As most internet active people in the libertarian movement are aware; blogger, Cato analyst and Fox News columnist Radley Balko has been leading the crusade against no-knock raids by police departments. His research also unearthed the story of Cory Maye, who was (probably wrongfully) convicted of murder in the death of a police officer in Prentiss, Mississippi. Maye contends that the killing was an act of self-defense.

Balko just completed Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids, a special report on the topic. From Cato's release:

The paper has an appendix of nearly 150 examples of documented botched raids, including: the case of Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old boy shot in the head during a bungled raid in Modesto, California; Clayton Helriggle, a 23-year-old shot and killed when an inexperienced SWAT team raided a house of college-aged men guilty of recreational marijuana use; Sal Culosi, an optometrist in Fairfax, Virginia mistakenly killed by a SWAT team that had come to his home to arrest him for betting on sports games; and Mississippi police officer Ron Jones, shot and killed when Cory Maye, a man asleep at home with his daughter and who had no criminal record, mistook Jones' raid team for criminal intruders.

Balko has found more than three dozen examples of completely innocent people killed in mistaken raids, twenty cases of nonviolent offenders who've been killed, and more than a dozen cases of police officers killed by suspects or mistakenly targeted civilians who thought the police were criminal intruders.

Additionally, Cato is releasing an interactive Google Map app that shows the locations of a score of bungled raids over the last two decades. If you're not familiar with Google Maps, you'll be able to zoom onto the local street where the raid happened and view either traditional street map detail or enjoy a satellite view of the area. The data are also searchable by state, year, or type of unnecessary harm done by government entities to private citizens.