I’m telling you, you can’t make this stuff up!
Tag: war on drugs
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Looking back from the future
“Whether a country that was truly free would criminalize recreational drug use is a related question worth pondering,” says Princeton professor Kwame Anthony Appiah in the Washington Post.
Thinking of that, Pete Guitherobserves:
I think it’s clear that the drug war is one of those travesties that will be reviled in some way by future generations. How is uncertain. Will it be like the horrible disgust we have hearing about the burning of witches? Or will it be like the Hayes code silliness, where we reminisce about how they used to have to show married couples in separate beds on TV?
Appiah concludes:
We will all have our own suspicions about which practices will someday prompt people to ask, in dismay: What were they thinking?
Even when we don’t have a good answer, we’ll be better off for anticipating the question.
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Good news in (ending) the war on drugs
From the UK’s Observer (sister paper of The Guardian).
One.
Two.
And three articles about the war on drugs, or lack thereof, in Portugal.
Excerpts:
Drugs have not only been decriminalised for almost a decade, but users are treated as though they have a health and social problem.
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Nor has it seen its addict population markedly increase. Rather it has stabilised in a nation that, along with the UK and Luxembourg, once had the worst heroin problem in Europe.
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The approach to Portugal, which has seen a fall in levels of petty crime associated with addicts stealing to buy drugs, as well as a drop by a third in the number of HIV diagnoses among intravenous drug users, is significant. Despite decriminalisation, it levies more fines than the UK and drug use has not increased.
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These days, addicts account for only 20% of those who are HIV infected, while the number of new HIV diagnoses of addicts has fallen to fewer than 2,000 a year.
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The Portuguese experience again shows that there is no necessary link between the severity of sanctions and rates of drug use.
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“You have to remember,” he says, “that the substances are still illegal; it is the consequences that are different.” And for those arrested in possession of drugs for personal use, that means not a court appearance but an invitation to attend a “dissuasion board” that can request – but not insist upon – attendance
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A sociologist by training, Capaz is a vice-president on the board. He believes that far from Portugal becoming more lenient, the reality is that the state intervenes far more than it did before Law 30 and the other associated legislation was introduced. Before, he explains, police would often not pursue drug users they had arrested, interested only in the dealers. “People outside Portugal believe we had a tougher approach under the old law, but in reality it is far tougher now.”
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As fewer people were arrested for drug offences, the prison population fell. So did drug use and HIV among prisoners.
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Politicians usually only suggest decriminalisation when they are either on the verge of retirement or at the fringes of power. -
News Bueno or News Malo?
You want the good news or the bad news?
Good news! “Mexico arrests drug trafficker Edgar ‘Barbie’ Valdez.” Pop the corks! But I wasn’t even going to post on that cause who the f*ck cares? It’s not like it will change anything or win the war on drugs. From the NYT:
Mr. Valdez, who was born in Laredo, Tex., faces an indictment in United States District Court….
The arrest came the same day that the head of the federal police said 3,200 officers had been dismissed this year, about a tenth of the force, because they had failed lie detector and other tests designed to root out corruption.
About an hour after the announcement of Mr. Valdez’s arrest, Mr. Calderón appeared in a campaign-style televised announcement, with scenes of the police on the march, a high-tech war room and families, declaring that the fight against crime “is worth it. You are the reason.”
You tell ’em, Felipe! Or, as Johnny Cash might say, “He was a young cowboy and he said he’d done wrong.”
Bad news: “Mayor in Mexican Border State Killed.”
Hidalgo Mayor Marco Antonio Leal Garcia was the second mayor to be assassinated in the past two weeks in the area.
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“This cowardly crime, and the reprehensible violent acts that occurred recently in this state, strengthen the commitment of the Mexican government to continue fighting the criminal gangs that seek to intimidate the families of Tamaulipas,” Calderon’s office said in a statement.Oh… poor Filipe.
So was this a good or bad day. I’d say bad. The killing of a mayor is worse than any stupid arrest.
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L.V. F-Up
Now I wasn’t there, but as I understand it…
A pothead and occasional seller in Las Vegas, let’s call him “Vegas Cole,” is sitting with his pregnant fiance on a Friday night watching TV. Police bust down the door and shoot and kill him.
Just another day in the drug war, right? Police did find a small amount a weed, a digital scale, and $702 in cash. So what’s the problem?
Vegas Cole was unarmed, no guns were found, and his fiance says the money was rent money. Rent money? Yeah, right. I’ve heard that one before. But you know what I never saw from a drug dealer? A receipt. The fiance actually had a receipt for half the money. From a pawn shop. She pawned her jewelry a few days earlier for $305. Oh. I guess they had money troubles.
The Las Vegas Journal Review says:
[Vegas] Cole, 21, was unarmed when he was killed by a single rifle round fired by Detective Bryan Yant, who a week before the raid swore under oath that Cole had a “lengthy criminal history of narcotics sales, trafficking and possession charges” in Houston and Los Angeles.
But [Vegas] Cole’s record in his native California was limited to a conviction for misdemeanor unlawful taking of a vehicle. He probably never even visited Houston.
Investigators might have confused him with another Trevon Cole [let’s call him, Texas Trevon]– one with a different middle name who is seven years older, at least three inches shorter and 100 pounds lighter, records show. That [Texas] Trevon Cole has several marijuana-related arrests in Houston, all misdemeanors
So Yant wasn’t too good at dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. It’s an understandably mistake, right? Just seven years, three inches, 100 pounds, and a different middle name? Seriously, how can a professional police officer confuse these guys. What in the world do these two black men have in common? …Oh.
So Yant is investigating Vegas Cole because he thinks he’s Texas Trevon, who is supposedly is a big-time dealer, but actually isn’t. It gets better (Or I guess you could say worse… if you’re some party pooper who care about dead people). According to the affidavit:
Undercover detectives had bought … a total of 1.8 ounces for $840
$465 an ounce for Nevada ditch weed?! Are you f*cking kidding me? The officers were offering perhaps a ten-times markup to buy grass that is barely criminal to possess in Nevada? 1.8 ounces weighs less than 1/4 cup of sugar.
Also, says Phil Smith of Drug War Chronicle, according to the warrant:
when police wanted to make a big score — $400 worth — … they had to reschedule because Cole didn’t have that much on hand.
This borders on entrapment. You offer me $400 an ounce for any old shit and I just might make a few calls and go into business. And I got a job. Vegas Cole’s pregnant fiance was hawking her jewelry to make ends meet!
Well, Cole is still a criminal, right? Nobody forced this man to accept the offer of easy money law enforcement dangled in front of him. And who knows, maybe neighbors were complaining. And policing is dangerous work. It’s not like Yant, who wrote the warrant and pulled the trigger, has a record of being trigger happy or anything. Oh, wait. This is the third police-involved shootings for Yant. Two of them fatal. There is good news. At least for Yant. Of the past 200 fatal police-involved shootings in Vegas–a rate of killing about 50% higher than the NYPD–only one has been found to be criminally bad.
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$4.9 million for the estate of Kathryn Johnston
Four years after it happened. One of the worst happenings in the War on Drugs.
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ICE Agent Almost Gets It
The key to combating [Mexican Drug Cartels], said Alonzo R. Pena, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputy assistant secretary for operations said, is to go after their money — money used to corrupt officials and to buy weapons.
William J. Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said “We have to get to the source of the money.”
That’s all from the El Paso Times.
Gosh. How can we take the criminal profit out of bootlegging… I mean drug dealing?
It’s also worth looking at the comments to the article at PoliceOne to see some of the stupidest police officers who know how to type. “Invade Mexico and smart bomb the terrorists!” “Bring the fight to them.” I really find it tough to believe that some people still think that is the answer. No doubt because after 28,000 deaths there we’ve all been playing this too soft. I guess we just need to go in and take out the Osama Bin Laden of Mexican drug dealing. Problem solved. Man, if only it weren’t for liberals who hate freedom, we’d be winning all our wars.
Effing idiots.
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Meanwhile, Mutiny in Juárez
“A bunch of angry, fed-up federal police in Juárez launched a mini-rebellion against some of their commanders Saturday, accusing them of corruption…. The bottom line is that nothing seems to be able to stop or even lessen the violence in Juárez.” So says the El Paso Times, just across the border, in the peaceful twin city of El Paso.
Probably, at some point in their career, every police officer has wantedto do this. It’s like a pissed-off flight attendant jumping out on the slide of an airplane. But the editorial board of the El Paso Timesfigures:
Perhaps the last straw was the perception of police officers that their commanders’ corruption and links to drugs and the cartels were putting the officers’ lives in danger. That could be quite a motivation.
Indeed.
The caption of these AP photos by Raymundo Ruiz says:Federal police agents beat a fellow officer after a top fellow officer was detained at his hotel room by his subordinates in Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico, Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010. Around 200 federal police officers protested Saturday demanding the dismissal of fellow police inspector Salomón Alarcón Olvera, aka “El Chaman”, accusing him of being linked to drug cartels and having participated in kidnappings, executions and extortions.
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“Presidente Fox? There are men here to see you”
The crack research-librarian staff here at Copinthehood Incorporated (aka, my wife) reminds me that President Vicente Fox tried to do something about drug legalization as president but then backed down under US pressure.
Indeed, I dug through the basement archives here in at 1 Copinthehood Plaza and dusted this off from the L.A. Times on May 3, 2006:
Mexican President Vicente Fox will sign a bill that would legalize the use of nearly every drug and narcotic.
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The law would be among the most permissive in the world, putting Mexico in the company of the Netherlands.[*]
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Selling drugs or using them in public still would be a crime in Mexico. Anyone possessing drugs still could be held for questioning by police [and fined]. But it includes no imprisonment penalties.
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Presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Tuesday that Fox would sign the measure, calling it an important tool in the fight against drug trafficking.
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Fox, whose term ends in December and who is barred by law from seeking reelection, has been considered a strong ally of the U.S. anti-drug effort. He has said the current drug war was triggered when he began arresting top leaders, including Osiel Cardenas, who allegedly runs the Gulf cartel from prison.Apparently that night there was a knock on his door from some burly gringo men with dark sun glasses and briefcases. It wasn’t the Blues Brother. MSNBC reported:
Weighing in, the U.S. government Wednesday expressed a rare public objection to an internal Mexican political development, saying anyone caught with illegal drugs in Mexico should be prosecuted or given mandatory drug treatment.
“U.S. officials … urged Mexican representatives to review the legislation urgently, to avoid the perception that drug use would be tolerated in Mexico, and to prevent drug tourism,” U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Judith Bryan said.
Apparently Fox got an offer he couldn’t refuse. Apparently to the tune of four-hundred-million US dollars a year for at least four years.
At the time, Fox was worried about 650 to 700 drug-war deaths a year. But the bill died and the war on drugs got ramped up. Since 2006 there have been about 7,000 drug-war deaths a year (though nobody knows for sure).
[* If only Mexico could be in the company of the Netherlands. The Netherlands resists US pressure to fight the drug war and partly as a result has a murder rate just a fraction of the US and just a tiny fraction of Mexico’s.]
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Legalize Drugs, Says Former Mexican President
Reuters reports:
“Legalization does not mean that drugs are good … but we have to see (legalization of the production, sale and distribution of drugs) as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allows cartels to earn huge profits,” Fox wrote in a posting over the weekend. “Radical prohibition strategies have never worked.”
Newsweek adds:
Fox, a member of the same conservative National Action Party as Calderón, was president between 2000 and 2006 and was a staunch U.S. ally in the war against drugs. But he says he now favors legalizing drugs.
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Fox also backs critics who say it was a bad idea to send the Mexican Army to support police as they battle the cartels that smuggle cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamines, among other substances, across Mexico and into the United States. “They are not prepared for police work,” he said, in apparent response to allegations of Army brutality. “They should return to the barracks.”Too bad Fox didn’t wise up when he was still president. I guess you get wiser when you’re no longer on the DEA’s payroll.