Police/Suspect Altercations

A Michigan cop shot college student Derek Copp in the chest during a drug raid last month in which police seized only a small amount of marijuana (at least according to Copp's lawyer; the cops aren't talking). Now they're coming after him with drug possession charges.

Police say that aggressive drug raids are good at protecting police, but two dramatic officer deaths that were caused by those tactics suggest the opposite. So do the statistics -- only three law enforcement officers died conducting drug raids last year. At least that many citizens were killed, and who knows how many dogs.

As Mexicos's plague of prohibition-related violence continues unabated, Washington is moving to beef up the border and the Mexican repressive apparatus. But for the first time, US officials are openly admitting that some of it is our fault, possibly opening the way for the discussion of drug legalization to move in from the margins.

Congress wants the Obama administration to "do something" about the prohibition-related violence ravaging Mexico. But that "something" just looks like more drug war.

There is outrage in western Michigan after an unarmed university student was shot and seriously wounded in a drug raid last week. And what did the cops find? "A few tablespoons full" of marijuana.

The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) met in Vienna this week to draft a political declaration and plan of action to guide international drug policy for the next decade. While the prohibitionists prevailed in the end, the voices of dissent are growing ever louder and more powerful.

The three Atlanta narcs whose phony drug raid ended with the death of a 92-year-old woman were sentenced to prison Tuesday. Has the Atlanta Police Department learned its lesson? The sentencing judge certainly hopes so.

The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy issued a report Wednesday calling for harm reduction, treating drug use as a public health issue, and decriminalizing marijuana. The report was an intervention aimed as much at Washington as at Vienna, where the UN meets next month to plot global drug strategy.

As violent intruders were battering down his door one night last January, Ryan Frederick picked up his rifle and shot through it, killing one. Now he's most likely going to prison for 10 years. Another misbegotten SWAT-style drug raid gone bad -- for everybody.

The Peruvian government managed to defeat the bloody Shining Path insurgency in the early 1990s. Now, the profits from prohibition are helping to bring it back to life.