'Botched' Drug Raids Show How Prohibition Invites Senseless Violence

THE WAR ON DRUGS AUTHORIZES POLICE CONDUCT THAT OTHERWISE WOULD BE READILY RECOGNIZED AS CRIMINAL.

- JACOB SULLUM

WHEN ALECIA PHONESAVANH heard her 19-month-old son, Bou Bou, screaming, she thought he was simply frightened by the armed men who had burst into the house in the middle of the night.

Then she saw the charred remains of the portable playpen where the toddler had been sleeping, and she knew something horrible had happened.

Phonesavanh and her husband, Bounkham, had been staying with his sister, Amanda, in Cornelia, a small town in northeastern Georgia, for two months. It was a temporary arrangement after the couple's house in Wisconsin was destroyed by a fire. They and their four children, ranging in age from 1 to 7, occupied a garage that had been converted into a bedroom.

Around 2 a.m. on May 28, 2014, a SWAT team consisting of Habersham County sheriff's deputies and Cornelia police officers broke into that room without warning. One of the deputies, Charles Long, tossed a flash-bang grenade, a “distraction device” that is meant to discombobulate criminal suspects with a blinding flash and deafening noise, into the dark room. It landed in Bou Bou's playpen and exploded in his face, causing severe burns, disfiguring injuries, and a deep chest wound. After the grenade exploded, the Phonesavanhs later reported, the officers forcibly prevented them from going to Bou Bou's aid and lied about the extent of his injuries, attributing the blood in the playpen to a lost tooth. The boy’s parents did not realize how badly he had been hurt until they arrived at the hospital where the police took him. Bou Bou, who was initially placed in a medically induced coma, had to undergo a series of reparative surgeries that doctors said would continue into adulthood.