DRUG COP KILLS WOMAN, WOUNDS BABY PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert #358 - Tuesday, 8 Jan 2008 The War on Drugs and a relentless policy of drug prohibition does not just increase violence in our communities among those involved with the illicit drug trade. It also increases undue violence and death among police and innocent bystanders. Over the past two decades, police forces across the USA have revamped their operations so that even routine search warrants are carried out by paramilitary SWAT teams. On Friday, Jan 4, the paramilitary SWAT unit of the Lima OH police department (city population 41,000) elected to serve a warrant at a home where they knew in advance that children were present. Still, they decided to go forward with the nighttime raid just after 8 p.m. Friday. The result was deadly. A SWAT team officer shot and killed Tarika Wilson. Her 1-year-old son, Sincere Wilson, also was shot. The man wanted in the arrest warrant was found immediately upon entry by the officers and arrested. An unidentified officer then ascended stairs to the second floor where he encountered Ms. Wilson holding her baby in her arms. He then shot and killed her, while wounding the infant. Such shooting by police of unarmed civilians nationwide continues to be reported far too often for the interest of general community health and safety. Further, the majority of such killings by police are waged against minority race civilians, despite the fact that all races use illicit drugs in virtually equal percentages. Perhaps the worst consequence of these police shootings of unarmed civilians is that it is very rare for the shooter cops to either be charged with a crime or even disciplined. Most police agencies seem to view such killing and injury to civilians as simple "collateral damage" in the never-ending War on Drugs. Please consider writing and sending a Letter to the Editor directed to the newspapers covering this story. Please use appropriate language to criticize the excessive force used by local police departments and encourage the newspapers to persist with coverage of the story in as much detail as possible. If you elect to write to more than one newspaper, we strongly suggest at least some modification of your message so that each newspaper receives a unique letter. Letters of 200 words or less have the best chance of print unless otherwise noted in MAP headers. Thanks for your effort and support. It's not what others do it's what YOU do. MAP is archiving news and opinion coverage about this breaking news story which may be found at a link which updates every 24 hours: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Tarika+Wilson Radley Balko of Reason magazine is one of many notable national writers who has carefully detailed the rising use of paramilitary actions by U.S. police against civilians in the name of drug prohibition. His July 2006 report for The Cato Institute - "Overkill - The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids In America" may be found here: http://drugsense.org/url/29ukwQCK Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center: http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides Or contact MAP's Media Activism Facilitator for personal tips on how to write LTEs that get printed. PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER Please post a copy of your letter or report your action to the sent letter list ( ) if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy directly to if you are not subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list so others can learn from your efforts. Subscribing to the Sent LTE list ( ) will help you to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing efforts. To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource =.

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