THE ATLANTA DRUG RAID

By Neal Boortz

(Back to John's Place)
By now you know the story of the drug raid in Atlanta where an elderly woman was killed by the police.

Thus far the police story is that a police informant purchased drugs at the woman's home earlier in the day. The police obtained a no-knock search warrant and returned to the home at 7:00 that evening. As they were breaking the door down to enter the residence, 88-year-old Kathryn Johnson, the owner of the home, opened fire with her pistol.

She hit all three police officers, one of them three times. The police returned fire and Johnson was killed. The issue isn't whether or not the police should have returned fire. Of course they should have. They didn't know who was doing the shooting. They believed they were entering a house where drugs were being sold.

On the other hand, Kathryn Johnson did the right thing also. Scared to death living in that high-crime neighborhood. She had heard of a recent rape of an elderly woman nearby. She was simply defending herself when she was killed.

Now we have an interesting twist. The informant is now saying that the police told him to lie, they told him to say that he had purchased drugs from the home. It would be easy to believe that the informant is now lying to cover his rear end. The problem is that the police have been caught in a few prevarications themselves.

The first word was the police officers made the drug buy in the home. Now we learn it was a police informant. Then we were told that police found narcotics in the home. Later we're told they only found a small amount of marijuana .. not considered narcotics.

As I've been saying from the beginning, the real cause of this tragedy is our insane war on drugs in this country. Study after study has shown that he most cost-effective way to reduce drug use in the U.S. is through treatment, not through criminalization and law enforcement. Americans just have this need to punish those who get involved in drugs.

Stupid? Sure they're stupid. Weak? Yeah, they're weak. Stupidity and weakness aren't crimes. We could save billions of dollars a year in law enforcement and incarceration costs if we would wise up and stop this absurd war on drugs. Identify the users and offer them treatment. Crime rate goes down. Money is saved, and we get reduced usage and dependence on drugs.

(Stupid & weak? Hmmm ... wonder if there is a treatment for being a liberal democrat?NB)