Daniel Castillo, Sr. buried his son tonight. Meanwhile, the details of what exactly happened in Tuesday’s raid haven’t gotten much clearer. The ABC affiliate in Houston filed a short story a little after midnight reporting that police say they found $5,000 in crack cocaine and marijuana at the home, and that they arrested Castillo’s uncle at the scene on drug charges.

But family spokesman Rick Dovalina told me on Friday afternoon that there was just one arrest, Jerome Hawkins, who was dating one of Castillo’s sisters. Dovalina also told me that the crack was found in Hawkins’ truck. He said there was hardly enough marijuana stems and seeds to merit a “trace.” I suppose these conflicting details will eventually sort themselves out.

Someone in the comments section at Hit & Run asked why the type and quantity of drugs found at the house is important. It really isn’t. The raid was wrong and needless and stupid whether Castillo’s uncle, Hawkins, or the victim himself were dealing drugs. An unarmed, 17-year-old kid was shot in the face and killed, just a few feet away from 1-year-old child. A 20-year-old woman watched her brother die before her eyes. And a father was forced to bury his son tonight.

All because a confidential informant reported seeing what at worst were a series of nonviolent, consensual drug exchanges.

Even if the drug charges are true, this is a grade-A, prime-cut example of why using SWAT teams to serve nonviolent drug warrants is needlessly dangerous, reckless, violent, and confrontational. How hard is this to understand? When you take men with guns and charge into someone’s home, you create violence. You leave very little margin for error. Of course, the police go in with ballistic shields, bulletproof vests, and helmets. So we know who catches the brunt of the errors when they happen.

The national media hasn’t picked up on this story, yet. Even the blogs have been quiet, at least in comparison to the Kathryn Johnston case. No one seemed to care much when police shot innocent Isaac Singletary to death a couple of weeks ago, either.

I’m starting to think “how many more people have to die” is the wrong question. I fear that pondering how many of these deaths it will take to spur people into seeing the perversity of our drug laws and their enforcement, and demanding reform is the wrong way to look at it. I’m starting to think that we’re now moving in the other direction — that these stories fatigue people. Numb them. Each one gets a bit less outrageous than the one before.

If that’s true, how sad. How incredibly fucking sad if the idea of a 17-year-old kid getting gunned down in his own bed in the name of preventing people from getting high is no longer capable of making us angry. And how incredibly fucking scary.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 12:38 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Informants, Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.