"It was unfortunate timing," said Lt. Scott Young, SWAT commander.

Yeah, that's not the word I'm thinking of. Unacceptable. Unbelievable. Unnecessary. Unjustifiable. Un<insert expletive here> real. Those seem more apt but unfortunate, perhaps for your career Lt. Young, but not for the family involved and certainly not for the dog that was killed. And for what? A misdemeanor amount of marijuana. Seriously.

The above event took place in Columbia, Missouri on February 11, 2010 but the story is just beginning to receive national attention. But in truth, this story is only exceptional because there is a video that has begun to circulate. The reality is that our so-called war on drugs, a resounding failure at home and abroad, has led to the militarization of our law enforcement agencies. Those weren't police officers, they were storm troopers. And raids like this one happen every day in this country, perhaps a hundred of them every single day in this the land of the free and the home of the high.

Here's the story from the Columbia Tribune:

Police arrested Jonathan E. Whitworth, 25, of 1501 Kinloch Court on Feb. 11 on suspicion of possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana and second-degree child endangerment.

A police SWAT team entered Whitworth’s residence around 8:30 p.m. suspecting a large amount of marijuana at the location, police spokeswoman Officer Jessie Haden said. SWAT members encountered a pit bull upon entry, held back and then fatally shot the dog, which officers said was acting in an uncontrollably aggressive manner.

Whitworth was arrested, and his wife and 7-year-old son were present during the SWAT raid, Haden said. A second dog, which Whitworth’s attorney Jeff Hilbrenner described as a corgi, also was shot but was not killed.

“The family is concerned with what happened,” Hilbrenner said. “We don’t feel like what happened in the home was appropriate. The priority right now for us is the misdemeanor charges.”

Police discovered a grinder, a pipe and a small amount of marijuana, Haden said. Because the SWAT team acts on the most updated information available, the team wanted to enter the house before marijuana believed to be at the location could be distributed, she said.

“If you let too much time go by, then the drugs are not there,” she said.

Drug distributors traditionally have a history with firearms, which is why the SWAT team is used when executing such warrants, Haden said. If the SWAT team believed they could have executed the warrant successfully during the daytime when the wife and child were not present, they would have, she said.

If the parents were charged with second degree child endangerment, what were the police charged with? There are no words. As Megan McArdle of The Atlantic put it "a mountain of marijuana" does not justify this.

Again we need to accept the fact that drug war is a forty year failure. And it's not just the untold billions of dollars we are wasting but the rather alarming militarization of the nation's police forces that we are witnessing. There are no easy solutions to drug issues, because ultimately it is a matter of values and culture which are hard if not impossible to change but as The Economist has so aptly put it legalization is the least worst option. The time is long past to treat drug abuse as a public health issue and not a criminal justice one. But beyond these arguments the above isn't "unfortunate," it is UNAMERICAN.

(Also at OC Progressive)

What happens when you combine a Democratic fundraiser in North San Diego County, a homophobic right-wing neighbor disturbing the peace, and the San Diego County Sheriffs? Apparently, one BIG, nasty mess! Here's the original TPM story:

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that a fundraiser for Francine Busby, who previously ran for the deeply-Republican Fiftieth District and came close to winning in the 2006 special election and subsequent regular election, was raided by sheriffs after an unnamed neighbor made a noise complaint. Busby now calls it a "phony" noise complaint, and the article says that multiple neighbors said there was no great noise at all.

Here's the twist: The fundraiser was hosted by a lesbian couple, and shortly before the sheriffs came a particular neighbor had shouted anti-gay slurs at the assembled crowd. "It was a quiet home reception, disrupted by a vulgar person shouting obscenities from behind the bushes," Busby says.

As one neighbor told the paper: "We didn't hear anything until the sheriff came, with eight patrol cars and a helicopter."

And yes, the new developments are becoming more sordid by the minute. Details after the flip...

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Warning this video is graphic.

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Al Sharpton is an asshole, but right now the racial rabble rouser is righteously leading a campaign that might finally end the Chicago police's ridiculously longstanding practices of brutality and torture. (If we regular Chicagoans -- despite the best efforts of the local mainstream media to keep us divided, docile, and uninformed -- really come out and support Sharpton's effort.)

Briefly, To get you up to speed on Chicago's out-of-control police:

Chicago's police department has been beset by claims that officers abused their positions.

Four inmates were recently awarded almost $20 million between them to settle lawsuits claiming they had been tortured by a former lieutenant into falsely confessing to crimes. In July, prosecutors accused officers of torturing suspects in the 1980s. And in September, four special operations members were charged with robbery, kidnapping and making false arrests.

The department has also has been embarrassed by other accusations of brutality -- some caught on tape, including the alleged beating of a female bartender by an off-duty officer.

(That's just the latest; the torture and brutality goes back decades; best to see the Chicago Reader's John Conroy reporting for the most complete story. (Tragically for the future of real reporting on this problem, Conroy has just been 'laid off' by the Reader.)

But there's a Sharp' break in the story cuz Richard Daley, Chicago's torture-overlooking mayor, l-u-v-v-s his 2016 Olympics vanity project! And that could be the chance for some real changes -- getting his tender paws off, and some tough independent supervisory hands on, Chicago police.

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The Hip Hop Caucus held a rally on Saturday at the Washington Monument,  to raise awareness of an upsurge in hate crimes and police brutality against communities of color, and I brought the camcorder. I'd have posted the video earlier, but a seemingly endless string of technical difficulties prevented that.

The rally was held because, to put it one way, if what had happened to Megan Williams had happened to me, the whole country would know my name. Or in still other words, it was about all the things that mean that supporting robot overlords is a rational position for a Black person living in the United States to take.

Speakers, in order of their appearance, include three parents who lost their children to unprovoked police shootings, Michelle Battle, Rep. Albert Wynn, Hashim Nzinga, Malik Zulu Shabazz, Donna Payne and Rosa Clemente. The event had numerous other speakers whom I didn't get a chance to record or interview, and the known affiliations of the speakers are listed below.

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