Stop The Raids Campaign

 

Michigan Moms United "Give Us Back Our Cops" Project

Hello, my name is Charmie Gholson and I’m the founder of Michigan Moms United. We educate legislators and the media about how the drug war destroys lives and decreases public safety.

I’m a life long resident of Michigan, the oldest daughter of a law enforcer and a former staff writer for LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
(www.leap.cc). My father was a Washtenaw County Deputy Sheriff and career military man, so one of the many reasons I do this work is to restore right relations between communities and police.

Since 2009, we’ve been conducting what I call, “raid response.” We interview drug task force raid victims and compile information on both the people who are raided and the multijurisdictional police agencies that execute the warrants.

It’s abundantly clear these highly militarized teams create danger where none previously existed.  The original intended purpose of SWAT is to respond to hostage stand off situations or domestic terror, but they are used in Michigan now almost exclusively to execute warrants for suspected drugs.  They are also consistently from county to county still raiding medical marijuana caregivers and patients—sick people—who honestly believed they would be protected from police encounters when they registered with the state.  This is not, and has not, been the case.

The video above is testimony offered in the House Criminal Justice Committee regarding HB 4914- the SWAT Reporting Bill by myself, the bill sponsor Rep. McMillin (R- Rochester) and the Michigan ACLU. My testimony is at the end but I hope you watch the entire clip so you can see how resistant legislators are to transparency, and the way they treat even their own party members who dare ask SWAT to report.

In January,  we will re-introduce the legislation- with an amendment that adds whether or not children are present during the raid  and how the actions of the officers during the raid affected them.

Michigan Moms United is proud to be working with a Jeff Frazier, one of the former ACLU attorneys who worked in the Tulia, Texas case as well as our good friends at the Law Offices of Michael Komorn.

We are working to do the following:
*reduce the use of military equipment and SWAT teams
*restrict SWAT to appropriate violent situations
*ensure proper training, regulation and oversight of the use of such equipment and
*reform Michigan’s civil asset forfeiture laws. 

This strategy will utilize both legislative actions and civil litigation.

Michigan Moms United is in the process of writing and submitting grants, but are in immediate need of $6,000 to cover travel expenses, basic office equipment, keep the lights on at home and get our website up and running.

Thank you for contributing what you can to our efforts.

Here are just a few links to previously published opeds and articles by Charmie

Drug Task Forces Chase Profit Not Crime
Published: Monday, May 14, 2012
News Harold
http://www.thenewsherald.com/articles/2012/05/14/opinion/doc4fad5850b733b622867771.txt
 
What I want for Mothers Day: Stop Stealing Our Sex Toys and Go Get Rapists
Published May 10, 2012
Ann Arbor News
http://www.annarbor.com/news/opinion/what-i-want-for-mothers-day-stop-stealing-our-sex-toys-and-go-get-rapists/

BUSTED: Oakland County Conducts Paramilitary Raids on Peaceful Families
Originally published in The Midwest Cultivator October, 2010.
http://thecompassionchronicles.com/2013/03/18/busted-oakland-county-conducts-paramilitary-raids-on-peaceful-families/