Unarmed FL Man Gunned Down in Cannabis SWAT Raid

On the right, Derek Cruice, needless victim of the drug war.

Another terrible story involving SWAT raids, cannabis and excessive force has percolated to the surface. This story comes from Florida, in which cannabis (medical and otherwise) is a hotly contested subject.

At about 6:30 AM one morning, an entire SWAT team raided a suspected cannabis operation. Immediately (as in, right when SWAT breached the house), one of the officers, Todd Raible, shot Derek Cruice, a 26 year old unarmed man, in the face, killing him.

This is far from the first time we have heard of such wildly unnecessary tactics when going after pot dealers. Cruice marks the tenth person this year alone who has been killed in domestic drug enforcement raids.

Cruice, for his part, was unarmed and worked as a pizza delivery driver (sounds like it sure was required to put him down with extreme prejudice). In fact, upon searching the premises, not a single weapon of any kind was found. It was clear that this house did contain a pot selling operation. Cops found several ounces of weed, a scale, a ledger, baggies and some cash. But why the gestapo tactics and trigger happy SWAT deputies?

A spokesman for the police department defended the SWAT deputy’s actions, stating that “[he was] met with resistance and a shooting occurred.” I’m sure to the family and friends of Cruice, this is registering as more than an “occurrence.” The spokesman declined to elaborate, but another police spokesman said that Raible fired his weapon after perceiving a threat.

Friend to Cruice and fellow resident of the raided home, Steven Cochran, claims that Cruice was not resisting the cops in any way, “he (Cruice) had no weapons on him or in the house. Nobody was making any kind of resistance or keeping them (SWAT) from doing their job.”

While it would be easy to jump all over the deputy for killing an unarmed man (and, to be sure, an investigation needs to happen to figure out what went wrong), the problem is that a SWAT team was dispatched at all to address a pot raid.

We are supposed to believe that law enforcement knew enough about what was going on in that house to know that drugs were being sold but they didn’t even have an inkling about any potential weapons or the overall threat that the inhabitants posed? I just don’t buy it.

Furthermore, even if Cruice did make some threatening gesture at Raible, he was unarmed. Cops, especially SWAT, are trained in hand to hand combat and how to subdue people with non-lethal force. Too often it feels like the first and only response to anything at all is a bullet. Also, Cruice was shot in the face, arguably one of the smaller and harder to hit targets! If Raible truly felt like he had to pull the trigger, how about a leg or a shoulder? A face shot means he intended to kill as there is almost never a survivor from a gunshot to the head.

Yet again, if the federal government would stop taking an ostrich approach to the cannabis issue and actually reschedule it to a more realistic place on the drug chart, Cruice would probably still be alive. There are murderers, rapists, arsonists and legitimately dangerous drug rings that exist all over the nation.

Wouldn’t the use of force and resources be better serving the public good if SWAT went after legitimately dangerous people and drugs?

This issue is endemic. Cannabis absolutely needs to be treated for what it is, something safer than alcohol, tobacco, aspirin and just about every other drug out there. When’s the last time anyone got killed in a police raid for alcohol?

I’m disgusted with our criminal justice system.