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SWAT/Paramilitarization

Alert: A SWAT Team Shot a Mother and Child Last Week -- Take Action Now to Stop the Madness!

CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION TO STOP THE DEADLY SWAT RAIDS

In November 2006, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was killed by police during a raid conducted at the wrong house. Ms. Johnston fired at the police officers as they were breaking in through her living room window. Three officers were injured, but Ms. Johnston was struck 39 times and died at the scene. In July 2007, Mike Lefort, 61, and his mother, Thelma, 83, were surprised and thrown to the ground when Thibodeau, Louisiana police burst into the wrong house with a "no knock" warrant. Thelma suffered from a spike in her blood pressure and had a difficult time overcoming the shock. In March 2007, masked police officers in Jacksonville, Florida, mistakenly burst into the home of Willie Davis, grandfather of murdered DreShawna Davis, and his mentally disabed son. The pair were forced to the ground, where they watched helplessly as police tore apart the memorabilia from DreShawn's funeral. The drug sale that never happened was said to involve all of two crack rocks worth $60.
One would think after Atlanta police killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, that they would get the idea, but they haven't. Last Friday, 1/4/08, a SWAT team, serving an ordinary drug search warrant, invaded the Ohio home of Tarika Wilson -- an innocent woman -- shot and killed her, and shot her one-year-old son. "They went in that home shooting," her mother said at a vigil that night. The boy lost at least one of his fingers. Two dogs were shot too. SWAT teams were created to deal with extreme situations, not routine ones. Yet police now conduct tens of thousands of SWAT raids every year, mostly in low-level drug enforcement. The result is that people like Wilson and Johnston continue to die in terror, with many thousands more having to go on living with trauma. But it's all for a drug war that has failed and can't be made to work. It's time to rein in the SWAT teams. Please sign our online petition: ">Enough is Enough: Petition to Limit Paramilitary Police Raids in America." A copy will be sent in your name to your US Representative and Senators, your state legislators, your governor, and the president. When you're done, please tell your friends and please spread the word wherever you can. This is a first step. Take it with us today, and there can be more. Enough is enough -- no more needless deaths from reckless SWAT raids! Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids for more information about this issue, including our October Zogby poll showing that 66% of Americans, when informed about the issue, don't think police should use aggressive entry tactics when doing routine drug enforcement.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE ACTION TO STOP THE DEADLY SWAT RAIDS

StoptheDrugWar.org (still known to many of our readers as DRCNet, the Drug Reform Coordination Network), is an international organization working for an end to drug prohibition worldwide and for reform of drug policy and the criminal justice system in the US. Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle for the latest issue of our acclaimed weekly newsletter, Drug War Chronicle.

SWAT Team Shoots Baby, Kills Mom in Drug Raid Gone Wrong

It has become a nauseating chore just to report on all the innocent people that get killed in the drug war. But until our public servants stop killing us to protect us from drugs, the reporting must continue:
Tarika Wilson, 26, was shot and her 1-year-old son was wounded when Lima police conducted a drug raid on their home Friday night, prompting members of the black community to organize a candlelight vigil and demand answers from police.

"They shot my daughter and her baby," Ms. Jennings said through tears while being consoled by other family members. "The police have to pay for what they did. They went in that home shooting and killed her." [Toledo Blade]
Tarika Wilson's boyfriend was arrested for marijuana and crack, but police haven’t reported how much they found. Something tells me this is because the amount is very small. Too small to justify shooting a baby. Similarly, they haven’t said a word about why Ms. Wilson was shot. If they had a good answer, we'd know by now what it is.

Here's the thing: when you hear about police shooting a baby and killing an innocent mother of six, you just know the drug war had something to do with it. Overwhelmingly, it is the drug war that sends adrenalin-charged cops into private homes with their fingers on the trigger of a machine gun. In a post-drug war world, babies and grandmas won't get shot in their houses by police. I can't wait.

More at DrugWarRant and The Agitator.

As We Mark the Anniversary of the Killing of Kathryn Johnston, Poll Commissioned by DRCNet (StoptheDrugWar.org) Finds Little Support for SWAT-Style Drug Raids in Most Cases

(Visit http://stopthedrugwar.org/policeraids for further information on our poll and positions on this issue as well as links to further information.) A year ago this week, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston was gunned down by Atlanta narcotics officers when she opened fire on them as they kicked down her door in a "no-knock" drug raid. The killing has had immense reverberations in the Atlanta area, especially since it opened a window on corrupt and questionable police practices in the drug squad. The officers involved told a judge they had an informant who had bought crack cocaine at Johnston's home. That was a lie. They shot at the elderly woman protecting her home 39 times after she managed to squeeze off one shot from an old pistol. They handcuffed her as she lay dying. They planted marijuana in her basement after the fact. They tried, also after the fact, to get one of their informants to say he had supplied the information, but that informant instead went to the FBI. Two of the officers involved in the killing were ordered to prison this week on involuntary manslaughter and civil rights violations. A third has an April trial date. The Johnston killing has also rocked the Atlanta Police Department. The police chief disbanded the entire drug squad for months, tightened up the rules for seeking search warrants, especially "no-knock" warrants, and instituted new policies forcing narcotics officers to rotate out on a regular basis. A year-long FBI investigation into the department continues. While the Johnston killing rocked the Atlanta area, it also brought the issue of aggressive drug war police tactics to the forefront. Each year, SWAT teams across the country conduct some 40,000 raids, many of them directed at drug offenders. The tactic, where heavily armed police in military-style attire break down doors, toss flash-bang grenades, and generally behave as if they are searching for insurgents in Baghdad, has become routine, and is the stuff of various TV reality shows. But, somewhat surprisingly, it isn't popular. According to a poll question of 1,028 likely voters commissioned by StoptheDrugWar.org (DRCNet), and conducted by Zogby International in October, a solid majority of respondents said such tactics were not justified for routine drug raids. Here is the exact question asked: "Last year 92-year old Kathryn Johnston was killed by Atlanta police serving a drug search warrant at an incorrect address supplied by an informant. Reports show that police use SWAT teams to conduct raids as often as 40,000 times per year, often for low-level drug enforcement. Do you agree or disagree that police doing routine drug investigations in non-emergency situations should make use of aggressive entry tactics such as battering down doors, setting off flash-bang grenades, or conducting searches in the middle of the night?" Nearly two-thirds -- 65.8% -- said police should not routinely use such tactics. With minor variations, that sentiment held across all geographic, demographic, religious, ideological, and partisan lines. Opposition to the routine use of SWAT tactics for drug law enforcement ranged from 70.7% in the West to 60.5% in the East. Residents of large cities (60.7%), small cities (71.2%), the suburbs (66.7%), and rural areas (65.0%), all opposed the routine use of SWAT tactics. Among Democrats, 75.1% opposed the raids; among independents the figure was 65.5%. Even in the Republican ranks, a majority -- 56% -- opposed the raids. Across ideological lines, 85.3% of self-identified progressives opposed the raids, as did 80.8% of liberals, 62.9% of moderates, and 68.9% of libertarians. Even people describing themselves as conservative or very conservative narrowly opposed the routine use of SWAT tactics, with 51.5% of the former and 52.5% of the latter saying no. This polling data will be the basis for a Drug War Chronicle article on Friday. We will dig a little deeper into the data, as well as the larger issue of SWAT raids for the Chronicle article. In the meantime, we have some very interesting numbers to chew on, and some public policy consequences to ponder. Our poll also received coverage on FoxNews.com this morning.

When Cops Ask For Machine Guns, You Know the Drug War Has Failed

If the drug war supposedly reduces crime and violence, how come we keep reading things like this?
Citing a dramatic increase in the availability of high-powered, semiautomatic assault rifles -- like the one used Thursday to kill a Miami-Dade County police officer -- Miami Police Chief John Timoney has for the first time authorized patrol officers to start carrying similarly lethal weapons.

A burgeoning ''arms race'' between police and heavily armed drug gangs forced him to sign the new policy earlier this week, Timoney said. [Miami Herald]
It is just amazing that there are machine gun battles breaking out in major American cities, and drug policy reform is still considered a politically suicidal fringe position. Meanwhile, the prohibitionist peanut gallery continues to pronounce with pride the glorious progress we've made towards preventing people from partying.

Miami Police Chief John Timoney nails it:
''This is really a failure of leadership at the national level. We are absolutely going in the wrong direction here,'' Timoney said. 'The whole thing is a friggin' disgrace.''
I couldn’t have put it better myself, except he's not even talking about drug policy. He's referring to gun control, which wouldn't even be necessary if we stopped the endless brutally violent war we've decided to wage against each other on our own soil.

Oops, Wrong House. Sorry We Threw Grenades and Kicked You in the Crotch.

Via Radley Balko, yet another wrong address drug raid disaster:

This one's got it all. Terrified immigrants who don't speak English, a roughed-up pregnant woman, a man kicked in the groin, another woman with a heart condition, flashbang grenades, and assurances from the cops that this kind of thing happens "not very often." Fortunately no one was killed. Only terrified.

The police never contacted the landlord of the residence to verify. And when they raided the "right" address, the place was empty.

Of course, throwing grenades and kicking people in the nuts are highly questionable activities even when police invade the correct location. This issue goes way beyond just getting the address correct. Even when the police get it right, anyone inside is innocent until proven guilty, and should never be brutalized arbitrarily. When police conduct becomes remarkably similar to that of dangerous criminals, we've got a major problem on our hands.

As Radley so often points out, the purpose of these raids is to stop people from getting high, which isn't a legitimate or achievable goal to begin with. The failure of prohibition is never more obvious than when police enter the homes of innocent people and beat or kill them in order to protect us all from drugs.

Atlanta Police Nearly Killed 80-Year-Old Woman Two Months Before Killing Kathryn Johnston

It has now been reported that a mere two months before killing 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, Atlanta police conducted a very dangerous, similar raid on the home of 80-year-old Frances Thompson. The supposed drug dealer, named "Hollywood," didn't live there. (Read more about it on Radley Balko's The Agitator blog, the most continuous source of information on the problem of SWAT teams/paramilitarization of policing.) You'd think the Atlanta police would learn from one experience and take the steps needed to avoid making the same mistake. Then again, you'd think police nationally would learn when people wind up dying in these raids. But they keep doing it over and over and over...

Why Aren't Police Videotaping SWAT Raids?

NorthJersey.com has an impressive piece on the overuse of SWAT teams to conduct routine drug raids in New Jersey. It's a thorough and informative discussion that includes law-enforcement perspectives as well as those of innocent citizens who've been targeted. There's a lot of revealing stuff here:
"The reporting back is on a case-by-case basis," said Deputy First Assistant Prosecutor Dante Mongiardo. "Nobody is compiling any six-month or yearly reports saying of the 100 (warrants) that we approved, drugs were found in 98 percent of them."

Capt. Robert Prause, commander of the Prosecutor's Office narcotics task force, stresses that officers are "not just randomly picking the house."

"A very large percentage of the time, we do find the contraband we're looking for," he said.
So they don't keep track, but if they did, the numbers would be impressive according to them. I think it's time for somebody to actually start compiling "six-month or yearly reports saying of the 100 (warrants) that we approved, drugs were found in [X] percent of them." Then we'd have a better sense of how often things like this happen:
In December 2005, officers with the Paterson police narcotics bureau had a warrant to look for drugs in the brown house. But before dawn, they burst into the DeCree/Clancy house instead. DeCree, 37, said he heard officers outside his closed bedroom door tell him they'd shoot him and his barking dog.

"They was nasty, making comments like they're police, they can do whatever they want, go call your mayor, your councilman," said DeCree. "I felt violated because I wanted to protect my family. All I wanted to do was physically put them out of my house."
Contrast DeCree's claim with this statement from Sheriff's Department spokesman Bill Maer in regards to an excessive force allegation from a different raid:
"Those allegations are ridiculous," Maer said. "I think the report speaks for itself. There has been no official complaint regarding any incident that occurred to the Sheriff's Department, or to the best of my knowledge, any other agency. So we don't consider any complaints or even accounts of that story as credible."
So if you don't file a formal complaint, they don't consider you credible. But according to victims of these raids, they tell you it's pointless to complain!

I think this pretty much says it all:
Unlike in many states, in New Jersey, nearly every document generated by a raid -- from the testimony that officers present to a judge to obtain a search warrant, to search warrants themselves, to the police reports detailing whether police found illegal drugs or weapons – is not public, even after the raid is executed. Most of the two dozen people interviewed spoke only on the condition that they would not be named, saying they feared officers would retaliate against family members or simply return to harass them.
The increase in paramilitary policing excesses, coupled with excellent reporting from Radley Balko and a few local papers, is finally beginning to bring some light to this growing threat to public safety. Still, as long as citizens are too intimidated to come forward, it will remain difficult to articulate the magnitude of the problem.

My favorite among Balko's recommendations for reducing the harms associated with paramilitary police raids is that officers videotape all home invasions as a matter of routine. There's an obvious mutual benefit to this in that citizens would enjoy an added safeguard, while police would be shielded from erroneous complaints.

Unfortunately, since police never get in trouble for mistakes and misconduct during SWAT raids, they have no incentive to keep records whose most likely effect is to incriminate the officers themselves.

But hey, if they're not hiding anything, why should they worry?

Cory Maye Catastrophe Copied in Canada

Basile Parasiris is the latest seemingly innocent person to fire on police who he mistook for burglars during a drug raid on his home. He's now charged with 1st degree murder among other things, for the apparent act of attempting to defend his family. From The Montreal Gazette:
Lawyer Frank Pappas said his client was trying to defend himself and his family when he grabbed a loaded gun and shot Laval Constable Daniel Tessier - whom Parasiris mistook for a crazed thief.

"If he would've believed it was the police, do you think he would have taken them on?" Pappas said in an interview. "They have more firepower than him."
…
According to Pappas, police didn't find anything in the Parasiris home.

"There was no body, no drugs, no large quantities of firearms," he said. "They may have found one or two pills of Viagra that he didn't have a prescription for.
…
According to Pappas, the son called 911 after the police barged into the family home and bullets started flying.

"Do you think that if they knew they were police officers, they'd call 911?" Pappas said.
Much remains unknown at this point. But the apparent absence of drugs and the 911 call sound like strong indications that we're looking at another terribly misguided prosecution. Unfortunately, as we've learned from the Cory Maye case, there seems to be a mental block that prevents police, prosecutors, and judges from understanding that normal people are prone to shoot at intruders who burst into their homes.

The otherwise forgivable instinct to defend one's property becomes totally unacceptable when the intruders turn out to be police who mistakenly believe you've got drugs in there. It's mind-boggling that despite all the evidence to the contrary, police continue to insist that they must raid homes suddenly and unexpectedly…because doing otherwise would be dangerous.

How many innocent people must be tricked into shooting police officers before law-enforcement figures out that behaving like burglars is not a safe way to initiate contact with citizens?

As Radley Balko has often pointed out, these deaths occur in the course of a completely unsuccessful effort to stop people from getting high. As the frequency of these raids-gone-wrong increases, it's chilling to think that this ongoing theater of unnecessary death and destruction won't stop until the pile of bodies is too tall to ignore.