The Madness of Law Enforcement's Escalating Brutality

Photo Credit: U.S. Government/Reason Law enforcement excesses grab an ever-growing share of headlines. Doors kicked in, people killed, dogs shot, phone lines tapped, curfews imposed—they’re all examples of official overreaching at that unpleasant intersection of private activity and state disapproval. For some people, the implication of such abuses is that more scrutiny and the right people in charge will make law enforcement an enterprise which people need not fear.

But what if that’s not the case? It may be that lawmakers have assigned law-enforcers goals so frustratingly elusive that even angels couldn’t resist the temptation to escalate tactics to insane extremes, trampling liberty and decency along the way.

Deranged escalation resulted in the misguided marijuana raid on the home of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Mayor Cheye Calvo, during which his dogs were killed. When even a government official like Calvo can’t protect his pets from police overstepping, you know we’ve gone over a cliff.

A similar venture into law enforcement madness resulted in the death of one police officer, and injuries to five others, when Ogden, Utah, resident, Matthew David Stewart, defended himself against the home invasion. Stewart later hanged himself in jail when it became clear that the legal system wasn’t about to admit police errors or recognize his right to self-defense.

But that leap into the void was probably inevitable given the government’s obsession with achieving the impossible: eliminating marijuana consumption. Almost eighty years after Reefer Madness, decades into the War on Drugs, a 2008 survey by the World Health Organization still says that 42.4 percent of Americans have smoked grass.

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