Consequences of Prohibition
Drug War Issues
Police conducting an undercover, street-level, reverse drug sting in Putnam County, Florida, shot and killed one of their targets Friday night as he attempted to drive away from the scene. Andrew Anthony Williams, a 48-year-old black man, becomes the 11th person to die in US domestic drug law enforcement operations so far this year.
Deputies had successfully sold drugs to and arrested 10 people, but when they identified themselves and tried to arrest Williams, who was number 11, he declined. "[H]e drove away quickly and hit a tree," the St. Augustine Record reported. "The man next backed up toward the deputies, then put the vehicle into drive and turned toward some of them, the Sheriff’s Office said. Four deputies fired at the oncoming vehicle almost simultaneously, the Sheriff's Office said."
News 4 Jax had it this way: "…when they tried to arrest Williams, he took off in a blue SUV and, swerving to avoid deputies, ran into a tree. Williams then backed up and tried to take off again toward deputies causing four of them to open fire on Williams SUV, hitting him an unknown number of times."
Williams was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. One deputy was wounded in the gunfire, but that bullet came from another deputy's gun, according to the Sheriff's Office. (In the headline for its story about the incident, News 4 Jax neglected to mention that anyone had been killed, going with "Putnam County deputy hit by bullet fired at suspect.")
The Sheriff's Office did not identify the four deputies involved in the shooting, but was quick to make available Williams' criminal history, which including charges for drugs, fleeing, eluding, resisting arrest, and battery on a law enforcement officer.
The four deputies are on paid administrative leave.
This killing should raise a few questions, both about the nature of the operation itself and about what actually occurred.
Reverse drug stings are a controversial tactic, sometimes arguably justifiable at the higher echelons of the drug trade, where selling sizeable quantities of drugs to a player to see where they go help crack a drug ring, but that logic isn’t at work here, where the only result is to round up some street drug buyers and drag them into the criminal justice system. Is having deputies pretend to be drug dealers to bust small-time users really the county's best use of its law enforcement resources?
And then there's the no-witness "he was going to run me over" defense used by the police to justify the killing. It happens not infrequently. Williams may have decided that getting busted on a minor dope charge was worth trying to murder a group of police officers with his vehicle. But could it have been that he was just trying to get away?
It'll be up to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which investigates officer-involved killings, to get to the bottom of it.
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Comments
Police Shootings in Drug bust s avoid the Media spotlight
Why some police shootings garner the media's attention is hard to fathom. However, there is one consistency in shootings related to drug busts. That's when the victim is also a drug suspect, the mainstream media has no interest in reporting on the story. I witnessed this trend locally in Upstate New York and nationwide. There appears to be a justification and judgment on the part of the media that drug suspects have it coming to them. I don't know what else explains their silence. In a few rare cases where the victim is a government official such as when the mayor of a Delaware town had his home raided or someone with the resources to have a lawyer on retainer, the media takes interest in the story. The deference shown to law enforcement by the media is troubling as it only emboldens them to continue to be aggressive and in some cases reckless in the prosecution of the drug war.
I never heard of this particular crap before, it's sickening
Incredible that thugs in uniform are allowed to get away with this garbage. Thugs who then go home and consume alcohol, which every sober person knows is far more dangerous than cannabis. Drug warrior cops should be aware that even if it's decades from now, they may have to answer to a citizenry who see things very differently from those today who would justify these Gestapo tactics.
Set Up and Murdered
This is scarcely believable to British ears.
It's like something out of Johan Hari's "Chasing the Scream".
Shooting at Vehicles
I worked in law enforcement for many years. I think today officers shoot people in vehicles too often. If an officer has time to draw their weapon and shoot the driver before the vehicle hits them, then they also had time to step out of the way of the vehicle.
I can't imagine a situation where you would have time to shoot, and time for the vehicle to come to a stop without hitting the officer, that the officer couldn't get out of the way. Deadly force should only be used to protect the life of the officer, or someone else.
un called for
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