In another example of drug war excess, officers raided and vandalized the home of Beach Park, Illinois resident Paul Brown on Friday afternoon of last week. The apparent impetus for the raid was a mysterious package delivered to the house 10 minutes earlier. Brown’s son-in-law, Wilmer Aries, received the package and noted that it was not addressed to any of the house’s residents. Instead, it bore the name “Oscar” and an unfamiliar last name. Brown, a 58-year-old architect, explained that the officers…

The brutal methods used by SWAT teams throughout the country are not news in the war on drugs. This steady militarization of our police forces in the pursuit of drug seizures has largely gone unnoticed in the press until recently, when some high-profile incidents highlighted some of the uglier tactics used when raiding potential drug dens. Two such cases were those of Tarika Wilson, who was killed while holding her baby, and Cheye Calvo, the mayor of a small Maryland town who had his home raided…

One year after a SWAT team shot and killed two Labrador retrievers in a marijuana raid on an innocent small-town mayor's family, the Prince George's County, Md., sheriff responsible has announced his department did nothing wrong. Here's The Washington Post's summary of the incident that occurred last July: Members of the SWAT team killed [Cheye] Calvo's black Labrador retrievers after deputies broke down his door and raided his home in search of a drug-filled package that had been addressed to Calvo's…