I want to share with you a recent horrifying example of our government's war on marijuana users. Get ready to be outraged. The following is an excerpt from a September 20 article in the "Times Union" in Albany, New York:
"A police strike team raided a woman's Prospect Street apartment and handcuffed her children and killed her dog early Tuesday in a $60 pot bust. The woman called it excessive force and a case of mistaken identity, but officers said they stormed the home for a good reason: One of her sons was selling marijuana there.
The Police Department's tactical squad knocked down the front door of the upstairs apartment at 110 Prospect St. and flooded into the apartment shortly after 6 a.m.
'I heard a big boom. My first reaction was to jump out of bed. We were trying to find where our kids were at and all of a sudden we had guns in our faces,' said 40-year-old Anita Woodyear, who rents the second-floor flat.
During the ensuing chaos, police handcuffed two of the woman's children, Elijah Bradley, 11, and 12-year-old Victoria Perez, and shot at her dog in the kitchen before killing it in the bathroom, Woodyear said.
'That seems like an awful lot of firepower for marijuana,' said Fred Clark of the Schenectady chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 'That's like spending $125,000 for $5.'
Woodyear said she suspected police had intended to search a neighboring home, but had the wrong address on the search warrant. Neighbors said they suspect illicit drugs are dealt at other homes on the block.
'No apology, no "sorry about your dog",' she said.
But police said they have no reason to apologize. They said they raided the house because Woodyear's 18-year-old son, Israel M. Bradley, sold three plastic bags of marijuana there for $40 on Sept. 15. They allege he sold two other bags of marijuana in the house for $20 on Aug. 28, they said.
In addition, police said Bradley was carrying marijuana in the home on Sept. 1. 'We had the absolute right house. We had the absolute right target,' said Assistant Chief Michael Seber."
Visit http://ny.mpp.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=grKMIYPGIqE&b=1773617&ct=2947891 to read the entire article.
Who do the police think they're helping by breaking down the front door of a family's home, pointing guns in their faces, murdering their dog, and handcuffing the children? Was this for the good of the children? The mother? The neighborhood?
No one wins -- except perhaps for the government thugs who get jacked up on the adrenaline rush that comes from threatening and persecuting others.
We have to stop this madness. We have to change the laws so that government thugs no longer have the legal authority to kick in people's doors to find marijuana.
If you're as outraged by the above story as I am, please turn your anger into action by helping MPP restore sense to our nation's marijuana policies.
Thank you for standing with us in this important fight.
Sincerely,
Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.
P.S. As I've mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $3.5 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2006. This means that your donation today will be doubled.