Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
As Radley says:
About this item:
Ex-Atlanta cops sentenced in deadly botched raid
ATLANTA – A federal judge sentenced three former Atlanta police officers to prison Tuesday for their part in a botched drug raid that ended with the death of an elderly woman in a hail of gunfire.
Jason R. Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler received sentences ranging from five years to 10. Kathryn Johnston, 92, was killed by police gunfire during the 2006 raid at her home.
After receiving an incorrect tip from a known drug dealer, police used a "no-knock" warrant to enter Johnston's house to look for drugs. As they tried to break in, Johnston fired a single shot through the door with a rusty revolver and the officers fired 39 bullets in return. Prosecutors say officers found no drugs inside the house and tried to cover up the mistake by planting baggies of marijuana.
As Radley Balko puts it:
Officers Junnier, Smith, and Tesler are going to prison. But you could make a good case that they were only responding to incentives. A lot of other people have Kathryn Johnston’s blood on their hands too, people with names like Bennett, Gates, Walters, Souder, Tandy, and Meese. They’ve been ratcheting up the war rhetoric of drug prohibition for 30 years. It boggles my mind that I’m “known” for this issue. For this to even be an issue, we had to have reached the point where most of America is now accustomed to the notion that state agents dressed in battle garb can and will tear down the doors of private homes in the middle of the night for nothing more than mere possession of psychoactive substances. And most of the time, they do it under the full color of law.
It shouldn’t be at all surprising that this particular war’s boots on the ground might start to take all of that war imagery to heart, and take shortcuts around whatever largely ritualistic Fourth Amendment procedures we have left to “protect” against whatever it is we still might call “unreasonable” searches (if a violent, terrifying, paramilitary-style raid in the middle of the night on someone suspected of a nonviolent, consensual crime isn’t “unreasonable,” I don’t know what would be).
Kathryn Johnston’s death is tragic. But the real tragedy here is that had the cops found a stash of marijuana in her basement that actually did belong to her–say for pain treatment or nausea–her death would have faded quickly from the national news, these tactics would have been deemed by most to be wholly legitimate, and we probably wouldn’t still be talking about her today.
Just for grins, I looked back to what I wrote the day after this "incident" happened. Here's an excerpt:
Last night Kathryn Johnston was home, alone. She’d lived in her house in Atlanta for 17 years. Since she was 92 and alone, she had a reasonable fear for her safety. So when unknown men kicked in her door, she opened fire on them with a handgun she had for her protection, striking three of the assailants.
In return, they shot and killed her. Though the police know who the men were, they likely will not be prosecuted. That’s because they were plainclothes Atlanta police, acting legally on a warrant in a narcotics investigation. Obviously, a mistake was made somewhere along the line.
That mistake goes deeper than the execution of the warrant. Three decades of “The War on Drugs” have had exactly the same effect as this decade’s “War on Terror”: we are less safe, the government and its agents have and abuse more power, and we are less free. The time has come to put an end to it.
***
The root of this problem isn’t guns, or police tactics. The root of the problem is the criminalization of drug use. Entire bureaucracies have been created to “deal with the drug problem.” Police forces have become militarized in order to “deal with the drug problem.” Our rights have been trampled on in order to “deal with the drug problem.”
I don’t use drugs. Not for 20 years. But you can bet that if someone kicks in my door in the middle of the night, chances are good that I will respond the exact same way that Kathryn Johnston did. And if it is cops executing a warrant, I too will likely become a victim in the “War on Drugs”. The same could be true for any of us. It is time to put a stop to it.
I was wrong - the three criminals who executed Kathryn Johnston have been held to account. But it is still long past time for this absurd "War" to be ended.
Jim Downey
(And FSM, have I really written that many posts here?? The count is over 600!! Bloody hell!)
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Win the war, cure the economy
Well, it might not be as simple as that, but a state legislator in California has proposed that one way the state can solve at least part of its financial crisis is to legalize pot sales just as alcohol sales are legalized. Tax them, too, and the government gets the benefit of the sales. Plus, you get much less criminal activity, probably about the same as you get for people stealing beer, DUI, and providing alcoholic beverages to minors.
It's just an extension of medical marijuana. So they would probably have to find a way to subsidize the sales for people who need it medically, as opposed to those who use it recreationally. Although I don't know of an analogy to alcohol for that.
There are other, more serious, drugs to fight on the streets. I've not been a pot smoker, like Hank I never got into that scene, but it's so much like Prohibition was, I think someone should pay attention. How much tax revenue did the country start to enjoy after December 5, 1933?
Just declare victory.
I'm firmly convinced that before this economic crisis is all over, we'll see the legalization of pot and the sentences of all those in prison for possession commuted or pardoned, at least insofar as they have federal charges against them. Further, many of the states will follow suit with related state charges. It's just become an untenable cost to wage this pointless "war".
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
War on Drugs
My take on drugs is a distant one. I was the consummate geek in high school and college -- so far out of my culture that it was only years after that I realized that everyone around me was smoking pot or, later, taking LSD. I think what really happened was that none of them ever thought to offer me any. Strangely enough, I was into my 20s before I ever drank a beer, or had a mixed drink.
Somewhere in there, I discovered I liked the way my mind worked. So when I did finally try alcohol and pot, I discovered my mind didn't work as well, and I didn't much like the effect. So I'm not a drug user. (Hell, I've had a six-pack of beer sit in my home fridge for as much as a year without drinking it.)
Further, I think people who DO regularly smoke pot or who regularly use stronger intoxicants are idiots. Not bad idiots, just sort of mildly pathetic idiots.
On the other hand, I think the War on Drugs is a fucking freedom-destroying nightmare, and everybody who supports it is a stupidly DANGEROUS idiot.
From what little history I know of the Prohibition era, it appears to me that Prohibition CREATED organized crime in the US. The War on Drugs wedded organized crime to government and international cartels, in a system under which individual humans are now nothing more than robots, and the real "people" with all the rights are corporations.
...
On a side note, I relate what I call "mental access time" to the level of maturity and wisdom a person is able to attain.
If you access your own mind in a useful, rational way for just ten minutes a day, you're waaay ahead of the guy who does it for only one minute a day. Considering that every day is filled with driving, showering, dressing, cooking, eating, more driving, watching TV, listening to music, being horny, talking to people, listening to people, sleeping, being sleepy, working, avoiding working, playing, daydreaming, and on and on, ten minutes a day of rational thought is hard enough to accomplish. If you manage an hour, by the time you're 30, you're a freakin' genius. But good luck if you can manage a minute.
The people who DON'T manage ten minutes a day ... well, in this society, they're normal and average. But all that means is that our entire society is painfully, dangerously retarded, filled as it is by "normal, average" people who are painfully, dangerously held back from what they could be, should be.
My opinion of drugs is that they're yet another way to keep you from thinking in a rational way, for those precious mandatory ten minutes, or hour, or whatever. But I feel the same way about alcohol, and TV, and even the habitual reading of fantasy novels or romances. All might be acceptable as an occasional vacation from the pressure of daily life, but are immensely stupid as a WAY of daily life.
Some years back, when laws were passed that handed over drug-raid confiscated property to law enforcement agencies, and nobody seemed to notice what the side-effects of that would absolutely have to be, I realized I was living among brainless, shit-throwing monkeys, and just gave up even worrying about the effects of drugs. The effects of law enforcement were a whole lot more immediate and dangerous. The people who SUPPORTED that type of law enforcement were obviously closer to Nazi ideals than American ones, and since they had all the guns and power, and couldn't tell Justice from oppression, this was way more important than some kid taking a bong hit every day after school.
The mindless prohibition on drugs that we have raises stupidity to a insupportable level of malevolence, wrecking more lives than the drugs themselves could. And damn, the amount of money that's spent on pursuing, arresting, and incarcerating people who smoke a joint now and then ... it's just freaky to think of all the good that money could be doing, but isn't, because retarded assholes think it's better to spend billions of dollars putting people in cages. Rather than, well, curing cancer, traveling to the stars, stuff like that.
Just to mention one personal side effect of the War on Drugs, I'm a fairly responsible, straight-laced citizen. I vote, I pay taxes, I'm a businessman. Hell, I don't even SAY mean things to others, much less want to rob or kill or cheat them. I know police officers are absolutely necessary to the functioning of society, and I'm glad they're out there. But as a generic group ... The disrespect for and mistrust of the individual that the Drug War embodies and encourages makes it very much more difficult for me to like and trust them.
Modern day witch hunts
Thats what its like. Hate your neighbors? Accuse them of being drug dealers, then watch a small army descend on them (it recently happened to people I know, who are totally harmless). Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com thinks support for marijuana legalization wil have to get close to 60% before the feds would dare end the war on drugs, and support for that only just broke the 40% barrier, so this stupid, wasteful, corrupting war is likely to continue for another generation.