FBI Drug Squad Uses Chainsaw To Invade…the Wrong Apartment

If anyone needs another reminder that the adrenaline-addicted anti-drug armies we've unleashed in our own communities are more dangerous than any drug on the planet, well, get a load of this:

FITCHBURG (CBS) – It’s going to be a while before things get back to normal for Judy Sanchez and her three-year-old daughter.

Last Thursday, a team of FBI agents swarmed her apartment building as part of a massive citywide drug and weapons gang raid.

Trouble is, Sanchez lives in apartment 2R.

The suspect they were after is in 2F.
…

“I just happened to glance over and saw this huge chainsaw ripping down the side of my door,” she explains. “And I was freaking out. I didn’t know what was going on.” [CBS Boston]

I'm sure it's just a matter of time before some spokesperson comes along to explain to everyone why breaking out a f$%king chainsaw at a drug raid was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances. Maybe their battering ram was broken from too many batterings. Or, gasp, maybe they chainsaw through people's doors all the damn time and we're only hearing about it now because they finally – inevitably – carved their way into somewhere they weren't supposed to be.

I could spend an extraordinarily long time enumerating all the ways that this is insane, but if I had to choose, I'd say the #1 most horrifyingly messed up thing about this is that they knocked first. It's protocol, I know, but that rule has to change now that there's a chainsaw in play. Imagine that you're doing what someone is theoretically expected to do when you hear a knock at the door and you actually go to answer it…and suddenly a screaming chainsaw rips through the door and you get your arm sliced off by the FBI!!!   

Seriously, this is how they protect you from the people engaged in drug activity down the hall: by mixing up your addresses, knocking on your door, and then shoving a giant buzzing chainsaw right where your head would be. Would the appropriate authorities then come forward and encourage everyone not to let this regrettable accidental disembowelment distort our perceptions of an otherwise sound public policy?

I swear, every time I think we've reached the peak of berserk drug war demolition tactics, someone somewhere finds an excuse to do something still more stupid and insane. And they actually have the nerve to tell us that if we're afraid of cops smashing our doors down with various deadly weaponry flailing in every direction, then we shouldn’t break the law. Yeah, tell that to Judy Sanchez and her 3-year-old.