In the 1980's, were the LAPD actually using APCs as battering rams to knock in people's front doors when suspected of being drug houses as shown in the film? When I saw this part of the film, it seemed a bit far-fetched to me. I know that no-knock warrants have been a thing for a while, but to use such excessive force before even announcing their presence seems a bit - as I said - far-fetched.
How realistic is this? Did these types of things actually occur in the anti-drug hysteria of the 1980s?
A secondardy question, if that's okay: When did Anti-Drug-Hysteria-As-Federal-Policy begin?
I grew up during the 70s and 80s, started college in 1986, and my recollection is that there was an abrupt and dramatic shift from a relatively lax national attitude about drugs to suddenly treating them like the most dangerous scourge to ever afflict the human race. My recollection is that the mass hysteria started in 1987 or 1988. As I remember it (correctly or not), it was like flipping a light switch; the whole federally administered program of panic and hysteria, with the concomitant rise in law enforcement, anti-drug policy, drug rehab for minor offenders, etc., ramping up very quickly to a fever pitch. The hysterics still have not subsided.
I've often wondered what the purpose of this deliberate shift in public policy was, and I have a hard time taking the official explanations at face value. I'd be less inclined to accept the argument that "drugs are a scourge afflicting our youth" and more inclined to believe it was part of the need for public policy to replace Jim Crow (as discussed in literature like "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," by Michelle Alexander), or possibly the need for public policy as the Soviet Union collapsed and international communism was no longer a viable justification for so much of the activity of the federal government.
These are the random thoughts of someone who lived through and very clearly observed the sudden, dramatic, and obviously engineered shift to "The Drug War" in the late 1980s, but I have no real idea why or how this shift happened, apart from the loose thoughts described above. If any qualified historians could shed light on the matter, I would greatly appreciate it!