It was 73 years ago today that America’s thirteen year history with alcohol prohibition came to a merciful end.
Unfortunately, it appears that we’re still far away from the day when we’ll be able to celebrate even the first anniversary of the end of America’s other insane war on (some) drugs.
H/T: Outside The Beltway and The Club For Growth
There is a guest editorial from Radley Balko in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the use of paramilitary raids by police:
After taking a year to research and write a paper for the Cato Institute on the proliferation of forced-entry, paramilitary-style raids, I’m sorry to say Johnston is just one of at least 40 innocent people killed in botched raids over the last 20 years in America. Worse, there are dozens more cases of low-level offenders, bystanders — and police officers killed or injured.
In 2005, for example, Baltimore’s Cheryl Lynn Noel, a mother and churchgoing woman, was shot to death when she mistook raiding police officers for intruders. She was holding a legal handgun when they kicked open her bedroom door. That raid was conducted after police investigators found marijuana seeds in the family trash.
Last January, Fairfax, Va., optometrist Sal Culosi was accidentally shot and killed when a SWAT team apprehended him. He was under investigation for wagering on football games with a group of friends.
The Johnston raid isn’t even the first such tragedy in Georgia. In 2000, Riverdale’s Lynette Gayle Jackson called the police after her home had been invaded by burglars. While investigating the break-in, police found a small amount of cocaine that belonged to Jackson’s boyfriend.
A few weeks later, police raided Jackson’s home, looking for her boyfriend. Jackson, understandably afraid after having been robbed less than a month earlier, was holding a gun when police entered her bedroom. The raiding officers opened fire and shot her to death.
In 2005, Stockbridge’s Roy and Belinda Baker were startled from their sleep by a raiding police team that destroyed the couple’s front door with a battering ram. The Bakers were handcuffed and made to stand on their porch at gunpoint. Police had mistaken the Bakers’ home for the house next door.
The botched raid in Stockbridge could be expensive for taxpayers in Henry County (which is where I live). In June it was reported that the Bakers were seeking $8 million in damages.
That’s just another day in the life of a police chief in Atlanta, I guess.
Atl Police Chief May Get Pay Raise
Atlanta’s Chief of Police could get a pay raise in the midst of a federal investigation into some of his narcotics officers.
Wednesday afternoon, the Atlanta City Council Finance Committee voted three to two in favor of the raise. It would provide nearly a $10,000 yearly bonus for Chief Richard Pennington.
The mayor’s office first introduced the idea of a raise before the deadly raid at Kathryn Johnston’s home as a way to reward the chief for bringing down the city’s crime rate.
I guess when your own narcotics officers are being investigated by the FBI for criminally negligent behavior, it does call into question the tactics used to ‘bring down the crime rate’.
Of course, this isn’t the end of the story. This still needed to be pushed through by the Atlanta City Council, which was voted upon today. I’d like to say that they unanimously voted against this raise, as a vote of confidence on Pennington and the no-knock raids. They didn’t. Thankfully, they didn’t rubber-stamp it, but they did what a city council would do with any controversial thing they want to accomplish: they postponed it until after the news cycle dies down. Even so, it was only 8-7.
They pushed the decision out until May. At that time, with Christmas, the Super Bowl, and springtime frolicking all occurring between now and then, the people of Atlanta will have moved on. At which time they’ll quietly pass this pay raise with little opposition. Always remember: the public’s outrage is fleeting and transitory— but big-city political wranglers are willing to wait us out.
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Long time readers of The Liberty Papers undoubtedly know who Radley Balko, The Agitator, is. Apparently The Dick List has no idea. Check out this opinion piece for a good chuckle.
Article after article praises “alternative” lifestyles and insult masculine traits. Such is the case with the article by Mr. Balko which accuses American police departments of increasingly using “…paramilitary tactics…” against poor innocent criminals.
While Mr. Balko sits safely in his tony Upper West Side of Manhattan digs puffing on some thai and bemoaning the plight of those persecuted by the gestapo Police SWAT teams to the members of his Mulatto studies literature club, the very men he defames are ensuring the continuance of his existence through their thankless work- protecting the good people of this country from the barbarians within our gates.
Heh, well, that’s pretty funny. The one piece of real meat in the whole thing is this:
In the article Mr. Balko uses a grand total of six examples of SWAT raids that resulted in deaths instead of arrests between the years of 2001 and 2006. He also cites the incredible rise of the use of SWAT teams, 1300% since 1980, stating that on average SWAT teams are used 110 times a day. Given the rise in SWAT action, the real story should be the lack of examples Mr. Balko is able to present in this article to prove his claims that “We the people” are under siege by the menace of “paramilitary” police units.
Well, given that Balko only had 600 words, I think fitting in 6 examples is pretty darn good. But, if you want a LOT more examples, check out this.
What anti-cop liberals want from Police Departments is perfection. What the real world offers is a lot messier. Most people will never be members of a law enforcement agency and therefore they will never experience the stress that goes along with it. This disconnect is clearly exemplified by the strum und drang following the recent shooting death of Sean Bell in Queens last week.
Well, I’m not a liberal in the sense this guy means it. And I’m certainly not “anti-cop”. Neither, though, am I pro-cop. I am definitely opposed to the police culture in our country today. I am in favor of police that act as agents of a government that protects my life, liberty and property. I have yet to find out how the War on Drugs does that, though.
One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers suggests that:
The difficulty with marijuana is that it produces a side effect that our government cannot tolerate. This side effect is so severe that any drug that produces it must be severely restricted or banned outright. And it is an insidious side effect. It is so insidious that it is nearly impossible to detect through measurments of body chemistry, metabolic function, critical organ functions, or tissue damage. You simply cannot find any harm caused by this side effect, but it's there.
The side effect, of course, is pleasure. Our government will never allow it.
Yes, there is a substantial puritanical constituency in America…there always has been.
They have opposed everything from sodomy to pornography to gambling; but somehow, not one of these culture warriors has managed to successfully wage a “war on vice”, bringing to bear the police power of government upon individuals who indulge in such behaviors.
So,
one wonders why the War on Drugs has worn on, virtually unabated, for over three decades!…despite numerous negative (unintended?) consequences. Could it be that a majority of Americans privately enjoy, to one extent or another, “harmless vices” while publicly demonizing recreational drug use as a scourge, thereby “justifying” the persecution and prosecution of the minority: users and addicts?
Now, I am not advocating drug use, or any particular expression of individual liberty for that matter. I am, however, advocating maximum individual liberty…even for those who seem to have very little regard for it. I agree with Adam Selene, who wrote: “I don’t want
my “libertarian values” to become what is moral for this society. I want us to stop using democracy to destroy liberty.”
hat tip: Julian Sanchez
