Brutal Drug Raid Killing Caught on Video
The drug czar has gone to great rhetorical lengths to convince the American people that our drug policy isn’t a war any longer, but you don't have to look very hard to see the violence that still erupts daily, not only in Mexico, but right here in our own communities. If you can handle it, I'd like you to take a look at just one example of the incredible violence police use when enforcing our drug laws.
That is how quickly lives are lost in the war on drugs. When police invade private homes in search of drugs, anything and everything can go wrong, and even the slightest misunderstanding becomes a matter of life and death. The victim in this case, Todd Blair, brandished a golf club in terror as armed men stormed his home in the night. We'll never know for sure if he realized they were police. But we do know that only a small amount of drugs were found in the raid that took his life.
That drugs and violence often go hand in hand isn't a mystery to many among us – the bloodshed gripping Mexico is old news by now – but this is a very different kind of drug war violence than the infamous turf wars of the cartels. This is a rare glimpse into the unbelievable level of force our own public servants unleash routinely in order to protect us from ourselves. This man was just a drug user. Whether he ever sold drugs is in dispute, but there's no question that he lived and died in poverty, and not from drugs, but from police who gunned him down in his own home.
So long as we rely on police to lead the fight against drug abuse, the consequences will unfold brutally all around us and people who could have been helped – not to mention innocent bystanders – will be lost to us forever. Mistakes and misunderstandings will continue to occur with deadly frequency, but to a very large extent, the tragic events that take place daily in the war on drugs are not mistakes at all; they are the real and inevitable results of the laws our police enforce and the orders they receive. If heavily-armed pre-dawn drug raids are standard protocol, then people getting shot dead in the dark obviously can't be considered a crime, and it shouldn't be called an accident either.
The movement to end the war on drugs isn't just about making drugs legal. It's also about making it illegal for police to kill our friends and family over small bags of contraband.
Prohibition versus Conservatism
It's time for us all to stop being ignorant hypocrites and start being TRUE conservatives!
Pragmatic libertarians (minimal-statists) and "true" Conservatives agree that many, if not most, of society's problems are caused by government usurping choices that could better be made by individuals and that government is just about the worst way of doing almost anything. Where libertarianism normally parts company with "fake" conservatism is over moral issues. But a true conservative would have no problem with agreeing, that what people do with their own bodies, and especially in the privacy of their own home, should be supremely their business, and that anything else would entail ignoring the basic tenet of limited government.
Fake-Conservatism on the other hand has much in common with socialism; Both Leftists and Fake-Conservatives appear to harbor the belief that nature does not exist and that any human can be anything he wants to be, or can for the "greater good", be "re-educated" into being. Leftists therefore think little boys can be conditioned into preferring dolls over toy soldiers, and similarly Fake-conservatives believe that adults can be coerced into choosing alcohol over marijuana. A true conservative, just like a pragmatic libertarian, would immediately reject both ideas as nonsense.
If you support prohibition then you are NOT a conservative.
Conservative principles, quite clearly, ARE:
1) Limited, locally controlled government.
2) Individual liberty coupled with personal responsibility.
3) Free enterprise.
4) A strong national defense.
5) Fiscal responsibility.
Prohibition is actually an authoritarian War on the Constitution and all civic institutions of our great nation.
It's all about the market and cost/benefit analysis. Whether any particular drug is good, bad, or otherwise is irrelevant! As long as there is demand for any mind altering substance, there will be supply; the end! The only affect prohibiting it has is to drive the price up, increase the costs and profits, and where there is illegal profit to be made criminals and terrorists thrive.
The cost of criminalizing citizens who are using substances no more harmful than similar things that are perfectly legal like alcohol and tobacco, is not only hypocritical and futile, but also simply not worth the incredible damage it does.
Afghani farmers produce approx. 93% of the world's opium which is then, mostly, refined into street heroin then smuggled throughout Eastern and Western Europe.
Both the Taliban and the terrorists of al Qaeda derive their main income from the prohibition-inflated value of this very easily grown crop, which means that Prohibition is the "Goose that laid the golden egg" and the lifeblood of terrorists as well as drug cartels. Only those opposed, or willing to ignore this fact, want things the way they are.
See: How opium profits the Taliban: http://tinyurl.com/37mr86k
or: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW OF NARCOTICS-FUNDED TERRORIST GROUPS
http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/NarcsFundedTerrs_Extrems.pdf
According to data gathered by privacy expert Christopher Soghoian (PhD candidate at Indiana University), 85-90% of real-time surveillance of your Internet communication is wasted on prohibition enforcement.
youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jJDCxzKmROY#t=342s
- he discusses drug related Internet wiretaps at 5min 42sec
Prohibition provides America's sworn enemies with financial "aid" and tactical "comforts". The Constitution of the United States of America defines treason as:
"Article III / Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
Support for prohibition is therefor an act of treason against the Constitution, and a dire threat to the nation's civic institutions.
The Founding Fathers were not social conservatives who believed that citizens should be subordinate to any particular narrow religious moral order. That is what the whole concept of unalienable individual rights means, and sumptuary laws, especially in the form of prohibition, were something they continually warned about.
It is way past time for us all to wise up and help curtail the dangerous expansions of federal police powers, the encroachments on individual liberties, and the increasing government expenditure devoted to enforcing the unworkable and dangerous policy of drug prohibition.
To support prohibition you have to be either ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, insane or corrupt.
* The US national debt has increased at an average rate of $3,000,000000 per day since 2006. http://www.usdebtclock.org/
* The unemployment rate has increased by 7300 per day since 2008.
* The loss of manufacturing jobs has been 1400 per day since 2006.
* Without the legalized regulation of opium products Afghanistan will continue to be a bottomless pit in which to throw countless billions of tax dollars and wasted American lives.
* The hopeless situation in Afghanistan is helping to destabilize it's neighbor, Pakistan, which is a country with nuclear weapons.
* The mayhem in Mexico has deteriorated so badly that it’s bordering on farcical.
There is nothing conservative about prohibition, which enlists the most centralized state power in displacement of domestic and community roles. There is everything authoritarian and subversive about this policy which has incinerated American traditions such as Freedom and Federalism with its puritanical flames. Any person seeking to insure and not further compromise the safety of their family and of their neighbors must not only repudiate prohibition but help spearhead its abolition.
"Narcotics police are an enormous, corrupt international bureaucracy … and now fund a coterie of researchers who provide them with ‘scientific support’ … fanatics who distort the legitimate research of others. … The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help, and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents." – William F. Buckley, Commentary in The National Review, April 29, 1983, p. 495
We will always have adults who are too immature to responsibly deal with tobacco, alcohol, heroin, cocaine, meth, various prescription drugs, gambling and even food. Our answer to them should always be: "Get a Nanny, and stop turning the government into one for the rest of us!"
This is INSANE this should be
This is INSANE this should be posted on everyones facebook this is exactly what our government allows to happen to its citizens over the irrational "war on drugs". Regain your right to choose and stop the top 0.5% of the populations profiting from your suffering.
One person one vote
your last right(until they take that too)
NO FN WAY IS IT OK!
This is crazy
So the police have taken up the policy on shooting first and asking questions later. Just to think they busted threw his door, shot and killed him. Now some one point out to me where the justice in this is because i don't see any.
"Justified" Shooting
The sad thing is that shootings like this are always justified as necessary and appropriate. They point out that the victim was "brandishing a weapon" and that the safety of police officers was in danger.
But honestly, who greets a room full of police with the intent to beat them over the head one-by-one with a 9 iron because of a little dope in the back room? Nobody. This guy thought his house was being invaded, and was simply defending himself from what he thought were armed robbers. If the police had simply knocked on the door like civilized people and served their warrant, no shots ever would have been fired.
It's very similar to cases like that of Ryan Frederick, who was charged with murdering a police officer after shooting at what he thought were armed robbers. People don't attack police to avoid getting busted for pot or coke -- they react in self-defense when they believe malicious robbers are attacking their homes. It's the raid itself that makes the situation violent and confusing and unpredictable.
If you can do this to your own people...
The lack of concern for other people's lives shown in this video is just sickening. But it is even more sickening to think that the same attitude is the basis of the US "War on Drugs". I wonder what percentage of the US population support what the US government do and encourage other government to do in their name.
It is clear to me that the fanaticism and fundamentalism of the USA when it comes to pursuing the so-called “war on drugs” is simply a reflection of their myopic and skewed views about human affairs. It is as if violence were the only instrument they are capable of entertaining. It is as if they were telling the world: if this is the way we do it, then that's the way you must do it, too. No room left for more civilised, rational policies.
The question is: what are US citizen doing to oppose such policies? What sort of pressure are they putting on their government, politicians and policy institutions to put an end to the barbaric policies incarnated in their “war on drugs”?
In my blog http://www.stopthewarondrugs.org I’ve given a little twist to IDPC campaign calling for Impact Assessments on Drug Policy and am asking people to demand that Parliament debate the need for such assessments. The final objective of actions like this would be to force the Government to assess objectively the convenience of drug legalisation and leave the Government with no other option but to accept the scientific community recommendations.
I’m wondering if US citizens could promote something similar, or any other mechanism to force the US Government to abandon their murderous and heinous drug enforcement policies and look for policies based on objective, scientific principles and not on prejudice and ideology.
Gart Valenc
shut up moron
"It is clear to me that the fanaticism and fundamentalism of the USA when it comes to pursuing the so-called “war on drugs” is simply a reflection of their myopic and skewed views about human affairs. It is as if violence were the only instrument they are capable of entertaining. It is as if they were telling the world: if this is the way we do it, then that's the way you must do it, too. No room left for more civilised, rational policies."
Oh shut up, moron. The cops shot too fast, the cop should be suspended, drugs kill, countries that legalzie them still have a problem with crime (and when Prohibition was ended in the U.S. it didn't kill the Mob), and it's YOUR "AMERICA SUCKS" attitude that should be flushed down the toilet.
Drugs kill? He was in
Drugs kill? He was in possession of MARIJUANA. When have you EVER heard of anyone dying as a result of using marijuana? Geeez. I wish people would stop drinking the "Say No To Drugs" kool-aid. It's nothing but propaganda funded by the liquor and tobacco companies. Wake up, people!
The U.S. DOES kinda suck right now, thanks to the greedy, crooked politicians who have very nearly ruined this wonderful nation over the past 30 years and nobody in Congress is trying to do anything to fix it; the corporations have our wonderful legislators in-pocket and said legislators are too busy bickering over party differences and trying to one-up each other, all for the sake of winning elections so they can keep their own gravy trains rolling.
RE: shut up moron
He was in possession of MARIJUANA. When have you ever heard of someone dying from using marijuana? Geez, I wish people would stop drinking the "Say No To Drugs" kool-aid. There is much worse crap out there than pot, starting with alcohol (the REAL gateway drug.) I used to be a bartender and I've seen my share of sad-assed, lonely drunks drinking themselves into the grave. And America DOES suck right now, thanks to the greedy corrupt politicians who have all but ruined this wonderful nation over the past 30 years. Wake up.
Suspended for Murder?
Countries with legalized drug laws don't have cops busting into private homes and shooting innocent people.
Suspending a cop for murder is not justice. Those cops were out of control. They need more than a slap on the wrist or loss of pay.
When Prohibition ended the turf wars over alcohol ended and the streets became much safer.
If you want to defend American anti-drug policies, try to do so without childish name calling. Otherwise, it would be better for us all if you would shut up.
and this is why the
and this is why the Netherlands is closing down 8 prisons because they do not have enough prisoners to fill them?
Do not call people morons just because you disagree
Drugs can kill yes, but legal drugs kill just as much.
"drugs kill, countries that legalzie them still have a problem with crime (and when Prohibition was ended in the U.S. it didn't kill the Mob), "
But cannabis does not kill. Certainly not the way all other drugs do, legal or illegal. Everywhere is going to have a problem with crime. The issue is that many drug users should not be considered criminals, based on consumption alone. There are responsible people out there that should be allowed to decide for themselves. The people who are irresponsible will be so whether or not some drugs are made legal or not. Why are you feeding the same line we have all heard, "drugs kill" the statement is overblown and needs to be modified with sound reasoning and facts.
And you are right the end of alcohol prohibition did not kill the Mob, because they had other illegal drugs to fall back on to make a profit like cocaine.
Sickening.
I live in Utah and the police get away with so much brutality it makes me sick. That man didn't deserve to die. Hopefully more people here start to fight the power and stop this oppression. This war needs to end.
We need a wave of sanity to
We need a wave of sanity to sweep over the world. This is just insane.
Ha
Guy looked mexican't to me: Good Shoot!
RE: Ha
Aren't you running late for your Klan meeting?
You are lost
The most dangerous thing is the combination of ignorance and intolerance. It creates bigotry, racism, hate, and irrational thought. It is horrific to praise the death of another person, especially in this case where we no nothing of this man. I pity you.
American standards lol and
Murder By Police
This man was murder by the police ! Where will his family get justice ?
THIS MUST STOP!!!
THE DRUG WAR IS A WAR ON AMERICAN CITIZENS! THIS INSANITY MUST STOP NOW! ALL IT DOES IS CAUSE VIOLENCE, NOT STOP IT. IT CREATES A MARKET FOR DRUG DEALERS AND GIVES POLICE A REASON TO SHOOT AND ARREST NONVIOLENT AND INNOCENT PEOPLE.
Police brutality
Unbelievable. I see a bunch of storm troopers invade a man's private residence who responded to the no-knock barge in with a golf club and it wound up costing him his life. Talk about excessive force... three shots for a golf club and some weed. The lead officer deserves to be sent to prison.
Karma
I have a place for him and his kind...... ...... ......
Are you effing kidding me?
Maybe the guy was high, maybe he was a small time dealer, who knows, but he was EXECUTED without a trial. Eff these aholes; they are all going to hades. No civilized person would participate in this slaughter.
Unbelievable
I can't believe what I just saw -- The man was clearly a long distance away from harming anyone, even potentially harming. A golf club isn't any sort of weapon against a gun. The police could and should have ordered him to put down his weapon at the least and then conducted their search.
It is clear that they just came in there with their guns ready to shoot without any provocation at all.
Armored with Kevlar
All of these "officers" of the "law" were wearing armor. I was in the Army, and wore very similar armor. I would have to say that if someone came running at me with a golf club, I would probably laugh and then simply detain them. Kevlar deflects bullets and shrapnel. I'm pretty sure that it would stop a golf club.
Unfortunately
There is still too many sheeple out there that believe every word that our corrupt, opressive government shoves down their throats. The fact that 2 people have watched a man get murdered in his own home by the gestapo and actually support this crap. Hey Mr. Joe, this could easily happen to yourself, or a friend or family member. I'll bet you would not be so gung ho then, partner.
Fear and Loathing in Utah
It’s clear from the video clip that the State of Utah condones this kind of behavior from its law enforcement personnel. Deadly force was unnecessary. One shot would have stopped Todd Blair in his tracks, but the cop didn’t hesitate to fire twice. The officer killed with impunity because he can—because no penalties for doing so are to be expected in Utah.
Utah has been ranked 44th among 50 states in a recent survey rating tolerance. The product of tolerance is civility; making intolerance uncivil, therefore barbaric, and at least in the case of Todd Blair, fatal. Utah’s aggressive police tactics in drug raids are like a candy store for psychopaths who have no appreciation for the sanctity of life.
Utah’s dumb thugs may be proud of what transpired in their name, but there are far more civilized outsiders who will take exception to what happened. There will be corrosive consequences for Utah, both financially and in terms of its perceived social status, if it continues to allow excessive force by police to go unpunished.
Giordano
RIP
If you support this War on Drugs
This mans death is on you!!!! And all the others like it. You might as well have pulled the trigger!
Stop the war.
Okay, your the point man for
Okay, your the point man for the S.W.A.T team. You knock in the door after you yell Police possibly 15 times, not something a criminal will do in the middle of the night. The door opens and within a second a man sprints out from around the corner holding what could be a weapon and is running straight at you. Also remember he is probably drugged up with the intent to fight. What are you gonna do? Wait until he is on top of you, rendering your rifle and sidearm useless, or are you gonna fire possibly saving your own life?
Missed the point
How any of us would (or even should) behave if you were the point man for a SWAT team is NOT the point. The point is that the drug war is costing lives for no good reason. You want to solve this problem? Learn from Portugal and shift away from criminal sanctions and toward treatment. The drug problem should be a public health issue, NOT a criminal justice issue.
Why are you trying to justify this?
You assume too much! He may not have been on anything, all they found was a small amount. And he didn't run around the corner at the cops. He was just standing there, he probably did not know what the hell the cops were yelling. They should have told him to get down before they shot him. They yelled "search warrant" over and over as they entered, and acted like they were raiding enemy territory . It was just a home! Watch it again, I have watched it about 5 times now, and I see an abuse of power.
Golf club vs SWAT team
> Okay, your the point man for the S.W.A.T team. What are you gonna do?
Okay, I am a point man for a SWAT team. I have at least five heavily armored and armed men behind me. Someone is standing in front of me with a golf club. What do I do? Even if he was running at me I'd still realize... "Hey there are five of us here, with armor and guns, and this one guy in a t-shirt has a golf club... uh this is an easy situation... we'll tackle him and take him down."
But no... the guy was just standing there... making the situation even more difficult for the poor SWAT team!
Yes, yes... poor poor SWAT team... they are constantly getting attacked and killed by golfers in their own homes. When will the tragedy end? Think of the poor SWAT team members, all they had was full body armor and guns to protect themselves... against a lone golf club!!! I mean come onnnn... the entire SWAT team was in terrible danger. That golf club could have easily killed them all in the blink of an eye.
Dear Think People
With all that armor the cops have no reason to fear for their own lives. Besides their JOB is to PROTECT the lives of others, not their own at the cost of (innocent of any violent crime) others' lives.
You must be a cop, nothing about being a cop makes a cop's life any more important than the life of any other person. However, the position of power into which we hire cops SHOULD make them be held to a much higher standard of calm and tolerant behavior, in every situation, as any person who is not a cop. When cops kill, they should be subject to a thorough investigation, not a cover up; the standard for a "justified kill" should be extremely high, not merely "followed department procedure/protocol"; and the punishment should be as harsh as for a non-cop who killed someone, even accidentally, rather than the paid vacation they usually get.
i fail to see the sprinting
i fail to see the sprinting part that would warant a bullet...
he was standing still for f sake. and like 5 m away.. what are you visually impaired?
Completely unnecessary
Who was in whose house without an invitation? That guy, Todd Blair, had every right to jump around in HIS HOUSE with a golf club. There is no good reason why there should have been a bunch of guys in there with guns at the time. Bottom line is the cops broke into a guy's house in the middle of the night and murdered him. If Todd Blair had been a terrorist and the police had reason to believe he was building a bomb in there then, yeah, they might have had a reason to do that. I don't care if there was 500 kg of heroin in there, they had no right to kill a man to get to it. It just doesn't come anywhere close to being worth it. All they had to do was wait for everyone to leave the house, as they eventually would have had to, and THEN go in and search it. They preferred the trusty Utah Police policy of just killing the occupant instead. Saves a few hours of overtime pay. Besides, Blair wasn't a Mormon so in their eyes he was less than human. That's how they keep down the non-Mormon population in Utah.
Legal murder.
If you don't like you're neighbor all you have to do is call the cops and tell them he has a little pot and you can have him executed legally and for free, and you can even watch the video on youtube later while enjoying a beer, a cigarette and a bong and even have a good laugh at the same time.
They used to do this sort of thing in the name of protecting us from commies, now that communism is dead they shifted their focus to an even greater evil, so-called, and upped the stakes. Thank goodness the US people do have in fact a truly democratic system that is allowing them to break down this insane wall, be it all too slowly but it is very hard work. So everyone prepare for the 2012 election and vote to legalise. Then we can set the captives free and put these murdering pigs in jail for the rest of their lives. To support prohibition you have to be ignorant, stupid, brainwashed, insane or corrupt.what to do
We need a Class Action law suit brought against all involved in this atrocity and all others like it!. The body isn't even cold before the cops are typically exhonerated so little to no chance of any justice there. When did we stop caring about the taking of a human life in this country? This drug war is unconstitutional. No-knock warrants are cowardly and unconstitutional. When did the people become the enemy of the government? When did people give up their sovereign right to decided whether or not and which substances they want to use in the privacy of their own homes? When did a man's home cease to be his castle? What was the point of this raid? Was it really worth the life of a human being? When did unalienable rights become subject to the whims of government? Where is the science that this prohibition is based on? This is not only unconstitutional but it's un-American. Our founding fathesr NEVER would have imagined that this sort of TYRANNY could be taking place under the constitution that they wrote.
25 year old murdered
in Aurora Co tonite , The man was in front of his mother 's house to pick up his 3 year old daughter .
The police state that we are
The police state that we are now in is something that many citizens blindly followed into, believing the propaganda that our law enforcement officials created under the smoke screen they called protection of society, with full backing from the Federal government including the Supreme court. Unfortunately over the years law enforcement has been allowed to get warrants with little or in some cases manufactured evidence and invade our privacy, even murdering innocent individuals in these military swat raids they will expand into every citizens lives at one time or another, but then it's too late. Once there was a country that used these type of tactics spewing propaganda that there actions were to protect law abiding citizens, but in the end almost everyone suffered the results, this was in 1940's Germany. It can and is happening here in the U.S. we need to take our bill of rights back and push it down the throats of the political and legal system that allows these gangs called law enforcement to do whatever they wish to do including getting away with murder.
crooked ass law
well i watched th video look like he had golf club weel the cops should not have shot him . anyone who is a cop an says it is justified is a dumb pile of shit butt we know tjhat/. well lets see some one coming with a golf club at me oh shoot. well thats called triger happy hoe. so there u got it from big mike cops suck big dicks just like there moms do if u donyu like what i said bring your sorry crooked asss down here to texas and let me shoot u oh let me give u a golf club let me knock then shoot your ass lol thats what u did u dumb mother fuckers butt u better watch it god saw it all and u going down
Post new comment