But Scalia has a point in implying that the case has little practical importance, since the protocol that police knock, identify themselves and then wait 15 or 20 seconds before entering, has gone the way of the 50-cent cup of coffee. It can still be found, but not often.

The Joe Friday approach to conducting a search has been replaced by Rambo in riot gear because years earlier the high court permitted the waiver of the ''knock and announce'' requirement - a rule grounded in our 4th Amendment privacy rights - in almost every circumstance.

If there's a chance that evidence will be destroyed, such as the possibility of drugs being flushed down the toilet, or a potential for physical violence - police suspecting there is a gun in the home, for instance - the Supreme Court has said it is not necessary to give advanced notice of entry.

We now have plenty of experience with ''no-knock'' warrants, as they are called, and the trail of victims this terrorizing tactic has left behind. Radley Balko, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, says that he has documented nearly 200 cases of ''wrong door'' raids occurring in the last 15 years, where the police broke into an innocent person's house. He says the correct figure is probably higher, but police and prosecutors don't generally bother keeping statistics on the operations they botch.

And when police come charging through the wrong door, they aren't dressed in a trench-coat and Dockers. These raids are typically conducted by militarized SWAT teams, outfitted for war. They are dressed in black masks and carry military-issue automatic weapons and other paramilitary gear, obtained gratis from the Pentagon. People who experienced such a raid must have felt like they were being attacked by an invading army. It isn't any wonder that, as in war, there is significant ''collateral damage.'' Balko has counted two dozen innocent people who died during one of these raids.

Some of the more notorious examples include the 1994 case of 75-year-old retired Methodist minister Accelyne Williams, who was reading a Bible in his living room when Boston police crashed through his door with sledge hammers. He died of a heart attack after being wrestled to the ground and handcuffed.

Similarly, in 2003, Alberta Spruill, a 57-year-old employee of New York City, died after police battered her door in and threw a concussion grenade inside. The coroner ruled that Spruill's death was a homicide. She had been scared to death.

Sometimes, the victim gets shot because his natural reaction to an invasion by gun-toting masked men is to reach for a firearm himself.
Is this highly confrontational tactic really necessary to secure evidence or ensure police safety when serving drug warrants? Not in the least, Jack Cole says.

Cole is the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition -- http://www.leap.cc -- an international drug-policy reform group made up of former drug warriors - police, prosecutors, wardens - who believe the U.S. War on Drugs has been a destructive failure. He is also a retired detective lieutenant and undercover narcotics investigator who spent 26 years with the New Jersey State Police.

According to Cole, ''too much violence is instigated by the police and it's just not necessary'' to do the job. Cole says a war metaphor has no place in domestic policing in a democratic society. When there is a war, there has to be an enemy, Cole says, and since 110 million people in this country above the age of 12 have admitted to having used an illegal drug, ''The enemy is us.''

Cole says that whenever he served a warrant, he was able to come up with some ruse to get an occupant to open the door without breaking it down or using violence. ''You just don't have to go in as a SWAT team,'' Cole says.

SWAT teams have proliferated not because they are needed but because police like to play soldier with relatively little of the battlefield risk; and they have been goosed along by a federal government that hands out surplus military implements like candy.

The only backstop to all this has been the U.S. Supreme Court and its rulings establishing basic standards for police interactions with the public. But with the Hudson case, it is pretty clear there is a five-member majority for loosening whatever reins still exist. So, expect the ''war'' to get more bloody and its casualty list to get longer. Welcome to the Roberts court.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
Author: Robyn Blumner, Tribune Media Services
Published: June 26, 2006
Copyright: 2006 The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact: letters@sltrib.com
Website: http://www.sltrib.com/

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The SWAT Syndrome
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread21926.shtml

My bride said that their (Switzerland) bridges are rigged with explosive devices so they can blow them up in case of an invasion.

With all that metaphor talk, you reminded me of a good book I read in the mid-70s (unfortunately it's out-of-print, but still available used):

Meta Metaphor -- David Macdermott http://search.barnesandnoble.com/used/product.asp?z=y&EAN=2698362252779&Itm=1

Last I saw he was out of surgery and was walking again.

Let's be clear on that point.

Ever.

A shot fired in anger, in order to enforce a law, or for any other purpose, is illegitimate.

Pointing or brandishing a gun, is itself an assault upon the person, it is to create a reasonable terror that one is going to be killed.

They at least should not be allowed to use deadly weapons against their own citizenry.

I'm not asking the government to disarm the people.

I hate it that in this world that are people who would harm their fellow man...or themselves. But I am thankful that I'm still allowed a modicum of self-defense.

I'm not too good with a baseball bat, except in softball...and I know that if I were close enough to an assailant to hit him with one...it would be all too easy for him to take it away from me and possible use it on me.

I always wished this country could be more like a big Switzerland. Standing defense and staying out of other people's wars.

Far from it. Every adult male that is not a criminal or insane has to serve in the militia and they have to keep a government issued, used to be fully automatic, rifle in their home. The entire nation can be mobilized and ready to defend itself within hours.

Half the canons (states) in Switzerland don't require any records to be kept on the sale of long guns or the free trade of guns with one another.

They have a very low murder rate. Much lower than the European nations that tend to ban most gun ownership.

They've never been invaded because of it. Concealed carry is ok in most of the canons without a special permit to do so.

Switzerland wants it's people to be responsibly armed.

Lots of ways to say the same things. Words are metaphors.

On topic: This preposterous Supreme Court ruling just puts more police and citizens in harm's way. LEAP is for harm reduction, not harm increase. Thank you, Jack Cole.

As a cannabist, like you I do not keep guns and I encourage my fellow cannabists not to do so either.

Am I a complete pacifist? In practice, yes. In theory, no, but here is my qualification: Force must be strictly defensive, never retaliatory, without threatening innocent bystanders; it must be necessary and sufficient to end an actual or imminent attack, in behalf of someone who would not object to being defended; it must be proportionate and not extended beyond the need to stop the immediate attack.

I intend to follow the path of peace, and non-violence, and so-far I've managed to keep within those boundaries. Fortunately for me I've managed to find outlets for my anger which is not of my own production, but a reaction to the active evil that is unavoidably in my view. I have music, and the written word. Now Cnews folks have given me another.

Truly any action of destruction and corruption such as we see now in the world has no possible result except more of the same, one way or another.

I certainly do not advocate or encourage violent reaction even though the push is closer to the brink than it should have ever have been let got, if there were actually any conscionable, responsible men or women in power- but there isn't not really.

Standing up and revolving into a new state, does not imply weoponry, though too few can concieve of how it could else be done, and because of that feel that nothing can be done.

The image of Thomas Jefferson (for instance) with an AK47 is meant to invoke both the seriousness of the situation, and one of the cores of Amercian liberties which is the right to bear arms, in an accepted American iconic fashion.

I don't believe in guns, but I sure wouldn't want the government to take away the right to have them, because the government has got the most of them, and Mr. Jefferson would surely not be trusting this one.

I was in the Polaris Misssle program long enough to get a good picture of the 'cold war' and what they called "detente." The atomic standoff that could have anhilated this earth in an hour should it fail.

The question of war, violence, and confrontational action accupied a lot of my thoughts.

What if a crazed meth-addict (for example) broke into my house and began beating up my wife to find out where our money was or something? In this county the odds of the sheriff responding within 24 hours is iffy. Should I then remain passive? Would you?

I decided that there are a lot of factors that leads one to such a situation, and a lot of them are decisions that one makes, like who they choose to associate with, and the kind of life one leads, but sometimes the factors are random. I do not keep a gun, but I do keep a baseball bat by my door.

They always make me have to stop and wonder what I would choose if it were mine to choose---going along as we are now for decades more, with the vast majority of citizens oppressed and abused, our rights laughed at, our health and resources stolen from us by corporate criminals... or setting things right in less than a year by way of an overthrow (which I am not advocating, I'm just imagining it).

I am not a fan of violence just as you are not, but I have to say the choice could be hard. We need change, and a lot of it, and FAST, and that hardly ever happens with solely peaceful means. Sadly, the human animal doesn't respond to that way very strongly. It tends to keep on abusing when it abuses others and nothing is done about it, and it always persists until the weapon (whether that is money, power, guns, etc) is pried away from it or it is rendered harmless somehow.

It was set up as a contest from the beginning, from which only one could prevail. We will have to create some new structures and we are going to have to figure out how to live in peace with one another. This is not going to be a top-down process but something that has to evolve between small groups of people, and then as we come together we discuss and agree. We are doing it here, and in many places. The old structure will have less relevance to us, and will cease to bother us when we no longer need it. But it will take time, and it will take one more thing.

hides in shame

the brutal disgrace

Justuce that flows freely

From God

People are going to die BECAUSE of this awful decision!

The ideas that our forefathers put forth in the form of government and it's rules that they tried to give us were golden. They were beautiful. They weren't perfect by any means, but better than what a lot of the world had. It made us great.

Scalia and others like him have managed to turn that particular "gold" to lead.

I've come to think in recent years that our losing all our rights and freedoms is the elitest's effort at slowing immigration. If they become appalled at our lack of freedom and rights...they won't want to come here. Of course this doesn't effect the elitest one way or another. They are above the laws and they know it.

These are behaviors we must not excuse, and we should not allow it to continue ever more.

there have been times

when violence and the shedding of human blood,

have marked humans footpaths

feels good,

Lord, fill the minds of these good people,

With Grace and Understanding,

From Sea to Shining Sea,

Everlasting Peace and Understanding,

Is Eternally Our Brotherhood,

Forever and Ever

If you're talking about impeachment, you'd have to impeach all five.

What tilted the balance in favor of Scalia's jurisprudence was the appointment of Alito, replacing O'Connor.

Museman, I am not in favor of violent revolution and I expect that you are speaking figuratively yourself. I don't like using the kind of language that implies we would engage in or support the use of weapons to overturn the state.

what if the the "money" were taken away,

what if, every good user of Cannabis,

simply stopped buying Cannabis,

Say for one special day,

In the worldly economics that drive this world of passion,

I know this idea is going to piss of old John Walters,

and his tribe, if the the truth be known,

that so many liars and hippocrites

who measure their worldly existence

by the "money" they are making in this prohibition,

on the backs of so many good people,

I'm too quick to not proofread well.

museman: Outstanding

Hope: Right to the point.

That man's ability to "judge" anything is obviously signifigantly impeded.

How can someone who is supposed to protect the Constitution even utter such an idiotic phrase? What happened to the Citizen of these United States being "Secure in his home"?

He needs impeaching. Perhaps, some sort of age related dementia is interfering with his judging skills.

Either that or he's part of those who would overthrow what this government was supposed to have been.

People who died for our freedoms would surely be rolling over in their graves if they could here this man's trivialization of our rights as humans and Americans. Maybe they should just visit Scalia regularly in his dreams. He deserves it, looks to me like.

God help us!

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he would be shopping for an AK47.

If Sam Adams were alive, he would be handing them out.

If George Washington were alive he would be raising an army to depose a corrupt King named George again.

If Nathan Hale were alive he would be smoking a joint on the front steps of the courthouse.

If Benjamin Franklin were alive, he would be putting our fearful mouse-like 'journalists' to shame.

If John Hancock were alive he would be shot in the streets.

If Patrick Henry were alive, he would be on the run from the modern redcoats (who wear blue).

If Thomas Paine were alive, he would be being deported from Canada right now for writing and distributing seditious material about liberty and justice.

As a nation we have failed our first cause which is liberty. As a people we have grown fat and lazy, to allow such base and evil men into such positions of power.

As human beings the wake up call is already upon us, the storm approaches, and some few may call upon the rocks to hide them from the wrath that they have provoked by their arrogance and hatred of care, and their flippant twitter at those who do not embrace wealth at the expense of all else.

The property of the rich shall be taken in an instant, lives of the self-assumed mighty are faggots for the fire that will consume their corruption and all their works of evil and destruction.

You pretenders of authority better start running now if you hope to get ahead of the momentum of destruction you have set in place. Better run, better take cover. Better make sure there's room inside the Cheyenne facilty, because in a few years that'll be your only sanctuary. And we all know where it is.

And all you 'enforcers' who carry out the whims of your masters like well trained dogs, wait till you see your destiny of humiliation and eternal ridicule because you so casually treated the peaceful, innocent children of God like the decaying slime you actually are yourselves.

The best thing you all could do for yourselves and this country, the entire world, would be to have a Roman party and slit each others throats.

You will not be missed, and this time you won't rewrite the history books.