Victims of the war

One of the best results of the drug war has been the militarization of the police force. SWAT teams, which are sometimes necessary to take out dangerous criminals that normal police couldn't handle, have proliferated like mad, spreading to every nook and cranny of our country. My sleepy little home town, which has had one murder in the past 30 years, even has a SWAT van, and presumably the armor and guns to go with it.

One might be inclined to think this is a good thing. After all, we're better prepared to deal with dangerous situations. Except those dangerous situations don't come up very often, especially in smaller cities and towns. Perhaps the police feel they need to justify the existence of these paramilitary forces, or perhaps they just like power of being able to use them. Whatever the reason, they do use them, and when they use them, people die.

Here, here, and here are some examples of police excess with these raids. Very often you get cases where someone is a little quick to the trigger and shoots an unarmed person, and the department covers up for them, claiming the victim was armed and dangerous. Very often you get sketchy informants giving bad information, and innocent people's homes are broken into and they end up on their knees with a gun barrel to the back of their head, wondering if they're going to die. Very often you get someone thinking they're being robbed and trying to defend themselves, and police and the homeowner die.

There are even cases of police kicking or shooting dogs.

Most of the time these men are looking for nonviolent drug offenders. They are looking for people who aren't an imminent threat, who pose no real danger to society. But they go in with big guns and itchy trigger fingers, and innocent people die.

And the citizens of this supposedly free country sit in silence. There is no outrage. There is no accountability. There is no reform. There is silence while innocent people die by the very hands of the people who are charged with protecting their lives.

Maybe you'll start to care when an informant gives up your address to shave a few years off of his drug sentence, the police request a no-knock warrant, the judge grants it, and you're staring down the barrel of a submachine gun at 2 AM, too scared to even move. Maybe you'll care when it's your children crying. Maybe you'll care when it's your dog with five bullets in its side. Maybe it'll be too late to care, because you "made a move for a gun", and someone put a few bullets into you, and you're just another victim of this senseless war.

I'll be writing my congressmen and senators asking for reform, and trying my damnedest to generate the outrage to fix this before more people die. I suggest you do the same.