Feature: On the Anniversary of Kathryn Johnston's Death, Poll Finds Most Americans Oppose Use of SWAT-Style Tactics in Routine Drug Raids

that they are confident that drugs are in a house then why don't they know if and when there are guns in the house? They justify the heavy handed SWAT incursions on the basis of not knowing if there are guns on the place. But they are sure there are drugs.

I was a victim of a "no knock" warrant based on unreliable information given by some rumor filled high school girls i've never met. They murdered my best friend (my dog of 9 years who previously saved my life in a house fire) and pushed my fiance down the stairs. They made me watch my best friend suffer for 10 minutes until he passed on. This was part of my family (the best part) who had stood by me through thick and thin. If killing a police dog is considered killing an officer, then I what these "peace officers" charged with second degree murder for killing a member of my family. I was held on a "Patriot Act" 24 hour hold then released "pending further investigation". By the way, this occurred this week. I don't know if I believed in heaven & hell before this, but I certainly do now. My best friend is in heaven and those officers will burn in hell if there is a just god.

Is there such a thing? Suppose you happen to have some prohibited vegetation in the garden. Then one day you hear a helicopter hovering 30 feet above your home. Next there are 10 ,maybe 20 "agents ", all around your place. These agents do not have a warrant yet , they can't bust on in.So a waiting game of intimidation begins while the search for a willing judge to sign commences. This continues for about 8 hours because the property owner will not "cooperate" as suggested by heavily armed persuaders. Then the cornered homeowner hears a crash as the doors go down. Well you know the rest ...nobody died though. Happens all the time right? Thats a "good" bust? 829,000 arrests for a weed in 2006! Whats that got to do with FREEDOM or the presumption of privacy?

Two thirds is a "super majority" in legislative terms, so let us use the power of that super majority -- send a copy of this article to every one of your elected officials at local, state, and federal levels, and your local police department and Sheriff's office. We can stop this travesty of justice if we want, and apparently 2/3 of us do want to stop it. But it takes more than a published poll result to change things, it takes real action, so take a few minutes and email the article to all those who need to see it. Inundate them with the truth of our feelings on this subject and the power of our numbers.

Too many innocent people are killed in these raids; and even when no one is killed, wrong address raid victims never receive a public apology, nor are their homes made whole again by those who broke down the doors, turned the home's contents upside down, and often killed the family pet in the process, these innocent victims never receive any kind of compensation for the atrocities perpetrated upon them. Is this the kind of country you want? If not take action here and now.

The DEA and anyone else that supports the "war on drugs" should be charged with war crimes asap.
http://libertarianempire.com

All this happens because of the doctrine of "Sovreign Immunity" -- the SWAT teams and the people behind them are absolved for responsibility for their actions. Authority without responsibility is tyranny. Get rid of this pernicious doctrine, and make the offenders personally responsible in court, and it would go a long way toward curing the problem.

One of the lessons of the Nuremburg trials was that "I was just following orders" is no excuse.

Of course people would respond that way, look at the way they prefaced the question, by giving a biased story. If they had given a different story, a story about one of the 39,999 other raids that successfully stopped crack dealers from preying on poor Americans, perhaps the responses would have been different. These folks should have taken a few extra classes in college, perhaps some dealing with the art of "polling"

This is absolutely insane. For me, two important pillars of a civilized society are "the principle of proportionality" and that of personal responsibility for your actions.

When people talk about the need to defend democracy, I would normally just ignore it. But this, especially combined with all the other alarm reports coming out of the US lately is a big fat bell of warning. This is about so much more than the drug war, this is about basic principles of a democracy.

And how does the possibility of 39,999 other 'righteous' raids make the 1 confirmed death of an innocent ok?

How many innocent lives need to be ruined or ended before you say enough?

http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm

Reading this article made me smile greatly. As a student pursuing a master's of the Criminal Justice program at the esteemed Eastern Kentucky University (top 5 school in the nation for this degree) I have learned, in great depth, the magnitude of how these ignorant, draconian tactics have affected our justice (or lack thereof) system. Our professors have dealt with situations like these firsthand and one of their foremost teachings is how the war on drugs is a complete charade and an even bigger failure. It's great to know that other minds around the nation feel the same way.
Sadly, I have experienced this sort of thing first hand. My father had worked for 35+ years as an automobile salesman, starting out poor and with nothing. Through years of rigorous work, employing very few people, he eventually became very financially successful. This was the only way of making a living for him in our small, rural Kentucky town. In 2006, he was a candidate in a hotly contested political race in our county, and one of the opponents was indeed my mother's brother. On that windy, March day, my father's business was surrounded by an army of mercenary state policemen and charged with drug trafficking. In less than 24 hours, after finding no propagating evidence at the business, they were able to obtain a search warrant and came into our home and took nothing but a few old, valuable firearms he had collected over the years, and his life savings in cash. Before 8am the next morning, these thugs had managed to obtain warrants to search and seize his safety deposit box contents, and his Cash Deposits at the bank.
In August of '07, he was arrested under the jurisdiction of a federal indictment and is currently incarcerated in Pike County Detention Center in Pikeville, KY. He had what seemed to be a good attorney, that more or less lied and deceived him into pleading under false pretenses. He now is attempting to withdraw his plea and take it in front of a jury after being granted the right to seek new counsel. Now, here I am stuck at school, while my family sits at home with 0 income, while these corrupt, vile state troopers can sit back and enjoy a Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas while counting the money that my father sweat out over 35 years of hard work and perseverance. Of course this is only the surface, and many other saddening, civil-rights-robbing details lie below. It is the most horrifying, frightening, and gruesome displays of "criminal justice" I have ever seen or heard of in my life.

I have tried bringing publicity to this but our local newspapers are controlled by the people who put this thing in motion, and the ACLU chapter seemingly is not interested in taking part in this. It's so very sad, and what's even worse.. is I feel powerless. If any of you want to read the full story, please visit:

http://corruptinjustice.blogspot.org

Kudos to the writers of this article and to those who conducted this research, as well as all supporters. My hat is off to all of you.

Ok, something happened to my link and my blog is messed up. Anyone who is interested may email me at [email protected] and I will respond. Any and all help is appreciated. Thank you all.

A lot of these cops like these raids because they get to dress up in cool gear, carry rifles they normally do not carry, play with night vision, and use explosives. They think it's cool. Seriously, most of these guys make well less than $40,000 a year. Who would do a job like this for the money? Serving the community? Gimme a break. Most do it because they like to bully people and feel all big and tough. They all want to be Rambo.

The fact is that in most localities SWAT training sucks. In fact, most police officers are horribly trained. I am a gun owner, and attend several professional training classes a year for both handguns and AR-15 rifles. Some of the folks taking the classes are former law enforcement and one thing they repeatedly state is how poorly trained they were. As civiliians taking these classes they are better trained than most local SWAT teams (their words, not mine). In fact, some of the tactics and techniques taught to some SWAT teams result in horrible and unsafe firearms handling practices. You want guys busting in doors that don't even keep their fingers off the trigger until they are ready to fire? Get startled and jerk the trigger firing a round at whatever your rifle happened to be pointed at. Nice.

Police justify these heavy-handed tactics under the "it's for officer safety" argument. Unfortunately, I don't view their safety as any more important than mine. That is why I choose to be armed and well trained - so that I can protect myself. I fear that if cops executed a mistaken "no knock" raid on my house we'd end up with an pleasant situation, just like this poor 91 year old woman (she is to be commended for attempting to protect herself, BTW). As a citizen, you can't just assume everyone who busts down your door is a police officer.

I understand that no-knock raids may sometimes be necessary. However, the standards for executing said raids should be high. It should not be simply the word of some informant (who's probably a criminal anyway). And police should be held accountable. Just last week in Lawrenceburg, Indiana the local SWAT gestapo tossed tear gas into the wrong house, ruining everything in the house. Single mother of two, everything ruined, cops said she could clean up on her own. Apparently, no liability. Jack-booted thugs, plain and simple.

The death of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston is shocking. The fact that the narcotics officers planted marijuana in her basement is even worse.Kathryn's death was obviously a mistake. A terrible result of bad policy and bad police work. The planting of evidence was not a mistake, and I find it particularly disturbing that that these officers were READY and willing to defile the memory of the grandmother they had just slaughtered by making her out to be a drug dealer post mortem. The people we trust to keep law and order should not be above the law, or have the "above the law" mindset. Honestly, what can you do if you get framed by the police? How many other people were framed by these people?

We haven't seen anything yet....it's going to get A LOT worse.......The American experiment is over....the people failed....the elites are right....the majority of sheeple really are too stooopid to live their own lives!

Duhhhh...freedom? What's that?

Regardless of what I have said...I do still believe those of us that do have a clue still need to fight against evil....but with the realization that it will not matter.

Lord help us all.......

As I see it, we lack a strategy to overcome the principle road block to the end of this persecution.

First, the "drug war" is really a struggle over marijuana prohibition. They like to lump all the drugs together to confuse and cast guilt on marijuana by "association." And it has worked well.

But 100 million Americans have consumed marijuana. There are likely about 30 million current consumers. Any group of such numbers should have trashed the fraud decades ago. And ending marijuana prohibition would most likely knock the stuffing out of the whole war on recreational drug consumers.

However, as Richard Cowan says, marijuana prohibition is the only major issue where the key stakeholders - marijuana consumers - are excluded from the discussion. If a marijuana consumer dares to speak out, they are targeted by police and driven from professional level employment. Yes, there are a few exceptions. People who are in unique employment positions, or retired, who can speak without losing everything they've got.

The fascists seized the government with the election of Ronald Reagan. It was such a huge turning point, I'm beginning to suspect that ceremony. They pumped up marijuana prohibition and used it as an effective tool to begin the removal of our freedoms and rights.

Clinton was as big a part of the problem as the rest. He gave us McCaffrey as a drug czar and elevated the Inquisition to record heights. To add insult to injury, as he left office he mumbled that he thought marijuana should be legalized. Thanks a lot, Bill! I wish someone would ask Hillary if she agrees with her husband's statement.

So now the partial job of the destruction of our freedom is being completed with the war on terrorism. Still, if we were to somehow free those 30 to a 100 million people from the gags so cleverly placed on them, they would consititute an unstopable force. Not only would they end marijuana prohibition and the whole fraud of all prohibition, they would likely be enough to also stop the fraudulent "war on terror" and shrink the executive branch back down to its proper size.

So, we need ideas on how to empower this great consituency.

One of the ideas I had was that all marijuana consumers should join the Unitarian Universalist church. This amazingly open-minded, dogma free congregation already declared their support for an end to marijuana prohibition. If they recieved a sudden injection of 50 million members, all determined to begin the fight at last, it would spell the end of the grand witch hunt. The church could even provide cover to its new activists. They could say they are carrying out the will of the church which has decided to fight to end the persecution of many of its members. Consumers and non-consumers alike would march together and the grand stigma the fascists have worked so hard to create and maintain would not stick.

This is just one idea, but it really is time to wake the tranquilized (by government/corporate sponsored terrorism) giant of U.S. marijuana consumers. We need more ideas.

Although Professor Julian Heicklen never smoked or cared about marijuana, when he retired, he led a smoke-in at the gates of Penn State every Thursday for about a year at the end of the nineties. He said,

"MARIJUANA IS THE MESSENGER, NOT THE MESSAGE! THE LIT MARIJUANA HERB IS THE TORCH OF FREEDOM!"

I have been an outspoken critic of the rise and use of militarized police forces for a long time. There is NO economic or threat based justification for SWAT teams - just look at the FBI and other Government reports. COPS are not and never have been being slaughtered (about 50 out of 900,000 die by gunshot each year), they are NOT outgunned, criminals do not use automatic weaponry, and there are so few hostage and no terroirist attack situations that SWAT is used to serve warrants almost exclusively - not their purpose. The billions spent per year on these play soldiers, if spent instead on improving for instance our highways, would save thousands if not tens of thousands of lives PER YEAR.

The thing I hate is that SWAT teams are used mainly in drug related raids (where there is no need for them to be used). And people get hung up with Drug decriminalization issues because of that. With respect, I try to set aside the drug issue and whatever individuals perspective is on that issue.

The real issue to me is we have eliminated the Possse Comitatus Act, Habeas Corpus, the 4th amendment and we have allowed a standing army of rambo thugs to take hold and grow and grow - and people's civil rights, lives, limbs and private property are being destroyed wholesale.

I'd love to see a valid cost benefit study done which could actually justify (based on reality - not "well one day Osama could take over a school and then we'd need SWAT "- btw SWAT did NOTHING at Columbine) the continued existence of SWAT teams.

Nick Charles

If al-Q or some such group decided to pull a Beslan in the US, SWAT would be useless. They'd definitely be outgunned-terrorists would bring serious weapons, including grenades and other explosives.

So if they didn't kill everyone inside the school before SWAT got there, SWAT would be outgunned, outplanned, and quite possibly outmanned.

If the Tangos decided to try to play the hostage game, SWAT and the local PD would be good for establishing a perimeter, and that's about it. If it was a real terrorist situation, I can almost guarantee that there would be a bunch of VERY well trained, very serious men from military units that Uncle Sam doesn't officially acknowledge exit on the scene in a matter of hours. (No, they're not all committed overseas. They rotate. And if American kids were being held hostage by terrorists in America, you would have to beat those guys into unconsciousness to keep them off the plane to get there, I guarantee it.)

An earlier poster hit on one of the problems with SWAT units-the type of cops who volunteer for SWAT are very often exactly the guys you DO NOT want doing that sort of job-precisely because they think it's cool, and are in love with the power and imagined badassery of the job. Also, their use for low level drug raids comes about at least in part for the stupid political reason of guaranteeing future funding. All that gear, and any training they actually do, is expensive. That expense has to be justified, and despite what Hollywood thinks, there are relatively few hard core criminals who'd rather shoot it out with the cops than get arrested. So, they get used for things that a couple of uniformed cops could do, mainly in the name of "preserving evidence." Here's a bright idea-turn the place's water off during the night, wait til he gets up and takes his morning leak, thus emptying the toilet tank, and then have the cops knock on the door. Even better, if possible, wait til the inhabitants leave, then search the place, giving them a phone call while you're doing it so they can come home.

If politicians won't disarm these thugs, then we must stage emergency recall elections, vote them out! In the meantime, we must do our best to defend ourselves-it's time to revive the concept of the Militia composing all able bodied Americans.

Some websites:

www.awrm.org
www.rwva.org
http://freedomguide.blogspot.com

J. Croft

Guaranteed ...it will be getting WORSE. Blackwater Global Inc.has received funding for counter narcotics actions. They will be coming back to the States after being kicked out of Iraq. A privatized,militarized,police force, on domestic duty. What can be done? Not much. It's nearly over USA, the grand experiment has failed. Of course," if your not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about"...right? Voting for the assortment of Republicrats is ...well...just voting, is'nt it ? Maybe Radley Balko will save the day...otherwise I'm afraid it's ...you know....(delete).

Please visit my website http://noxcusesnone.com

This article is so stupid. Of course it was right for them to gun her down because she fired at them. It was either them or her. If anyone else would of been in the swat officers shoes, they wouldn't think twice about it. Typical stupid americans thinking that the police is bad and corrupt. They only seem that way because stupid uneducated people talk about them like that.

"It was either them or her." --- Hmmm, guess it's also either you or me!

"No one knows how many more innocents have been injured by testosterone-crazed police or had their property wantonly destroyed in such raids. And no one is even counting how many people -- innocent, guilty, family members -- have been needlessly traumatized by the jackboot kicking the door in at 4:00am and all that follows."

And no one knows how many were framed by police planting drugs, as happened to Johnston. The system needs to consume human victims to keep going, and it doesn't much care if they are breaking any law.

Of course it doesn't matter if the police announce themselves on these raids. That does not make their actions acceptable. Any home invasion gang with any sense is going to yell "Police" when they break your door in, too.

ok if these drugs are so bad 1)pot now after all these years it now helps cancer 2)meth was given to soliders in the wars and yes this war to,if its so bad why give it to the soilders who are fighting for our lives never mind all that where the hell does some people think it comes from ?! the gov wants the drugs out there its all about the money they didnt get it from the pot so now its legal this is all about the money!looks like they would take the war on drug funds and put it where its needed oh that would be to easy. we are suppose to be free its your body if you want to use that should be choice. as long as your not hurting someone else or pushing them on kids you should be able to give it hell.