Police-Community Tensions

A Prince Georges County, Maryland, SWAT team raided a mayor's house last summer, shot his two dogs, and manhandled the mayor and his mother-in-law because they thought they were marijuana traffickers. They weren't, and the cops have acknowledged as much. Now the county sheriff has investigated the incident and concluded his boys did nothing wrong. The mayor disagrees -- and he's going to court.

Mexico's drug war took a strange turn last week as authorities took the battle to a pair of folk saints. Shrines to Santa Muerte and San Malverde were destroyed in Tijuana and on the highway south from Texas to Monterrey.

Tired of the same old coca products? Now you can try coca beer! Coming soon to a bar near you... but only if you live in Peru, China, South Africa, Argentina, or Venezuela.

Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos was interested in police socialization, so he joined the Baltimore PD and hit the mean streets of the city's Eastern District for more than a year as a uniformed officer. The book he wrote based on his experiences is an illuminating gem.

Brazilian police are killers, both on and off the job, according to a new report from the UN's Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary, and arbitrary executions.

Faced with rising levels of violence as Mexican drug traffickers, police, and soldiers engage in a multi-sided struggle for supremacy, Mexico's left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party may be about to call for legalization of the drug trade -- in both the US and Mexico.

Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr uses the raid on the home of the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, to issue a broader critique of drug law enforcement.

A Lima, Ohio, police sergeant who shot and killed an unarmed woman and wounded her infant son during a SWAT raid was acquitted on all counts this week. He only faced eight months, anyway. But this story isn't over -- relatives have now filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and the shooter.

Drug user activists handed out brochures called for the legalization of drug use in some of Jakarta's most notorious dope-dealing hot-spots this week. It was the second user demonstration this summer in Indonesia.

An Ohio SWAT shot and killed a young black mother and wounded the toddler she was holding in her arms during a routine drug raid last Friday. An angry community wants some answers and some accountability.