Washington Post has a definitive account of the killing of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s dogs that took place during a botched drug raid back in July. It’s an impressive feature that references Radley Balko’s research and really nails down the faulty drug war tactics that brought this tragedy about. As upsetting as the story is, it’s vital that this incident becomes more than a footnote in the long and growing list of brutal drug war excesses that occur everyday in America and beyond.

An accompanying online chat with Calvo included this question:

Washington, D.C.: Mayor Calvo, thank you for courageously speaking up and telling the world about the tragedy perpetrated on your family. I know you have forcefully called for some incremental reforms on the state level, but don't you agree that we will continue to see innocent lives lost in raids gone wrong, billions of dollars wasted on arrests and incarceration, and empowering of violent criminal enterprises as long as drugs are illegal? Isn't the real solution to put drugs into a legal and regulated framework like we did when we legalized alcohol 75 years ago?

Cheye Calvo: Let me say first that I have never done drugs and have a fairly deep personal opposition to them. That said, I also have a serious problem with public policy by metaphor -- and the 'war' allusion is especially dangerous. Clearly, the current policy is a failure, and there needs to be a genuine public discussion here. A federalist at heart, I think that states should have greater leeway to try new approaches. There has to be a middle ground between outright legalization and a military state.

That sounds awfully reasonable and although I’d argue that anything short of a regulated market would continue to produce unnecessary violence, I think Calvo is speaking in a way many people can relate to. I think it’s this type of argument from this type of person that will eventually make a difference in the way the war on drugs is fought in our communities.

We should be seeing a verdict soon in the case of Ryan Frederick, the Virginia man who was charged with murder for killing a police officer who he mistook for a burglar during a questionable drug raid.

The jury failed to return a verdict on Tuesday and will continue deliberating Wednesday. Having followed the case closely, I’m pretty worked up about it and I’ll be glued to the computer until this gets resolved. A guilty verdict would not only send an innocent man to prison, but would provide a symbolic victory for the worst aspects of drug war policing, those that created this tragedy in the first place.

Beyond all that, the trial itself has been a grand injustice, really just a classic railroading that brought out the worst of the worst as far as drug war prosecutorial tactics are concerned. Ryan Frederick is simply not the man the prosecution made him out to be, not on any level whatsoever. In one familiar example, prosecutor Paul Ebert used testimony from a "marijuana expert" to grossly exaggerate the capacity of Frederick’s personal marijuana garden:

Meinhart says 1 plant produces 1 pound of salable marijuana. 1 pound is 16 ounces, and at $400.00 per ounce is $6400.00 times 10 plants is $64000.00. [Tidewater Liberty]

Yet, as Radley Balko points out, Frederick had a not-so-great job getting up at 4 a.m. to deliver sodas. He didn’t have $64,000. Police only found 12 grams of marijuana in the raid. All of this is just pure garbage, the same bogus story recycled over and over again in every marijuana trial. But it’s particularly insidious in this case, since the goal is not only to convict Frederick of a marijuana offense, but to destroy his image before the jury and nail him on a false murder charge.

Please join me in keeping your fingers crossed that Frederick will be set free.