The following video is heartbreaking, especially since it happened in my state. Still, this is happening every day in every other state over completely victimless crimes.
Here’s a quick explanation if you can’t watch the video (via Radley Balko)…
SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on. They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment. So smoking pot = “child endangerment.” Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone’s safety.Just so we’re clear.
And now…yeah, wow…
And yet people can smoke and drink to their hearts content around their kids and nobody bats an eye.
Here’s E.D. Kain’s take on it…
How can we give our government the authority to trample on its own citizens like this over what is by every sane and rational argument – not to mention every piece of scientific data – an incredibly harmless substance used consensually without any real side-effects? It boggles the mind.
Here’s the original story, which happened back in February…
Whitworth was arrested, and his wife and 7-year-old son were present during the SWAT raid, Haden said. A second dog, which Whitworth’s attorney Jeff Hilbrenner described as a corgi, also was shot but was not killed.“The family is concerned with what happened,” Hilbrenner said. “We don’t feel like what happened in the home was appropriate. The priority right now for us is the misdemeanor charges.”
Police discovered a grinder, a pipe and a small amount of marijuana, Haden said. Because the SWAT team acts on the most updated information available, the team wanted to enter the house before marijuana believed to be at the location could be distributed, she said.
Long story short…if the right wing, Constitution-loving crowd really wanted to fight tyranny…well…here ya go. This is it. Shock and awe in the face of some pot and some pets.
