Binky
11-30-2006, 11:22 AM
Georgia -- Just a few days ago, three Atlanta police officers shot down and killed a 92 year-old woman in her home while executing a search warrant.
The frightened elderly woman lived alone in a high- crime neighborhood and had burglar bars on all her doors and windows. When the officers attempted to batter down her door, she fired on them and was killed when the officers returned fire.
What is most disturbing about this is that the officers were apparently following standard procedure, in which the homes of suspected non-violent drug offenders are routinely broken into by armed police officers or SWAT teams without knocking or identifying themselves first.
There has been a strong movement towards the increased use of highly confrontational police tactics and the militarization of civilian police forces in the 25 years since the war on drugs began.
The annual number of SWAT deployments has surged from 3,000 to 40,000 in that time. Tactics once reserved for only the most dangerous criminals are now used regularly in the execution of routine search warrants.
Though the use of warrants was limited by the 1995 Supreme Court decision Wilson v. Arkansas, they are still permissible under an array of exigent circumstances which are arguably present in most cases.
Since President Reagan announced the war on drugs in the early 80s, federal and state spending on drug enforcement and incarceration has grown to more than $75 billion per year.
Roughly half of our prison cells and a similar proportion of our judicial resources are consumed by drug enforcement.
The American prison population has ballooned to more than two million incarcerated citizens, making it the largest in the world in both absolute and per capita terms, and more than four times larger per capita than any Western European democracy.
During this time the rate of drug arrests has increased rather than decreased, by a factor of three.
The exigencies of our perpetual drug war have led to an erosion of our civil liberties and have undermined respect for the rule of law.
The fear and distrust of police, which has become endemic among younger and less affluent Americans is a direct result of the diversion of police resources from the protection of the citizenry to the enforcement of morals.
The police officers wounded or killed as a result of the drug war are victims just as the innocent civilians. One need not adhere to a Millian conception of liberty in which the rights of the individual may only be restricted to protect the rights of others.
It is only necessary to rationally assess the costs and benefits of our current drug policy to come to the conclusion that it has been an abject failure.
This may be the approach most likely to lead to re-election, but addiction treatment, education and the creation of economic opportunity are much more effective at combating drug usage than Gestapo-style tactics.
How many lives and liberties are we willing to sacrifice for a solution which has only compounded the problem it sought to solve?
Andrew Muchmore is a second-year law student from New Orleans.
Source: Red and Black, The (U of Georgia, GA Edu)
Author: Andrew Muchmore
Copyright: 2006 The Red and Black Publishing Co., Inc.
Website: http://www.redandblack.com/
Contact: http://apps.ugatoday.com/forms/letter.php
The frightened elderly woman lived alone in a high- crime neighborhood and had burglar bars on all her doors and windows. When the officers attempted to batter down her door, she fired on them and was killed when the officers returned fire.
What is most disturbing about this is that the officers were apparently following standard procedure, in which the homes of suspected non-violent drug offenders are routinely broken into by armed police officers or SWAT teams without knocking or identifying themselves first.
There has been a strong movement towards the increased use of highly confrontational police tactics and the militarization of civilian police forces in the 25 years since the war on drugs began.
The annual number of SWAT deployments has surged from 3,000 to 40,000 in that time. Tactics once reserved for only the most dangerous criminals are now used regularly in the execution of routine search warrants.
Though the use of warrants was limited by the 1995 Supreme Court decision Wilson v. Arkansas, they are still permissible under an array of exigent circumstances which are arguably present in most cases.
Since President Reagan announced the war on drugs in the early 80s, federal and state spending on drug enforcement and incarceration has grown to more than $75 billion per year.
Roughly half of our prison cells and a similar proportion of our judicial resources are consumed by drug enforcement.
The American prison population has ballooned to more than two million incarcerated citizens, making it the largest in the world in both absolute and per capita terms, and more than four times larger per capita than any Western European democracy.
During this time the rate of drug arrests has increased rather than decreased, by a factor of three.
The exigencies of our perpetual drug war have led to an erosion of our civil liberties and have undermined respect for the rule of law.
The fear and distrust of police, which has become endemic among younger and less affluent Americans is a direct result of the diversion of police resources from the protection of the citizenry to the enforcement of morals.
The police officers wounded or killed as a result of the drug war are victims just as the innocent civilians. One need not adhere to a Millian conception of liberty in which the rights of the individual may only be restricted to protect the rights of others.
It is only necessary to rationally assess the costs and benefits of our current drug policy to come to the conclusion that it has been an abject failure.
This may be the approach most likely to lead to re-election, but addiction treatment, education and the creation of economic opportunity are much more effective at combating drug usage than Gestapo-style tactics.
How many lives and liberties are we willing to sacrifice for a solution which has only compounded the problem it sought to solve?
Andrew Muchmore is a second-year law student from New Orleans.
Source: Red and Black, The (U of Georgia, GA Edu)
Author: Andrew Muchmore
Copyright: 2006 The Red and Black Publishing Co., Inc.
Website: http://www.redandblack.com/
Contact: http://apps.ugatoday.com/forms/letter.php