another search, another death...and no effect on supply or demand

Radley Balko the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, tells yet another story like many others he has told. He quotes from a news story about the killing of Derek Cuice:

A deputy shot and killed an unarmed man while attempting to serve a narcotics search warrant in Deltona, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators said deputies were entering the home on Maybrook Drive when Derek Cruice, 26, allegedly advanced on a member of the SWAT team around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. 

“Volusia County Sheriff’s Office narcotics investigators and the Street Crimes Unit were attempting to serve a search warrant at a residence. They were met with resistance and a shooting occurred,” Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson said. 

 Balko writes:

It seems likely that Cruice was dealing pot. The police say they found a ledger book, a scale, about a half-pound of marijuana and some cash. It also seems likely that if the police had simply knocked on the door and waited, or apprehended Cruice as he was coming or going, Cruice would be still be alive. This insistence on serving drug warrants by barreling into homes creates needless violence, confusion and confrontation. They’re designed to do this. I doubt that Cruice knowingly decided to take on a raiding police team armed only with his basketball shorts. It seems far more likely that he thought they were criminal intruders and was either trying to confront them, or was trying to escape. But there is no room for errors in judgment for the people on the receiving end of these raids — even though sowing confusion and disorientation are the stated aim. But it is only the suspects, the targets of the raids, who are expected to do everything right. When the police screw up and kill someone, they’re generally forgiven, owing again to the volatility of the situation.

Those who have been through a home invasion by the cops will recognize the truth in this. When law enforcement shows up wearing Kevlar and with weapons drawn, they are not protecting anyone but themselves. The chaos, no matter how unnecessary, is intentional.

So judging from the many, many prior incidents similar to this one, it’s probably safe to say that this officer will be cleared of any wrongdoing. It’s also probably safe to say that any investigation will determine that there’s nothing wrong with the police department’s warrant service policies. At least that’s how these investigations usually go. And if it is determined that the cops in these cases are following policy, and that there’s nothing wrong with the policies themselves, then the only conclusion we can draw is that the police agencies believe unarmed men getting shot in the face is an acceptable consequence of the effort to stop people from getting high on marijuana. [My emphasis.]

Balko sounds frustrated, angry. But after hearing so many stories like this, who isn't? 

Of course, even that is an illusion. If there’s one thing we can say with near-absolute certainty, it’s that it is no more difficult to buy pot in Volusia County, Fla., today than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down in his own home. And so we add another body to the pile.

It is no more difficult to buy pot...than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down... 

Violent, chaotic searches, arrests and convictions, long prison sentences. None of those have slowed down the supply or demand for recreational drugs.

The story is the same with child pornography. As I said here, discussing an interview of a man who had a collection of a million child porn images:

It is important to know that putting people in prison for possessing, receiving, or distributing illegal images does nothing to reduce the availability of child porn. 

Those million images? Still freely available on the Internet.

"$60 meth bust led to shooting of officer"

This is what happens when law enforcement uses unnecessary force: Police making a meth bust shot an undercover cop. The injured cop was shot several times and is still in critical care.

Meth is a dangerous drug, I hear, but I would hazard a guess that no one needs to be shot several times because of $60 worth of meth.

“We’re getting some push back because (the investigation) was for $60 of meth,” said Albuquerque police officer Tanner Tixier, a spokesman. “But that’s how these investigations work. You start with $20, $40, $60 buys. You can’t just go out and buy five pounds of meth.”

Sure, I suppose that could make sense if you ignore the fact that making those $20, $40, $60 buys--and the buys for tens of thousands of dollars--hasn't stopped the availability of meth.

If a large bust manages to slow down the meth trade in a city, the price for meth rises, making it more profitable to produce.

Is that the goal?

People get hurt and killed in the midst of chaos. When it isn't cops shooting cops, it is cops shooting innocent people, cops shooting dogs or cops burning toddlers.

Is that the goal?

police want to force a 17-year-old boy's erection so they can photograph it

For the last week, the Internet has been chewing up a story about child pornography. Radley Balko sums it up:

...the efforts of officials in Northern Virginia to forcibly induce an erection in a teenage boy in order to pursue “sexting” charges against him has deservedly provoked national outrage. ... Manassas police have since backed down and now say that they won’t execute the warrant. Of course, there remains the problem of why the warrant was issued in the first place. No one in the Manassas Police Department, the office of Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert or the judge who signed off on the warrant was able to see what the rest of the country saw, here: an outrageous abuse of power and an unfathomable violation of this kid’s privacy. The Commonwealth of Virginia was prepared to create child porn in order to prosecute a 17-year-old kid for sending videos of himself to his then-girlfriend, who was 15 years old.

Seems clear: an outrageous abuse of power and an unfathomable violation of this kid's privacy.

Also clear: in the prosecution of a child pornography case, they were going to produce child pornography. 

As usual, it is a good idea to read all of Balko's piece. He talks about several other crazy cases in which teens landed in huge trouble for playing doctor while texting.

The trend is toward dragging more minors into the justice system.  

In an effort to register their contempt for child exploitation and sex crimes, lawmakers have defined sex offenses so broadly that a teen sending an explicit photo to a boyfriend or girlfriend can qualify. Typically, when critics point out that a new law could be used in ways lawmakers never intended, supporters point to prosecutorial discretion. They argue that it’s ridiculous, even insulting, to suggest that a prosecutor would twist a law to bring charges against someone in ways the law clearly never intended — or that a judge would allow it. That police, a prosecutor’s office and a judge all saw nothing wrong with forcibly inducing an erection in order to pursue charges against a 17-year-old kid puts the lie to that argument.

Sex isn’t the only context in which we’re ruining kids under the pretense of saving them. We’re protecting kids from drugs by arresting and jailing them for marijuana possession. We’re protecting them from the (mostly nonexistent) problem of school violence by assigning law enforcement to patrol middle and high school campuses. The presence of law enforcement means that kids who were once reprimanded, assigned detention or possibly suspended for infractions such as fighting, throwing food or truancy are now fed into the criminal justice system.

I have written about how casually cruelty is directed at the children of sex offenders, here, here, and here. As demonstrated in the cases Balko discusses and in a 2010 prosecution of sexting minors, the cruelty can be even more astounding when minors are the offenders.

More on the Virginia case from Robby Soave at Reason, from Shelly Stowe at Justice For All, and from Lenore Skenazy at Free Range Kids here and here.

flash-bang grenade...the cops just couldn't help themselves

When we complain about the chaos and dangers of SWAT-served search warrants or home invasion-style served warrants, we often hear that the person who broke the law is the one to blame for a family's pain, not the cops who invade homes. A Georgia family would love to hear those people make sense of what happened to their 19-month-old boy.

Jacob Sullum writes about a 3 a.m. drug raid when a flash-bang grenade was thrown into a child's playpen, critically injuring the toddler. The police said they had no idea there were children in the home or they would not have used the grenade.

"If there's children involved in a house, we do not use any kind of distraction devices in those houses," [Sheriff]Terrell told AccessNorthGa.com. "We just don't take the chance on it....According to the confidential informant, there were no children. When they made the buy, they didn't see any children or any evidence of children there, so we proceeded with our standard operation."

Standard operation? It is standard to throw flash-bangs where the landing place is not clearly seen?

The lawyer for the family said,

"This is a stay-at-home dad who was out in front of the home, playing with the children on a daily basis. Any surveillance that was done would have revealed there was a father with four children who played in that driveway."

Surveillance?

...the SWAT team was relying on the report of a confidential informant who briefly visited the home on Tuesday night, just a few hours before the raid...

Despite an avowed policy of not using flash-bang grenades when children are present, it seems that neither Terrell's office nor the Cornelia Police Department did anything to investigate that possibility aside from asking the informant, who according to Terrell did not even enter the home. 

So, no surveillance.

Beyond the lack of due diligence on that point, there is the question of whether tossing an exploding, potentially incendiary device into a home that may be full of innocent people in the middle of the night is A-OK as long as you are reasonably sure all those people are 18 or older.

Think about this. Laws are often described in terms of protecting the innocent and yet police take no precautions to protect the innocent or even to ascertain if there are innocents present. 

Remember those people who blame the law-breaker for the chaos? The sheriff is one of them.

Terrell continues to blame [drug]transactions for the horrible injuries police inflicted on a sleeping baby. "The information we had from our confidential informant was there was no children in the home," he told WXIA, the NBC station in Atlanta. "We always ask; that determines how we enter the house and the things we do.... Did we go by our training, did we go by the intelligence? Given the same set of circumstances, with the same information dealing with a subject who has known gun charges on him, who is selling meth, they would go through the same procedures...Nothing would change....Had no way of knowing the child was in the house. The little baby [who] was in there didn't deserve this. These drug dealers don't care."

The little baby didn't deserve this? If the grenade had landed on the bed of the baby's mother instead, the mother would have deserved it?

the effect of violence on children and the need to do something about it

In an opinion piece in the Omaha World-Herald, Nebraska US Attorney Deborah Gilg talks about the need to recognize how violence affects children. She writes:

More than half of America’s children and teens are in some way exposed to violence in their homes, schools and neighborhoods every year, according to a 2009 U.S. Department of Justice study. Many are victims of violence themselves, but many more will witness violent crimes or share the trauma when their families, school friends or neighborhoods are targets of violence and abuse. Unfortunately, many of these young people will experience violence from multiple sources, compounding the trauma and its effects. 

The consequences of this kind of exposure can be difficult to measure, but the harm is real.

We know that children and teens exposed to violence are more likely to experience anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress. They are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. They are also more likely to fail at school, be absent from school and experience learning difficulties. These children are also more likely to enter into, and stay in, abusive relationships. They are also at higher risk of going on to commit crimes themselves.

It comes as a surprise to find that I agree so strongly with a US Attorney. Witnessing violence or being in the middle of it can have long-lasting effects on children. We should do more to protect children from violence.

A good place to start for all of us is by listening to young people and being engaged in their lives. 

Well, now...that seems a tepid approach to the problem she describes. Wait, though. She has more:

If you’re interested in learning more about the effects of violence on children, the U.S. Department of Justice has produced a video series Through Our Eyes: Children, Violence, and Trauma, available at www.ovc.gov/pubs/ThroughOurEyes/index.html. The DOJ also has launched the Defending Childhood initiative to address the exposure of America’s children to violence as victims and as witnesses.

A video? I would have preferred a more robust response but she is a busy woman. Maybe she doesn't have time to think of more effective ways to lessen the violence that surrounds children. If it isn't too presumptuous of me to think that I can help, I came up with a few ideas. Maybe she can use her powerful voice as US Attorney to promote ideas that would have a more immediate impact on reducing violence than, say, a video.

Stop shooting the family dog. When I was small, I witnessed a neighbor drive over and kill one of our dogs. It was an unfortunate accident but it was a terrible thing for a small child to see. Imagine how terrifying it must be for children to see a law enforcement officer--someone who is supposed to protect and serve--shoot their family dog. 

Stop sending SWAT teams into homes where children are present when that level of force is not necessary. People, including the children, have been hurt and killed in those raids. Watch this video of a SWAT raid in Columbia MO and try to imagine being a child in that home. Radley Balko estimates law enforcement agencies carry out over 100 SWAT raids every day across the country. How many children are affected by violence in their homes perpetrated by law enforcement?

Stop putting so many people in prison. The United States has 2.2 million prison inmates. According to Families Against Mandatory Minimums (famm.org), one in 28 children have a parent in prison. This doesn't count the kids who have a sibling or other family member in prison. How does that affect children? 

Stop relying on mandatory minimum sentences to push a defendant into taking a plea agreement and start proving your cases in court. Introducing mandatory minimum sentences has increased sentence length even for crimes that do not carry a mandatory minimum. Tearing families apart is traumatic for all family members. Tearing them apart for longer than necessary is cruel. 

Children in homes with a drastically reduced income, children with a parent struggling to be everything to everyone--prison spouse, mother and father--in the midst of his or her own grief, children grieving for the family member in prison, children unable to visit the prison because distance and expense are too great...these children suffer a violence that the US Attorney does not address. 

coming home safe at night

When I told our attorney that executing search warrants as a home invasion should not be legal, he told me that if I were the wife of a cop, all I would want is for him to come home safe each night. Since then, my response has been that if I were the wife of a cop, I would not want him to put his safety above those he has sworn to serve and protect.

Which brings us to this article by Radley Balko.

The "war on cops" talk heats up every time that one or more high-profile police killings hit the news. But there's just no evidence that it's true. 

I've pointed out a number of times that the job of police officer has been getting progressively safer for a generation. Last year was the safest year for cops since the early 1960s. And it isn't just because the police are carrying bigger guns or have better armor. Assaults on police officers have been dropping over the same period. Which means that not only are fewer cops getting killed on the job, people in general are less inclined to try to hurt them. Yes, working as a police officer is still more dangerous than, say, working as a journalist.

The truth is that farmers, miners, and fishermen are more likely to die in the line of work than law enforcement officers.

Balko says the false belief that cops constantly risk their lives in their work leads to poor policy and poor budget decisions.

For example, one effect of false perceptions about the dangers of policing that I've noted before is that they can sway public debate on issues like police budgets, police use of force, police militarization and what sort of accountability cops should face when they're accused of violating someone's civil rights. Exaggerating the threat that cops face can make policymakers and public officials more reluctant to hold bad cops accountable or more willing to outfit police departments with weapons and equipment better suited for warfare.

Worse:

I interviewed lots of police officers, police administrators, criminologists and others connected to the field of law enforcement. There was a consensus among these people that constantly telling cops how dangerous their jobs are is affecting their mindset. It reinforces the soldier mentality already relentlessly drummed into cops' heads by politicians' habit of declaring "war" on things.

Read the whole thing. The next time law enforcement talks about how dangerous their job is, you'll know better.

good cops wouldn't?

Commenter Our Family is His makes an astonishing assumption, so astonishing that I wondered if I misread her attempt at humor.

Thankfully good cops wouldn't shoot an innocent person doing nothing, so while you were emotionally hurt so much that day and your husband decided to rip your family apart, you were safe that day.

Good cops would have investigated to see if any of us have a history of violence. 
Good cops would have questioned the need to come into my home with their weapons drawn.
Good cops would have waited until the children were out of the house.

Good cops wouldn't shoot an innocent person doing nothing? 

Sometimes the resulting damage, injuries, and deaths have less to do with whether the cops are good or bad than to do with the dangers inherent in drawing weapons in a chaotic situation. Too much chance for unexpected movements or sounds, too much chance for misunderstandings, too much chance for adrenalin to lead to mistakes.

Good cops understand that and avoid creating that chaos.

fear

When the ICE agents left the house after they searched it, they left something behind. Fear.

For months after, I wondered if they had bugged our house. I waited until we were out of the house to discuss my husband's case, just in case. I especially disliked saying anything too personal in our bedroom because I felt as if someone were listening. I checked under the kitchen table to see if they had left a bug there. Does this sound crazy? At the time, it made sense to me.

When I left my office for lunch, I contemplated leaving by another door just in case police were waiting to arrest me. I had done nothing wrong but seeing how easily they could crash into our lives and leave wreckage behind, I felt none of us was safe. Does that sound crazy? At the time, it made sense to me.

When I was stopped for speeding, my hands shook as I talked to the police officer. When I pick up my kids at school and I see the police officer who hangs around there, I recoil. Seeing uniformed officers brings all the terror back to me; the anger, too.

Using my computer to type in my journal, I worried that the agents had installed a key logger on my computer and could see what I was typing, read my mind. They had access to all of our computers that morning and could have installed anything on it. Why did they leave mine behind for me? It isn't as if they were nice people. Does that sound crazy? At the time, it made sense to me.

I used to walk the dog early in the morning but stopped doing that. The idea of leaving my family behind in the house without me was frightening. If I were walking the dog, who would protect them against agents who invade the house again? The morning of the search, an agent had sat in his car on our street, watching our house; a neighbor had seen him and talked to him. The agent had watched me pick up the newspaper from my driveway. I still look up and down the street for unfamiliar cars when I get the newspaper.

Locking the doors and closing the blinds is still almost obsessive for me. The fear that someone could come into my house, that someone could even look into my windows is still there.

The agents ran through my house with their guns drawn. To get my husband to talk, they threatened to come back and take our children away.

This, and worse, much worse, happens every day across the country. The vast majority of crimes being investigated when law enforcement executes search warrants this way are for non-violent crimes. I cannot be the only person left with fear whispering in the back of my mind.

judicial whining and finger-pointing

What's a judge to do?

 My passion for justice was hard-wired into my DNA. Never could I have imagined that by the end of my 50s, after nineteen years as one of 678 federal district court judges in the nation, I would have sent 1,092 of my fellow citizens to federal prison for mandatory minimum sentences ranging from sixty months to life without the possibility of release.

Judge Mark W. Bennett writes in The Nation about his part in sending Iowans to prison--for years and decades--for their non-violent crimes.

Several years ago, I started visiting inmates I had sentenced in prison. It is deeply inspiring to see the positive changes most have made. Some definitely needed the wake-up call of a prison cell, but very few need more than two or three years behind bars. These men and women need intensive drug treatment, and most of the inmates I visit are working hard to turn their lives around. They are shocked—and glad—to see me, and it’s important to them that people outside prison care about their progress. For far too many, I am their only visitor.

Good on you, Judge, for visiting prisoners and convincing yourself that since the sentence you handed down worked out well for some, perhaps you're not the bad guy you feared.

If lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug addicts actually worked, one might be able to rationalize them. But there is no evidence that they do. I have seen how they leave hundreds of thousands of young children parentless and thousands of aging, infirm and dying parents childless. They destroy families and mightily fuel the cycle of poverty and addiction. In fact, I have been at this so long, I am now sentencing the grown children of people I long ago sent to prison.

Judge Bennett shows real compassion for the children and families severely affected by the mandatory minimum sentences but did he stop signing search warrants that would send armed men into the homes of those families when the children were home? 

I wonder at what point in those nineteen years the good Judge came to the realization that mandatory minimum sentencing is wrong. Did he know right away that it was wrong? Did he continue sentencing defendants to the mandatory minimum for nineteen years or only a dozen or so? Or did his realization come immediately before writing the opinion piece? 

What could he have done? Judge Bennett provides his own answer in the comments after his article:

I understand why some of you are labeling me a coward. But there is a lapse of "critical thinking" here. I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States when I was sworn in. Federal judges cannot substitute their personal opinions and refuse to apply valid laws passed by Congress. If we did our legal system would be replaced by anarchy. Our Nation operates under the rule of law. Higher courts have upheld the constitutionally of mandatory minimum sentencing and no defendant before me has ever raise a legal challenge to them. They are not illegal but IMHO unwise. Only Congress can change them..that's not a copout it's the law !!!!! So for Pope Pisius [another commenter] to accuse me of fake heroism and fake concern is unfair. And yes, RoundAbout federal judges have to apply valid laws passed by Congress. We can't willy nilly enforce only laws we personally agree with. 

So he was just doing his job...to prevent anarchy. The defendants walked willingly onto the trains. Here's an idea, Judge Bennett: You could have instructed jurors on their duty to decide if the law was properly applied in the case before them. Imagine if you had begun doing that nineteen years ago! How many of those 1,092 defendants would have benefited? And if you didn't want to do that yourself, you could have allowed defense attorneys to do it.

Many people across the political spectrum have spoken out against the insanity of mandatory minimums. These include our past three presidents, as well as Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist, whom nobody could dismiss as “soft on crime,” and Anthony Kennedy, who told the American Bar Association in 2003, “I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences.” In 2005, four former attorneys general, a former FBI director and dozens of former federal prosecutors, judges and Justice Department officials filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court opposing the use of mandatory minimums in a case involving a marijuana defendant facing a fifty-five-year sentence. In 2008, The Christian Science Monitor reported that 60 percent of Americans opposed mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenders. And in a 2010 survey of federal district court judges, 62 percent said mandatory minimums were too harsh.

Three presidents, four former attorneys general, a former FBI director, dozens of former prosecutors, judges...blah, blah, blah. Did any one of them do anything more than talk about how awful the mandatory minimum sentences are? 

Did any of the three presidents put forth bills to abolish the MMs? Did the FBI director put out the word to stop executing search warrants SWAT-style or home invasion-style? Did the prosecutors stop using the MMs to pin defendants between a rock and a hard place? 

I would guess that, just like Judge Bennett, they did not.

what happens when police are militarized?

In Maryland, this:

Terry Allen Porter’s home was raided using all the power of the state security apparatus not because he was terrorist, a bank robber, serial killer, or a relative of the Kennedy clan, but because of an anonymous tip that he was an avid outdoorsman...

An anonymous tip. Hmm. 

Terry Allen Porter required the attention of Maryland State Police, Washington County Sheriff’s Office deputies, a helicopter, K-9 units, a heavily armed FBI SWAT team, and two armored vehicles because he had guns and a twenty-year-old conviction for dealing cocaine that landing him in jail for six months in 1992. 

Three different law enforcement agencies to raid someone with a single non-violent crime in his history. Hmm.

How his home came to be raided should be of great concern to every American. All media accounts suggest that he was informed on by a fellow citizen who apparently had few facts correct (no “machine gun-style firearms,” handguns, or large caches of ammunition were recovered) and a police officer who felt not liking how the election turned out, having security cameras, and being a “prepper” constituted a threat that needed to be responded to with a combined-arms raid of infantry, armor, and air power.

Imagine your neighborhood during a raid such as this. When law enforcement comes in with multiple agencies, with officers armed to the teeth, with helicopter overhead, accidents are just waiting to happen. 

As an American, I am appalled that an informant (who rather frankly appears to have been a liar) and scant evidence brought forth by an undercover cop who saw no actual criminal activity were enough to launch a massive paramilitary raid against a citizen without a history of violence.

And, incidentally, a citizen who wasn't home at the time. Yes. All the combined investigative powers of the Maryland state police, the county sheriff and the FBI led up to a raid when the suspect wasn't even home. Lucky for him.

ICE agent arrested for child porn

If you think I'm going to be sympathetic with this guy, you might be surprised.

A former top law enforcement official who helped lead the local crusade against child sexual exploitation was sentenced Friday to a little under six years in prison on a child pornography charge. 

Anthony V. Mangione, who headed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's South Florida office for four years, possessed up to 150 images of child pornography, some depicting the "extreme abuse of children," according to federal prosecutors.

So, it seems that child pornography is addictive. Even ICE agents (and FBI agents) make the mistake of thinking they can satisfy their curiosity and then find themselves unable to leave it alone. Too bad this man couldn't ask for help to break his addiction without getting turned in to law enforcement. 

The FBI and Broward Sheriff's Office seized Mangione's laptop computer in April 2011 after his Internet provider detected him sending child pornography. He quickly retired from ICE and was arrested in September 2011.

This guy earned his living going after child porn users and, because he "quickly retired" from ICE, he will probably have a nice retirement income earned on the backs of those in prison and on the sex offender registry because of his work. 

How many early-morning raids did he approve? How many families broke up under the stress of those raids and the resulting discoveries? How many families deal with the crazy requirements of the sex offender registry because of his work? How many people live under the  Miami Julia Tuttle Causeway because of his work?

Family members and friends wrote letters describing him as a devoted father of three and a dedicated law enforcement officer. 

As the Special Agent in Charge of ICE's South Florida office, Mangione supervised more than 400 employees in nine counties. He was regularly at the forefront of arrests of child pornography suspects, vowing to see them punished.

My heart goes out to his family. This discovery has to be incredibly difficult to deal with. I should know. My sympathy is for them. To be honest, I have a tiny bit of sympathy for anyone leading the double life he lead--unable to ask for help and knowing the certain horror it would be for his family when he was caught. I can guess that like most addicts he never thought he would be caught. 

I hope he has used his time between search and imprisonment as well as my husband has. I hope he has come to terms with what he has done--not only the child porn he used, but the fact that he personally put other families through the same hell his family is going through. Crowing over his downfall is difficult for me, knowing that his family falls with him. 

Perhaps he and his family will become supporters of efforts to abolish the sex offender registry. I could live with that.

long nights

The other night, I dreamed I was driving my husband to the prison where he'd been assigned. Something happened to the car and we were unable to continue our trip. The details are, well, dreamlike; all I remember is waking up in a sweat because I couldn't get him to the prison on time. No more sleep that night.

Other nights, I wake up thinking about the morning they searched the house and my anger will keep me awake.

Worry about his safety in prison, worry about his health, worry about whether he will get the medicine he needs.

I worry about what our children will be forced to deal with when the word is out about their father.

I go through cycles. This week has been one with little sleep. Maybe next week will be better.

just say No!

This man made one simple mistake: He let the cops search him and his vehicle. He thought he had nothing to worry about because he had nothing to hide.


I have begun telling my kids how to respond if they are ever stopped by police. I tell them to say, "I do not consent to any searches." I tell them that even if the cops are polite and friendly they should still refuse consent to a search, even when they are sure they have nothing to hide. I think of this as preparation for the day when they will be driving with their friends in the car. When friends are in the car, they could spill pot, drop pills, leave something behind that law enforcement could find suspicious.


The justice system is controlled by bureaucrats, people who follow the rules and don't know how or when to discriminate among details.

All of this was supposed to be temporary. James hoped that after 12 months, his record would be wiped, and he could find his way back into the finance industry.   

He was wrong. While his probation officer told James that he could break curfew if he was working late (and only then), she didn't tell him that he needed permission from the judge do so. This led to him being charged with violating his probation, and the extension of his punishment until March 2008. And those two years were more than enough time for every third-party private background-check company in the state to register him as having pled no contest to a possession charge.

Just as with this man, even when the situation is generally understood to be unjust, the justice system has no way to stop, think, and reconsider. No way to back out of the course it is set upon.


It is best to Just say No.

you know those awesome drug dogs?

Nevada's drug dogs are trained to respond to the officers, not to the drugs. Does this surprise you? Maybe what should surprise you instead is that we ever fell for the idea that a reaction from a dog is considered a cause for reasonable suspicion.


I admire the dogs used to find bodies in the wreckage after earthquakes or tornadoes or floods, so it isn't that I think dogs are not smart enough to detect drugs. However, there is a huge difference between saving a life based on a dog's senses, and wrecking a life because a dog reacted a certain way. Kind of like polygraphs: Sure, they might be right sometimes or even many times, but the fact that they can be wrong is reason they cannot be used as evidence in court.


When dogs are used to detect drugs--high schools routinely let drug dogs find the lockers that contain drugs, for example--we are accepting the reaction of an animal as legal justification for infringing on someone's right to be free from search or seizure . The animal cannot explain its reaction, it cannot be questioned. If a cop searched a car (or a locker) with only the justification that he "had a sense" that the car/locker contained drugs, we would laugh. Why do we roll over for dogs? 

Our attorney tells me that the prosecutor is a "good guy" just doing his job prosecuting the crimes the feds are told to focus on. I like our attorney so I really want to believe him about this...but it is difficult for me to reconcile what I know of the prosecutor with the attorney's opinion of him.

What do I know? I know only one thing for certain about the prosecutor: He thought it was just fine to send a dozen armed men to invade my home at a time when they knew the children would be home.

Law enforcement wanted the family home when the search warrant was executed or they could have easily done it at a different time. Think about that. They wanted the children there when they came into the home with their weapons drawn, when they aimed a gun at the family dog. They wanted the children to know that their father was in trouble and they chose to do it at a time when the kids would spend all day at school wondering whether their dad would be arrested.

How can a person who approves of that plan be a good guy?

Drugs. If the laws prohibiting illegal drugs were effective, we would have seen proof of it by now. Since it is abundantly clear that the laws haven't slowed down the supply or the incidence of drug use, let's decriminalize the stuff. I've never used illegal drugs but easy (easier?) availability won't make me start now and I'm sure that's true for most people.

Drug law does nothing but fill up our prisons. If you can stomach it, watch this video, read the article and tell me that Columbia MO is better off after this search warrant was executed.

[The police fired] seven rounds into a home just seconds after they'd broken into it. This, despite the fact that there was nothing in the home that posed a lethal threat to them. (Yes, some pit bulls can be dangerous, but not to an armed SWAT team bedecked in full body armor.) One of those rounds missed its intended target (the pit bull) and struck an unintended target (the Corgi). According to Montgomery, there are now bullet holes in the walls of the house. There were other people in that house who weren't suspects, people the cops weren't aware of before they started firing their guns, including a child. That seems like a pretty reckless disregard for human life.

Radley Balko, of the Huffington Post (formerly of Reason magazine), has done extensive reporting on cases like this. I admire his work greatly and I wish he would extend his focus to child pornography cases--if for no other reason than to let the world know that law enforcement uses SWAT teams for most search warrants, not just drugs.

The team that invaded my home used no flash bombs, didn't break down our door, and fired no shots. When I think of how chaotic and terrifying it was for us, I hate to think how the family in Columbia felt.

militarization changes the attitude of the police toward the public

If you watch TV police dramas, you can be forgiven for thinking that executing a search warrant is a civilized event: a couple of detectives knock at the door, explain that they have a search warrant, show the warrant, and then politely go in and look around for what the search warrant says they can look for. That's not the way it works in real life.

Within moments, and without Guerena firing a shot--or even switching his rifle off of "safety"--he lay dying, his body riddled with 60 bullets. A subsequent investigation revealed that the initial shot that prompted the S.W.A.T. team barrage came from a S.W.A.T. team gun, not Guerena's. Guerena, reports later revealed, had no criminal record, and no narcotics were found at his home.

Sometimes that is how search warrants are executed. Not so civilized.
As police departments have become more militarized, the attitude of the cops has also become more militarized.

The most serious consequence of the rapid militarization of American police forces, however, is the subtle evolution in the mentality of the "men in blue" from "peace officer" to soldier. This development is absolutely critical and represents a fundamental change in the nature of law enforcement. The primary mission of a police officer traditionally has been to "keep the peace." Those whom an officer suspects to have committed a crime are treated as just that - suspects. Police officers are expected, under the rule of law, to protect the civil liberties of all citizens, even the "bad guys." For domestic law enforcement, a suspect in custody remains innocent until proven guilty. Moreover, police officers operate among a largely friendly population and have traditionally been trained to solve problems using a complex legal system; the deployment of lethal violence is an absolute last resort.

Soldiers, by contrast, are trained to identify people they encounter as belonging to one of two groups -- the enemy and the non-enemy -- and they often reach this decision while surrounded by a population that considers the soldier an occupying force. Once this identification is made, a soldier's mission is stark and simple: kill the enemy, "try" not to kill the non-enemy. Indeed, the Soldier's Creed declares, "I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy the enemies of the United States of America in close combat." This is a far cry from the peace officer's creed that expects its adherents "to protect and serve."  

To protect and serve...is that idea nothing more than a relic?

how to serve a search warrant

Nineteen years ago today, seventy-six people in the Branch Davidians compound in Waco, Texas, were killed in a fire. The feds tried to execute a search warrant fifty days earlier, resulting in a gun battle killing four Bureau of Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco agents and six Davidians. After the first day, the Davidians were under siege. In the nineteen years since, the feds haven't learned much about safety of the public during the execution of a search warrant.

A quick search of the internet turned up these instructions for serving a search warrant in Michigan. (We do not live in Michigan.) 

1.Get a search warrant, no-knock search warrant or arrest warrant from a judge. You must demonstrate that you have probable cause to believe a suspect is hiding evidence at his home to get a search warrant. To obtain a no-knock search warrant, you must demonstrate that the suspect is likely to destroy evidence, or injure himself or others, if he knows police officers are at his residence.

2. Enter arrest warrants into computer databases for local, state or federal law enforcement. Serve search warrants at the residence that the warrant allows you to search.

3. Knock on the door of the residence and identify yourself as a police officer unless you have a no-knock warrant. Give the suspect a reasonable amount of time to open the door. When he comes to the door, show him the search warrant before entering the premises.

4.Force the door open if you have a no-knock warrant or if occupants refuse to allow you into the residence. Be prepared for violence if you face this situation.

Perhaps the law is different in my state because those aren't the rules they followed when they served the warrant at our house. "When he comes to the door, show him the search warrant before entering the premises." That's the part that didn't happen. Wearing Kevlar, they pushed their way in, nearly shot our dog, waved guns around, rounded up my family, and only then--after I made multiple demands to see it--did they show me the warrant.

Protect and serve? Not so much. They protected themselves, first and foremost. We weren't armed. We weren't wearing Kevlar. They were.

All this for a non-violent crime and no reason to suspect that any of us would react violently.

"we were here"

After the ICE agents searched our house and left us with a--believe it or not--"Have a nice day," my husband and I found an attorney in the phone book and met with him. It wasn't until later in the day when we noticed things out of place because of the search. 


In our closet, a box of mementos that had been stored on the highest shelf was left open on the floor of the closet though everything else was in its place. In my underwear drawer, an envelope that I keep on the bottom of the draw was left on top of the underwear. My daughter found her journal left open on her bed.


These all felt as if they were messages to us from the agents that they had been there. I believe that the searches are meant to terrorize the families.

how not to serve a search warrant

This story illustrates why a crowd of armed cops storming a residence is a bad way to serve a search warrant: because people get killed.

This is the same narcotics task force, by the way, that shot and killed a man wielding a golf club five seconds after breaking down his door during a botched meth raid last year. That cop was forgiven for his mistake. Heat of battle, volatile situation, mistakes were made—you know the drill.

I don't care if the cops are searching for porn or drugs. When our home was invaded by a dozen armed cops, I had no idea that search warrants are routinely served this way. Until more people understand that police operate this way, it will continue.