Peanut is not the issue. Excessive force is.
The war on crime should not be a literal war, and police should not be soldiers. Armed agents of the state should not be enforcing regulatory matters.
A great deal of outrage has been stirred up online over New York state government raiding and then euthanizing a pet squirrel and raccoon. But even if you agree with the state's authority to seize wildlife from a home, that can be done without excessive force.
The police arrived for two relatively harmless wild animals with multiple armed agents, forcibly detaining the man and his girlfriend for hours. They questioned her immigration status, which was clearly meant to be an intimidation tactic. This was not necessary for two small animals, which can be safely captured without having men with guns ransack a man's home. Did they really expect the man to present armed resistance? The point was a show of force. "We are the boss."
This is the kind of thing that libertarians and Black Lives Matter has been complaining about for decades. Too much force brought to bear in situations where it is not required raises tensions and results in a needlessly confrontational situation. Other than two wild animals, the situation did not end with needless tragedy. The same cannot be said of Bounkham Phonesavanh, a baby who was severely injured when police officers threw a flash bang grenade into his crib during a no-knock raid. The grenade exploded in the baby's face, nearly killing him. That could have been avoided with a simple search warrant, as there was no resistance at all in a search for a suspect who did not live at the home that was raided.
Starting as a backlash against lawlessness in the 1960's, we have increasingly made the "war on crime" and the "war on drugs" into a literal war, giving police a soldier's mentality and treating citizens (who do have Constitutional rights) as enemy combatants. We are giving police equipment and armored vehicles more appropriate for fighting the Islamic State or al-Qaeda than for dealing with American citizens. We saw tanks being used against American citizens in Waco, Texas in 1993.
One can debate the details of wildlife policy and what should or should not be permitted regarding domesticating wild animals. What should not be debatable in a constitutional republic that respects people's rights is that law enforcement should use the minimum force necessary to accomplish their jobs. Yes, police must sometimes use force, including deadly force. But overwhelming force is far too often the first resort, leading to needless tragedies. This needs to stop.