You're missing the social context here. First, this is never about using it's about dealing. Police enforcement efforts are almost entirely preoccupied with trafficking. Second, dealers are, by and large, bad people for other reasons. Your suburban pot dealer isn't the target of no-knock raids. The targets are guys with long rap sheets of felony convictions, often for violent crimes.
Drugs are a proxy in a war between police and gangs. Atlanta had 81 murders in 2013, versus 82 for London, which has 20x the population. To an extent the drug trade causes some of this violence, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Atlanta is in a former slave-holding state and was segregated as recently as the 1970's. It's a city where 27% of residents, and 31% of children, are below the poverty line. Poverty is highly correlated with race: 33% of blacks and hispanics versus only 8% of whites. It's a city where 76% of poor families are led by women with no husband present.
Between the history of oppression and the massive racial disparity in the incidence of poverty, there is zero trust between the black majority and the white minority (which holds a majority of the economic and political power). This lack of trust is at the root of much of the conflict. Black and hispanic communities are unhappy with the crime, but also, arguably for good reasons, don't help the police shut down the gangs. At the same time, wealthier whites support the aggressive enforcement because they are scared and the negative side-effects don't happen in their neighborhoods.
This is not to justify no-knock raids for drug enforcement, but to help illuminate the mindset of the officers involved and how they justify their actions. I am in favor of deescalating the drug war, but that's just the first step in normalizing our cities, which see violence that is without comparison in the developed world.
>Second, dealers are, by and large, bad people for other reasons. Your suburban pot dealer isn't the target of no-knock raids. The targets are guys with long rap sheets of felony convictions, often for violent crimes.
This may (or may not) be true in Atlanta, but in South Carolina, it's demonstrably untrue. We had a wave of SWAT raids from 2006-2010 on poker games, culminating in this:
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When a police department forms a swat team, they're going to use it, even for minor offenses.
While this specific story is staged in Atlanta, this is happening throughout the country, in every state.
We need to stop the demented practice of selling surplus military equipment to local police departments. We're not saving money. Cops don't need armored cars, drones, grenades, etc.
They already sold the equipment to the federal government. The federal government is simply getting rid of stuff they don't want. If anything, this practice hurts them by flooding the market with used goods.
> Police enforcement efforts are almost entirely preoccupied with trafficking.
I find that hard to believe. It can't be that hard to actually shut down distribution networks with the amount of resources the government uses. But if you just focus on the parts of the network near to the end user, you can burn a lot more resources and argue that you should be given even more resources. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they actively protect or support the major distribution networks:
Atlanta spends over $15,000 per pupil per year on schools, 50% over the OECD average, and about as much as Switzerland (although, adjusted for PPP Atlanta still spends much more than Switzerland).
Spending per pupil is not necessarily the right metric. The net spending accounts for paying for teachers who can't teach, overly priced contracts to the businesses connected to school boards, corruption, etc.
Net educational spending isn't even the right metric.
Unless we want to agree that spending $15,000 per pupil from a family with an income of $30,000 equates to the same education as $15,000 per pupil from a family with an income of $200,000.
And for social context too, this roughness is probably mandatory in a country where it's so easy to buy weapons : they never know what they will face (I'm not defending them either).
Drugs are a proxy in a war between police and gangs. Atlanta had 81 murders in 2013, versus 82 for London, which has 20x the population. To an extent the drug trade causes some of this violence, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Atlanta is in a former slave-holding state and was segregated as recently as the 1970's. It's a city where 27% of residents, and 31% of children, are below the poverty line. Poverty is highly correlated with race: 33% of blacks and hispanics versus only 8% of whites. It's a city where 76% of poor families are led by women with no husband present.
Between the history of oppression and the massive racial disparity in the incidence of poverty, there is zero trust between the black majority and the white minority (which holds a majority of the economic and political power). This lack of trust is at the root of much of the conflict. Black and hispanic communities are unhappy with the crime, but also, arguably for good reasons, don't help the police shut down the gangs. At the same time, wealthier whites support the aggressive enforcement because they are scared and the negative side-effects don't happen in their neighborhoods.
This is not to justify no-knock raids for drug enforcement, but to help illuminate the mindset of the officers involved and how they justify their actions. I am in favor of deescalating the drug war, but that's just the first step in normalizing our cities, which see violence that is without comparison in the developed world.