Friday, August 08, 2008

SWAT teams

So you're a small town mayor in Maryland and you have the misfortune to have a couple of crooks pick your address at random for a drug delivery - they'll mail a package to your house and then pick it up under the pretense of a delivery gone astray. Arizona cops stumble across the scheme and enlist your local county's sheriffs to raid your house, even though they know that you aren't guilty of anything. Had the sheriffs asked your local cops, they'd have learned that you were a non-druggy and the mayor of the friggin' town, for cripe's sake but when SWAT team equipment is ready at hand, why worry about details that might spoil the fun? They charge in, shoot your two Labrador retrievers to death then handcuff you and your mother in law and make you lie in your pets' blood for two hours while they ransack the place.

Then they let you go. No apologies because, 'we don't need no stinkin' warrants". There are lots of good reasons to oppose our supposed war on drugs and its futility is just one of them. Another is how we have empowered storm troopers and even what was once the beloved Coast Guard to trash houses and boats and terrorize civilians. Not good.

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