The Midnight Hour

Today Brian at Flashpoint alerted me to this horrible story of the “war on drugs” gone wrong. Here’s the original story from the Baltimore Sun, but I’ll summarize:

Drug traffickers stole the names and addresses of several people and had marijuana shipped to their addresses. Whenever a box was delivered one of the traffickers would reclaim the package from the unsuspecting person’s mailbox/porch/etc. The addressee never had a clue about the scheme. Police picked up on this, intercepted a package, and delivered it to the addressee while undercover cops and a SWAT team stood by. After the man (a local mayor) retrieved the package and brought it into his home (unopened) the SWAT team began their raid. The cops claim they had a no-knock warrant. The family claims that is not true. The police broke into the home and shot one of the family’s dogs on sight. The police claim the dog “engaged” them. The family says that is false. During the course of the raid the other family dog was shot in the back while fleeing the police. The police apprehended the man and his family, tracked the dogs’ blood all over the house, and later found the suspect was innocent. They have yet to even say, “I’m sorry.”

I’ll start by giving the law enforcement officers (LEOs) the only slack I’ll give them: hindsight is 20/20. They had no way of knowing the man was innocent and had to prepare for a possible threat. However, their propensity to open fire on any possible non-human threat (the dogs) is disturbing, especially in light of the fact that the second dog was shot while fleeing the police. This is not Nazi Germany. This is not Iraq. This is suburban America. Police should be held to a higher standard that recognizes the threat to freedom they represent when let run amok.

I frequent a few discussion forums where this general topic has been discussed before. Whenever there is outcry over police shooting dogs the online law enforcement community usual responds with straw man arguments such as “So you value the dog’s life over mine?” or “I don’t get paid to get beat on.” The point is that no-knock raids like this erode the very principle of liberty that LEOs supposedly protect. The unintended consequences of killing two canine members of an innocent man’s family is not trivial. A cop with a submachinegun and a powertrip can do much more harm than any drug dealer ever dreamed of.

Here’s another underlying issue: Does an innocent man have the right to be secure in his home? If an intruder breaks into your home unidentified with weapons drawn, what should be a reasonable person’s response? If the man had engaged the police with deadly force, would he have been justified? I say yes. Without them serving a warrant, how are you to know they are law enforcement? Is there even a difference if you are protecting yourself and your family from an unknown and armed threat? If bullets are flying at me and my loved ones I really don’t care about the affiliation of the shooter.

Oh, just one last jab: all this was over a box of marijuana. Police are conducting no-knock raids and shooting family pets because someone might be smoking a doobie on his back porch. This is your war on drugs, America. You may get periodically terrorized by armed men in balaclavas, but at least your neighbors won’t be using marijuana.