Academic

RADLEY BALKO: A DRUG RAID GOES VIRAL. A violent drug raid posted to YouTube catches fire online. B?

By Glenn Reynolds

RADLEY BALKO: A DRUG RAID GOES VIRAL. A violent drug raid posted to YouTube catches fire online. But the only thing unusual about the raid is that it was caught on video.

As of this morning, the video had garnered 950,000 views on YouTube. It has lit up message boards, blogs, and discussion groups around the Web, unleashing anger, resentment and even, regrettably, calls for violence against the police officers who conducted the raid. I’ve been writing about and researching these raids for about five years, including raids that claimed the lives of innocent children, grandmothers, college students, and bystanders. Innocent families have been terrorized by cops who raided on bad information, or who raided the wrong home due to some careless mistake. There’s never been a reaction like this one.

But despite all the anger the raid has inspired, the only thing unusual thing here is that the raid was captured on video, and that the video was subsequently released to the press. Everything else was routine. Save for the outrage coming from Columbia residents themselves, therefore, the mass anger directed at the Columbia Police Department over the last week is misdirected. Raids just like the one captured in the video happen 100-150 times every day in America. Those angered by that video should probably look to their own communities. Odds are pretty good that your local police department is doing the same thing.

Read the whole thing. And note the attempted cover up by the police. Plus this: “We’ve seen about a 1,500 percent increase in SWAT deployments in this country since the early 1980s. The vast majority of that increase has been to serve search warrants on people suspected of nonviolent drug crimes.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on May 12, 2010 (boomark / email).