{"id":20381,"date":"2016-01-16T14:15:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T19:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=20381"},"modified":"2016-01-16T14:15:32","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T19:15:32","slug":"wapo-radley-balkos-the-watch-blog-this-week-in-drug-raids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=20381","title":{"rendered":"WaPo: Radley Balko&#8217;s &#8220;The Watch&#8221; Blog:  This week in drug raids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WaPo: Radley Balko&#8217;s &#8220;The Watch&#8221; Blog: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/the-watch\/wp\/2016\/01\/15\/this-week-in-drug-raids\/\">This week in drug raids<\/a>:<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There were two unfortunate drug raid stories in the news this week. The first comes from Crescent City, Calif., where some cops were caught on video allegedly stealing money out of the wallet of a drug suspect, then laughing about it. And that\u2019s really only the start of the alleged corruption.<\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>These stories aren\u2019t uncommon. They\u2019re partly the product of the general nature of the drug war. Because consensual crimes don\u2019t usually produce victims who report the crimes to police, drug enforcement often requires drug cops to break the same laws they\u2019re enforcing, either through informants, or by going undercover. That can foster a mentality that the law is fungible or that the cops themselves are above the law.<\/p>\n<p>But I also suspect civil asset forfeiture has something to do with these laws. Once you believe that the police are entitled to the property of anyone merely suspected of a drug crime, it isn\u2019t much of a moral leap to start helping yourself to a suspect\u2019s belongings, particularly if, as in this case, it appears that the suspect is a major drug distributor. Between the two, we get a steady stream of stories about corrupt drug cops.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WaPo: Radley Balko&#8217;s &#8220;The Watch&#8221; Blog: This week in drug raids:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-police-misconduct"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20382,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20381\/revisions\/20382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}