Drugs are a proxy in a war between police and gangs. Atlanta had 81 murders in 2013, versus 82 for London, which has 20x the population. To an extent the drug trade causes some of this violence, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Atlanta is in a former slave-holding state and was segregated as recently as the 1970's. It's a city where 27% of residents, and 31% of children, are below the poverty line. Poverty is highly correlated with race: 33% of blacks and hispanics versus only 8% of whites. It's a city where 76% of poor families are led by women with no husband present.
Between the history of oppression and the massive racial disparity in the incidence of poverty, there is zero trust between the black majority and the white minority (which holds a majority of the economic and political power). This lack of trust is at the root of much of the conflict. Black and hispanic communities are unhappy with the crime, but also, arguably for good reasons, don't help the police shut down the gangs. At the same time, wealthier whites support the aggressive enforcement because they are scared and the negative side-effects don't happen in their neighborhoods.
This is not to justify no-knock raids for drug enforcement, but to help illuminate the mindset of the officers involved and how they justify their actions. I am in favor of deescalating the drug war, but that's just the first step in normalizing our cities, which see violence that is without comparison in the developed world.
It's not Switzerland, so you can't compare.
Unless we want to agree that spending $15,000 per pupil from a family with an income of $30,000 equates to the same education as $15,000 per pupil from a family with an income of $200,000.
I find that hard to believe. It can't be that hard to actually shut down distribution networks with the amount of resources the government uses. But if you just focus on the parts of the network near to the end user, you can burn a lot more resources and argue that you should be given even more resources. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they actively protect or support the major distribution networks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffic...
We need to stop the demented practice of selling surplus military equipment to local police departments. We're not saving money. Cops don't need armored cars, drones, grenades, etc.
They already sold the equipment to the federal government. The federal government is simply getting rid of stuff they don't want. If anything, this practice hurts them by flooding the market with used goods.
The thing is, we're prohibited by law from buying them at the moment.
This may (or may not) be true in Atlanta, but in South Carolina, it's demonstrably untrue. We had a wave of SWAT raids from 2006-2010 on poker games, culminating in this:
http://pokerati.com/2010/11/poker-raid-in-south-carolina-1-p...
None of these poker game players were "guys with long raps sheets". In fact, most of them had no prior criminal record.
I know of numerous other SWAT raids for other white collar crimes like campaign finance violations but I don't have time to dig them all up now.
Finally, SWAT raids are routinely carried out on "suburban pot dealers". Here's one from a few months ago:
http://marlborough.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/swat-t...
Just Google "pot dealer" and SWAT and you'll find tons of other examples.
http://www.scnow.com/news/local/article_3506ee8e-1bce-11e3-b...
Well, it's also about violent dancing and parking.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/swat-t...
When SWAT raids are SOP, violent dancers and babies are going to get hurt. But at least the cops are winning.
But so too are these kinds of reactions from the police. Its really as if the public are caught in the middle of two horrific forces, being created on both ends of the playing field. The question is: who profits? The cold hard answer, which nobody wants to admit is this: the dealers of drugs, and the dealers of weapons. Oftentimes, the same damn groups.
Cops profit. Lawyers profit. DAs profit. Tough-on-crime politicians profit. Religions profit. Government profits. Political parties profit.
Basically, the whole establishment profits from maintaining status quo in the drug war.
More info: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-america...
Well, here's the most relevant quote, anyways:
"""
Because of a legal quirk, SWAT raids can be profitable. Rules on civil asset-forfeiture allow the police to seize anything which they can plausibly claim was the proceeds of a crime. Crucially, the property-owner need not be convicted of that crime. If the police find drugs in his house, they can take his cash and possibly the house, too. He must sue to get them back.
Many police departments now depend on forfeiture for a fat chunk of their budgets. In 1986, its first year of operation, the federal Asset Forfeiture Fund held $93.7m. By 2012, that and the related Seized Asset Deposit Fund held nearly $6 billion.
Mr Balko contends that these forfeiture laws are “unfair on a very basic level”. They “disproportionately affect low-income people” and provide a perverse incentive for police to focus on drug-related crimes, which “come with a potential kickback to the police department”, rather than rape and murder investigations, which do not. They also provide an incentive to arrest suspected drug-dealers inside their houses, which can be seized, and to bust stash houses after most of their drugs have been sold, when police can seize the cash.
"""
This is really my main concern with the "war on drugs". Keeping the drug trade illegal doesn't get rid of it - rather, it just pushes it underground. The result is organised crime, violence, and so many other major problems.
Admittedly, I'm very far removed from the situation, but I find it difficult to imagine that there'd be so much of these problems if you could just walk into a store and buy your drug of choice in the same way that you buy cigarettes or alcohol. You don't see gangs and cartels forming from around the trade of household cleaning supplies or consumer electronics.
However, they are starting to get into the trade of fake food.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/fake-food-c...
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21599028-organised-gan...
https://reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/cc-blog/1758...
Should the SWAT team be able to toss a flashbang into your child's crib because you have a dime bag in the nightstand?
Given the opportunity to wear body armor and carry a rifle when confronting a perceived threat, many will take it.
There is a reason that burglary is dangerous: it invites a confrontation that doesn't have to exist.
I'm not so starry-eyed as to imagine that the cops never need to enter a house forcefully. But they can make this happen at a time and means of their choosing. They can watch to determine how many people are in the house. They can wait for some suspects to leave and detain them individually.
It's easy for me to second-guess from here. But the time to think through all these things is before you go into the house.
My comments speculate upon the mindset of those involved in these raids regarding their choice of weapons and gear. They know they are going into a house, that much is given.
1. Officer wants to return home no matter what. 2. He/she decides to use as much firepower as possible to achieve that - 50 cal guns, military grade armor, armored cards, explosives, grenades, rockets, whatever. 3. I have a risk of getting caught in the situation like this. I live in bad neighborhood, my brother sells weed, I had police encounters in the past, whatever. 4. I want to stay home alive. 5. What should I do to achieve #4 if police decided on the escalation of firepower? Logically I can conclude anything besides having thicker armor and higher caliber weaponry?
If someone declares war on you and not poised to take prisoners and determined to kill, what should you do?
If you do (5), then the police simply bring that shiny new MRAP they got from the DoD and park it in your yard and turn on some spotlights. Then they get on the loudspeaker and have you come out with your hands up. If you fire up your heavy weaponry to oppose them, then you will surely fail to maintain (4).
Remember, this whole thing got started because the police thought they might face armed resistance. If you have a nice paper trail of armor and high caliber weapons leading to your door, then the police will simply bring the proper amount of firepower to assure their success. So, I disagree that escalation of arms gets you anything in the long run regarding this SWAT business.
But they're serving a warrant, and we still have due process (or at least some shred of it), so these SWAT teams are going after suspects.
[1] EDIT: Many more are killed in vehicular accidents.
Background: it's long been known that law enforcement officers (LEOs) are _safer_ on the job than non-LEOs. Only an unfortunate few die in violent encounters with the criminal elements. When LEOs scream about how dangerous their job is, they're almost always asking for a pay raise.
Nonetheless, there was a time in the not-so-remote past when LEOs _consciously__accepted_ the possibility that they might die or be injured on the job. That attitude is fast disappearing.
Once one accepts the analogy that "battling crime" (where any "enemy" is poorly defined; those are civilians out there) is equivalent to warfare (where the enemy is well-defined and no quarter given), then one can almost unconsciously accept a "better him than me" attitude where the civilians' lives are, relative to LEO's, worthless.
The creeping acceptance of warfare's "better him than me" attitude by LEOs and police departments is the root of the problem.
Like the rest who must escape to reality on a daily basis, I rather have a) My gun with me, and b) A cop by my side.
FWIW I live inside a very large US city, am familiar with firearms and have worked in law enforcement for many years.
And now for something supported by the numbers: have you considered the likelihood that the cop by your side shares his/her bed with someone else?
I have a pretty good understanding of race and the 'war on drugs.'
[0] http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/07/14/201981025/the...
Why the 88, by the way? I hope it isn't to do with that angry Chaplin lookalike. Is just when combined with silver and a comment saying that race has nothing to do with the drug war in the US, I can't help but get suspicious. Apologies for the godwinning if it is just the year you were born, or something.
Meth didn't exist when the war on drugs started, it is an after the fact explanation. You've been taught that the war on drugs is equal opportunity. Propaganda is built on lies and dis-information. The individuals crafting policies who actually believe that propaganda eventually craft disaster and failure, like a geneticist who doesn't believe in evolution.
As far as I can tell, they care less about pot. With the exception of massive amounts of pot, they care mostly about everything else. Small amounts of pot are virtually decriminalized in much of the US, but not small amounts of other scheduled substances (I knew a [white] guy in college who went to jail during a routine traffic stop for possession of one 10 mg pill of dexmethylphenidate (a.k.a. Foculin) without a prescription -- $1500 bail).
I'm not saying police don't do racial profiling, just that the War on Drugs is not about holding a race war; it's primarily about money.
But there's nowhere near as much money coming from seizure as is coming from the government to fund the manpower and equipment used to do the seizing.
The enforcement divisions of the DOJ seize less than 2B annually. (That's FBI/DEA/ATF/etc combined.) Their combined budget is ~27B.
Seizure (and prosecution in general) is more a problem due to perverse incentive schemes: Police are incentivized to seize money not so much to have the money directly, but to have those seizures show up on their performance reviews. Not unlike prosecutors trying to rack up convictions or traffic cops trying to fill ticket quotas.
The Drug War is much more about race.