Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008
Subject: #358 Drug Cop Kills Woman, Wounds Baby
DRUG COP KILLS WOMAN, WOUNDS BABY
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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #358 – Tuesday, 8 Jan 2008
The War on Drugs and a relentless policy of drug prohibition does not
just increase violence in our communities among those involved with
the illicit drug trade. It also increases undue violence and death
among police and innocent bystanders. Over the past two decades,
police forces across the USA have revamped their operations so that
even routine search warrants are carried out by paramilitary SWAT teams.
On Friday, Jan 4, the paramilitary SWAT unit of the Lima OH police
department (city population 41,000) elected to serve a warrant at a
home where they knew in advance that children were present. Still,
they decided to go forward with the nighttime raid just after 8 p.m.
Friday.
The result was deadly.
A SWAT team officer shot and killed Tarika Wilson. Her 1-year-old
son, Sincere Wilson, also was shot.
The man wanted in the arrest warrant was found immediately upon entry
by the officers and arrested. An unidentified officer then ascended
stairs to the second floor where he encountered Ms. Wilson holding her
baby in her arms. He then shot and killed her, while wounding the
infant.
Such shooting by police of unarmed civilians nationwide continues to
be reported far too often for the interest of general community health
and safety. Further, the majority of such killings by police are
waged against minority race civilians, despite the fact that all races
use illicit drugs in virtually equal percentages.
Perhaps the worst consequence of these police shootings of unarmed
civilians is that it is very rare for the shooter cops to either be
charged with a crime or even disciplined. Most police agencies seem
to view such killing and injury to civilians as simple “collateral
damage” in the never-ending War on Drugs.
Please consider writing and sending a Letter to the Editor directed to
the newspapers covering this story. Please use appropriate language
to criticize the excessive force used by local police departments and
encourage the newspapers to persist with coverage of the story in as
much detail as possible.
If you elect to write to more than one newspaper, we strongly suggest
at least some modification of your message so that each newspaper
receives a unique letter.
Letters of 200 words or less have the best chance of print unless
otherwise noted in MAP headers.
Thanks for your effort and support.
It’s not what others do it’s what YOU do.
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MAP is archiving news and opinion coverage about this breaking news
story which may be found at a link which updates every 24 hours:
http://www.mapinc.org/people/Tarika+Wilson
Radley Balko of Reason magazine is one of many notable national
writers who has carefully detailed the rising use of paramilitary
actions by U.S. police against civilians in the name of drug
prohibition.
His July 2006 report for The Cato Institute – “Overkill – The Rise of
Paramilitary Police Raids In America” may be found here:
http://drugsense.org/url/29ukwQCK
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Additional suggestions for writing LTEs are at our Media Activism Center:
http://www.mapinc.org/resource/#guides
Or contact MAP’s Media Activism Facilitator for personal tips on how
to write LTEs that get printed.
heath@mapinc.org
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Prepared by: The MAP Media Activism Team www.mapinc.org/resource
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