What is involved in blocking the sewer line coming from a house? Is it even possible? (short of a back-hoe)
From their point of view what is easier throw a flash grenade into a crib or build sewer shut-off valves through-out the city. Control them, repair them. Can you prove that these drugs belonged to this particular house. That this one person flushed them. What if they are 10 people in the house. Are they all drug dealers because they found pot flushed in some sewer trap?
"they found pot flushed in some sewer trap?"
How is that worse than "they found pot under the floorboards"?
Huh? If you have evidence for a warrant on a supposedly dangerous dealer you don't need to catch them with drugs. Simply wait them out for when they leave their house and pick them up then.
Did you know that a search warrant is not the same as an arrest warrant?
It would seem that if you have enough probably cause to go into the suspect's family's house with an armed and armored SWAT team tossing grenades, then you would have enough probably cause to simply arrest him and bring him down to the station. It's also much more civilized that way.
I'm pretty sure the poor child's situation is a direct result of a flash bang 'distractionary device' being thrown into his crib by law enforcement. The suspect was NOT in the house, and they found NO DRUGS in the house. As for having a semi-auto firearm, um every other single house in Habersham county probably has one or more semi-autos, big deal. This was a poor family in a bad situation, that the poorly trained sh…
> Is one grenaded baby worth finding even 100lbs of meth? Not to me. // Does it matter if the meth might be causing far more pain to more people? This https://www.google.com/search?q=mother+on+meth+kills+child gives a lot of pretty stark reading material.
Does it matter if your death will moderately increase the happiness of a room full of bunnies? The group-ethics model has some pretty obvious limits, which I think you've violated in your example.
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.
This may sound silly, but it seems like there could be a MythBusters episode specifically on this to prove or disprove how likely these no-knock raids are needed to prevent an effective coverup of evidence. They could actually make some actionable data for public good.
Well, anecdotally, I've been in a house full of drugs when the cops showed up, and those drugs were gone before the cops stepped foot in the house. Yes, I had a not-so-optimal childhood.
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…
That solves nothing whatsoever. People aren't selling drugs because they believe everyone should have access to them. They sell drugs because it makes money. Legalize drugs and they'll make money some other illegal and dangerous way.
They could go into other illegal fields, or they could move somewhere where their illegal drug expertise is useful, or they could become farmers or teachers or simply retire.
There are other countries and other states in the USA that have legalized certain drugs, have they had a comparative rise in other illegal and dangerous activity like you have claimed?
Or are you just hypothesizing one possible outcome that has no evidence or bearing on reality, "whatsoever".
We have the same thing in the UK, you won't see any flash bangs being used here though.
Like in the the other European countries, too. If someone pulls a knife or even a pistol in Germany, the police will try its best to save even the offenders life - even if it takes hours.
The paramilitary home invasions authorized by U.S. injustice system is a small part of the increased militarization of the police who use military tactics and decommissioned military hardware stemming from the over decade long military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Also "middle America", European descendant U.S. citizens have little altruism for homeless, undocumented and oppressed nation peoples (New African, Chicano, Native American). Since the late 60s, middle america have had a knee jerk reaction toward more policing, more prisons, harsher criminal sentencing like "three strikes", and reactionary laws like Florida's "stand your ground". Marginalized U.S. inhabitants have little say in how their communities are policed and face police state conditions and a country with the highest per capita prison population.
> 1) It's unconstitutional, as a violation of due process, to suspend officers without pay, before they have been adjudicated as having done something wrong. This is almost certainly not true, especially with modern executive interpretations that 'due process' in the law simply means any established process. Do you have any references for this?
I'm not sure what your reference to "executive interpretations" is about, but the level of process that is due has been determined through case law. The test for the past 30+ years has been a balancing test that considers the following factors: "Three factors are relevant in determining what process is constitutionally due: (1) the private interest that will be affected by the official action; (2) the risk of an erro…
>I'm not sure what your reference to "executive interpretations" is about,
>"Three factors are relevant in determining what process is constitutionally due: (1) the private interest that will be affected by the official action; (2) the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and (3) the Government's interest."
These are impossibly vague and open-ended. That's actually my only point. What I'd like to see is a case where the Supreme Court said that a policeman could not be suspended without pay, decided on constitutional grounds.
A scale with a bit of powder on it does not demand 10+ years in prison. A gun, if registered (and it's not like all dealers have illegal guns) carries no penalty in and of itself. They (the cops) need something to barter with. You're much more likely to get useful information from someone facing 10+ years than someone facing 1 year (6 months with good behavior) or probation. They want to find everything.
Now you're onto something! Your first point is true. If the suspect manages to dispose of even some of the substance, that could hurt the case. Or it may not. There's lots of factors, I was just giving the simplest example I could think of (trying to flush a sufficiently large amount of cocaine). To elaborate on your own example though, pretty sure that even if a firearm is legally registered you can still get in tro…
You'rd right; I can't speak intelligently on the number of dealers using illegal firearms. It's about not leaving it up to chance though. They may know, to a relatively high degree of confidence, that the drugs are there, but they may know little else. You don't want to raid a home and come up empty handed.
I can't imagine a scenario in which finding a small percentage of the drugs wouldn't hurt the case though. If you can't find it then you can't charge them with possessing it.
From their point of view what is easier throw a flash grenade into a crib or build sewer shut-off valves through-out the city. Control them, repair them. Can you prove that these drugs belonged to this particular house. That this one person flushed them. What if they are 10 people in the house. Are they all drug dealers because they found pot flushed in some sewer trap?
"they found pot flushed in some sewer trap?" How is that worse than "they found pot under the floorboards"?
It is not worse, it is still easier to throw a flash grenade in a crib.
Worst case they get time off with pay while and internal investigation by their friends determine that procedures are followed.
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?
The majority of your 'white coke' or powder cocaine busts are of Hispanic dealers (that's how it gets into the country and distributed to the big cities). Crack busts on the other hand were almost exclusively Africa-American dealers. They'd make crack out of powder cocaine once it got to their neighborhoods.
You parsed my admittedly poorly-written sentence wrong. I meant white dealers and users of pot and coke.