A report yesterday by WMC-TV (channel 5) in Memphis was titled "North Memphis Store Sprayed with Gunfire." What happened was that after two police confronted a local drug dealer completing a sale from the parking lot of a convenience store at the corner of Chelsea and May, the dealer "ran over the officer, knocked him down and dragged him some 10 to 12 feet," according to a Sgt. Vince Higgins who was interviewed. The officer's partner then opened fire as the dealer sped away in his SUV.

Hopefully the injured officer will recover, but it's lucky that someone wasn't shot by his partner. The moral of the story is, prohibition makes the world more dangerous -- the driver of the SUV was involved in criminal activity because it's profitable, and it's profitable because the drugs are illegal -- legalization would put people like him out of that business.

Instead, we have police crawling everywhere (the news report's word, not time) looking for drug suspects to arrest. The suspects don't want to be arrested and imprisoned, so some of them resist, sometimes recklessly or violently. And this time an officer reacted the wrong way to that and put other people in danger too.

Let WMC-TV news director Peggy Phillip know you think this angle merits inclusion in the station's reporting when these things happen. A good contact for her to make in this kind of story would be the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

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