Pubdate: Thu, 04 Sep 2014
Source: Chico News & Review, The (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsreview.com/chico/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/559
Author: Garry Cooper

BLAME THE 'DRUG WAR'

Re "This isn't Ferguson" (Editorial, Aug. 28):

Your editorial about Ferguson, Mo., was right on. To further 
understand the militarization of our police forces and how it is 
being instituted, consider the following: SWAT teams have grown 
14,000 percent over a 10-year period, Al Jazeera reports. Ninety 
percent of the tasks performed by these SWAT teams with their newly 
issued armored vehicles and military-grade weapons are for nonviolent 
drug raids and serving drug warrants.

Basically, this already-proven failure of drug policy-the "Drug 
War"-is being used as a sorry excuse to militarize the police against 
us. We must demand an end to this drug war, once and for all.

The problem is that the police/prison industrial complex has grown in 
political power to a point that virtually all politicians are on 
their dole and are being "handled" by them. Our whore politicians 
will not even consider any change in drug policy as it is political 
suicide because of this unholy union. Our only hope for the people 
and America's freedom is to rally behind any grassroots effort to 
reform the drug laws in this country. We must stand behind every 
effort such as our local pot growers' Measure B in the Nov. 4 election.

Garry Cooper

Durham
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom