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Tactics of the drug war

Discussion in 'Free Speech Alley' started by Robidoux87, Jan 11, 2010.

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Robidoux87 You call that a double?

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How many people have to die before this madness stops?

Last month, the family of the late Tarika Wilson won a $2.5 million settlement from the city of Lima, Ohio. In 2008, as a tactical narcotics unit raided the home of her boyfriend Anthony Terry, the 26-year-old Wilson dropped to her knees in an upstairs bedroom, one arm over her head, the other clutching her infant son Sincere. As the officers stormed the home, one opened fire on Terry's dogs. Another officer, Sgt. Joseph Chavalia, mistook those shots for hostile gunfire, and himself opened up his weapon into the room where Wilson was kneeling. Wilson was killed. Her son lost a hand. Chavalia was acquitted of manslaughter last year at a trial in which one former police officer, who now testifies as a specialist in the use of force, declared that Chavalia should have opened fire on the unarmed mother and child sooner. Though these highly volatile raids are often justified on the premise that drug dealers are heavily armed, a subsequent survey of no-knock raids by the Lima News last year found that most raids in that city failed to yield any weapons at all. In fact, a third of the raids conducted by the Lima police department between 2001 and 2008 turned up no contraband—drugs or guns. The settlement included no admission of wrongdoing on the part of the city.

The family of Jonathan Ayers has also filed a lawsuit against the police agency that killed him. Ayers, a pastor survived by a pregnant wife, was killed by a drug task force in Taccoa, Georgia last September. The police were targeting Johanna Kayla Jones Barrett, a suspected prostitute and low-level drug dealer. On the day of his death, Ayers—who had been counseling Barrett, and had given her some financial help to avoid eviction—dropped her off at the motel where she was staying with her boyfriend, then drove to a gas station to get cash from an ATM. According to surveillance video and a subsequent investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the task force officers followed Ayers to the gas station and, though they had no warrant for him and weren't targeting him, nevertheless confronted him as if he were a heavily armed kingpin. The narcotics agents jumped out of a black, unmarked SUV, guns drawn, and approached Ayers' car. Ayers, who just before he died would tell emergency room attendants he thought he was being robbed, threw his car into reverse in an attempt to escape, grazing one of the agents in the process. That agent then fired at Ayers' car, hitting Ayers twice. Ayers continued down the road, wrecked his car, and later died at the hospital. Last last month, a grand jury found that the shooting of Ayers was justified.

Finally, there's Gonzalo Guizan, killed last May during a drug raid in Easton, Connecticut. Guizan was visiting the home of Ronald Terebesi Jr., the target of the raid. A stripper had earlier told police that Terebesi and Guizan were using, not distributing, cocaine in Terebesi's home. The police responded with a full-on SWAT raid, complete with flash grenades, that ended in Guizan's death. Police found no weapons in Terebesi's home, and only enough drugs to charge him with a misdemeanor. Nearly 10 months later, the office of the Connecticut attorney general finally released its report on the raid. The report concluded that Guizan, who was unarmed and had no prior criminal record, attempted to wrest a gun from one of the officers, at which point he was shot. The report, however, relied only on the shooting officer's statements, and neither Guizan's DNA nor his fingerprints were found on the weapon. The attorney general's report states that it makes no judgment on the appropriateness of the raid tactics, only on whether the officer's actions were legal. A subsequent video of the raid released to an attorney for Guizan's family casts some doubt on the narrative; it shows that just seconds transpired between the officers' entry and the sound of gunshots.
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That Other War - Reason Magazine

Robidoux87, Jan 11, 2010

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martin Banned Forever

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no clue why this is not a much, much, much bigger issue.

we bitch about global warming and gay rights and assorted other bull**** while the drug war kills and desttroys.

martin, Jan 11, 2010

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LaSalleAve when in doubt, mumble

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martin said: ↑

no clue why this is not a much, much, much bigger issue.

we bitch about global warming and gay rights and assorted other bull**** while the drug war kills and desttroys.
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LaSalleAve, Jan 12, 2010

#3
shane0911 Helping lost idiots find their village

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Ok this is a tragic story and all but really, c'mon man, did she REALLY name her SON "Sincere" You have GOT to be kidding me? REALLY?:dis:

Sad story, just sad all around.

shane0911, Jan 12, 2010

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OkieTigerTK Tornado Alley

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this is why if you really want to "fight" a "war" on drugs, you dont go all guns blazing sh*t, you focus on rehab and treatment of addicts. and i used quotes because i think it is absolutely stupid.

im not gonna argue legal/illegal. but there is a strong case for treatment. just throwing people in jail is going to do nothing. this kind of sh*t is just plain wrong!

OkieTigerTK, Jan 12, 2010

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Bandit88 Old Enough to Know Better

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War on drugs = nonsense.

Treatment can help but is an episodic, not a systematic, solution.

The vast, vast majority of folks who are hurt (or allow their innocents to be hurt) in these situations have nobody but themselves to blame.

It's wierd that in 44 years, nobody has ever had cause to storm my house with guns drawn. I wonder why that is? Perhaps it's because I don't break the law.

Bandit88, Jan 12, 2010

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LaSalleAve when in doubt, mumble

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Its all about the benjamins. Too many people make too much money policing drugs. When close to 63% of prison populations are from non violent drug offenses, and private companies who own these prison's trade on wall street based of prison population, its never going to happen. Hell the CIA funded the Contras with Cocaine money. Plus it keeps minorities behind bars too.

LaSalleAve, Jan 12, 2010

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BAY0U BENGAL I'm a Chinese Bandit

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LaSalleAve said: ↑

Plus it keeps minorities behind bars too.
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Really?

BAY0U BENGAL, Jan 13, 2010

#8
Robidoux87 You call that a double?

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Bandit88 said: ↑

It's wierd that in 44 years, nobody has ever had cause to storm my house with guns drawn. I wonder why that is? Perhaps it's because I don't break the law.
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Or, you have been lucky not to have idiot cops raid the wrong house (yours) and shoot your pets.

As Calvo returned to the house, he said, he spotted the large package that his mother-in-law had told a deliveryman to leave on the porch. He placed it on a buffet table near the front door and went upstairs to change.

"I brought it inside because I figured it was something we'd gotten for the garden," he said.

Moments later, just after he had undressed, Calvo said, he heard his mother-in-law scream that someone was coming toward the house. He looked out his bedroom window and saw officers in SWAT gear running across the lawn.

"I heard a loud crash and then 'bang, bang, bang,' " he said, recalling the sounds of the police shooting the dogs. "I hit the floor."

As the police came in, Calvo said, they shot his 7-year-old black Labrador retriever, Payton, near the front door and then his 4-year-old dog, Chase, also a black Lab, as the dog ran into a back room. Walking through his house yesterday, Calvo pointed out a bullet hole in the drywall where the younger dog had been shot.

"I understand they have a job to do, but it didn't have to go like that," Calvo said. He said the police could have knocked on his door and asked him about the package. "I've never done drugs in my life. Anyone who knows me knows that I am so adamantly opposed to them."
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Police Raid Berwyn Heights Mayor's Home, Kill His 2 Dogs - washingtonpost.com

Have fun with this map, too (some snippets):

84-year-old Annie Rae Dixon, a bedridden paraplegic, is shot and killed after police officers from the nearby town of Kilgore break into her Tyler, Texas home.

They have the wrong address.

Police later say one raiding officer's weapon "accidentally" discharged, firing the bullet that struck and killed Dixon. A jury would later acquit the raiding officers of any wrongdoing.
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In 1989, police in Minneapolis, Minnesota conduct a drug raid at the home of elderly African-American couple Lloyd Smalley and Lillian Weiss after a bad tip from an informant.

The flashbang grenades police use in the raid set the home on fire. Police are certain no one is inside, and so at first make no attempt at rescue. Smalley and Weiss die of smoke inhalation. Police had raided the wrong house.

Ten years later, the same police department would make a similar mistake. The deployment of a flashbang during a drug raid on a triplex would cause the entire building to catch fire, ruining the two homes surrounding the target of the raid.
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Botched Paramilitary Police Raids

Robidoux87, Jan 13, 2010

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Rex_B Geaux Time

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prohibition worked.. NOT

Rex_B, Jan 13, 2010

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