Just another cost of doing business in the War on Drugs

Radley Balko's all over the story of the latest in a long line of bunged-up narcotics operations, this time resulting in an innocent Georgia pastor being shot and killed by undercover plainclothes officers:

"Stephens County Sheriff Randy Shirley said Jonathan Ayers, 29, was not the target of their sting operation and that authorities were looking for a woman they say Ayers dropped off minutes before the shooting."

So why did your goons draw down on an innocent man who was merely going about his lawful errands then, Sheriff? There was just no other way for the "officers" to contact and question Ayers about his departed passenger? How about giving him a telephone call? What's wrong with having a marked unit pull him over if they had reasonable suspicion that he was involved in criminal activity at that moment (and it sounds like they didn't)?

"There were no drugs in Ayers’ car."

So why was the high-risk stop attempted in the first place?

Video from the convenience store shows that Ayers had just finished using an ATM at a convenience store when he was set upon in the parking lot by men in civilian clothes pointing guns at him. Given that fact that Ayers had just withdrawn money, we agree with Balko's analysis that "isn’t difficult to see how someone in Ayers’ position might panic when confronted with armed, plain-clothes men who’d just jumped from a black SUV."

The absolute worst part of this nightmare, in our opinion, was how his family was informed of his demise:

"[Brother-in-law Matt] Carpenter also told AccessNorthGa.com that the family was first informed Ayers died in a traffic accident, and then that he had been shot. Hours later, they learned he died in an officer-involved shooting."

Nothing like dribbling out the truth bit by bit to solidify the department's position that there was no wrongdoing by them, nosirree.

When is society going to finally tire of "law enforcement" constantly using these dangerous tactics to combat what is essentially a private decision to put a substance into one's body?

We certainly don't condone drug usage by any means (we have never used an illegal substance), but we really don't condone the dispatching of innocent pastors in order to stop it.

(h/t to Kimberman at the Forum for highlighting this story)