First, I’ll point you to the story I mentioned in late February where a SWAT team busted into a home in the middle of the night on a drugs warrant, arrested the inhabitants, and promptly shot the family’s two dogs, injuring a pit-bull and slaughtering a corgi – all before the eyes of a 7-year-old boy. They found only traces of marijuana and some minor paraphernalia, and saw this as a good enough reason to charge the father with “child endangerment”. Because storming a house in the dead of night and pumping the innocent family pets full of bullets was, of course, a necessary risk as opposed to the adults occasionally taking a little toke now and then.
Now, a video of the whole affair has been released, and here it is, below. WARNING: This footage is fucking horrifying and includes the graphic abuse and slaughtering of the aforementioned innocent animals. I damn near stopped watching when the corgi was screaming from being shot, before being silenced by an ensuing flurry of gunfire … and when the guy finally realized what these subhuman excuses for cops had done. As difficult as this may be to watch, I urge you to do so. Heightened awareness is the only weapon the common people have against these godforsaken assholes.
As Radley Balko points out, there are anywhere from 100 to 150 of these raids carried out every single day across the US against nonviolent drug users, approximately 95% of whom are regular people like you and I.
Good thing I don’t have a dog or I think I’d be hugging him to death, now. (Figuratively speaking.)