Drug WarRant

Radley has an outstanding (and horrifying — even though I’ve read about all those cases before, it still hurts) piece putting the Johnston story in perspective, with examples from other bad raids.

People like Maye and Johnston are supposed to show remarkable poise and judgment, despite the fact that armed men are breaking into their homes..
When police make mistakes, however, they’re nearly always forgiven. Because we’re supposed to understand how an officer in such a volatile situation might misjudge an everyday object for a gun, or shoot a completely innocent, unarmed man — all perfectly understandable, given the volatile, confrontational circumstances surrounding SWAT raids. Such deaths — while tragic — are mere collateral damage. We have to keep fighting the war on drugs. And we have to protect our police officers by allowing them to break down doors while people are sleeping. The deaths of a few innocent people are the price we pay for the privilege of having the government tell us what we are and aren’t allowed to put into our bodies.
It’s an abhorrent double standard.

Read the whole thing.
Now I know that some people around the web are chiding people like us for jumping on the story too quickly — that we don’t know all the facts yet, so how can we possibly claim that a tragedy occurred in the Katrhyn Johnston case?
It’s possible that she was a 92-year-old drug dealing kingpin (and they just didn’t happen to find anything at her place). Maybe she was letting her house be used by drug dealers. Maybe she had created an elaborate hidden identity during the decades she lived in that house. Who knows? I don’t. And I don’t care. Because it just doesn’t matter.
When the shooting happened is not when things went wrong. As Atlanta’s photodude says:

But I do know this. No violent crime had been committed or observed to obtain this warrant. There was no evidence of anyone in the home being held against their will. The circumstances seemed to contain no imminent danger … whatsoever.

And that’s the point that Radley has to keep repeating to the dimwitted apologists for our drug war. They just don’t seem to get the fact that it is the policy that is completely and insanely out of control. The calamitous policy that says that it is somehow appropriate to use military home invasion techniques for drug charges.
To use armed invasion as a sanctioned method to arrest someone for marijuana offenses is as insane as if we had police fire rocket propelled grenades at cars exceeding the speed limit.

A refreshing OpEd in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: Friedman made right call on legalization

… In a Newsweek article Friedman wrote in 1972, he took a step outside his realm of monetary policy and free marketeering and laid out in clear, unequivocal terms what kind of social disaster we were buying with Nixon’s drug war. Thirty years later, we know he couldn’t have been more right. […]
We have spent $1 trillion on the drug war since 1972 and we arrest 1.7 million people for nonviolent drug offenses every year. When you put a rapist in prison another one doesn’t get recruited to take his place, but that is precisely what happens in drug dealing. Take one guy off the streets and that becomes a job opportunity for someone else in the neighborhood. […]
Albert Einstein is credited with saying that insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” We must really be nuts. […]
Legalization of drugs is Friedman’s best economic and moral thesis that has been left untried; and one day, when courage returns to politics and we take this sensible step, experience will bear that out.

Beautiful.
Update: Another great OpEd this weekend — this one at the Aspen Daily News by LEAP’s Tony Ryan — End The War On Drugs.

Living on West Market Street in Bloomington, Illinois, I’m used to seeing a lot of traffic stops. I don’t know if I saw this one, but it’s nice to know that there’s a judge in my area who believes that the Fourth Amendment still is important.

[redacted], was arrested following a traffic stop Feb. 8 on West Market Street. Court records say [redacted] car did not have a functioning light over the rear license plate.
After stopping him, Bloomington police patted him down and found 4.6 grams of marijuana in a plastic bag in one of his pockets, according to court documents. A subsequent search found 10 pounds of marijuana in the trunk of his car.
He was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana and unlawful possession of marijuana with intent to deliver the drug, according to court documents.
“The judge found that the officers discovered the drugs following a search, which was not justified,” said Assistant Public Defender Brian McEldowney. “They did a pat-down search, and the judge found there was no basis for that.”

Of course, such a story is always bound to bring out commenters who complain about a criminal getting off on a technicality, but as always they miss the point — this is about the rule of law, about our rights as Americans, as free citizens, not about technicalities.

“bullet” Also at the Drug Czar’s “blog,” comes this bit of Thanksgiving advice

The good news is that the holiday season often provides us with quality family time and opportunities to talk to young people about the dangers of drugs.

I agree! And they even say: “Give honest answers.” Absolutely! So I’d pass on the false information in their links.
Instead, try Safety First: A Reality-Based Approach to Teens, Drugs, and Drug Education
“bullet” And kids — Thanksgiving is also a good time to educate your parents on the dangers of the drug war. Take a moment to sit down with them and share what you’ve learned. Tell them that drug policy reform is about getting the profits out of the black market and putting criminals out of work. Tell them that prohibition does not stop drug use, but instead fosters violence. Tell them that their tax dollars are going toward making the U.S. the most-incarcerated country on the planet (with 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prison population). And that prohibition does absolutely nothing to help those with drug problems. Tell them that cops and religious leaders want a change, too.
And you older kids… you know who you are… the ones who are grown up and still won’t talk to their parents and friends about the drug war… Stop being afraid to talk about it!
“bullet” The rest of you — if you’re one of the lucky ones without a family member in jail for hurting nobody, take a moment to be thankful. And read a thanksgiving story from a few years ago.

So is the staff of the ONDCP daft, stupid, or just plain incompetent?
How else do you explain the fact that

1. On Wednesday, the Drug Czar’s “blog” brags that…
2. On Monday, the Drug Czar presented a check for $1.1 million to the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program in the Atlanta area, where
3. On Tuesday, a drug raid ended with a 92-year-old lady shot to death, about which everyone is talking.

Do they not have the capability of… literacy?

It just never stops…

ATLANTA — Three Atlanta police officers were shot and wounded and an elderly woman killed at a house in northwest Atlanta Tuesday night.

The woman, who relatives say was 92-years-old, opened fire on the officers from the narcotics division at a house at 933 Neal Street, according to officials. Authorities say they received a tip of drug activity taking place at the home and officers were headed to the house with a search warrant.

Relatives identified the elderly woman as Katherine Johnston.

The woman’s niece, Sarah Dozier, says that she bought her aunt a gun to protect herself and that her aunt had a permit for the gun. Relatives believe Johnston was frightened by the officers and opened fire.

“They kicked her door down talking about drugs, there’s no drugs in that house. And they realize now, they’ve got the wrong house,” Dozier said. “I’m mad as hell.” Officials say they had the correct house and that the warrant they had was legal.

No politicians were harmed in the gunfire.

More here and here, and here, and a discussion here.

Update: More at TalkLeft, and Radley caught the Press Conference.

Phillip Smith suggests a somewhat daring notion:

a direction action protest to surround and shut down DEA headquarters in suburban Arlington, Virginia. …
Isn’t it about time to take concrete action against these latter day buccaneers? My activist friend suggested a national mobilization designed to bring thousands of people to DC to literally shut it down by blockading the entrances of DEA headquarters. Now, of course, such an action wouldn’t actually disrupt the agency’s business for more than a short period of time, but it would disrupt it. I’m for that. Personally, I’m tired of protest actions that don’t actually do anything. …
I, for one, would rather take the fight to their house than have them take the fight to my house.

An intriguing idea. Certainly the notion of protesting at the DEA is not new — medical marijuana activists have organized numerous protests at DEA offices around the country, with some success in getting media attention.
The small protest that we organized through this blog at the DEA exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago generated a Washington Post article and a Chicago Tribune feature.
Now imagine that we take all the various interests in the drug war, for whom the DEA represents destruction of American principles — medical marijuana, civil liberties, foreign policy, and more… and bring them together at the DEA headquarters.
The potential benefits

• Reaching more Americans with the message that drug policy reform is important.
• Making the media deal with drug policy reformers without laughing.
• Giving politicians cover to do something.
• Giving drug policy reformers a morale boost.

What do you think? Is it worth joining together with a bunch of organizations, raising the money and doing it right? Will people come? Not 12 or 20, or 100, but thousands willing to commit civil disobedience?

“bullet” In the Detroit News: Subject drug war to the Iraq War test by Nolan Finley

Yet while it only took three years for the American people to lose patience with the Iraq War, the drug war has been dragging on virtually unchallenged for three decades.

Given the cost, it’s baffling that taxpayers haven’t demanded more accountability. State and federal drug fighting efforts cost roughly $1 billion a week.

Here’s the return on that money: Zero.

“bullet” At Huffington Post: Time for Exit Strategy for Unwinnable Drug War by Tony Newman

It is time to encourage treatment providers, public health officials, law enforcement, drug users, educators, elected officials and others to come together and help us find ways to reduce the harms of both drug abuse and drug prohibition. We need to heal from this war on our fellow citizens.

“bullet” Via TalkLeft an editorial in the Houston Chronicle Smarter on crime: It’s time for Harris County to heed the message of a tough-on-crime judge about handling of drug cases.

…the ill effects on a community of committing huge numbers of prospectless drug addicts to lengthy jail sentences and felony records without dealing with their underlying drug dependence are well-documented and long-term. And those ill effects are suffered by everyone in this county.

I’m not sure what the Drug Czar’s “blog” is trying to say with this minimalist post:

Marijuana and Memory Loss
Here’s the latest science (from Scientific American).

It’s an article about the fact that marijuana can affect short-term memory.
Well… duh!
Scientific American reports

…rats that had been trained to follow a specific series of turns to get water–and did fine on the test before being intravenously injected with the drug–found themselves wandering in a daze under its influence…

Did anyone talk with the rats to actually see what they were experiencing? Maybe they were enjoying it. Maybe the rat was thinking “Dude. Look at the wall of this maze. I never realized how… grey it was before.” And is really such a bad thing that the rat decided not to mindlessly follow the same soulless path he was forced to repeat time and time again by the authorities? Is this a problem or a benefit?
To give the rats higher doses, they injected cannabinoids directly into the brains.
The one point in the article that was written with ominous tones was:

But the research also reveals that at the highest doses of synthetic cannabinoid, the rats failed to discover the right sequence of turns altogether. In other words, there may be a threshold level of the drug that entirely prohibits learning, and that is something worth remembering very clearly

That’s right — when you’re stoned (or at least when you’ve been injected in the brain with pot) — you may have trouble learning things. Again, we say, “well, duh!” Everybody knows that you should read the instructions to Chutes and Ladders before you get stoned (or just make up your own as you go).
Yes, pot affects your consciousness. That’s a feature.
And if the studies about pot and Alzheimers are true, then the pot smokers will have the last laugh as they help John Walters remember his own name in the retirement home.

Link
So, if I break into a woman’s house, fully armed and armored, and then shoot her in her nightgown in her bedroom — three times to make sure she’s dead — do you think I could get one of those nifty awards for bravery?