DRUG WAR CASUALTY

On Thursday, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced he would
investigate the killing of an 11-year-old boy by Modesto city police a week
earlier. The investigation was requested by the Modesto Police Department.
An investigation is surely needed.

Reported the Modesto Bee, "The shooting occurred Sept. 13 after the SWAT
team forced its way into Moises Sepulveda's north Modesto house to serve a
federal arrest warrant on drug charges. Shortly after they entered, officer
David Hawn shot Alberto Sepulveda while he lay face-down on the floor in
his bedroom, as ordered by police. The department repeatedly has said
Hawn's shotgun accidentally discharged."

Moises Sepulveda is the boy's father; he was charged with conspiracy to
distribute methamphetamine and later released on $20,000 bail. The raid was
part of a roundup of alleged methamphetamine labs.

Officer Hawn, the Bee reported, "an 18-year SWAT team veteran, told other
officers at the scene right after the shooting that his finger was not on
the trigger."

Such killings by police simply are inexcusable. After Mr. Lockyer conducts
his investigation, we hope that he will urge changes by police in all
jurisdictions to reduce these military-style assaults on citizens.

"This is far from an isolated incident," Joseph McNamara told us; now a
research fellow at the Hoover Institution, he's a veteran of 35 years of
police work, on the New York Police Department and as chief of police in
Kansas City and San Jose. "It's like there's no one in charge of these
decisions" to raid homes. "It's automatic."

He said he has talked to law enforcement and political officials about such
raids and asked, "Will this make any change in drug use?" The officials
respond, "Maybe temporarily."

Mr. McNamara warned, "These decisions are being made many times at a low
level," in which police chiefs aren't involved. "There doesn't seem to be
any value judgment."

Things have changed for the worse in recent years, he said, "When I became
a policeman and the police used this kind of force, there would have been a
congressional investigation. Instead, recently Congress has been giving
police military training and new laws" leading to such an excessive use of
force.

We don't know the exact sequence of decisions and choices that led up to
the death of little Alberto Sepulveda, but we do know the drug war has led
directly to heightened use of military-style force against citizens in more
and more situations, with less aforethought and scrutiny.

An investigation is the least Mr. Lockyer, and Californians, can do.