Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

[The Toecutter]

So what happens when an anonymous informant gives a tip to police that someone is dealing drugs?

1) A judge rubberstamps a warrant with little or no evidence to support its justification
2) The chief of police waits 8 days to serve the warrant and conduct a raid, without bothering to collect any evidence of drug dealing
3) During the raid, the police wearing military gear storm the home and kill two dogs that pose no threat(one of them being a Welsh Corgi), and fire shots with a 7 year old child on the premesis
4) Their "big bust" was a pipe with marijuana residue

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XmjNxKOQvg

This war on drugs makes no sense whatsoever. When will our inalienable rights finally be acknowledged? Perhaps when ordinary American citizens decide they have nothing to lose by returning the use of force where applicable? I know lots of people where if police barged into their homes in such a fashion, there would be deaths on both sides... and I certainly wouldn't blame them for protecting their property.

[Sejon]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

Maybe they suspected the Welsh corgi was a drug-lord?

If Cowboy Bebop's taught me anything, it's that Welsh corgis can never be underestimated.

[Hrafn]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

The officers who shot the dogs need to be fired. No ifs, ands, or buts. Suspended without pay until the inevitable investigation is complete, and then ****canned. Because these are clearly people too trigger-happy to be allowed to represent the law. It's their restraint which is supposed to separate them from those they are opposing.

And yes, not to beat a dead horse, but this whole interest in taking down nonviolent drug offenders is just ridiculous. I'm so glad government money was spent on efforts to remove heinous crime lords like Tommy Chong from society (and for a whopping 10 months or so, too). I slept safer after hearing that one.

[DK]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

[IamPinhead]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

Corgie was a vicious combatant.

Yeah.....a corgie? I've seen Cowboy Bebop too, but....really? You could probably punt that thing on accident. How come we never hear about cops doing anything cool anymore?

[Cutter De Blanc]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

I wonder if they actually did deal drugs at that house and were just out, that would be funny.

[orius]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

Huh? Did Terr just link to a Fox news video? What the hell is going on?

I would be more likely to blame points #1 and 2 on local politics rather than the drug war in general. Both look like the typical tactics/**** ups of corrupt local officials and could happen in any case. At first I thought that this was some small town out in the Midwest, but a quick check on Wikipedia reveals the community has a population of 100,000, so small town corrupt hick stereotypes may not apply here.

Shoot to kill cops? Bad idea. But if they broke into my house without a proper warrent, or caused excessive damage without cause, I would very much look into a lawsuit.

[Wavelength]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

I've got mixed feeling about this whole thing because while I feel people should have the right to do what they want with their own bodies, some drugs (really anything heroin-level or above) will mess you up so badly that you're barely even a person once you've been on it for a while. We don't need to protect people from their own stupidity, but we do need to protect them from losing touch with reality entirely.

And we do need to raid the violent drug-dealers who are orchestrating peoples' murders in cold blood, and put them away for life. But a huge part of the reason the violent types are running the business in the first place is because we make it so economically rewarding for them by illegalizing relatively harmless drugs like marijuana.

This is a great (if one-sided) article I just read from AP Impact. The cost of the war on drugs is staggering. I'll post an excerpt below:

In 1970, hippies were smoking pot and dropping acid. Soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin. Embattled President Richard M. Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win.

"This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people," Nixon said as he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The following year, he said: "Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive."

His first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it's $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation.

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:

- $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico - and the violence along with it.

- $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.

- $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.

- $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.

- $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.

At the same time, drug abuse is costing the nation in other ways. The Justice Department estimates the consequences of drug abuse - "an overburdened justice system, a strained health care system, lost productivity, and environmental destruction" - cost the United States $215 billion a year.

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides.

"Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a fortune."

[Kire]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

Cops shoot pet dogs all the time, even when they're not a threat...which is sad and disgusting. You think it's protocol?

[Gustaff 13]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

[The Toecutter]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

Shoot to kill cops? Bad idea. But if they broke into my house without a proper warrent, or caused excessive damage without cause, I would very much look into a lawsuit.

Bad idea it may be, sometimes it *is* the right thing to do, and sometimes you have no way of knowing they are cops.

What would your reaction be if you were sleeping, and all of a sudden heard a group of people breaking into your house, your dogs barking, and then shooting your dogs? Assume you had a firearm nearby and that you had no idea who was doing this. For all you know, they could be burglars with a penchant for violence.

It happens all the time in the U.S., thanks to "no knock warrants", where police enter your home unannounced(while that wasn't the case in this video, it does happen).

Guess what? There are cases of individuals in the U.S. who opened fire, and then went to jail for murdering police officers. Get this: often the police broke into the wrong house without wearing uniforms. If you shoot an officer that breaks into your own home unannounced without uniform, you get a murder charge and the possibility of the death penalty, even if your home was the incorrect target!

http://reason.com/archives/2006/10/0...e-of-cory-maye

Sometimes you don't have time to assess the situation... sometimes you pull the trigger knowing full well your life could depend on it.

IMO, there shouldn't be any charges.

There are also cases where police had broken into the wrong home using such a procedure with a no-knock warrant, and then when an innocent person fired upon them not knowing they were police, they were shot dead. It was also later discovered that the police even planted drugs on her in an attempt to cover their mistake.

IMO, the chief of police who ordered that raid should be charged with murder. Not the lighter manslaughter charges the courts gave to the officers that were acting on bad information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathryn_Johnston_shooting


Sometimes you don't know they are cops, but what difference does it make? If someone breaks into your home unannounced and is armed, technically you have a right to defend yourself; it's just our courts make exemptions if the person is a member of law enforcement, regardless of whether they were in uniform or not. THAT is disgusting.

And we do need to raid the violent drug-dealers who are orchestrating peoples' murders in cold blood, and put them away for life. But a huge part of the reason the violent types are running the business in the first place is because we make it so economically rewarding for them by illegalizing relatively harmless drugs like marijuana.

The US Central Intelligence Agency fits your description of violent drug dealers, at least certain members. I wonder what the reprecussions would be if police raided them?

[Wavelength]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

Sometimes you don't know they are cops, but what difference does it make? If someone breaks into your home unannounced and is armed, technically you have a right to defend yourself; it's just our courts make exemptions if the person is a member of law enforcement, regardless of whether they were in uniform or not. THAT is disgusting.

If the police come into your home in plain clothes, and point a gun at you, and don't inform you that they are police, and you just happened to have a weapon nearby and use it in a self-defensive manner, then yes, I also feel you should be in the right there, so long as you can prove that you were acting in a reasonable heat-of-the-moment self-defense and weren't trying to shoot anyone who might happen upon one of the other shady things you were doing.

But I can't imagine this has happened in the US more than a few times this decade.

The US Central Intelligence Agency fits your description of violent drug dealers, at least certain members. I wonder what the reprecussions would be if police raided them?

Oh? What drugs does the CIA deal? Who buys them?

[The Toecutter]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

But I can't imagine this has happened in the US more than a few times this decade.

The fact that it happens at all is cause for alarm and should at least effect those in our government to the extent necessary to think about changing their priorities...

Oh? What drugs does the CIA deal? Who buys them?

they weren't duirectly dealing drugs to people on the street, but they were selling in bulk to distributers.

Depending upon the place and date, the answers range from cocaine, crack, marijuana, and opium for the drugs sold and the customers ranged from Bangkok, Thailand when Mao ruled China, the Contras, Los Angeles, various miami drug barons during the 1980s and 1990s, Haiti from the 1980s to present day, Lebanon and Syria, Afghanistan today, and other incidiences.

One famous bit of investigated journalism pertaining to this even aired on 60 Minutes, where investigated reporter Gary Webb presented video footage of CIA operatives loading cocaine onto planes, and had statements from police officer Mike Ruppert in Los Angeles who had witnessed CIA operatives with crack-cocaine on their person.

The video of this 60 minutes episode was on youtube in 2007, but I can't seem to find it now.

There were many articles written by Webb published in the San Jose Mercury News.

Check the sources in the linked wikipedia article, on just one of the drug distribution incidents they were involed in:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and...king_in_the_US

There are sadly a lot more...

[orius]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

Bad idea it may be, sometimes it *is* the right thing to do, and sometimes you have no way of knowing they are cops.

What would your reaction be if you were sleeping, and all of a sudden heard a group of people breaking into your house, your dogs barking, and then shooting your dogs? Assume you had a firearm nearby and that you had no idea who was doing this. For all you know, they could be burglars with a penchant for violence.

It happens all the time in the U.S., thanks to "no knock warrants", where police enter your home unannounced(while that wasn't the case in this video, it does happen).

Guess what? There are cases of individuals in the U.S. who opened fire, and then went to jail for murdering police officers. Get this: often the police broke into the wrong house without wearing uniforms. If you shoot an officer that breaks into your own home unannounced without uniform, you get a murder charge and the possibility of the death penalty, even if your home was the incorrect target!

http://reason.com/archives/2006/10/0...e-of-cory-maye

Sometimes you don't have time to assess the situation... sometimes you pull the trigger knowing full well your life could depend on it.

IMO, there shouldn't be any charges.

No, there shouldn't be charges if the cops screw up, and if this is a really serious problem, then it should be addressed with political reforms. Though trying to protect people from a violent form of the Keystone Kops would be difficult, because the police unions and their supporters would complain that it's an attack on public safety.

It can be easy to label cops as thugs and brutes, but I think there are times when they get too much of a raw deal. The job itself can be very stressful at times, and sometimes their lives are at risk.

[Cutter De Blanc]

Re: Police raid using SWAT invade a home for drugs, kills pets, and only finds a pipe

But I can't imagine this has happened in the US more than a few times this decade.

That's a few too many.