Here We Go Again
Radley Balko | November 21, 2006, 11:47pm
Police in Altanta
have apparently shot and killed a 92-year-old woman Tuesday night during a drug raid. Details are sketchy, but unless a nonagenerian was pushing dope and using lethal force to protect her supply, the most likely explanation here is that someone sent the tactical team to kick down the wrong door after a bad tip from an informant. Again. Only this time, the spunky old broad inside met the intruders with gunfire:
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."
Police insist the warrant was legit, and the house was correct -- which is why I'm guessing the problem originated with the informant.
This of course is why you don't kick down doors for nonviolent offenses in the first place, especially if all you've got is a CI's tip. But you already knew that. Thing is, even if this case is every bit as egregious as it seems, it won't change much. There will be some outrage. Perhaps an apology. Maybe even a few empty promises for reform. And then, in a few months, everything will go back to the way it was before. The only certainty here is that Kathryn Johnston won't be the last person to die in one of these stupid raids. Just ask
Alberta Spruill.In the meantime, somebody wanna' hand me another
one of those red thumbtacks?
UPDATE: More from the
AJC here. Police aren't saying what they were looking for, or what they found inside. Johnston was the only person in the house at the time of the raid. Perhaps this case will prove different, but my experience in researching this stuff is that when police conduct a drug raid, they trot out
everything they found -- particularly when the raid resulted in violence. That they've yet to announce any seized contraband doesn't bode well.
Ryan Waxx | November 22, 2006, 11:07am | #
...1> Dangerous drugs are still being sold.
You can call it an 'old argument' (argument by namecalling), and you can even repeat it a few dozen MORE times. But you can't eveade the FACT that the presence of lawbreakers DOES NOT prove the law is broken. NO OTHER EXISTING LAW is held up to that standard, because if it WERE, we'd have very few left.
... 2) The selling of said drugs has been put into the hands of people who have no interest in protecting their 'customers' and often sell tainted drugs which are even more dangerous.
This much is true.
... 3) The 'customers' are forced to pay exorbitant prices for the drugs, which often forces them to commit crimes to support their habits - including the 'crime' of selling the drugs.
And the fact that people become so enslaved to the things that the need for the drugs, and ONLY the need for the drugs (according to you) causes them to commit crimes... bounces off your head, making no mental impact whatsoever.
Because of course if you bothered to THINK, you might WONDER weather something that is so controlling that it could compel people to commit crimes might be... well... a BAD thing.
... 4) Millions of people who have done no harm to others are being criminalized.
I don't necessarily like this either. But enriching a crack dealer IS a harm to society. Of course, in your worldview, ONLY the government is guilty of enriching crack dealers. Everyone else has a free pass.
... 5) The police are being turned into paramilitaries.
So enforce the drug laws WITHOUT using paramilitary police. I'll help. Problem solved.
... 6) Drug cartels are destabilizing countries in the third world.
You can only take the chain of causation so far(unless you are a fanatic). We're their biggest customer, but you seriously think we're their ONLY customer? And you also think there are no other criminal enterprises that enrich thugs? Get real.
7) Same argument, same answer as 1).
8) Same argument, same answer as 5). People accuse me of using old arguments, who wants to bet NO ONE will call you on outright recycling yours?
Dee | November 22, 2006, 12:26pm | #
Ryan Waxx - Do people have a problem getting drugs now? Nope. So what exactly would be the difference, as someone else noted its easier for kids to get drugs than liquor which your dictator freinds from last century found out they could not stop either. The fact that something is illegal does not make it unavailable, simple supply and demand.
As for having to increase the budget of cops for them to actually INVESTIGATE something is bullshit as well. Had one of the DEA agents that raided my neighbors house a few weeks ago spent an hour on the datamine of info they have on us all and another few hours staking the place out they would have seen the amount of force brought to confiscate a internet server was a bit excessive. So they come guns and vests on to serve the warrant for a computer in a residential neighborhood, all 12 of them. Now thats 12 agents times the 3 hours they were there rummaging through his house. That equals 36 man hours to pick up a server. One hour looking at data followed by a few hours of actual investigating takes us to 8 total man hours at which point they would have seen they were in no danger and only needed 2 agents at most to serve the warrant. Seems like a cost cutting measure to me not a increase in spending.
Cops these days do no investigating. The only way they catch major criminals is via traffic stops. They are usually only around after the fact to write a report of what happened. To bad those they kill in these raids can't give their side of the story.
I really think the only way to get this type of shit to stop is for people all over the country to locate relatives of judges, politicians etc and give the gung-ho cops anonomous tips that would lead to their doors being kicked in. Perhaps if a few of them needlessly lose their lives something will change.
The main issue most overlook is that if your an honest citizen with nothing to fear from illegal activities your first instinct when hearing your door smashed in is that your being robbed since there is no other reason your door should be being dehinged in the middle of the night. In my house I could not hear someone at the front door from my back room, unless they kicked the door down. At which point they would have to come down the hallway at which point they would be shot because I would have my sights lined up with the door and the first person to walk into it gets it, period! What might a home invader yell as he kicks in your door to give them that extra moment to take over and try to assure themselves no one goes on the instant defensive, POLICE perhaps so they might not get shot would be my guess.
And for you anti-gunners in the audience how do you think the country would look if all guns were outlawed the same as drugs are now? Zero tolerance has worked so well in stopping drugs I am sure it would care over to firearms as well. Then you will want to ban knives as well I suppose. But we will still be free to defend ourselves with our nail clippers I hope.
Something tells me if this woman would have been in her 70's those cops would be dead as well if she managed to hit 3 at 92 years old.
I think all drug use will stop just as soon as we pay off the national debt. *holding breath*
psychoactive77 | November 27, 2006, 9:40pm | #
Atlanta police kill 92-year old woman in drug raid.
Police have no constitutional right to enter anyone's home with regard to prohibition. No judge would issue a warrant if they had a remote clue what constitutionally guaranteed freedom means. Likewise, no Supreme Court judge would support prohibition if there were a clue in his puny and decrepit mind.
If it weren't for the promise of free drugs, free money and the non-observance of ethical law that states warrant serving profiteering prohibitionists (police) must announce their presence before entry, this would not have happened. It is an unconstitutional war. These spineless and scared police who innately know they are doing something wrong think that ignoring law and ethics is justifiable. Clearly greed induced ignorance and violence.
If there were any real motivation to "protect the kids" as they claim, legislators would protect them by getting drugs off the street by ending this dim-witted profiteering scheme of a drug war for the spoils of war. Drugs are never destroyed after confiscation, but always returned to the street for profit by law enforcement, if they don't use it themselves.
Do you follow the path of confiscated drugs to their claimed destruction? Certainly not. Someone who has no one looking over their shoulder eventually gets them and no one is aware of their eventual sale and use.
In a free country, people have the right to peacefully use drugs and to provide them to those who want them. Some may not approve of their choices, but to interfere coercively is a violation of their rightful liberty.
Coercion is acceptable to whom the alluring promise of personal gain and elating drugs is too seductive and because too many people don’t have a clue as to what is a principle. Principles are rules I decide I will live by because principles are the only thing that can support ideal realty. Freedom is a principle. Profit is way more important to heartless warmongers. Heartlessness and the seduction of gain creates unthinking and greedy members of society not to mention the sadistic pleasure derived from watching others suffer, especially if these sufferers are of the race that prejudiced sadistic bigots hate.
If we know prohibition doesn't work (proven for more than 80 years) and only creates a street market for crime, violence, and child addiction (prohibition creating anarchy), to continue the drug war madness (reminiscent of witch hunt days) means we are either stupid or irresponsibly greedy or both.
Prohibitionists suffer from the lack of intelligence, lack of information, insatiable greed or all three. Mainly it is the profiteering prohibitionist that stands in our way.
Lack of intelligence means you cannot see a true cause or realize that controlling others is futile. Those that lack intelligence are (for lack of better words) programmable lemmings - robots following their televised programming - unable to think for themselves or have an original thought. That only describes the little prohibitionist. The real problem cases are the heartless profiteering slime-ball prohibitionists.
All of this is something Government can control and make sane. But why would they? Their insatiable greed is the cause and they belong in their own death camps if only for non-action. They can check for ID at the drugstore. The street dealer isn't checking ID. So it isn't really about the children in the poor neighborhoods going to jail before they get a chance at career life. It's about the utilitarian price of greed. Geo Group stock would crash. There would be no more "illegal" drugs to fight over.
Prohibition...goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."-- Abraham Lincoln December 1840. Another President said, "Its up to you to recognize the enemy; the enemy is ambition"
If everyone doesn't have the intelligence to take a stand, together, against the stupidity, we are doomed to this deserved insanity.
Gekkobear | December 1, 2006, 5:59pm | #
Ok to the defenders of the Police, I have a question.
Why did she need to be taken down forcefully, SWAT style, in the dark of night?
Was the 92 y/o woman a threat? She was dangerous, so a SWAT raid was the only option?
Or are SWAT raids just so much fun we have them whenever there is an opportunity?
For the record, if you have to take a 92 year old woman into custody, would you like to try it when she is at home at night, possibly armed, or when she heads to the grocery store? Maybe have a couple uniformed officers wait for her to get home from Church Sunday AM outside her house?
Some days I don't understand Police planning at all... why do they believe kicking in the front door is the best idea for them or for the suspect? If I'm setting up a drug house (which this wasn't but nevermind that), I'm damned well going to fort it up as best I can to prevent a police raid.
Wouldn't this make a run to 7-11 for munchies a better time to arrest me? You know, outside the fort?
Ok, maybe they aren't willing to put the public at risk by trying a public arrest; but putting people at risk with numerous "no-knock" raids which occasionally involve hitting the wrong target, house, or have faulty information... that isn't risk I guess.
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