War on Drugs: Bomb the Baby Edition

Tiassa

Tiassa

Let us not launch the boat ...
Valued Senior Member
This Is Your War On Drugs
Georgia cops bomb baby

This ... is ... your ... War ... On ... Drugs.

​

The lede, from Simon McCormack of Huffington Post:

A toddler is fighting for his life after a stun grenade landed in his crib and exploded next to his pillow during a drug raid.​

It should be noted that the suspect, facing federal drug charges, was not present at the time of the raid.

Alexis Stevens of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

19-month-old boy critically injured when a police device was tossed into his bed has a 50 percent chance of surviving, his parents said today. But a northeast Georgia sheriff defends the officers' actions, calling it a tragic accident.​

A "police device" in this case means a flashbang stun grenade that exploded in the toddler's face.

WSB TV explains:

Cornelia police Chief Rick Darby confirmed that the raid took place at the home just before 3 a.m. He said a multijurisdictional drug unit issued a warrant and organized the SWAT operation.

Deputies said they bought drugs from the house, and came back with a no-knock warrant to arrest a man known to have drugs and weapons.

“There was no clothes, no toys, nothing to indicate that there was children present in the home. If there had been then we'd have done something different,” Darby said. ​

But as an AJC update notes, that point is contested:

The mother of a 19-month-old boy critically injured when a police device was tossed into his bed in Habersham County said Friday there is no way officers should not have known there were children in the house.

“They say there were no toys,” Alecia Phonesavanh told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution today. “There is plenty of stuff. Their shoes were laying all over.”​

A question that seems to remain unanswered at this time is whether SWAT believed their suspect was still present in the home, and why.

​

WSB TV further notes:

[Alecia Phonesavanh] also showed [WSB reporter Ryan] Young pictures of her child in the Grady burn unit. Channel 2 has decided not to share most of the photos because of the graphic nature of the child's injuries.​

Be disturbed by what you see above if you find it disturbing, but apparently that image does not begin to accurately describe the damage done to the nineteen month-old in the name of our War on Drugs.

As police scramble to explain themselves and plead their emotional pain at what they have done, it really is hard to give a damn. Whenever the cops fuck up, we're supposed to feel sorry for them?

That is to say, if you're executing an arrest warrant with body armor, grenades, and assault weapons, it would seem advisable to know where the supsect is.

It is hard to believe Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell when he says, "Our hearts are broken with them because of the child". In order to have a broken heart, one must first have a heart.

To protect and serve, a police officer must be willing to kill or gravely injure innocent people because it is apparently too complicated to avoid such outcomes.

When one signs on to become a police officer, one is asking to undertake extraordinary authority, which in principle at least means undertaking extraordinary obligations. Bombing a baby because you are afraid of someone who isn't even there just doesn't make the cut. This team should face extraordinary punishment.
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Notes:

WSB-TV. "Toddler critically burned during SWAT raid". May 29, 2014. WSBTV.com. May 30, 2014. http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/toddler-critically-burned-during-swat-raid/nf9SJ/

McCormack, Simon. "SWAT Team Throws Grenade That Blows Up In Toddler's Face During Drug Raid". The Huffington Post. May 30, 2014. HuffingtonPost.com. May 30, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/30/swat-team-grenade-toddler_n_5418871.html

Stevens, Alexis. "Toddler critically injured by 'flash bang' during police search". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. May 29, 2014. AJC.com. May 30, 2014. http://www.ajc.com/news/news/breaking-news/toddler-critically-injured-by-flash-bang-during-po/nf9XM/

Image credit: WSB-TV.
 
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Tiassa said:
This Is Your War On Drugs . . . .
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It's now fifty years since "the Sixties" began--that misnamed 12-year period that began with the first Beatles song in 1963 and ended with our withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975.

I have always held out hope that some day before I die, I'll be able to retire from the Counterculture and blend in with the rest of America.

But nope, not today, heading for birthday #71 in a couple of months.

I'm still a hippie, and I still believe that this country would be a great deal safer if all the cops died tonight.

I was pissed off enough by their casual killing of dogs. But now they count babies as collateral damage???

The only reason there's violence in drug deals is that drugs are illegal. You don't see alcohol dealers and junkies shooting each other. Well... actually we did, back in the 1920s when alcohol was illegal.

And can you imagine how dangerous America will be when the Nannies finally get their way and make tobacco illegal? Who wants to accidentally stand in the way of a nicotine slave desperate for a black-market ciggie?
 
NcDanger

Fraggle Rocker said:

Who wants to accidentally stand in the way of a nicotine slave desperate for a black-market ciggie?
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Especially if the addict in withdrawal is a responsible gun owner.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
The only reason there's violence in drug deals is that drugs are illegal.
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There's violence in drugs for many reasons. Dealing with shady people is dangerous. Many of those people don't have compassion for other human beings. They just as soon put a bullet in your head and take your wallet rather than have a legitimate deal go down. They get the idea that "when the guy gets here let's kill him and take his money."

Then there's the, "You gave me a bad deal so I'm gonna kill you and take your money and drugs!, so there!"

Or the guy that has no money and needs a fix...bad!


Fraggle, the people that kill people in drug deals aren't law abiding citizens that would help you if you needed it, they would shoot you and take your money.
 
Motor Daddy said:
There's violence in drugs for many reasons. Dealing with shady people is dangerous. Many of those people don't have compassion for other human beings. They just as soon put a bullet in your head and take your wallet rather than have a legitimate deal go down. They get the idea that "when the guy gets here let's kill him and take his money." Then there's the, "You gave me a bad deal so I'm gonna kill you and take your money and drugs!, so there!" Fraggle, the people that kill people in drug deals aren't law abiding citizens that would help you if you needed it, they would shoot you and take your money.
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Geeze dude, you get the "He Just Don't Get It" award for the entire decade!

If drugs were not illegal, they would not be sold by these miscreants! They'd be manufactured by corporations and sold in stores, just like tobacco, alcohol and caffeine!

The only popular drug that would not be marketed that way is marijuana, because it is, literally, a "weed" that grows in every climate. Nobody will have to buy it or sell it, simply pick it off the bushes in their back yard. Sure, ya don't get sin-semilla that way, but most people will be happy enough with free pot to not complain about it not being quite as strong as the stuff they were buying for $10,000 a pound back in the pre-420 days.

You don't seem to understand that when the shit-for-brains government deliberately moves a popular product to the black market, its commerce now shifts into the hands of criminals. They're mobsters, not responsible businessmen, therefore;
  • They raise the price to account for the risk of doing business--and also because they're even greedier than capitalists.
  • Their quality control sucks--a big problem for heavy drugs like heroin, where an overdose can kill.
  • They can't take their commercial disputes to the courts so they shoot it out in the streets, often catching innocent bystanders in the crossfire.
  • They recruit children as runners because they're harder to catch and less likely to be prosecuted.
  • Children see them driving Maseratis while their hard-working parents take the bus, and decide which business they want to go into when they grow up instead of wasting time in school.
  • Americans are not an authority-loving people like the Brits, Germans or Japanese, so when something becomes illegal it just becomes more popular.
  • The cops and other authorities are bribed into cooperation, so respect for law diminishes.
My parents lived in Chicago during Prohibition, and this is exactly what they observed. Kids skipped school because they could make big money running bootleg liquor. People were blinded or even killed by the methanol (wood alcohol) that leached into backwood stills. My mom lamented that the worst impact of Prohibition was that women started going to taverns.

There were entire neighborhoods where they feared to go because of gunfights. Of course our own shit-for-brains government has solved that problem by offloading its War on Drugs to Mexico. Something like 30,000 Mexicans have been killed in the crossfire.

Of course we don't give a shit about them because they're "only Mexicans."

Just the other day there was a blurb in the paper about John D. Rockefeller, a teetotalin' Baptist and the richest man in America in the early 20th century. He was a champion of Prohibition and a major force in the campaign to implement it. But in 1932, when Roosevelt promised to repeal it (there was no income tax in those days so liquor taxes increased the federal income by 30%), he went on record with the following speech:
John D. Rockefeller said:
When the 18th Amendment was passed I earnestly hoped—with a host of advocates of temperance—that it would be generally supported by public opinion and thus the day be hastened when the value to society of men with minds and bodies free from the undermining effects of alcohol would be generally realized. That this has not been the result, but rather that drinking generally has increased, that the speakeasy has replaced the saloon, not only unit for unit, but probably twofold if not threefold, that a vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale; that many of our best citizens, piqued at what they regarded as an infringement of their private rights, have openly and unabashedly disregarded the 18th Amendment; that as an invevitable result respect for all law has been greatly lessened; that crime has increased to an unprecedented degree—I have slowly and reluctantly come to agree.
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Do you happen to notice the parallel?
 
Long ago and far away, I was a "young republican" when AuH2O was running for president.
Back then we were avid fans of William F. Buckley
His take on the war on drugs follows:
More people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing. These fatalities include, perhaps most prominently, drug merchants who compete for commercial territory, but include also people who are robbed and killed by those desperate for money to buy the drug to which they have become addicted.
This is perhaps the moment to note that the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approximately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000.
Treatment is not now available for almost half of those who would benefit from it. Yet we are willing to build more and more jails in which to isolate drug users even though at one-seventh the cost of building and maintaining jail space and pursuing, detaining, and prosecuting the drug user, we could subsidize commensurately effective medical care and psychological treatment.
The cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with intensive education of non-users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs.
Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority.
It is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors.
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The voice of the right. The correct voice.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
Geeze dude, you get the "He Just Don't Get It" award for the entire decade!

If drugs were not illegal, they would not be sold by these miscreants! They'd be manufactured by corporations and sold in stores, just like tobacco, alcohol and caffeine!
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So what you're saying is that if drugs were legal a desperate drug addict wouldn't shoot and kill for drugs? How about pizza? If pizza were legal would people kill a pizza dude for cash? If diamonds were legal would people hold up jewelry stores and kill people? How about banks? Why do people hold up banks and kill people since money is legal?

I'm declining the award... ;)
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
and I still believe that this country would be a great deal safer if all the cops died tonight.
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I might be & you might be yet I do not see how most people could be safer without police. I think I understand tho & you & I probably agree on most of what led you to say that. It is horribly tragic that 1 thing we need so much (police) is 1 thing which does so much harm.
 
Motor Daddy said:
So what you're saying is that if drugs were legal a desperate drug addict wouldn't shoot and kill for drugs? How about pizza? If pizza were legal would people kill a pizza dude for cash? If diamonds were legal would people hold up jewelry stores and kill people? How about banks? Why do people hold up banks and kill people since money is legal?

I'm declining the award... ;)
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Your attempt at analogy doesn't work. You are correct that there is more than 1 reason for drug violence yet the main reason is that they are illegal. Despite the fact that no person or group has the moral right to tell me what the heck I can or cannot put into my frigging body & the fact that much more harm results from legal drugs than illegal & the fact that obviously the shit-for-brains government does not know what the hell they are doing. Fraggle explained the situation very well yet no 1 can make you face it.
 
Motor Daddy said:
I'm pretty sure that when the Linguistics Moderator says "only", he means what he says.
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I'm pretty sure that neither you nor I know whether it was a typo or he temporarily misspoke or whatever. He said the only reason & I said the main reason & which of us is more correct is barely related to the issues being discussed. If we substitute main for only in that, it does not affect anything else he said.
 
StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
I'm pretty sure that neither you nor I know whether it was a typo or he temporarily misspoke or whatever. He said the only reason & I said the main reason & which of us is more correct is barely related to the issues being discussed. If we substitute main for only in that, it does not affect anything else he said.
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The only reason means 1 reason, not 2 reasons or 13 reasons. One reason... not many reasons, or some reasons, or a bunch of reasons, or even the main reason. The ONLY reason!

...and it's nasty of you to suggest that Fraggle made a typo. Which letter did he mistype?

...and the nerve of you to suggest that the Linguistics Moderator misspoke! (rolls eyes)
 
Motor Daddy said:
The only reason means 1 reason, not 2 reasons or 13 reasons. One reason... not many reasons, or some reasons, or a bunch of reasons, or even the main reason. The ONLY reason!

...and it's nasty of you to suggest that Fraggle made a typo. Which letter did he mistype?

...and the nerve of you to suggest that the Linguistics Moderator misspoke! (rolls eyes)
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Tell your doctor you need to cut back on your meds.
 
This is what you did. Care to explain in detail what you meant?

StrangerInAStrangeLa said:
Your attempt at analogy doesn't work. You are correct that there is more than 1 reason for drug violence yet the main reason is that they are illegal. Despite the fact that no person or group has the moral right to tell me what the heck I can or cannot put into my frigging body & the fact that much more harm results from legal drugs than illegal & the fact that obviously the shit-for-brains government does not know what the hell they are doing. Fraggle explained the situation very well yet no 1 can make you face it.
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