Police Kill Man with Bulldozer over 10 Marijuana Plants

Pennsylvania State Police killed a man with a bulldozer over a 10-plant marijuana grow "operation" on state lands in Berks County.

The man's death was likely an accident, but it highlights how recklessly and foolishly police have perpetuated the drug war, even as Americans want to pull back.

On July 9 a state worker on a bulldozer was clearing out some brush to improve hunters' access to state lands. He saw a suspicious car off the road and called the cops. When law enforcement came out to investigate, the Reading Eagle reports, they found those 10 marijuana plants.

They also found two men: David B. Light, 54, and Gregory Longenecker, 51. Light surrendered to police immediately. Longenecker ran.

The police called in a helicopter to follow Longenecker, but they lost him in the dense brush of the state lands. A trooper jumped onto the bulldozer and used it with the state worker to try to chase the grower. What happened next is a little vague, thanks to police spokespeople's propensity to describe events in ways that leave out any sort of clear cause-effect relationship. But according to State Police spokesman David Boehm, the bulldozer was clearing a path through the underbrush when the state trooper on the bulldozer told the worker to stop. Then they looked behind the bulldozer and saw Longenecker's body.

The subsequent autopsy determined that Longenecker died of "traumatic injuries." At the time of Longenecker's death, Boehm had tried to float the possibility that maybe the man died of a heart attack prior to being run over by a bulldozer. (Presumably the terror of having a bulldozer bearing down on him, about to run him over, caused Longenecker to have a heart attack and die, right before the bulldozer actually ran him over.)

Read more at http://reason.com/blog/2018/07/16/police-run-over-kill-man-with-bulldozer