Project Safe Neighborhoods
Leave it to the drug warriors to create something called Project Safe Neighborhoods that really means strange men bursting into your house after dark yelling as they break down your door and expecting you (a 92-year-old woman) to read their vests before deciding that your life is not really in danger.
I considered writing this up for the Walkerville Weekly Reader, but it’s Thanksgiving and my heart’s not in it. Maybe when we find out more about what actually happened. Who knows? Maybe she was the Secret Atlanta Drug Kingpin and Atlanta will now be free of illegal drugs.
The police call these things “knock and announce” but what they really are is “burst and yell”. Regardless of who is behind the door, if this is the only way to enforce prohibition, maybe it’s time to rethink prohibition?
At 92, Kathryn Johnston was about six years old when alcohol prohibition passed. She was about nineteen when alcohol prohibition was repealed.
Now I lay me down to sleep-
My life and limb may Hoover keep,
And may no Coast Guard cutter shell
This little home I love so well.May no dry agent, shooting wild,
Molest mine wife and infant child,
Or searching out some secret still,
Bombard my home to maim and kill.When dawn succeeds the gleaming stars,
May we devoid of wounds and scars,
Give thanks we didn’t fall before
The shots in Prohibition’s War.—The Patriot’s Prayer, Arthur Lippman
- November 25, 2006: It is not the bee that stings, but the bee’s wax
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One of the problems with our incredibly complex and increasingly capricious legal system is that those who deal with it can end up treating it as a game. After Jonathan Adler on the Volokh Conspiracy quoted Radley Balko about Kathryn Johnston’s killing, Orin Kerr took offense:
Radley’s “pretty simple” solution seems quite troubling to me. Under his proposed solution—“stop invading people’s homes for nonviolent offenses”—a person could commit any white collar fraud, embezzle money from the elderly, bribe Congressmen, or engage in a global child pornography trading ring knowng that the police won’t invade their home to collect evidence against them.
Orin Kerr is using “invasion” to mean any kind of police search and arguing against the notion that we should forbid any home searches for any non-violent crime. But is that what Balko meant? Here’s part of what Adler quoted:
On the other hand, if the police break into your home and they mistake the blue cup, TV remote, the t-shirt you’re holding to cover your genitals because they broke in while you were sleeping naked, or the glint off your wristwatch for a gun—and subsequently shoot you (all of these scenarios have actually happened), well, then no one is to blame. Because, you see, SWAT raids are inherently dangerous and volatile, and it’s perfectly understandable how police might mistake an innocent person holding a t-shirt for a violent drug dealer with gun.
This discrepancy grows all the more absurd when you consider that they have extensive training, you don’t. They have also spent hours preparing for the raid. You were startled from your sleep, and have just seconds to make a life-or-death decision. To top it all off, many times they’ve just deployed a flashbang grenade that is designed to confuse and disorient you.
The solution is actually pretty simple: Stop invading people’s homes for nonviolent offenses.
I’ve highlighted the parts that Kerr appears to have missed. Balko is clearly not talking about all searches. He’s talking about SWAT-style break-ins performed at night when the victim is most likely to think that a home invasion is in progress, and performed in a manner to create just that confusion. This is not the kind of search that police normally use for white collar fraud. Although its use is growing, the police are rarely worried that some accountant is going to flush twenty million dollars down the toilet.
Kerr knows this. He’s playing word games. Even having the obvious meaning pointed out to him, he updates his post with “I’m not sure I see this in Radley’s post, but I thought I should at least flag the uncertainty.”
- Shooting victim, 92, shot officers five times
- “The assistant chief said Johnston should have recognized the men as officers even though they were not wearing uniforms. He said all three wore bulletproof vests that had the word ‘Police’ across the front and back. He said they shouted they were police as they burst through the door.”
- The Walkerville Weekly Reader
- In the end times, one newspaper dared to call God to task for His hypocrisy. That newspaper was not us, we swear it. Not the eternal flames!
- Intemperance: The Lost War Against Liquor
- Larry Englemann’s Intemperance is a great history of prohibition. The bumper sticker “Don’t shoot, I’m not a bootlegger” could just as well be transported to homes today for overeager, paranoid police: “Don’t shoot, I’m not a drug dealer.” Companies such as Ford fired people based on their opposition to prohibition. And people claim heaven if we just step up enforcement.
More police corruption
- White privilege is not the nail
- Attributing George Floyd’s death to white privilege when it was caused by left-run city policy means that we will continue to have more George Floyds.
- Public Prostitution
- Because sometimes a police officer dressed as a prostitute really is a prostitute. Especially in Chicago.
- America, your restrooms are safe
- No, you don’t have to worry about touching toes with a homosexual—unless he’s also a police officer, of course.
- Targeting critics of the law
- When Canadian journalist Kerry Diotte criticized red light cameras in Edmonton, Edmonton police started looking for a reason to arrest him.
- Massachusetts State Police encourage speeding
- Massachusetts State Police have made it clear that speeding laws are not about safety, but only revenue.
More prohibition
- Learning from alcohol prohibition
- If the people against ending drug prohibition had been around in the thirties, we would never have ended the prohibition of beer and cocktails, because of the dangers of pure alcohol and bathtub gin. One of the lessons of the alcohol prohibition era is that we don’t have to go from banning everything to allowing everything. There is a middle ground.
- Progressives ruin a different kind of race in New Jersey
- As a potential triple-crown winner prepares for the third race of the Triple Crown, it’s almost impossible to place a bet in Atlantic City, NJ.
- U.S. homicide rate compared to gun control measures
- Extrano’s Alley lists the U.S. homicide rate from 1885 to 1940, and somebody else puts it into a chart.
- The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition
- Herbert Asbury’s book has to rank as one of the greatest arguments ever written against the drug war; this book about alcohol prohibition chronicles and forecasts all of the problems with modern prohibition that we see today.
- Cannabis Britannica
- Subtitled “Empire, Trade, and Prohibition”, this is an in-depth history of how prohibition came about in Britain, and ends up describing how marijuana prohibition came to the forefront of international attempts to ban opium.
- 26 more pages with the topic prohibition, and other related pages
Remember: Trump reassures crowd after assassination attempt fails. (read more…)
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