions into a reasonably good set of choices for their campaign at FireDogLake

Just Say Now
Just Say No – To Prohibition
Vote Green
Stop Supporting Cartels
Marijuana Never Stole Your 401k
Liberty. Legalize Marijuana
Prohibition; Stupid Then, Stupid Now
Stop Funding Criminals. Legalize Marijuana
Marijuana: Pass it
Prohibition Kills
Campaign for Sensible Cannabis Reform
End Prohibition Again
Legalize Marijuana
Grass is Greener

Go and vote.

It’s nice to have FireDogLake working on this project.

It’s also nice to see some stirrings at other progressive sites, such as this mention by Marcos at Daily Kos, when talking about the Arizona issue:

The drug smuggler infestation (whether white or brown) at the border is at true crisis levels. But the drug issue has nothing to do with the immigration issue. Drug runners aren’t crossing the border looking to get jobs mowing lawns, and demanding to see immigration papers at a Tucson bus stop won’t make a dent in the drug cartels. […]

There are two broken policies here — the immigration system, which desperately needs reform, and the drug war, which is costing people their lives and essentially turning Mexico into a narco state in order to irrationally keep people from smoking freakin’ weed.

In Columbia, Missouri, SWAT teams storms into house, kills one dog in front of the 7-year old kid, wounds another, terrorizes the family. Cops find grinder, pipe and a small amount of marijuana and charge the father with possession plus child endangerment.

I think you can decide if the child was in danger and from whom.

See if you can make sense out of this:

Because the SWAT team acts on the most updated information available, the team wanted to enter the house before marijuana believed to be at the location could be distributed, she said.

“If you let too much time go by, then the drugs are not there,” she said.

Drug distributors traditionally have a history with firearms, which is why the SWAT team is used when executing such warrants, [police spokeswoman Officer Jessie] Haden said. If the SWAT team believed they could have executed the warrant successfully during the daytime when the wife and child were not present, they would have, she said.

So apparently, if they had waited until the next day, even with surveillance, the “drugs” would have been gone, presumably through underground tunnels, I guess.

Interestingly, in another article:

[Deputy Chief Tom] Dresner previously said that intelligence gathered before the raid did not indicate the child was in the home.

The video is disturbing to watch, but the really disturbing things are what happened before the video — the truly warped thinking that created the laws and the procedures that made people think this was a good idea.

Referring to a medical marijuana bill in Illinois…

“The passing of this bill is going to lead to more crime and drug use. Street gangs will open marijuana dispensaries and they’ll use the profits for selling that marijuana to buy guns and drugs and bail out fellow gang members,” said Phil Cline, former Chicago police superintendent.

The entire statement is absurd. The really outrageous part, however, is that Phil Cline believes that criminals will not only take over some dispensaries, but despite being listed in the phone book, and having a sign over their door, Chicago cops will be too stupid to find them.

When are the cops going to grow a set of balls and start pushing back at the insults given them by their union leaders and bosses, who keep claiming that medical marijuana laws are too hard for dumb cops to enforce?

… nor do they want to.

After claiming that they wanted to communicate with the public on a more regular basis, they started an ONDCP Update Newsletter in January. Then they had an issue in February. Then nothing. Finally, on May 3, they had a March/April issue.

A little embarrassing, particularly since hyping their new Open Government Plan in April.

But you’ve got to give them a break. They’ve been busy — it take a lot of work and time to find more creative ways to lie to the public.

Take a look at the latest “blog” entry: Drug Use in America — it’s a doozy.

Research and data serve as the foundation of ONDCP’s programs and recent statistics show that we need to act now to address this public health and safety issue and reduce the devastating effects of drug use.

Note the emphasis on research and data; then the sneaky mention of drug use (not abuse).

But how do they present that data?

The use of illicit drugs—including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, PCP, ecstasy, inhalants, methamphetamine, and the non-medical use of prescription drugs—is a significant public health problem. The use of these substances led directly to the death of 38,000 Americans in 2006—nearly as many as died in motor vehicle crashes that same year (43,000). In monetary terms, the use of illicit drugs cost the United States billions of dollars in health care, lost productivity, and other costs.

That is a truly diabolical paragraph. Based on the grammatical structure, when I first read it, it appeared that illicit drugs alone (including marijuana, of course) directly caused 38,000 deaths (particularly with the bookended “illicit drugs” phrase at the end of the paragraph).

But no. See how they improperly snuck in “and the non-medical use of prescription drugs” into the dashed clause that was detailing the kinds of illicit drugs? Impressive.

Lying through misdirection and implication. That was a hallmark of the John Walters ONDCP. Looks like the Kerlikowske ONDCP is really getting up to speed.