End the drug war
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"Hey, Daddy, there's a bunch of guys outside with machine guns."
How would you like to hear that from your 9-year-old son some fine morning? That's what Clyde Highbarger heard in his Cave Junction, Oregon home 8 a.m. Jan. 27 from his boy, Christopher.
Then came the knock on the door.
"Police. Search warrant. Open the door."
For the next five and a half hours, the Highbarger family experienced what all too many innocent Americans have begun to experience lately -- state-directed police terror.
Highbarger and his wife, Ruth, were handcuffed by dozens of federal, state and local police wearing combat-style uniforms, helmets and visors. The Highbargers' four children -- Christopher, 9, Laurel, 14, Robin, 7 and Madeline, 2, were forced to stand in the chill morning air, some still in their night clothes.
Mrs. Highbarger, holding Madeline, who is nursing, was ordered out of bed at gunpoint and told to keep her hands up. The toddler wore a thin nightgown. The mother wore a long shirt and underwear. As Mrs. Highbarger headed for the front door, baby in her arms, an officer aimed a semiautomatic handgun.
"I'll thank you to not point your gun at my daughter's room," she said.
"I'm just doing my job," said the officer.
Yeah, just doing my job. Where have we heard that before?
You know, sometimes, to understand what's happening in our country, you have to get away from the TV talk shows and the network newscasts and turn your attention to your local weekly newspaper where police stories still rule.
What happened to the Highbargers' last month is not unlike what has happened to hundreds of other innocent families throughout the country in recent years. The cops came looking for drugs. They didn't find any.
Who knows why they came? Maybe they got an anonymous tip. Maybe the drug informants they employ provided bogus information to protect their friends. Maybe, God forbid, the drug search was just an excuse by cops to intimidate and harass what they described as "anti-government" people.
The Highbargers are home-schooling Quakers. But the cops, while on their fruitless search for contraband, let them know they did not appreciate some of the literature they discovered in the house. There were videotapes on shooting techniques and magazines about self-reliance.
One of the cops asked Highbarger why, if he was anti-government, he just didn't "come out shooting." Maybe the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies dispatched to this dangerous detail would have liked that.
Mrs. Highbarger, on the other hand, simply explained: "First, we're not anti-government; and second, we're not stupid."
The harassment of the Highbargers was part of a larger series of drug raids that took place in southern Oregon last month. About 140 officers from the FBI, DEA, IRS, U.S. Attorney's Office, National Guard, ATF and lots of local cops took part in serving 20 search warrants for psilocybin manufacturing plants. It was part of a three-year investigation, requiring thousands of man-hours, at who-knows-how-much cost. (cont)
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