Armed with a battering ram and shotguns, Buffalo police looking for heroin broke down the door and stormed the lower apartment of a West Side family of eight.
The problem is that the Wednesday evening raid should have occurred at an apartment upstairs.
And, thatâs only the tip of the iceberg, according to Schavon Pennyamon, who lives at the mistakenly raided apartment on Sherwood Street with her husband, Terrell, and six children.
Pennyamon alleges that after wrongly breaking into her apartment, police proceeded to strike her epileptic husband in the head with the butt end of a shotgun and point shotguns at her young children before admitting their mistake and then raiding the right apartment. [BuffaloNews.com]
"We wouldnât be comfortable discussing the internal investigation," [Chief of Detectives, Dennis J.] Richards said. "We can say comfortably that over 1,100 search warrants were executed last year and 580 to date this year and that, with such a high volume and such a fast-paced environment, it is understandable that mistakes could happen."
The special prosecutor in the case against Ryan Frederick, the Chesapeake man accused of killing a city detective, wants the murder trial moved out of the Hampton Roads area.
The commonwealth has urged the court for a change of venue from Chesapeake to a court elsewhere in the state. Frederick is to stand trial Jan. 20 in Chesapeake Circuit Court on charges of capital murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and possession with the intent to distribute marijuana. [PilotOnline.com]
Itâs a devious move, necessitated by the fact that a lot of folks in and around Chesapeake, VA know that Ryan Frederick didnât do anything wrong. Police thought he was growing marijuana, but he wasnât. When they raided his house, he thought he was being robbed and fired on the intruders, killing an officer that he didnât realize was a cop. The marijuana growing operation they were looking for just wasnât there and Iâm still unclear on why theyâre pursuing distribution charges for the tiny amount of pot found in his home.
Letâs hope the judge has the sense to see through this sham of a trial and blocks these pathetic efforts to gain leverage for charges that should never have been filed to begin with.
Continuing the Fight against Illegal Drugs
The human toll of drug addiction and abuse hits all segments of American society. It is an international problem as well, with most of the narcotics in this country coming from beyond our borders. We will continue the fight against producers, traffickers, and distributors of illegal substances through the collaboration of state, federal, and local law enforcement.
We support mandatory sentencing provisions for gang conspiracy crimes, violent or sexual offenses against children, rape, and assaults resulting in serious bodily injury.
Thatâs really a rather positive sign, indicating that we may be moving towards a bipartisan consensus that our drug laws have gone too far.
Iâm also tempted to theorize that Obamaâs decision to bring Biden onto the ticket may have been a contributing factor here. Months ago, Dick Morris editorialized in favor of attacking Obama on sentencing reform, arguing that by supporting revised crack sentencing guidelines, Obama wants to let thousands of crack dealers out of jail. Itâs cynical and ruthless ploy that becomes considerably harder to pull off with Biden on the ticket. Given his central role in pushing through the original sentencing disparity, and his recent evidence-based reversal, Biden has all the credibility to blow any "soft on crack" attacks back to the '80's where they belong. Iâm no fan of Bidenâs drug war record, but thereâs an interesting dynamic here, which I'll concede to those who've argued that Biden's awful history could end up providing cover for reform.
Which brings us to the obvious question: if the democrats donât support mandatory minimums for drug offenses, and the republicans donât support mandatory minimums for drug offenses, who does?
(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)