Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Taking the Warfare out of the War on Drugs

J.D. Tuccille:

Police in Prince George’s County, Maryland, are conceding that, just maybe, last week’s violent raid on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, during which officers killed two dogs, was a mistake. ...

Police burst into Calvo’s home with guns blazing because ... he took delivery of an officially disfavored intoxicant. There was no hint of violence, no hostages or threats—just a lot of wacky weed.

So why the “Raid on Entebbe” tactics?

The fact is, the results could have been a lot worse. I’m not trying to minimize the slaughter of the dogs here—I’m a dog owner myself, and I’d be driven into a murderous rage were anybody to gun the furry beasts down. But if animals died, people could have died too—they often do in these violent drug raids. Just today, a Lima, Ohio, police sergeant was acquitted of criminal charges stemming from his killing of an unarmed woman and shooting her one-year-old son during a botched drug raid. Cory Maye is currently serving life in prison for killing a housebreaker who turned out to be a raiding police officer acting on bad information.

Violent police raids are dangerous. But marijuana, in and of itself, is not. Even if Calvo was the intended and willing recipient of that package, there’s no excuse for enforcing the laws against marijuana by knocking his doors in and shooting his dogs.

As of now, the definitive study of violent, militarized policing in this country is Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America (PDF) by Radley Balko, formerly of the Cato Institute, and now of Reason magazine. The study is accompanied by an online map detailing some of the raids researchers have looked into, and their results, including the deaths of innocent people, deaths of police officers, deaths of nonviolent offenders and raids on innocent suspects. (Dogs, sorry to say, are not included).

As of 2006, Balko estimated that as many as 40,000 violent raids of the sort suffered by Calvo and his family take place every year in this country, although not all of them end in blood and tragedy.

Download the Balko study here. It’s time to declare a cease fire in the war on drugs. As Balko observes in a post on the PG County story:

The real question is whether there will be any discussion over the appropriateness of sending a SWAT team into any private home, handcuffing the occupants at gunpoint, and slaughtering the family pets—all over the mere receipt of a mailed package of weed.  I doubt it.

Even if hizzoner turns out to be guilty, it’s always worth contextualizing these cases:  We’ve reached the point where it’s commonplace for the government to wage violent, confrontational invasions of private homes over the suspicion of possession of the dried leaves of a plant.