How to the actions of the DEA in this story differ from those of criminal thugs?
Truck owner wants DEA to pay up after botched sting
So the owner of a trucking company with two trucks discovers after the fact that the DEA decided to use one of his trucks and drivers (without the owner’s permission) for a sting operation.
Commandeered by one of his drivers, who was secretly working with federal agents, the truck had been hauling marijuana from the border as part of an undercover operation. And without Patty’s knowledge, the Drug Enforcement Administration was paying his driver, Lawrence Chapa, to use the truck to bust traffickers.
At least 17 hours before that early morning phone call, Chapa was shot dead in front of more than a dozen law enforcement officers – all of them taken by surprise by hijackers trying to steal the red Kenworth T600 truck and its load of pot.
In the confusion of the attack in northwest Harris County, compounded by officers in the operation not all knowing each other, a Houston policeman shot and wounded a Harris County sheriff’s deputy.
But eight months later, Patty still can’t get recompense from the U.S. government’s decision to use his truck and employee without his permission.
Insurance wouldn’t pay for it. He had to hire a company to clean the driver’s blood out of the cab and then have all the bullet holes in his truck fixed. He’s almost bankrupt, and…
Perhaps most unnerving, Patty says, is that drug mobsters now likely know his name, and certainly know his truck.
Panic at the Patty home these days can be triggered by something as simple as a deer scampering through the wooded yard or a car pulling into the driveway.
In Mexico, the drug trafficking organizations act in completely lawless ways that result in deaths without fear of any real repercussions from the law. They consider themselves to be the law. The same is true of terrorist organizations around the globe. And the same is true of the DEA.
I’m half expecting the DEA to try to seize the truck after it has been repaired…you know for transporting drugs.
but in all seriousness, is this any different for normal LEO lawlessness? how many hundreds of wrong address raids happen. which is technically illegal entry without a warrant, and nothing happens (except for some patting eachother on the back).
whenever police get caught doing illegal crap, they’re never subject to law. they’re subject to department policy.
it is only when they do something egregiously bad (usually killing someone or getting someone killed) and news agencies pick up the story and then requires public outrage….THEN something might happen.
And for every one we hear about, I’m certain there are ten, or twenty, or a hundred more. The DEA should be disbanded by executive order, just the way it was created.
Items of the symptoms of drug prohibition that enables ever-growing crime networks, comprise approximately eighty per cent of the breast-beating items on the DEA’s 2012 News Releases. The remaining twenty per cent makes for a short list of mainly discreditable accomplishments.
Nowhere to be found on their News Release are the varying degrees of atrocities committed by all levels of the DEA so far this year that surely warrants an honest investigation and public analysis:
-Militarized international anti-narcotics operations that reinforce the fears of many nations that the U.S. would willingly equip the drug war madness that is consuming Mexico.
-The DEA / hooker interaction, at the Cartagena hotel Obama stayed at during the Summit of the Americas, seems to have been a useful diversion that glossed over the damage to Latin American relations over the rebuffed growing calls for drug legalization talks.
-An innocent University senior astonishingly detained in a cell that afforded him to be in earshot of footsteps and agent banter, driven to hysteria by the fact that all his desperate efforts of screaming and constant kicking were not be acknowledged over the course of five days.
-The fittingly single-minded head of the DEA alluded that marijuana was just as harmful as meth and heroin during questioning by two exasperated congressman.
Which reveals prerequisite attitude, I suppose, for the unprecedented carte blanche onslaught the DEA enjoys to annihilate the prematurely legalized medical marijuana industry.
These current omnipotent DEA incidents just reinforce my long-held sentiment that a feral tail vigorously wags this presidential dog.
Francis’ Law enforced (again):
At least the school board recognized that the policy was a failure at achieving it’s goal,,the federal government would just keep spending more money and get the same results for forty years.
This breath of sanity can also realize, for the Hillsborough school district, the most awesome Ultimate frisbee teams in New Jersey!
How dare you speak ill of the DEA! If there wasn’t the DEA we would have our streets filled with drugs and crime. Oh wait..
That company owner might as well fold up and ask for Witness Protection…if that’s any good, anymore. The narcos know who he is, now. And the DEA sure won’t protect him, as they couldn’t protect the driver.
To the DEA, all assets, including their own, are fungible. Just ask Celerino Castillo.
and when you turn on the masters as Cele did:
http://www.freecelecastillo.com/Free-Letter.html
The business owner certainly has a right to complain about (and sue?) some DEA agents regarding their ill-conceived schemes, but a damaged tanker truck and serious business losses don’t compare to Lawrence Chapa lying in a grave with eight bullet holes in him because of a botched marijuana heist.
No one should become a drug informant without understanding that they can get killed. Much is at stake in black market drug sales. Not just big money, but horrific jail sentences get handed out for major trafficking activities that result in insidious games played out at life-or-death levels of violence.
And what of Chapa? He didn’t appear to be a volunteer, but rather someone who was trying to work off a prior drug arrest. Regardless of the relationship, Chapa was drafted into an army of fools who hung him out to dry.
.
.
Old Chinese wise men say, “snitches get stitches then end up in ditches.” It is the way of the world.
I’m hard pressed to believe that Mr. Chapa didn’t realize his potential liability. We’re missing a huge piece of this story, namely how did Mr. Chapa came to be sitting on a truckload of contraband at the time of his death. We’re not talking about a naïve 18 year old girl like that case in Florida perhaps a year or so past.
Why in the world would the actors targeted by the operation target the truck owner if he wasn’t involved? Yes I know that such people aren’t necessarily discriminating about who they kill but think it’s collateral damage, wrong place at the wrong time. If Mr. Patty is truly as innocent a player in this drama as he claims it makes no sense to me why he’d be targeted. Tell me, how the hell do you lose track of one of your trucks in a two truck shop when they’re equipped with GPS? Just filling out the required DOT documents for truck maintenance should have uncovered a trip that put an extra thousand miles on the truck. The cost per mile driving one of those things is not negligible. With only 2 trucks and a business that can barely function at break even with one truck I find it far fetched to believe that Mr. Patty was completely ignorant of what was going on. If that’s true it’s only a matter of time before Mr. Patty goes teats up regardless of the outcome of this incident. We’re missing a couple of huge pieces of the puzzle.
Prolly right there to some extent. Don’t really matter. DEA got caught with their unmentionables out in mid stroke. While they were spanking monkeys someone tried to jack their load, their driver got shot, and looks like they even shot one of their own. Now, just like when little Nermal gets caught in the bathroom, Momma’s gonna drag them to the Priest (judge)for confession.
It’ll be interesting, unless it’s buried and we never hear of it again.
Is it just me or does anyone else think that wiggles actually did it?
BRB may have been a perv and a truckstop sleazoid, but dude could rap out the occasional good one. And whatever his faults, he could not do anything like this. (he couldn’t remember where his pants were most of the time)
Ah, Wiggles, you were a Troll, but you were OUR Troll…*sigh* R.I.P.
The DEA is not a drug-reduction organization. That is their cover.
They are an intelligence-gathering organization disguised as a drug-reduction organization.
Nobody wants the CIA in their country, but every politician is a wannabe drug warrior. So, the US intelligence agencies get access to foreign countries by saying “We will help you with your evil drug cartels”.
Notice how they never wipe out any drug cartels, but we know all about their political process, and their banking and internet usage.
I think it’s time for Michele Leonhart to do a little more ‘splaining to the house judiciary committee
The DEA knew that keeping drugs illegal funded 9/11 and yet didn’t do anything after 9/11, which means it was the DEA who pushed down the World Trade Centers -blew up the Pentagon and crashed an airplane over a field via giving the enemy illegal drug money in the form of doing their job. The DEA killed 7,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and the Stan via giving terrorists the right to sell illegal drugs. The Law requires we try them and then execute them for treason during a time of war. You cannot spell Al Qaeda without DEA.
“This shot is from 2/4/2010 when Chapa was arrested by the Houston PD for possession of a controlled substance. Photo by HPD / HCâ€
Chapa may have been working for the DEA since his Houston drug arrest. Ms. Leonhart may have offered him a lot of money. That besides some guy’s bright red tanker truck is all that’s needed for a serious disaster to commence.
I wonder if he painted his truck a different color?
Life will certainly change if Mr. Patty gets his $1.3 million for suffering fear and anguish. As for whacking him, regardless of his involvement, I don’t see how the cartels could justify the time, risk and expense, either, since killing him really wouldn’t accomplish anything.
Also, a cross-border whacking would appear to violate the undeclared cartel policy of not exporting Mexico’s drug violence into the U.S.
Drugs good. Severed heads bad.
Yooo-Hooo, FRANCIS?? Hey who’s supposed to be watching FRANCIS? Anybody seen him??
Oh no. He wandered off.
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