AlterNet: America, Intoxicated: Conference Tackles Disasters of the Drug War

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America, Intoxicated: Conference Tackles Disasters of the Drug War

By Silja J.A. Talvi, AlterNet. Posted December 11, 2007.

1,200 activists and experts converged on New Orleans for the Drug Policy Alliance conference, where AlterNet won a prize for its drug war coverage.




Kathryn Johnston paid the ultimate price in the name of our country's perversely titled "war on drugs." She wasn't a soldier, but she was most certainly another innocent casualty on domestic soil.

It's quite likely that her murder would have gone with little, if any, notice had it not been for the fact that she was a 92-year-old black woman shot to death when Atlanta narcotics officers burst through her door using a "no-knock warrant." The officers had the wrong house. When Johnston scrambled for an old gun stashed in her house to try to save her life from people she assumed were trying to rob or hurt her, she fired one shot and missed. The plain clothed officers fired back, over and over again. Johnston died in the blast of gunfire, in which several officers were wounded in what is euphemistically referred by the U.S. military as "friendly fire."

Johnston's death at the hands of overzealous narcotics officers shocked Atlanta and then made national headlines when the officers involved were exposed for having planted drugs in her house in an outrageous attempt to try to cover up their deadly blunder.

Last month, on the anniversary of Johnston's death, Atlanta Police Chief Richard Pennington proudly announced that his department now had "the best-trained narcotics unit in the Southeast," having doubled its ranks and instituted new rules. No-knock warrants were still acceptable but only if they were "approved by a major" and if officers wore uniforms. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/70195/

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1. AlterNet win is deserving

and Silja J.A. Talvi's articles are revealing and thought provoking.