End up? Sure. Sometimes these raids come up dry.
But they were going after a drug dealer, not user. You incorrectly said the police were "tracking down" users who are harming no one.
"then 47 of those other citations, chosen at random, should be thrown out"
If a guy is stopped at a DUI checkpoint and has a dead body in the back seat, I think he should be charged. But hey, that's me.
Maybe they're supposedly going after the big dealers, but I don't believe it for a second.
If the police were actually interested in going after big dealers, they would put a lot more careful preparation into their raids. If the police want to bust a lot of poor shmucks who can't afford any sort of lawyer, it's pretty easy to target dwellings in areas where drug use is common; it's not hard to find a judge to rubber-stamp warrants based on pure hearsay, and even if the targets are effectively random they're bound to score some little hits. Such tactics might not benefit society, but when the politicians are up for reelection they can boast of all the criminals they put behind bars.
Maybe they're not really "tracking down" users, but merely taking pot-shots in the hopes of hitting some. But that's even worse than tracking them down.
If a guy is stopped at a DUI checkpoint and has a dead body in the back seat, I think he should be charged. But hey, that's me.
If hundreds of cars are stopped at a DUI checkpoint that failed to yield a substantial number of DUI convictions, the checkpoint shouldn't have existed in the first place.