Part IV: When it comes to dangerous drug raids, culture has become a roadblock to reform

This is Part IV of my series titled “We Must Still Fight For Breonna Taylor.” On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor was killed by three officers from the Louisville Metro Police Department. The officers were executing a no-knock warrant as part of a drug investigation. This five-part series is intended to shed light on several systemic issues that led to her tragedy. It’s more than just arresting the cops, although this series will also discuss law enforcement accountability. We must still fight for Breonna Taylor, the countless others who came before her and nationwide reform to the systemic issues that fuel these tragedies.

Part I: We must still fight for Breonna Taylor and other Black women
Part II: When innocent people think burglary during a midnight drug raid
Part III: How the weakening of the Fourth Amendment has led to tragedies

* * *

Julian Betton was shot to pieces by police over $100 worth of weed in 2015.

Law enforcement then lied about it.

Officers claimed Betton, a 31-year-old Black man, shot his pistol at them when they stormed into his house during a drug raid. Ballistic reports proved that his handgun had never been fired. His story is best explained in The Washington Post, in which author Radley Balko writes:

“Julian Betton’s offense was to sell $100 worth of pot to a friend. For that, South Carolina police battered down his door, fired 57 shots at him and hit him nine times, leaving him paralyzed and without the use of several major body organs. The cops then lied about the circumstances of the raid to make it seem as if Betton deserved every bullet.

“When Betton awoke from a coma, his leg was shackled to the hospital bed. Prosecutors then charged him with several felonies — enough of them to put him in prison for the rest of his life, should he survive his injuries. For those two sales of pot totaling $100, Betton will not only be saddled with paralysis and debilitating injury, he’ll also have a felony record. The cops who broke down his door, filled him with bullets and then lied about what had happened will suffer no punishment at all.”

Insane, yet indicative of the paramilitary raids that have disproportionately impacted minority communities since the architected ascent of the War on Drugs, which this five-part series has detailed as a War on Blacks.

This heinous police activity did not begin with Betton, nor did it truly begin with the War on Drugs. It began with how policing was enacted during slavery, when towns and counties in the Antebellum South hired local volunteers known as “slave patrols.” These jobs, which were later formed into modern police departments, required white men in every district to monitor the streets at night and terrorize any runaway slaves.

Much of their operation was revisited in the book “Slavery, Resistance and Freedom” by Ira Berlin. “They were organized in military fashion,”she writes, “with captains, sergeants, and patrollers (privates); and they had legal authority to search virtually anywhere.”

Berlin continues: “As one patroller said, they were instructed to search the negro cabins … They were further told to ‘apprehend every negro whom we found from his home, and if he made any resistance, or ran from us, to fire on him immediately.’”

When police were instructed to search his cabin, Kenneth Walker had no idea who they were. He shot in self-defense, which to them, qualified as resistance. They responded by firing on him immediately and ultimately killing his girlfriend, Breonna Taylor.

The same tactics were done to Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who went running, but ended up being murdered by a modernized version of unpaid slave patrolmen.

The same tactics were done to Julian Betton, a victim of a toxic legacy that still exists today in forms of search warrants, stop-and-frisk and much more.

It’s cultural.

* * *

Black people are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people, despite the fact that Blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates.

Betton broke the law by selling $100 of pot to a friend. His offense did not merit an army of officers raiding his home, especially when you consider marijuana raids are more deadly than drug itself.

Police units are well-aware of how dangerous raids are, even for themselves, yet many of them are too culturally-intoxicated to desire transformation.

“There is a component of police that are completely infatuated with paramilitarism,” said Dr. Peter Kraska, a well-renowned criminologist at Eastern Kentucky University. “It taps into themes of militarism and hyper masculinity. The stuff is a rush.”

That rush is the reason Betton is projected to never walk again or have kids of his own. It’s the reason his lung is partially collapsed, his small intestine is damaged and parts of his vertebrae are destroyed. It’s the reason countless Black people are maimed or killed in their homes in drug raids by officers given carte blanche to do so.

“If this tactic was being used against any folks that weren’t poor or people of color, this would be an absolute national outrage.” Kraska told me.

The city, county and members of the drug enforcement unit had to fork up $11 million to settle Betton’s case earlier this year. Just two weeks ago, an LA Times report said Los Angeles County has paid out roughly $55 million in settlement cases because of racist, violent deputy gangs throughout the patrol station.

One of the current police gangs is known as the “Executioners” and doesn’t allow Black or female members. The county sheriff initially scoffed at such nefarious activity, even though the gangs were reported by two officers in the force. The sheriff then addressed the matter by placing a ban on gangs and secret societies, but no investigation was ever conducted.

“One of the key things about all this that people don’t get is there’s two forces going on in policing just like there is in society,” Kraska said. “There’s a progressive force with a progressive dimension in policing, and there’s a regressive part, and the regressive part is about as ugly as it gets. It’s racist, it’s violent, it’s rooted in militarism.”

Here’s that dynamic broken down:

1.) The progressive can maintain honorable values and have all the right intentions, while the regressive seeks the opposite, or at the very least, diminishes the honorable behavior.
2.) Leaders who represent the police institution are then made aware of such opposition, but the concerns are either overlooked or clandestinely supported.
3.) The progressive begin to be treated unfairly — just like those two officers in L.A. — and marginalized throughout the police unit for not contorting to their ideology.

We’ve seen that in sports. Colin Kaepernick had good intentions, but his significant concerns were overlooked from leadership, and suddenly, he was treated unfairly and banned from the NFL. It’s because the league as an institution didn’t have those same values at its core.

It’s just like that in law enforcement.

Police unions have become a serious impediment to reform. New York City’s police unions have been among the biggest opponents to changes. That’s been evident on the streets.

When a Black officer in New York tried to stop a white cop from placing a suspect in a chokehold, she was punched in the face and fired from the department for interfering with an arrest.

When a white officer in New York placed Eric Garner in a chokehold, none of the surrounding officers intervened and instead assisted in detaining Garner. He died pleading that he couldn’t breathe. All the officers involved moved on with their life without any adequate penalty.

That contrast is institutional racism still embodied in police culture.

“I’ve got people in my personal life who are still talking about, ‘Well, most cops are good,’” Kraska said. “That is irrelevant, I work with police very closely, I’ve worked with them for 30 years, and of course there are wonderful people in policing that are sincere. But talking about good cops and bad cops, it doesn’t accomplish anything. It shouldn’t even be controversial at this point to say that the police institution needs major changes.”

Significant changes are often met with significant challenges. One barrier is no-knock and quick-knock raids being culturally alluring across the country.

“You have the cultural aspect that’s really hard to withdraw at this point,” Kraska said. “So there is going to be push back from there.”

Much resistance stems from the history of policing. Slave patrols and militia units participated in these acts hundreds of years ago, terrorizing minorities. History repeats itself, and sometimes it just reshapes itself.

Julian Betton’s tragedy occurred five years ago in South Carolina, the state where slave patrols were formed in 1704. Much is different, but as he and Breonna Taylor experienced, much isn’t.

This is America today.

* * *
Part V: How money fuels the type of raids that killed Breonna Taylor