Scenes From The Drug War, Ctd

Vice interviews Balko:

[T]here are about 100-150 of these raids per day. I believe about 50 million or so Americans admit to having used an illicit drug in the last year. So the odds are, you aren’t going to get raided. Odds are even slimmer if you’re white, and live in a good neighbourhood. Housing projects get raided pretty regularly. Fraternity houses, not so much. Of course, that doesn’t mean we should be comfortable with that 100-150 figure. Heavily armed cops acting like soldiers, breaking into homes to arrest people suspected (suspected, mind you, not even convicted), of nonviolent, consensual crimes - these just aren’t images I think we should tolerate if we’re going to call ourselves a free society.