Puppycide
This article on a DEA site where SWAT teams train for raiding meth labs is pretty interesting. First, note that the people who run it all too happy to let lawmakers get the adrenalin rush of a trial drug raid. That's all good and well. But maybe a better test run to put lawmakers through would be to have the on the receiving end of a drug raid. And not at a test site, but when they don't suspect it. Say, while they're at home with their families. My guess is that if such an experience didn't motivate them to put a stop to using SWAT teams to enforce drug warrants, it would at least motivate them to make damn sure the right procedures were in place to make sure the tactics were used sparingly, only against the most violent drug offenders, and that there were checks and double-checks codified into law to guard against wrong-door raids.
On the puppycide front, note the following passage from the article:
The instructor knocks on the front door, shouting, “DEA! Police! We have a search warrant!”
The next thing you know you’re inside, clearing rooms like a SWAT team on “COPS,” firing only at targets with odd numbers. The even-numbered targets could be the good guys, even children. Everyone shoots at the dog. It’s covered with paint-ball splatters.As my old basketball coach used to say,
you play the way you practice.Daniel Castillo Buried
Daniel Castillo, Sr. buried his son tonight. Meanwhile, the details of what exactly happened in Tuesday's raid haven't gotten much clearer. The ABC affiliate in Houston filed
a short story a little after midnight reporting that police say they found $5,000 in crack cocaine and marijuana at the home, and that they arrested Castillo's uncle at the scene on drug charges.
But family spokesman Rick Dovalina told me on Friday afternoon that there was just one arrest, Jerome Hawkins, who was dating one of Castillo's sisters. Dovalina also told me that the crack was found in Hawkins' truck. He said there was hardly enough marijuana stems and seeds to merit a "trace." I suppose these conflicting details will eventually sort themselves out.
Someone in the comments section at Hit & Run asked why the type and quantity of drugs found at the house is important. It really isn't. The raid was wrong and needless and stupid whether Castillo's uncle, Hawkins, or the victim himself were dealing drugs. An unarmed, 17-year-old kid was shot in the face and killed, just a few feet away from 1-year-old child. A 20-year-old woman watched her brother die before her eyes. And a father was forced to bury his son tonight.
All because a confidential informant reported seeing what at worst were a series of nonviolent, consensual drug exchanges.
Even if the drug charges are true, this is a grade-A, prime-cut example of why using SWAT teams to serve nonviolent drug warrants is needlessly dangerous, reckless, violent, and confrontational. How hard is this to understand? When you take men with guns and charge into someone's home, you create violence. You leave very little margin for error. Of course, the police go in with ballistic shields, bulletproof vests, and helmets. So we know who catches the brunt of the errors when they happen.
The national media hasn't picked up on this story, yet. Even the blogs have been quiet, at least in comparison to the Kathryn Johnston case. No one seemed to care much when police
shot innocent Isaac Singletary to death a couple of weeks ago, either.
I'm starting to think "how many more people have to die" is the wrong question. I fear that pondering how many of these deaths it will take to spur people into seeing the perversity of our drug laws and their enforcement, and demanding reform is the wrong way to look at it. I'm starting to think that we're now moving in the other direction -- that these stories fatigue people. Numb them. Each one gets a bit less outrageous than the one before.
If that's true, how sad. How incredibly fucking sad if the idea of a 17-year-old kid getting gunned down in his own bed in the name of preventing people from getting high is no longer capable of making us angry. And how incredibly fucking scary.
Free the Mircale Fruit!
My friend Jacob Grier has
created an online
stir with his post about the wonders of the Miracle Fruit.
It's
a small, red berry from West Africa with a strange and wonderful property: It makes sour things taste sweet.
I tried one over the weekend, from the same batch Jacob tried. You put the thing in your mouth, chew it, and slosh it around so it coats your tongue. I then bit into two lemon wedges, and ate them both. I chewed them like candy. They tasted like sweet lemonade.
The secret is a glycoprotein called Miraculin (yes, that's actually what it's called) that attaches itself to your taste buds. No one seems to be quite sure how it turns sour and bitter to sweet. The effect lasts for about 90 to 120 minutes.
The fruit is heavily marketed in Japan, where it's used in fruit form, in powder form, and now that scientists have figured out a way to isolate Miraculin, in tablets.
Some chefs there have constructed low-cal deserts around the use of the fruit.
Wired News reported last December that there's even Miraculin-infused lettuce in the works.
In Japan, the Miracule Fruit is particularly popular
among diabetics and dieters. Those are two very large (sorry) and growing markets in the U.S. It's also used to help leukemia patients get back their appetites, and to make bitter medicine more palatable. All this would seem to mean a great market for the stuff in America. So why can't U.S. consumers get any?
It seems that the FDA banned the fruit under mysterious circumstances in the 1970s. I've seen speculation on various websites that it may have had something to do with the sugar industry, or with the fact that aspartame was working its way to FDA approval at about the same time. There's been little written about why the fruit was banned, only that the prohibition appears to have been sudden and unexpected. It came on the eve of one compnay's plan to roll out a major marketing campaign.
The Miracle Fruit has been used for centuries, now. And there have been
quite a few studies of it, with no known ill-effects, other I guess than that it could potentially cause something toxic to taste better than it should. That hardly seems like a reason to ban it.
Seems like something the FDA ought to revisit, particularly with the uptick in diabetes cases over the last several years.
(Cross-posted at Hit & Run.)
Bush administration shows its continuing support for federalism...
...by sending federal agents to raid 11 medical marijuana dispensaries in California, all legal under state law.
Richard Eastman, a pro-medical marijuana activist who said he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1995, said he was horrified by the raids. Some of the pills he takes to fight his illness, Eastman said, "take away my appetite, but the marijuana keeps me eating."
As a result of the raids, Eastman estimated that perhaps 2,000 people who ordinarily would buy marijuana for medical purposes "won't be able to get their medicine tomorrow. And it's not like they can go to Sav-On or Thrifty."A fine use of our tax dollars, Mr. President.
We can't have AIDS-having, pot-smoking hippies in California thumbing their noses at our federal vice laws. Good, God-fearing families in Kansas shouldn't have to worry about what might happen to their kids if we start allowing cancer-stricken chemo patients in Burbank to light up a doob with impunity.
So rest easy, Kansas. Once again, your federal government showed 'em who's boss. Like that time they handcuffed a post-polio patient to her bed, and led her taste
the business end of an assault weapon. Man, that was sweet.
It would almost be funny if people weren't, you know,
dying because of this shit.Puppycide
Police in Hartford, Conn. ignore the "beware of dog" sign, and shoot a St. Bernard in front of the 12-year old girl it was protecting. They were investigating a "gun complaint," but found no guns, and made no arrests.
Another Isolated Incident
Alton, Kansas:
The night of May 19, 2005, Billy Peterson awoke about a quarter to midnight to noise at the back door of his family's home.
The door burst open and masked intruders entered, yelling and with guns drawn.
They forced Peterson to the floor at gun point and handcuffed him and his wife, Julie.
The intruders identified themselves as members of the North Central Kansas drug task force. They told the couple they were there with a warrant to search the house for illegal drugs and guns.
The officers found neither. They left empty-handed and without making an arrest, according to an account of the incident filed in a lawsuit.I'm sure this almost never happens.
