As I mentioned yesterday, LEAP speaker David Bratzer has been ordered by the Victoria Police Dept. not to speak at a city-sponsored harm reduction event. If they thought they could silence the case for legalization, their plan backfired:  

I agree with Pete Guither that it's a great segment. No matter what you think about drug policy, it just seems stupid and cowardly to deny this man his chance to speak. When opponents of legalization start resorting to this sort of petty obstructionism, it doesn’t exactly reflect confidence. If the drug war is so frickin' great, it should be easy enough to defend it without attempting to silence its critics.

Check out this letter in The Baltimore Sun from an ex-cop who's pissed off about Cheye Calvo's efforts to monitor the use of SWAT teams. The writer apparently thinks police should be free to use as much violence as they choose without having to explain themselves to angry innocent citizens whose pets they kill.

Radley Balko picks the whole thing apart masterfully, resulting in a rather useful point-by-point refutation of all the most common defenses of constantly using SWAT teams for everything. There isn’t much else to say except that it still amazes me that anyone would dare condemn Calvo's advocacy. Guess what, if cops bust into an innocent family's home and kill their dogs, they're going to be extremely displeased.

Everything that happened here is the fault of bad laws, bad procedures and bad cops. None of this is Cheye Calvo's fault, and any suggestion that he's overreacting is plainly ridiculous. You can't overreact to police coming into your home and shooting your pets! It's a really big deal. This wasn't a random accident that everyone can just put behind them. There is no such thing as an acceptable number of dog killings in the homes of innocent marijuana suspects. Things like that should never happen at all, and if they do, it should be discussed constantly until every contributing factor is identified and every responsible party is held accountable.

From our friends at LEAP:

Active duty police officer and LEAP speaker/blogger David Bratzer was planning to accept an invitation to speak about drug policy and harm reduction at an official city government-sponsored event this week...until his police department's leadership stepped in and ordered him not to show up.

More details here.

When a mysterious package of marijuana arrived at the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, police arrived moments later and murdered his dogs in a horrible botched drug raid. He was completely innocent, and now other innocent people who receive suspicious packages have to worry about being victimized by law-enforcement:

Sloan and Anderson have a German shepherd named Cheyenne. Sloan said the Berwyn Heights fiasco sprang to her mind the instant her husband told her about the coffee grounds.

"Before he even looked in to see what kind of drugs they were, I called 911," she said. "I told them exactly what was going on. I'm like, I don't want them coming through my door with guns drawn, because I love my dog." [Washington Post]

It's just so tragic that anyone would even have to worry about such a thing. Every single element of this problem is a symptom of prohibition, from the smuggling technique of intercepting packages at random addresses all the way up to the violent raids and dog killings that occur when police crash into private homes with big guns and no proof of guilt. It's a dreadful situation and no one is safe from it.

For more on the horrors of paramilitary policing, here's an interesting piece from Radley Balko and some disturbing news from Pete Guither.