"It's actually impossible to shoot somebody, accidentally or "accidentally," if you aren't staging a violent raid on their home in America's disgusting war on its own citizens and their civil liberties, aka the "War on Drugs.""

Did you mention this during the discussion about Tarika Wilson?

Yes, I did. I feel it's wrong to stage a SWAT raid on a home with children in it.

Those blog posts were about something else -- that a woman had six daddyless children with five different drug dealers. I later found that she'd gone away herself for a year in prison for her part in some drug deal. Wholesome environment for children!

And thank you so much for dredging that back up. The attack on me that ensued took a great deal out of me in terms of time and attacks on my ability to earn a living from my writing.

The fact that you can use a point isn't reason to necessarily do it.

Sorry if that's a burden today... I know there was a great deal of "churn" wasting everyone's time, but wasn't sure that was raised as a point. There are actually more issues here.

• Police misconduct, in basing a raid on faulty information and attempting to blame the weapon for an officer's negligence.

• Prosecutorial misconduct, in charging a man for defending his home during the meleé made necessary by poor police procedure.

• "The Drug War" and its influence on police, in both alienating them from the public they are supposed to serve and bribing them with the lure of easy money through confiscation.

• Cause and Effect and its application to law. Which came first, crime or law?

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Something which might be useful, from 6 years ago:

Raids are ordered to seize criminals with their property when such property is likely to be evidence. When a raid is ordered, the officers all have a right, and some have the duty, of checking the warrant in the raid briefing. If it is known, the blueprints of the building will be gone over. Expected points of cover and concealment will be discussed and likely occupants' pictures will be passed around.

All of the armament the police use will be department issue, and so will the ammunition. Each officer will have in their service records his/her qualification to carry a weapon in the line of duty.

The nature of the raid may include a "no-knock", break-the-door entry, if the evidence can be disposed of. This is the worst sort of raid, because in many states, it is totally legal to resist any entry of excessive force with deadly force. Also, practically speaking, any person who is prepared against home invasion may assume that this is what is really happening and may shoot to kill regardless of announcements like "Police! Search warrant! Get of the floor!" and so forth. Anyone can shout these things.

Police ordered to go on these raids may have body armor and even "flash-bang" stun grenades, but this is not a guarantee against being shot; head and neck shots are still fatal to police. Consequently, anything that looks like a threat will be shot more often than not.

There are an awful lot of people flapping figurative gums about this and that without knowing one damned thing about how raids happen. It all boils down to this:

You don't want to be shot? Don't make somebody pull a gun on you. Even police. Because no matter who you are, where you are or how good a person you think you are, bullets don't care, and the shooter usually doesn't have time to talk about the weather.

IF you have somebody with armor and and M-16 or MP-5 in the yard or in the house, your only practical chance at survival is to lie on the floor, face down, with your hands in plain sight away from anything whatsoever. If you cannot get into the yard, clear of the house, before police get to your door, do not be next to the door. If you are holding anything - dog, cat, baby, paper, comb, oxygen bottle - you greatly increase the risk you will be shot dead. If you move, you may be shot dead. Ditto if you hide your hands at any time. If anyone else in the room with you moves, that increases the chance you will be shot also, because of the possibility that you are a decoy.

These things are very tough to do because the emotional trauma of having armed troops storm your sanctuary is huge. I'm just telling you how to make the best of it, and what's really going on.

If the raid is improper, you can argue the Constitution in court - but you have to survive to get there.

Be smart about this. You might think it's horrible that drug raids happen, or that all police are thugs, but that doesn't change what happens today in any way whatsoever (sorry, you're totally impotent on this issue, short-term). If it looks like an armed thug, it gets shot, and sometimes it isn't a thug. Raids happen without producing the evidence hoped-for by law enforcement all the time, too, because probable cause doesn't exist for the bulk of any thug's activities and a house or apartment is the only chance. No, arresting a dealer on the street does not result in a lasting conviction for possession. Period. Generally, a person will be arrested on the street only for evidence connecting them to a criminal act which is independent of possession.

The next raid, by any police force, will have the same limitations this one did in dealing with bystanders. Indignant people will blame police for other people breaking the law, and thus activating enforcement powers. That's part of that "cause and effect" thing above.

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As the law stands today, you may thank drug users for making drugs so profitable that dealers risk death, passing that risk on to you, so that they can get high. The proper way to treat a law is not to break it, but to change it first. The proof is right here, in this case, like so many thousand others, because while a law exists, it must be enforced.

Using a baby in a gunfight never works. Grandma should have learned this from Prizzi's Honor:

Irene Walker: I can't get over it. What kinda creep wouldn't catch a baby? If it was real it coulda been crippled for life.

Charley Partanna: He wasn't paid to bodyguard the baby.

...because while a law exists, it must be enforced. ~ Posted by: Radwaste at September 20, 2014 7:52 AM

"I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." ~ Ulysses Simpson Grant

“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?” - Henry David Thoreau

Alonzo's two daughters have infant children -- and both daughters were implicated in the seizure of guns, $58,000, and 1,600 pills. It doesn't sound like a great environment for children. There might be a similarity to the Tarika Wilson post.

If it's true that the number of no-knock SWAT raids have grown from the hundreds/yr in the mid-'80s to 40,000/yr today, then it should be obvious that their impact on the drug trade has been ineffective. It's a brutal, counter-productive approach to the problem, and it's terrible policy.

I would think that decriminalizing and taxing cocaine, heroin, etc. would create enough revenue to make treatment a priority, rather than jail or prison. And the drug cartels wouldn't like it, either, I would assume. (I don't know the data, so what do I know?)

But looking at this map of botched drug raids from 1985-2010, I was surprised by the numbers.

For instance, in the year 2008, there were 22 botched raids in the USA. Of the 22, two innocents were killed, including Wilson. This is 22 too many, of course, and I'm not saying it's good policy, but assuming there were 30,000 raids in 2008, the number of botched raids would be 7 one- hundred-thousandths of a percent of the total number of raids.

In 1985, there were two botched raids. Assuming there were 250 raids nationwide, that would be 8 thousandths of a percent of the total.

For all I know there could be more botched raids that weren't reported, but from the database available, the totals are surprising.

Thank you, Matt.

My mistake -- it should be 7 *thousandths* of a percent, and 8 *hundredths* of a percent.

@Jason S: Evidently you are assuming the definition of a "successful" raid is merely one in which nobody gets inadvertently killed. So if some innocent family merely gets completely traumatized and their lives severely disrupted, as with most the tens of thousands of SWAT raids, I guess such a raid qualifies as a "resounding success"? I think your standards are too low still :/

I guess such a raid qualifies as a "resounding success"?

No. Not what I said, or meant.

As I stated, I think it is a brutal and barbaric approach to the problem.

I was merely looking at the data provided for "botched raids" like the two examples Amy provided on the blog post, and whether it is correctly labeled as an "epidemic".

I would think that the growing number of raids, botched or otherwise, would fit the definition of "epidemic". And that is very disturbing.