WOW! ISN'T THIS DRUG WAR GREAT!

Boortz.com ^ | 11-22-2006 | Neal Boortz

[Dick Bachert]

Atlanta police went to a home on Neal Street in Atlanta last evening to execute a search warrant. When they kicked the door in the only occupant of the home, a 92-year-old woman, started shooting. She hit all three police officers. One in the thigh, one in the arm and another in the shoulder. All police officers will be OK. The woman will not. She was shot and killed by the police.

I'm not blaming the cops here. Not at all. They had a valid search warrant, and they say they were at the right address. Shots were fired, three cops hit, and they returned fire. A 92-year-old woman who was so afraid of crime in her neighborhood that she had burglar bars on every door and window, is now dead.

The blame lies on this idiotic drug war we're waging. We have all the studies we need, all of the comprehensive data is in. We can do a much more effective job of reducing drug use in this country if we'll just take a portion of this money we spend for law enforcement and spend it on treatment programs. A Rand study showed that we can reduce illicit drug usage in this country a specified amount through treatment programs at about 10% of the cost of reducing drug usage by that same amount through criminalization and law enforcement.

There's just something in the American psyche that demands that drug users be punished instead of treated and rehabilitated. We think they're stupid and ignorant for getting mixed up with those drugs in the first place. And you know what? We're right? But look at the messages we send to our children every single day with cigarettes, alcohol, and an endless stream of drug ads on television and in magazines. Drug culture? You bet we have.

[Hemingway's Ghost]

I hate the Drug War as much as any other pothead here on FR does, but something about this story doesn't ring true. If all the information on the warrant was correct, and they had articulable, accurate evidence that this 92-year-old woman was selling drugs out of her house, why in the world would the police find it necessary to execute a no-knock warrant (in plain clothes!) to apprehend such an old woman? Why couldn't this warrant have been executed in another way?

Have the cops been watching too much Dallas SWAT on A&E or something? Do they need to act like adrenaline cowboys each and every time they act?

[calex59]

For those of you who think the cops are being maligned here and not enough facts given, get real. This sort of stuff happens all the time in the US now thanks to our WOD and the use of no knock warrents.

The way to end this and the drug gangs is to legalize drugs. No, I am not a libertarian, but I am a person who uses history as a lesson. Drugs and gangs were not a problem in this country before they were outlawed. Prior to the turn of the century most drugs were legal in this country and the drug addition rate was no worse then than it is now, AND we had the added benefit of not having gangs that are financed by illegal drugs.

There are a whole lot of people who use a moralistic approach to drug use instead of the lesson that prohibition taught us, in fact there are some who still believe we should bring back prohibition along with bootleggers and the crime that was rampant during the prohibition era.

Want to end drug crime? Legalize it, take the money out of it and you will stop drug dealers and most of the crime in their tracks, not to mention defunding street gangs. Yes, we would probably still have gangs but we would take the sting out of most of them, without money they would fall apart.

I would be willing to bet that the reason drugs are NOT legalgalized in this country is, in large part, due to the bribing of officials to make sure the golden goose isn't slain. Flame away if you want, but this time maybe, just maybe, you could try using your heads to think with instead of your emotions.

[rhombus]

Caffeine is a mind altering chemical. Good thing you picked a government approved drug or you would have to expect a midnight knock on the door with a battering ram.

Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts...arrest them all. Throw away the key. Did you know that if you give rats Mocha Lattes all day they will pee a lot and become schizophrenic. That study was funded by Salada Tea. What other evidence do we need? Damn those crazy libertarians. ;-)

[girlangler]

Okay, say the lady had a nephew, grandson, etc., who deals drugs.

Can the cops NOT set up a stakeout to see who is there before busting into someone's house with guns pulled? What if her two and four year old great grandkids were there?

If I am home alone at night, and somebody (don't know it's cops) kicks my door in I am going to shoot.

[higgmeister]

Odd that the amount is omitted.

He omitted nothing. You are not paying attention. He said the cost was ten percent.

For what ever amount paid for law enforcement to achieve a certain reduction in drug usage, the same level of reduction can be achieved through noncriminal treatment programs at ninety percent less cost.

Treatment costs only 10% of what enforcement costs for any dollar amount you wish to throw out there.

Better still, no Great Grandmothers need to die.

[JamesP81]

For the longest time, I was against drug decriminilization. I've catigated Libertarians about being obsessed with drug legalization more than once.

Now, I'm no longer sure that legalization is a bad idea. Obviously, laws against driving under the influence and similar laws would remain, but I'm no longer convinced society is well served by imprisoning someone who uses drugs in their own home where they aren't messing with someone else while doing it.

I think that programs like those put on by churches, DARE, and the like have done far more to reduce drug use than any amount of enforcement ever did. And our enforcement procedures are making the cops look and act more like military forces or JBTs everyday. I fear where this road leads far more than some guy next door smoking himself to death with crack. If that sounds heartless, then I'm sorry, but that's how it is.

[Mr. Jeeves]

There's just something in the American psyche that demands that drug users be punished instead of treated and rehabilitated.

Puritan heritage.

[absolootezer0]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1742500/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1742448/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1742449/posts

[EEDUDE]

Just ask yourself a hypothetical question:

If the enormous profits to be made from selling drugs were removed, who is going to go to the trouble of bringing the stuff into this country, and for what reason?

Take the profit out of the equation and the problem will be reduced substantially.

Am I a druggie? No.

I do not use any illicit drugs OR alcohol.

But I am a rational and intelligent person that is able to see that when something hasn't, doesn't, and WON'T work, it is time to try something else.

The per capita addiction rates for this country have remained essentially unchanged since the eary 1800's.

Education and treatment are the areas where money should be spent.

[Gideon Reader]

No. It is not the "Drug War".
It was the stupid and careless execution of a Search Warrant by an alleged law enforcement entity, that did not have its shit together.
I would really like to read the Warrant and the Application and Affidavit for the Search Warrant as well as the ***REQUIRED***specific and particular description of the premises and curtilage to be searched and where they expected to find the contraband.

If anyone has personal problems with the "drug war" and it's connection to the procedures of the search and the warrant procedure, extensively and precisely governed by the Forth Amendment just replace the term "drugs" with contraband, i.e. explosives, child porn, widgets, macaroni, whatever.

It's HOW the search is executed and conducted. Not rocket science but not exactly art either. There is a correct and prescribed manner in which these things are done, with oversight (hopefully) by the supervisory echelon of the law enforcement entity. Mistakes do happen. But they should be rare to the extreme, if the individual executing Officers/Detectives/Agents do their job correctly and accurately.
Generally when incidents of this type occur, it is because of the piss poor selection of personnel by police agencies for their Detective/Investigator units.

[mutley]

"The per capita addiction rates for this country have remained essentially unchanged since the eary 1800's."

Availability hasn't seemed to have suffered much either, in this war.

[zeugma]

Great shooting by granny in what was probably a pretty intense situation. Unfortunately, she was out numerered by the thugs.

[discostu]

Remember the Sudafed clause. Thanks to a rise in meth use the fed and most states independent of the fed have now decided that if you buy too much stuff with psuedoephedrine in it then you are a "probable" drug dealer. This is why all the medicines with psuedoephedrine in them are behind the prescription counter and have to be signed for and they have limits to how much they can sell you at once. Anybody that decides to stock up on cold and allergy medicine, and does so in multiple purchases to get around the single sale limit, is putting themselves at risk for being noticed by the DEA and experiencing some of this no-knock action first hand.

[SampleMan]

And had they gone to the wrong address to investigate a burglary or an armed robbery then this wouldn't have happened?

I fail to see the connection to the WOD.

[rhombus]

I think that programs like those put on by churches, DARE, and the like have done far more to reduce drug use than any amount of enforcement ever did.

I certainly agree that enforcement has been a joke on level with some of the weirder global warming proposals. However, I'm not a big fan of project DARE. When my son was in first grade he called me a drug user for having a beer. Of course he was right but the point was the program was aimed at children too young and still in the black and white concrete operational stage to understand what they were being told. By middle school my son and his friends were making up all sorts of outrageous drug experiences just to entertain the DARE instructors in their "group therapy" sessions. I wish he's spent all that time learning how to read and write better instead of wasting school time with project DARE.

[discostu]

But the drug war is the specific excuse that's been used by the government to make no-knock searches part of their regular repetoir, and to expand the list of products that make you a potential bad guy to include things in almost every American home like alergy medicine.

[headsonpikes]

Your post contains much that is reasonable.

Unfortunately, since you fail to pander to the self-righteous prohibitionists in our midst, you will be dismissed as either a pot-head or a cloud-cuckoo libertarian.

The faith that these folks have in the state is truly frightening. American-style socialism certainly has created its own special version of secret police.

[JamesP81]

Points well taken. Then again, DARE is a government run program, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised. I think that on moral issues like this, it is the Christians in the community as a Church that should deal with these issues. The Church is supposed to be the moral conscience of the community. The government, OTOH, exists only to secure the rights of individuals against infringement. This system has worked since the founding of our republic, and I see no reason why it should've been abandoned.

[Taylor42]

Just for the record, I agree with you 100%.

[rhombus]

The Church is supposed to be the moral conscience of the community. The government, OTOH, exists only to secure the rights of individuals against infringement.

I take it then you're not a paleo-conservative. ;-) You'd better put on your flame-proof underwear.