Go read about Rusty Windle.

He was an electrician’s assistant who in 1999 was duped by a police informant posing as Windle’s friend into selling two half-ounce bags of marijuana. For this, the local narcotics task force assembled a nine-member paramiliatry force for a pre-dawn raid on Windle’s home.

Hearing commotion outside his house prior to 5am, Windle came to the door with a weapon. He saw several men in black looking up at him from his yard. One of the men fled when he saw Windle’s gun, but tripped while fleeing. Windle pointed his weapon at the guy. It was a cop, of course, who then shot back three times, killing Windle.

The story — which is far from uncommon — has all the worst elements of paramilitary drug policing: Securing a search warrant based on a tip from an ex-con. Inherent flaws in the informant system. The targeting of a nonviolent, unthreatening guy whose worst offense was procuring a very small amount of marijuana for someone he thought was a friend. And the asinine practice of deploying highly-weaponized SWAT teams to conduct early morning raids on the homes of nonviolent drug offenders.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 12:26 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.