Posted on 06/04/2014 12:17:09 PM PDT by Kaslin
When Alecia Phonesavanh heard her 19-month-old son, Bounkham, screaming, she thought he was simply frightened by the armed men who had burst into the house in the middle of the night. Then she saw the charred remains of the portable playpen where the toddler had been sleeping, and she knew something horrible had happened.
Bounkham "Bou Bou" Phonesavanh, who is in a medically induced coma at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, may never wake up. But the appalling injuries he suffered during a police raid in Habersham County, Ga., last week should awaken the country to the moral obscenity that is the war on drugs.
Two months ago, after a fire at their home in Wisconsin, Alecia, her husband and their four children, ranging in age from 1 to 7, moved in with relatives who live just of outside of Cornelia, Ga. The whole family slept together in a garage that had been converted into a bedroom.
Sometime before 3 a.m. on May 28, a SWAT team consisting of Habersham County sheriff's deputies and Cornelia police officers broke into that room. One of the cops tossed a flash-bang grenade, which creates a blinding light and a loud noise that are supposed to disorient the targets of a raid. It landed in Bou Bou's playpen and exploded in his face, causing severe burns and a deep chest wound.
The cops were looking for the Phonesavanhs' 30-year-old nephew, Wanis Thonetheva, who a few hours before had allegedly sold methamphetamine to a confidential informant from the same doorway through which the SWAT team entered. They had obtained a "no knock" warrant by claiming Thonetheva was apt to be armed and dangerous.
Thonetheva was not there, and police did not find any drugs, cash or guns, either. When they arrested him later that morning at a different location, he had about an ounce of meth but no weapons.
Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell and Cornelia Police Chief Rick Darby said their officers would not have used a "distraction device" if they knew children were living in the house they attacked. But their investigation of that possibility seems to have consisted entirely of asking their informant, who according to Terrell was at the house only briefly and did not go inside.
Even rudimentary surveillance should have discovered signs of children, who according to the Phonesavanhs' lawyer played with their father in the front yard every day. Alecia told ABC News there were "family stickers" on the minivan parked "right near the door they kicked in," which contained four child seats, and "my son's old playpen was right outside because we were getting ready to leave" for Wisconsin. Anyone who entered the house would have seen toys and children's clothes.
Last week, Terrell claimed Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Brian Rickman had assured him the officers involved in the raid did everything right and "there's nothing to investigate." Rickman, who says he is conducting a thorough review, denies telling Terrell that. But the issue here goes beyond sloppy police work.
Terrell says Thonetheva is to blame for Bou Bou's injuries, and the alleged meth dealer may even face criminal charges based on that theory. But Thonetheva did not toss an explosive, incendiary device into a baby's crib; the police did that, in the service of an odious ideology that says violence is an acceptable response to consensual transactions in which people exchange money for drugs that legislators do not like.
"The little baby (who) was in there didn't deserve this," Terrell told WXIA, the NBC station in Atlanta. "These drug dealers don't care."
Terrell, by contrast, cares so much about the psychoactive substances his neighbors consume that he is willing to endanger the lives of innocent bystanders in his vain attempt to stop people from getting high. If people like Terrell cared a little less, Bou Bou would be home with his parents instead of clinging to life in a hospital.
Two-thirds of murder cases are solved - the fraction of drug transactions that are even detected by authorities is certainly orders of magnitude lower.
I’m just looking for intellectual consistency. A fool’s errand, I know.
Absolutely not. We already proven that making alcohol illegal solves none of the problems and makes a whole bunch more. And it’s not believes, it’s a fact. Alcohol is more addictive than coke and meth, and has potentially lethal withdrawals which coke and meth don’t. Anything where quitting can kill you IS more dangerous than thing that don’t.
Well, until they start dying because of it.
If all you’ve got is strawmen you’ve got nothing.
Oh wait, you also have ad hominems.
Call me when facts and logic will support your cause. Every time you need insults you announce to everyone that you know you’re wrong.
“The war on drugs”
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It is like no one learned anything about the attempted “war on alcohol” (prohibition).
So. Because we are not catching drug dealers, we should just forget it? And go home?
Not buying it.
Here’s a little something to blow your mind.
Actually, Prohibition Was a Success
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/opinion/actually-prohibition-was-a-success.html
So, you want to let the governor ignore the State constitution?
Art I, SECTION 12. — Searches and seizures.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, and against the unreasonable interception of private communications by any means, shall not be violated. No warrant shall be issued except upon probable cause, supported by affidavit, particularly describing the place or places to be searched, the person or persons, thing or things to be seized, the communication to be intercepted, and the nature of evidence to be obtained. This right shall be construed in conformity with the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution, as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court. Articles or information obtained in violation of this right shall not be admissible in evidence if such articles or information would be inadmissible under decisions of the United States Supreme Court construing the 4th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Being “dangersous” does not enumerate a power to regulate it.
“After three deputies put my renter and her abusive boy friend to bed because they were too drunk to stand, they sent in a SWAT team because they’d spotted 48 10’’ pot plants. Twelve men with machine guns and an armored vehicle arrived at 2:00am and smashed in MY DOOR and arrested these people who had no guns and had only a history of drunken fighting with each other. Why didn’t the three deputies make the arrest right then and there? Well, I suspect it was so they could get extra pay and practice.”
You’re right; it is a shame what happened to this child, but the real damage is done to the taxpayers who are expected to fund th e law enforcement industry that has no interest in winning the war anyway (Would they then go get real jobs like everyone else?). It is a cash cow for workfare gibsmedats to retire at 45 with nice packages...
Because we're not only not putting a dent in the drug trade, but are boosting criminal profit margins - and turning our police forces into an occupying army.
This is in Florida’s constitution? It would seem to say that the governor is supposed to protect us from SWAT excesses.
The SWAT teams do have affidavits, but as the article indicated, they’re generally lies. Apparently, judges see their role as aiding and abetting this assault on citizens.
I see no reason for SWAT raids. Just watch the place and grab them when they get the mail or go shopping. The bit with David Koresh and the Branch Dividians was ridiculous. likewise, Ruby Ridge and Elian Gonzales.
I’d also like to see officers punished for gratuitously shooting dogs when they have pepper spray and stun guns. Also, when the raid the wrong address. (A serious fine, at the very least, plus personal restitution.)
You should actually read it. It actually shows why you’re wrong. The “best” prohibition did was reduce use, and it made a massive black market. And his conclusions have serious issues. Most historians attest the reduction in use to the PR from the temperance movement which made prohibition, not prohibition itself. A similar cycle can be seen in drunk driving, the laws haven’t effected people’s behavior nearly as much as the societal change that lead to the laws.
In Mo. they passed a law that all the "asset forfeiture" money from drug busts would go to the school system. The feds worked out a system where the local police would call them first and they'd provide federal paperwork for the bust. Then they'd take over the asset forfeiture and kick part of it back to the local police as a "grant", and the school system got nothing.
This article, which unlike yours cites actual sources, says otherwise: http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa157.pdf
drugs destroy lives....the police have procedures to follow and do so. If you don’t want a raid on your house, do not tolerate illegal drug use there
What would be an even greater moral obscenity is the millions of deaths which would result by NOT having a war on drugs.
I think you are highlighting this and other abuses to support a false conclusion. A War on drugs is necessary, but excesses and abuses are not. Without a war on drugs, we go the same way China went after the Opium wars; The country is devastated socially and economically, and it collapses. Millions of people die.
What China went through by NOT having a war on drugs is FAR worse than these abuses you point out.
Asset forfeiture is a good tool in theory. But now every “police” (quotes because police now means “revenue”) agency has an asset forfeiture group. In Tallahassee they took a grandmother’s paid for home because they said her grandson sold drugs from her porch. The paper mentioned that if she’d had a mortgage instead of owning it outright they wouldn’t have bothered. So, the sale wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t getting any money from it, but they succeeded in taking her home. Now, could she have fought it in court? In theory, but you have to come up with $5,000 down and $500/hour to use the court system. For all intents and purposes there is no justice unless you have plenty of money.
That is a simplistic and childish understanding of the drug issue. I have personally known several people who died of drug overdoses. Two of them were women who left behind less than 1 year old children.
I have known several chronic drug abusers, and what money they get either comes from stealing or from the government. The third party being harmed are we people who are stolen from and we people who have to pay taxes to feed these parasites.
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