Via Radley Balko, here's another grave tragedy that we can all thank the drug war for making possible. The victim clearly freaked out when police confronted him, but I'm not at all convinced that he understood who they were. They were in plain clothes in an unmarked vehicle jumping out on a guy who'd just drawn money from an ATM. Why would he knowingly try to evade police when he didn’t have anything illegal on him?

It's one more dreadful tragedy that just didn't have to happen. Police pulling guns on harmless people should be a rare event, but it's not. And when it happens, it's almost always the result of some crazy drug investigation with more questions than answers.

When experts like Mark Kleiman say that legalization doesn’t add up, are they factoring events like this into the equation?