\tBotched Paramilitary Police Raids\t \t \tAn Epidemic of "Isolated Incidents""If a widespread pattern of [knock-and-announce] violations were shown . . . there would be reason for grave concern." -Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Hudson v. Michigan, June 15, 2006. An interactive map of botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids, released in conjunction with the Cato policy paper "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids," by Radley Balko. There is an interactive map at the title link and herehttp://www.cato.org/raidmap This is caused by the federal bounty money for drug arrests and will continue to escalate until they are removed.
In the town I grew up in. In September 2005, police in Bel Aire, Kansas raid the home of the town's former mayor after mistaking sunflowers in the mayor's backyard for marijuana plants. Police took pictures of the plants, and showed them to a district attorney, who showed them to a judge. All agreed that the photographed plants were marijuana. The sunflower, incidentally, also happens to be the state flower of Kansas. Source: "Bel Aire police mistake sunflower plants for marijuana," Associated Press, September 17, 2005. smfh
A whole police force and sheriff dept spent hours pulling and bagging milkweed in one small town,,,the DEA probably hired them after that.
I remember eating about a story where the dea broke into the wrong house and when they went to the room a man and his wife were awaken. The man reached for a gun because he thought they were home intruders and ended up getting shot in the head. Then they found out they were at the wrong house. How ridiculous is it that they spend so much time and resources to go after a perfectly safe and natural plant.