Bad boys, bad boys

With guns drawn and a battering ram in tow, members of the Capital District Drug Task Force barreled into a Glens Falls apartment with the force of a barreling freight train and all the bravado of an episode of Miami Vice.

After splintering no less than one door and bashing the living hell out of a combination safe, the bullet-proof vest-clad brigade of no less than six mid- to high-ranking cops emerged with the pay-dirt: a half-pound of marijuana and some books about growing weed.

streets so Yes, another bad guy taken down by the cops. Another stain of scum eradicated from thethat John Q. Public won’t have to contend with a bunch of bongo-playing hippies strutting around his neighborhood stinking up the place with the pungent aroma of cannabis. Keep the streets clean, boys. And if these dope-smoking free-living fiends think they can escape the law, then pull out your equalizers and squeeze off a few rounds into their backs as they flee in terror; that’ll teach those deadbeat potheads.

To chronicle this spectacle last week was the Post Star’s long-time cops and courts reporter, who penned an ingratiating first-hand-account about the bust. Of course, the writer buried the real news at the bottom of the article: despite all the theatrics of the raid, the suspected marijuana grower was charged with one misdemeanor charge and later released without bail.

In other words, the true story is this so-called ‘task-force’ wasted a ridiculous amount of taxpayer money to go on a raid that yielded absolutely nothing of substance, save for a small-time grower. But what is more startling about this account is that the neither the Post Star nor the drug task force seem to consider this bust as much. In fact, the impression one gets by reading this article is that such storm trooper tactics are a needed, if not necessary tool to wage the so-called war against drugs.

Obviously, they didn’t read about the drug bust in Schenectady last month. Similarly, a brigade of overzealous cops battered down the door of a city residence and then charged in shouting with guns drawn. They then pepper sprayed a sleeping 12-year-old girl, beat up her 11-year-old brother and filled the family dog full of lead.

And the result? The arrest of an 18-year-old on two misdemeanor charges of selling marijuana and a violation for possession of a “small amount” of weed, which likely means they found several grams. Despite this public relations disaster, Schenectady’s stalwart police chief had the gall to support the raid as something significant, noting that “selling drugs out of your residence is not minor."

After a pronounced period of drug war Glastnost during the nineties –most significantly the decriminalization of marijuana –police agencies seem to have renewed this furtive Reagan-era battle with zeal. Of course, cops during the original War on Drugs at least had the sensibility to bust people proliferating hard drugs, such as cocaine and opiate derivatives.

Today, cops are seeking out anything, including small-time marijuana operations, and using a boat-load of public dollars to do it. Problem is, they no longer have the draconian laws on the books to lock pot-heads away in jail like they used to. There is even a fundamental shift in thinking among their own ranks that suggests such bogus raids are probably not the solution this society needs to get a leg up on drugs. Rather, it’s more likely they’re just another part of the problem.