Senior Editor Radley Balko at Reason Magazine has done another one of his incisive pieces on the militarization of the War on Marijuana:

Cops Employing Robbers: Did police misconduct lead to another fatal marijuana raid? – Reason Magazine
Ryan Frederick, the 29-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing capital murder charges after shooting and killing a police officer during a nighttime drug raid on his home, was back in court for a preliminary hearing earlier this month. What came out at the hearing may be the beginning of the unraveling of the state’s case against him.

Frederick has said he was asleep in preparation for an early shift when police raided his home at 8:30 p.m. on January 24. According to search warrant affidavits, officers were acting on a tip from an informant that Frederick was running a major marijuana growing operation in his garage. The raid turned up only a misdemeanor amount of the drug—about a third of an ounce.

Frederick has said in interviews and in letters to his family that he was awoken by his dogs barking at the intruders, then heard the sound of someone breaking down his front door. He says he grabbed his handgun and ran to his living room, where he saw that the bottom panel of his door and been busted out and saw someone reaching up through the broken panel toward the door handle. Frederick says that’s when he fired, striking and killing Det. Jarrod Shivers. Police and prosecutors counter that Frederick fired through the door, hitting Det. Shivers as he was standing on Frederick’s front lawn. Police say they announced themselves before attempting to enter Frederick’s home. Frederick and at least two neighbors say they heard no announcement.

Frederick’s case is only one recent example of the inherent danger and disproportionate absurdity of using violent, forced-entry police tactics to serve nonviolent drug warrants. This raid on a man with no prior criminal record left a police officer dead, his wife widowed, and his children without a father, while effectively ruining Ryan Frederick’s life. He’s facing one count of capital murder for the shooting of Shivers, a felony drug distribution charge, and a charge of using a weapon during the commission of a drug crime.

Now, disturbing new questions have emerged about the quality of the police investigation and the way the Chesapeake Police Department’s narcotics officers may have been using confidential informants in their drug investigations.

“Confidential informants”, a.k.a. “snitches”.  I’m not talking about people reporting a crime – that’s not “snitching”, that’s being a good neighbor and citizen.  I’m talking about the people, usually repeat crimanl offenders, who are bribed with lenient sentences in exchange for the dirt on somebody else.  This can be a good thing in the case of capturing a mob informant who gives up bigger fish, but it has been misused in the Drug War to pad arrest totals and manufacture criminal charges where no crime has been committed.

These “snitches” have incentive to lie.  An acquaintence with a baggie of weed becomes a “major marijuana growing operation”, the bigger the fish given up, the better the deal for the “snitch”.

Then there’s the militarization of our domestic police.  Our SWAT teams were originally intended to cope with violent situations in our cities, not to create them.  I find it especially ridiculous when it comes to these “major marijuana growing operations”.  What’s the big rush?  Afraid the “perp” is going to flush all the evidence… all those big leafy plants, pots full of soil, huge lights and ballasts?  And what’s with the guns?  Are you really afraid that if you knock on the door of the big bad marijuana grower and say, “Police, we have a warrant,” that he’s going to come out guns blazing?

The guns and the shouting and the breaking down doors aren’t about subduing the alleged indoor pot grower.  It doesn’t even matter if the person subdued isn’t really growing pot indoors.  It’s about subduing and terrorizing the neighbors, the other people not involved with pot, to convince them that marijuana is dangerous and its users are violent.  Because otherwise, most people get along just fine with their pot smokin’ and growin’ neighbors.

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