Nobody is Safe from Drug Prohibition’s SWAT Teams

Yet another SWAT team raid has gone horribly bad. A group of police officers stormed a house looking for suspected drug dealers. But this otherwise normal situation is somewhat out of the ordinary because there was actually a relatively wealthy, affluent person who was unwittingly targeted:

The [police officers] were together Wednesday night, battering down the door of a suspected drug house, when two men on the other side nearly ended their lives, police said. Gillis and Garrison remained in Grant Medical Center last night, recovering from serious gunshot wounds, as investigators worked to build the case against the two men accused of shooting them during a raid gone awry on the Near East Side. One of the accused is Derrick Foster, a 38-year-old former defensive end for Ohio State University who police said has no criminal record.

The article also states that a work review called Foster "an asset to the Near East Side" of the neighborhood where he was employed as a Columbus code-enforcement supervisor. He was a pillar of society. When he heard the police bust in the door of his friends house, he mistook them for a team of robbers and fired his legally-owned weapon. He was not under any investigation, others in the house were. Here is the official police story on what took place:

Officers with the narcotics bureau's Investigative and Tactical Unit had received a warrant to search the house at 1781 E. Rich St., just north of Main Street. They approached about 9:45 p.m. IN/TAC officers are trained for such raids and make eight to 12 a week across the city, police said. They follow a specific procedure that includes announcing their presence immediately. "The whole time they're pounding on the door, they're yelling, 'Police!'," division spokeswoman Amanda Ford said.

But according to a witness, the only alert given was for the windows to be broken. The police spokeswoman, who wasn't there, apparently knows something that the witness doesn't. In addition, even if the police did yell, I can think of several completely plausible explanations why people in a home may not hear such an announcement – they’re listening to loud music, they’re in the basement working with loud machinery, they’re asleep and using earplugs, etc. Also, the article stated "police didn't know who might be in the house when they raided it." I question the intelligence and responsibility of the decision to raid a house when they had no idea who might be there. In this case, an innocent man (or men) was exposed to a traumatic experience that ended in a horrible way. What if his daughter had been there too? What this shows is that anybody could be the target of one of these raids. This is not just a problem for the underprivileged. Foster is a college-educated middle-class father. He owned a legal firearm, a right granted in part for the purposes of self-protection. Attempting to protect himself, he now faces two counts of felonious assault and attempted murder. It is extremely fortunate that this didn’t turn out even worse. Both of the policemen that were wounded are thankfully expected to recover. But the sad truth is that Foster’s five-year-old daughter is probably going to have to grow up with her father in prison because of this futile drug prohibition-related insanity. Yet another American family destroyed by the increasingly indiscriminate drug war.