If you have a heart condition, diabetes or some other ailment for which you can't make it a few days without medication, be careful about ordering drugs from Canada. As if U.S. Customs doesn't have enough on its plate already, it has embarked on a new program at the Canadian border of seizing packages of prescription medication intended for U.S. patients.

We're not talking about illegal prescriptions here, but legal ones. Since Canada's drug prices are lower than those in the U.S., the pharaceutical companies here and their lobbyists in Congress don't want you to get your hands on them.

Earlier this month, the Senate voted 68-32 to approve an amendment to the Homeland Security appropriations bill that would bar Customs from using federal funds to seize prescription drugs imported by individuals from Canada. The House passed a similar amendment in May. However, it remains unclear whether the amendment will make it into law. Drug-industry lobbyists are expected to push to scrap it when the bill goes to conference in coming weeks. The Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders have supported the industry's stance against Canadian imports.

The Cato Insitute has an interactive map of dozens of botched drug and paramilitary raids in which civilians and officers were unnecessarily killed. While you're there, check out the 100 page "white paper" by Radley Balko, a dogged critic of the militarization of police.

From the executive summary:

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

by TChris

Yesterday, Last Night in Little Rock took issue with Justice Scalia's assertion in Hudson v. Michigan that the exclusionary rule isn't needed to deter police misconduct because "modern police forces are staffed with professionals." Complementing LNiLR's comment on the unprofessional and inexperienced members of the Las Vegas Police Department is David Feige's Boston Globe reminder that the New York Police Department spent nearly 12 years trying to locate evidence that led to the exoneration of Alan Newton. A professional police department might have considering looking in the evidence locker assigned to that case, where it was finally found. If this is "professional" conduct, what does an incompetent police department look like?

Like LNiLR, Feige is baffled by Scalia's vision of unerring law enforcement. Feige calls the Newton exoneration "a poignant rebuke" to Scalia's opinion in a different case, Kansas v. Marsh.

by Last Night in Little Rock

A month ago today, Justice Scalia justified cutting back on the exclusionary rule in Hudson v. Michigan using this rationale, obviously culled from the state's amici briefs (playing into Scalia's hand) with no basis in fact:

Moreover, modern police forces are staffed with professionals; it is not credible to assert that internal discipline, which can limit successful careers, will not have a deterrent effect. There is also evidence that the increasing use of various forms of citizen review can enhance police accountability.

Not necessarily so in our fastest growing metropolitan area: Las Vegas.

Today, the LA Times reports in Many Possible Triggers in Rash of Police Shootings in Las Vegas that the unusually young LVPD is coping with its first cop killing in 17 years. Not likely coincidentally,

This year, they have fired at suspects in 19 incidents, killing nine people. If that rate continues, the total police-involved shootings for the year would far surpass those in each of the previous five years, according to police data.

...

The rash of shootings has triggered an FBI investigation into one case, prompted a local review of the inquest system that has repeatedly cleared officers of wrongdoing, and caused outcry from civil rights organizations.

This is a revealing article about a police department policing its own when they are admittedly so young and inexperienced.

by TChris

The latest victim of death by Taser is Nickolos Cyrus, a mentally ill man who was found partially dressed in a home that was under construction.

Chet Cyrus, the man's father, said sheriff's detectives told him Nickolos Cyrus was shocked twice by stun guns, once in the back while he was walking or running away and then once when he was on the ground with his arms under his chest. Nickolos Cyrus was shocked a second time because he apparently refused to place his hands behind his back so police could handcuff him, Chet Cyrus said detectives told him.

After testing the Taser for a year -- "testing" by shooting 262 people with Tasers during that time span -- the Milwaukee Police Department "concluded that the stun guns helped officers safely subdue people who were resisting arrest." Tell that to the parents of Nickolos Cyrus, who lost their mentally ill son because he allegedly resisted arrest -- nonviolently -- for a trivial offense.

A really bad law will go into effect in Georgia on July 1. It prohibits anyone on the sex offender registry from living within 1,000 feet of any one of the hundreds of thousands of Georgia's school bus stops. (Text of law is here, in pdf.) As a result of this law, people will be forced from their homes and unable to live in urban and suburban areas.

The Southern Center for Human Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of 8 offenders to block implementation of the law. Today, a Judge granted a preliminary injunction as to those 8 plaintiffs.

The law does not distinguish between offenders with a 20 year old conviction for having had sex with an 16 year old when they were 18 and violent sexual predators. Here are a sampling of the crimes for which the 8 plaintiffs were convicted (from the Complaint, in pdf ):

by TChris

Unless a law enforcement officer is trying to stop a suspected murderer or other serious felon, there's little reason to engage in a dangerous high speed pursuit when a driver fails to heed a squad car's red and blue lights. It makes no sense to put innocent drivers and pedestrians at risk to stop a common offender when he or she can be arrested more safely at work or at home the next day.

In March, TalkLeft wrote about proposed legislation in California that would repeal a law giving immunity to officers who engage in a reckless pursuit. That bill was introduced after a police officer chased a 15-year-old driver who stole her mother's car. Speeds increased as the girl tried to elude the pursuing officer, until she collided with a van, killing a 15-year-old passenger.

CNN reports (text here, "A police chase gone bad" available in today's "most watched video" section) on the languishing legislation, and on the larger issue of "dinosaur police chiefs" who refuse to adopt policies that would limit the discretion of officers to pursue at high speeds. As this article suggests, high speed chases are "an emerging public health problem," one that accounted for more than 7,000 deaths between 1982 and 2004.

Lots of people e-mailed me about Orlando federal judge Gregory Presnell's written order to two bickering civil lawyers that they resolve where to take a disposition by meeting at the courthouse and playing a game of "rock, paper, scissors."

Fed up with the inability of two lawyers to agree on a trivial issue in an insurance lawsuit, a federal judge in Florida this week ordered them to "convene at a neutral site" and "engage in one (1) game of 'rock, paper, scissors' " to settle the matter.

Childish lawyers are commonplace, but the use of children's games to resolve litigation disputes is apparently a new development. The judge, Gregory A. Presnell of Federal District Court in Orlando, wrote that his innovation was "a new form of alternative dispute resolution."

Judge Presnell is no kook. I included a lengthy section of an opinion he wrote in March in a brief I filed last week. In the opinion, he decries the disparate sentencing guidelines for crack vs. powder cocaine.

by TChris

Reasonable arguments can be made that laws should require drivers to wear seat belts, or that motorcylists should be required to wear helmets, because society often bears the cost of injuries that exceed insurance coverage. Others reasonably argue that the government should allow individuals to make their own judgments about the costs and benefits of using seat belts or helmets.

Putting that debate aside, states that mandate seat belt use must decide whether the police should be allowed to stop a vehicle solely because the officer suspects that someone in the car hasn't buckled up. The Massachusetts House wisely declined to give the police the power to stop motorists solely to write a seat belt ticket. About half the states permit only "secondary enforcement" of seat belt laws, permitting seat belt enforcement when the police make a traffic stop for some other traffic violation while prohibiting traffic stops just to write a seat belt ticket.

by TChris

The company that manufactures Tasers bases its safety claims on tests conducted on pigs. Pigs aren't people. Although a pig's heart and an adult human heart are similar in size, a thicker layer of fat and muscle protects the pig's heart.

A researcher who stripped away some of that fat and muscle to more closely replicate human anatomy found that Taser shocks kill pigs when the Taser dart delivers a shock within 17 millimeters from the heart. So much for the theory that Tasers are always safe -- a theory that has been debunked by the fatalities that have occurred when humans have been shot by Tasers.

Amnesty International has linked over 150 deaths to Tasers since 2001, according to one of its reports.

TalkLeft's Taser coverage is collected here.

The BBC News reports today that a panel of experts in Britan have recommended a program that has been in effect in Switzerland for years -- heroin addiction rooms, where addicts can go to get clean needles and shoot up, with a nurse on staff to help them find a vein or provide medical or treatment advice.

Addicts can get a shower, there is a small restaurant providing nutritious food, and even a corner with comfortable armchairs and table football. But perhaps the most important thing the centre provides, apart from the clean needles, is psychiatric support.

Most doctors who treat long-term addicts agree there is always a point when an addict is ready to give up heroin, and there are staff here to watch for those signs, to counsel, and to refer patients for therapy.

Students for a Sensible Drug Policy tells us there's a new bad drug law bill in the hopper:

[There is] a new bill in Congress that would loosen the standard of evidence needed to search public school students' lockers and belongings for drugs. The so-called "Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006" actually invents an entirely new standard called "colorable suspicion," whereas up until now "reasonable suspicion" was needed to search a student.

Details here.