PARAMILITARY DRUG RAIDS AND THE BRIXTONIFICATION OF AMERICA

"When they kick at your front door

How you gonna come?

With your hands on your head

Or on the trigger of your gun"

. The Clash, "The Guns of Brixton"

I'm not sure who was pictured in the minds of punk rock icons The
Clash when they wrote the words to song above, probably almost any
young resident of Brixton. It seems unlikely it was a 92-year-old
woman, certainly terrified, yet ready to defend herself as burly men
in combat gear burst into her house.

Yet that was the scene that unfolded in Atlanta a little more than a week ago.

As you've likely heard by now, Kathryn Johnston was apparently
minding her own business when she was shot to death by police, but
not before hitting some police with shots of her own. At first, the
police department was typically non-committal on the atrocity, but as
details leaked out (see Radley Balko's website www.theagitator.com
for ongoing superb commentary on all of the horrible particulars, as
well as his paper "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in
America" for an analysis on the growth and tragedies of no-knock
raids), and public outrage grew, several investigations have been announced.

Some investigations are better than no investigations, but we've been
down this road before: Innocents left maimed or dead, the press
actually asking some good questions for a few months before starting
to practice the same old press release journalism when federal
agencies hand out paramilitary equipment to local police departments
and issue grants for aggressive anti-drug policing.

Balko documented many such botched raids over the years, but he
acknowledges he couldn't track them all down, as many simply don't
get any public attention. After editing this newsletter for more
than five years, I see that sometimes when mistaken raids occur, they
are ignored by the press for months or even years, and then only get
noticed if and when a lawsuit is filed against police.

Balko wisely suggests serious limits (and new accountability) for the
ways in which no-knock raids are used in any circumstance, not only
in drug cases. People, like Kathryn Johnston, who have no reason to
think the police will be kicking in her door, naturally act to defend
themselves against thugs who aren't affiliated with the police. It's
a recipe for more tragedy.

In the Clash song, the subject seems to know that if someone's
busting down the door, it must be the police. Today in Atlanta and
elsewhere, one can't be so certain. Several criminals have been
known to commit their crimes while posing as police on a raid; yet
police insist citizens must not react with force if police are
entering the house, announced or otherwise, or police will indeed
retaliate with deadly force.

This policy, like the larger drug war, is as bad for police for
police on the street (excluding the adrenaline junkies) as it is for
the public. Officers in the Johnston case may put on a brave public
face, and if it turns out like other similar cases, they will likely
encounter no serious legal consequences. But however the case is
resolved, the officers will have to live with the physical and
psychic wounds that were inflicted that night too.

This will all happen again, maybe not with an 92-year-old woman, but
with another citizen who clearly posed no threat to his or her fellow
citizens. The police will at first say they were right, then the
ugly details will leak out, and if there are any surviving relative,
there will be a monetary settlement without any admission of wrongdoing.

But, it could get better. When the Clash wrote about Brixton in the
late 1970s, the area was a hotbed of poverty and riots, a place where
ugly confrontations with police and citizens were to be expected.
Since then, things seem to have gotten better. I walked through the
neighborhood a few times while I visited London in the late 1980s,
and it didn't seem too much different from other neighborhoods in the
city. A 2004 report printed in the Guardian suggests that crime had
dropped significantly and consistently in Brixton in the previous 10 years.

Coincidentally or not, Brixton was the site of a temporary relaxed
cannabis policy early in the decade, one that paved the way to
reduced cannabis penalties nationwide.

Watching all this drug war news it's hard not to be cynical. When
other older innocents, like Acceylne Williams and Alberta Spruill,
were killed, I hoped maybe that would stir enough outrage to restrict
the drug war. It wasn't. And maybe the death of Kathryn Johnston
isn't enough either. But, sometimes, people realize it's time to
change. They realize if it can happen to a 92-year-old on the basis
of no evidence, it can happen to anyone.

Nobody, whether they have a gun or not, wants the horrible last
decision faced by Johnston.