Drug War Update

Radley Balko was the latest update on last week's drug raid gone wrong when the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland had both of his black labs shot and killed in what certainly seems to be an unjustified use of police force. From the developing story, it appears that the mayor and his family really were just in the wrong place at the wrong time- the real criminals authorities are looking for are men involved in a scheme to ship marijuana across the country using innocent people's names and addresses. But still, the Prince George county police (who had conducted the raid) have still refused to apologize. And now Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo is calling for a federal investigation.

Anytime these sorts of stories break, there are always those who rush to defend the police. But the truth is that the problems with these stories are not the individual officers who've been put into bad situations, but the literal use of this sort of force in circumstances that don't require it.

It's really a shame, but maybe it takes a white, middle class, politician victim for these sort of tactics to receive national attention.