Earlier quoted context omitted.
Legalize all drugs, and fill each one with literature about how damaging it is to you (similar to what some countries do on cigarette packs). If you can get heroin at CVS, you wouldn't need to go to your local drug dealer and help finance his shady/violent activities. I know it sounds crazy but we already knowingly sell stuff that can kill you (cigarettes, alcohol). The gangs/drug dealers would simply not survive if…
And who gets to foot the bill for all of these new addicts? The cigarette companies have been used for years for killing people. Imagine he amount of people using for ods. Tort reform would also be need for this to ever work.
A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
331–340 of 464 posts
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're essentially saying that the only way to stop this is to use an excessive force in return.
How are you reaching that conclusion, may I ask?
I'd appreciate if you'll find a flaw in the following:
1. Officer wants to return home no matter what. 2. He/she decides to use as much firepower as possible to achieve that - 50 cal guns, military grade armor, armored cards, explosives, grenades, rockets, whatever. 3. I have a risk of getting caught in the situation like this. I live in bad neighborhood, my brother sells weed, I had police encounters in the past, whatever. 4. I want to stay home alive. 5. What should I do to achieve #4 if police decided on the escalation of firepower? Logically I can conclude anything besides having thicker armor and higher caliber weaponry?
If someone declares war on you and not poised to take prisoners and determined to kill, what should you do?
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Legalize all drugs, and fill each one with literature about how damaging it is to you (similar to what some countries do on cigarette packs). If you can get heroin at CVS, you wouldn't need to go to your local drug dealer and help finance his shady/violent activities. I know it sounds crazy but we already knowingly sell stuff that can kill you (cigarettes, alcohol). The gangs/drug dealers would simply not survive if…
And who gets to foot the bill for all of these new addicts? The cigarette companies have been used for years for killing people. Imagine he amount of people using for ods. Tort reform would also be need for this to ever work.
First, I don't think we'd see a surge of new addiction like you expect. Second, we are already footing the bill for drug addiction, plus the violence it causes, plus the extra policing, plus legal costs, plus incarceration costs. Even with a surge in addiction, we'd still come out far ahead of the current situation.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#3341. This happened in rural Georgia, far away from Atlanta. 2. The suspect was later arrested for dealing meth. This isn't a little dime bag situation as the clearly biased writer would have you believe. 3. This isn't the suspect's first arrest, he was arrested before for distribution. Police found an AK-47 in his house. Here are things that could have been done to prevent this situation. 1. The homeowner could have no…
Did you read the article? 1. The suspect is the nephew. 2. The nephew is not the home owner. 3. The home owner wasn't the one dealing meth. 4. The nephew/suspect wasn't present at the home at the time.
They'll get him eventually even if it takes another fifty armed assaults.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prohibition 101: 1. The act being prohibited is nonviolent; injecting heroin, for example, involves zero violence. 2. The prohibition itself creates the violent black market organizations; if heroin were legal, the black market organizations wouldn't exist. 3. Thus yes, nonviolent laws.
This is true to some degree, though I think legalizing many drugs would still not take away a large portion of the associated criminality. People with bad coke or meth addictions just don't care very much who they hurt.
Hurting people is already illegal.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an interesting point, and depending on the jurisdiction, some judges are elected officials. It should come back on the judge that he or she authorized this abuse of power. Unfortunately, the feedback loop between the (hypothetical) judicial backstop on the system and the enforcers of the law tends to be left open by ignorance. It would be good for local political activists in Atlanta to make sure that the jud…
OK, but the judge can only go by the evidence s/he is presented with. This judge might have been rubber-stamping SWAT raid applications, or might have been given sufficient evidence to think there was a serious risk of a firefight.
Sure, but elected positions do not work that way. ;)
Sometimes you make a bad choice based on circumstances that were partially outside of your control. An elected judge being overthrown for that reason may make their successor either more willing to question or less willing to take the police's evidence as sufficient.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
The drug war is a race war. It has little to do with drugs. They're not going after white coke/pot users/dealers very much, are they?
Race has nothing to do with it. Lots of meth labs getting busted in rural America are run by white dealers.
If your constituents are racists, you have to find policies that support those views by proxy -- the war on drugs, immigration control, abortion rights, and so on. Over time, people end up remembering the propaganda and forget the real reasons these ideas gained so much support in the beginning.
Meth didn't exist when the war on drugs started, it is an after the fact explanation. You've been taught that the war on drugs is equal opportunity. Propaganda is built on lies and dis-information. The individuals crafting policies who actually believe that propaganda eventually craft disaster and failure, like a geneticist who doesn't believe in evolution.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#338I was thinking to moving to the US and start my company
now i'm gonna stay home. At least no one is gonna fire a flash nade at me
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#339Caveat: I don't support frequent use of no-knock warrants. That said, this is another article on the story: http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/30/us/georgia-toddler-injured-stu... According to CNN, the offender had sold meth to an informant "a few hours earlier" at the house and had a previous felony weapons charge. Their target is a meth dealer who brings a gun to the table. Given that information, it seems less crazy to th…
I'm surprised by the huge difference between those articles. Somehow i do find your article more believable. News outlets prefer to spin the story the other way because that kind of story is much more popular. It sheds light on a whole other side of what happened and i'm shocked to see how the posted article just lies about half of it.
Of course this is a sad story, no one should ever get hurt by drug violence, let alone a defenseless baby. But i think we should not rush our opinions on these things.
It's easy to get all emotional and be all upset when we read these things.
But we are supposed to be intellectuals right? We should not make judgements based on one sensationalist article. We can do better than that.
I think we should all just act a bit more rational. Don't make snap judgements. Read more about a subject before you condemn people.
In the end, i don't care what YOU think is the truth. Just make sure you know what you're talking about before you shout out your opinions.
PS: iambateman, this is not really meant for you of course ;)
People will probably misinterpret my post. In no way i mean to say that police and government don't share any blame. I'm definitely against the militarization of police. But i won't be sending money to that family either.
Re: A SWAT team blew a hole in my 2-year-old son
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that simply not true. Do you know how much a kilo of coke costs? We're talking ~20k USD. You could easily flush that, and low level street guys don't have kilos lying around, not even close. If you have access to that kind of quantity you know people who are pretty high up. Not to mention the fact that the penalty for such an amount is on the order of 10 years in prison (of course, that depends on a lot of fac…
Really? So you could cut open whatever's holding it, throw all the powder in the toilet (1 kg will be more than 1 flush also), dispose of the bag, clean the knife/scissors and there be no trace? I'm sceptical. The police don't need to find 1 kg of cocaine, to find a bag with powder in and powder around the toilet should be sufficient.
How is it sufficient? Sufficient for what? Do you think that their end goal is to get a charge, any charge, on this mid level dealer? Of course not; they want information on someone even more high level.
The penalty for 1 oz and destroying evidence (if they can prove that) is nothing compared to the penalty for 1 kg.