One more data point in the destructive war on drugs. Since drug transactions are consensual, police can’t count on “victims” reporting the crime, so they have to seek it out, often using nefarious means. One of the most nefarious is the use of informants who are trying to either make money or avoid jail and are willing to lie or plant evidence in order to do so.
It was this corrupt practice that led to both Tulia and Kathryn Johnston, for example.
And here, we have: Undercover Informant Plants Crack Cocaine in Smoke Shop, Business Owner Saved by Tape
Andrews was arrested until he was able to show police the surveillance video exonerating him. WNYT reports the county sheriff admitted procedures were not followed and blamed the informant, who has apparently gone missing. Andrews is preparing to sue for his wrongful arrest.
Lucky for Andrews he had those video cameras installed. Otherwise, as an upstanding business owner, he would have had no chance against the word of a low-life informant.
The video segment is worth watching – a pretty good job by the television news station.
I consider the use of “narcs” and informants corruption of the law looking for a place to happen,,it put’s too much temptation for eager people to manufacture the evidence required to justify any arrest.
Just like some cops carrying throw away guns so anyone they shoot is armed now they carry bags of dope to use against anyone that raises their ire….
These people have run amuck!
FDA Attacks Menthol Cigarettes for Smooth Flavor
I suppose they will go after flavored snuffs any day then because people usually start out on them and progress into the natural flavored.
Do they have a “quota” for fucking with us or what?
“Upon shooting the cat, I also wrote up a citation to the owner for housing dead animals without a taxidermist permit.”
Perfect example of a Narc and total chaos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/world/asia/26headley.html?ref=davidcheadley&_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/world/asia/08terror.html?ref=davidcheadley
Prohibitionists and inquisitors have the same enforcement problems. Inquisitors also relied almost exclusively on informants. Like mind-altering drugs, heresy is a crime of the mind. Its prohibition hinged on investigating the private mental acts of one individual, or a consensual crime involving a conspiracy of like-minded:
Jews were tracked using informants during the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition’s edict of faith required anyone witnessing heresy to inform the authorities. The edict created a nation of spies in which parents couldn’t trust their children, and children couldn’t trust their parents. People were compelled to regard all others as the possible destroyers of their careers or reputations. The effects stifled human expression and imagination so much it left the Spanish Empire defenseless against its own stupidity in a world already hating it for its Inquisition; thereby enabling competing world powers to destroy it.
I might just as well be describing the final moments of the American Empire. There’s no limit to how insidious informant nonsense can get. History proves time and again that the smallest and most stupid of things can have the worst of all consequences.
Fighting the “war on drugs†is not about ending consumption or destroying the cartels. It’s a bankrupt, imported ideology intended to appease the gullible. This war is fought principally against the poor and the underprivileged. In America, it’s a war fought by the white elites against an African-American underclass. Unless we want yet more generations lost in a battle the state can never win, say yes to a regulated drug trade.
http://tinyurl.com/ppbkmdk
In this country, Native Americans are the smallest segment of the population yet we account for the second highest rate of incarceration of any race in state prisons nationwide.
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These policies have further resulted in our communities becoming a farm system for the prison industry and the development of a social cycle that continues to keep our indigenous nations crime ridden and in poverty.
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Self determination does not begin with tribal governments, it originates at the personal and community level and it’s time we start exercising our self determination by approaching our issues with illegal drugs in our communities from a public health perspective.
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Locking our people up for arbitrary drug offenses is not working. It is time for us to reassess where we stand on America’s Drug War and stop running blindly into the battlefields.
http://tiny.cc/pvz00w
Some good news for once.
UCSD Student “Forgotten by DEA” to Get Millions
http://tinyurl.com/mpa7wmz
The U.S. government will likely pay millions to avoid a lawsuit against federal agents who forgot about a UC San Diego student left in a holding cell for days without food or water.
Daniel Chong spent five days in a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) holding cell in April 2012.
Taken into custody on a DEA raid, Chong was left in a windowless room without food and water. He was forced to drink his own urine hoping it would help him stay alive.
Most DEA agents are rent-a-pigs,,contract laborers with no federal benefits but obscene on the job benefits.
If you’re fresh out of syrup of ipecac and have an acute need to barf, this should turn the trick in a pinch:
An internet security expert, Bryan Krebs, was framed on a heroin charge by an administrator of a Russian cybercrime forum.
Krebs was monitoring the Russian site and witnessed the plot as it evolved. The heroin was likely purchased on the Silk Road black market and delivered to Mr. Kreb’s home, where Krebs handed it over to the cops. Had Krebs not been a top-notch computer guy, things might have turned out much differently.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23502300