The war on drugs is a failure. An abject total complete failure. In 30+ years on fighting drug use we've really done two separate and completely unrelated paths. The first path, and probably the one that's had significant success has been the worth working on has been the social and health care argument. Drug use is down, where it's down because people have been convinced that cocaine, crystal meth, marijuana and what ever else has been shown to many to be a disaster for you as a personal choice.

That's the good news.

The bad news is this:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/07/mayor.warrant/

and this:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-mayor0807,0,4563211.story

For those folks who don't live in the DC area, these people live in what is clearly an upscale, middle class, "good" neighborhood. That's not to say that drug abuse and distributors don't live in those kinds of neighborhoods, but just that this is the kind of neighborhood most people assume gets some kind of special deference by the members of the police department. Not any more it seems.

If you're unfamiliar with the story, these folks where at home, on a normal day, when a package was delivered. Less than an hour later, the SWAT team, without any announcement, broke down the door, shot and killed the family pet dogs (2 Black Labs), bound the occupants and excuted a drug raid.

The problem is that the resident of the house is the Mayor of Berwyn Heights. No one in the house had a history of drug use, or abuse or was known to be a drug dealer. The assault of the house, reportedly, was done with out a no knock warrent so that seems to be a problem for police as well.

Now the police did have reason for the raid, there was a 32 pound box of marijuana delivered to the house. The package was known to contain marijuana and had been tracked since entering the country. The package has addressed to the Mayor's wife.

However, my problem is the whole totality of the situation. Anyone can send any package to your home. You have no way of knowing who's sending what to you.
There is literally no defense against this. This family had no idea what was about to happen. They had done nothing wrong, the gentleman in question was hand cuffed in his briefs in the middle of his home while his 50 year old mother-in-law was forced to watch the police execute one of the family dogs.

This is an extreme case, but in general the trend seems to be that the police have lost their minds. Who could possibly think this was a good idea?

What has happened till innocent until proven guilty. Why was it just assumed that a package sent to the occupants would be evidence of guilt? How did we reach this point where merely living your life with no intent or even inadvertent act is enough to bring gun wielding , dog shooting crazy men into your home.

"As he changed clothes, SWAT team members darted across the fenced-in lot. Porter, 50, was cooking artichokes in the kitchen and screamed when she saw the approaching masked men with guns."

I don't know about you, but the thought of masked men running across the yard is chilling. Just chilling.

This kind of thing has to stop.