Drug WarRant

Here’s an outstanding news piece covering the situation with Constable David Bratzer reported here yesterday.

The coverage is a real breath of fresh air.

Link

GUATEMALA CITY – Authorities arrested Guatemala’s anti-drug czar and national police chief Tuesday in a case involving stolen cocaine and slain police, acting just two days before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrives to discuss the drug war.

Oops.

The Victoria BC Police Department, an organization that should be known for its bravery, exhibited a rather extreme act of cowardice recently.

David Bratzer, who volunteers with the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) while off-duty, has been ordered not to speak at an official City of Victoria-sponsored event on harm reduction scheduled for this Wednesday, March 3 at 7:00 P.M.

Even though the event is scheduled outside of his regular work hours, management from the Victoria Police Department, without Bratzer’s knowledge, informed city staff that he was being withdrawn from speaking. Then on February 24, a senior officer at the department directly ordered Bratzer not to participate in the event.

In response to these developments, Bratzer stated: “I will not be attending this event, but I would like to thank the City of Victoria for the invitation to be part of an honest and open discussion about harm reduction. I will try to find other venues to present my views about drug policy.”

Upon learning of the department’s order, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association filed a complaint with the Victoria Police Board.

Bratzer has always taken pains to state that his opinions are his own and do not reflect the views of his employer. He has participated in a number of credible venues related to drug policy during the past year, including delivering testimony to the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in Ottawa (video available from LEAP).

“The voices of front-line officers who are charged with enforcing the drug laws are incredibly important to the public debate on drug policy issues,” said Jack Cole, a retired American undercover narcotics detective who serves as executive director for LEAP. “Preventing an officer from sharing his firsthand perspective about the harms of our current drug laws with policymakers is a disservice to the entire democratic process.”

Action Alert: LEAP has a petition to show your support for cops like David.

Here is the BC Civil Liberties Association press release:

The BCCLA is concerned that the Victoria Police Department is taking an unduly punitive and anti-free speech position without justification. […] Where an off-duty communication by a member is a critique or endorsement of government or department policy, and it is not stated or implied in that communication that the member is unable or unwilling to enforce the law impartially and according to his or her statutory and professional duties, it is inappropriate for a police department to interfere with that communication.

It’s fear, pure and simple. This action by the Police Department isn’t about policy, or about protecting the reputation of the department. It’s about fearing the message. Period.

We’re a scary bunch. ‘Cause we bring facts that upset the apple cart.

We’ve talked so many times here about the death of the Fourth Amendment, particularly in the war on drugs. It has been trashed over and over again from every direction.

We haven’t talked much about “plain view.” Plain view is the notion that if an officer sees something illegal sitting out in plain view, it’s perfectly OK for him to charge you with it. So, if you’ve been robbed and you invite a police officer into your home to show him that your piggy bank was broken open, and there are twelve severed heads on the counter, the officer isn’t required to ignore them — they are in plain view and now you’re going to be charged with some heinous crime.

However, that’s not how plain view normally works. Officers work hard to get themselves into position where they can see as much as possible in an attempt to go fishing.

Terry v. Ohio, followed by Michigan v. Long, allowed police to pat people down, and even do a routine search of a car in certain situations for the safety of the officer to insure that there are no weapons present. (I wonder how often people detained by officers are able to dive back into their car and grab a weapon.) Of course, if they find drugs, well, that just happened to be in plain view, while they were searching for tiny guns which might be hidden inside film canisters [is that a dated reference?].

If you open the door to your house when police knock and they see something illegal through the open door (or through your window), they can act.

Just this past month, the 9th Circuit made a particularly bad ruling in United States v. Lemus, holding that when police arrested a man outside his house, the police had the authority to sweep inside the house to make sure there was nothing there to endanger them!

Thanks to Fourth Amendment.com, we give you the powerful words in dissent of Chief Judge Kozinski…
Continue reading →

In the last post, I was trying to describe the INCB – The independent and quasi-judicial control organ monitoring the implementation of the United Nations drug control conventions.

Here’s another way of looking at it.

A lot of you are too young to remember this, but there was a charlatan named Jim Jones, the leader of the Peoples Temple back in 1978. He was a dangerous cult figure. On November 18, in Jonestown, Guyana, the entire cult committed mass suicide, drinking cyanide-laced grape-flavored “Kool-Aid.” 909 died, 276 of them children. Not all were willing. Core members made sure all “participated.”

…

The U.N. drug control conventions are the suicide pact. The drug war is the cyanide-laced grape-flavored Kool-Aid. The INCB are the folks that make sure everyone “participates.”

Good news from Cheye Calvo:

Yesterday, District Court Judge Ahalt yesterday denied a motion to dismiss our lawsuit against the Pr. George’s law enforcement. This clears the path for us to go to trial, probably early in 2011. He also denied a motion to suppress the Sheriff’s Office internal affairs division (IAD) report, which cleared his agency of any wrong-doing.

That’s wonderful. This next part will make you sick.

The county actually asked the judge to remove Sheriff Deputy Sagin (the second shooter) from the count related to the execution of Payton and Chase. The reason was that Sagin twice shoot Payton in the head, but AFTER he was already fatally wounded — and therefore was incapable of causing further destruction of property (he actually said this). Judge Ahalt said no.

Can you use an extra 48 billion dollars? Jeffrey Mirron has the latest estimates on savings due to legalization. Taxes would be extra.

Another reason for legalization: Drugs need to have ingredients listed on the package.

Colorado Congressman Fights Back Against DEA’s Medical Marijuana Raids Excellent job by Colorado Congressman Jared Polis. He needs to be rewarded by the voters for sending this letter.

In drug war, failed old ideas never die: Bernd Debusmann. Good column on the recent nonsense from the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) that’s been in the news.

If you’ve been wondering who the INCB is and what power they have, it’s certainly a curious thing.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is the independent and quasi-judicial control organ monitoring the implementation of the United Nations drug control conventions.

Yep, it’s an independent and quasi-judicial control organ. Sounds like something hidden behind the large intestine.

DrugSense Weekly – a weekly review of the most interesting or relevant articles in the press and on the web related to drug policy reform.

Drug War Chronicle – weekly update of drug war news and analysis from Stop the Drug War.org.

Oliver North has a piece at Townhall: The Other War

WASHINGTON — It’s a war the so-called mainstream media apparently have decided to ignore. Though its death toll is higher than Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s combined, it evidently isn’t worth covering; and unless you’re reading this in the Southwest, you probably haven’t even heard about it.

The conflict, a full-blown narco-insurgency, has claimed the lives of more than 17,000 combatants and innocents, threatens to undo several democratically elected governments and poses a real and present danger to the United States. It’s not the one being fought in Afghanistan. It’s the war being waged from the Andean basin all the way north to the Rio Grande.

Yes, he’s discovered the drug war in Mexico. I’m not sure where he’s been, but I think there’s been a little bit of press of this one. I know it seems like I see a lot of coverage, but I’m particularly interested in the topic, so maybe I’m imagining it? Nope. According to Google News, there have been over 4,000 articles in the mainstream media in the past year with “Mexico” and “drug war” — the topic that the mainstream media has supposedly ignored.

Now, there probably should be even more coverage, but it’s not exactly flying under the radar.

North goes on to recount some of the violence that has gone on in Mexico – all old news to us. Of course, he acts like he has some special ability to talk about this subject since his “Fox News team accompanied DEA and Customs and Border Protection agents on patrols.”

And, of course, Oliver North knows what must be done. He’s got it all under control…

… pause … rewind …

Let’s take a moment and remember who we’re talking about. This is Oliver North. Lawbreaker extraordinaire. He didn’t break small laws, no, he broke laws set by Congress having to do with relations with other countries.

He broke the law and sold weapons — not to someone on the street, but to Iran (yes, the country that the Fox News crowd is so terribly afraid of) and then he used the money to fund the Contras — a revolutionary group in Nicaragua that mostly targeted civilians (isn’t that what we call terrorists?) and then destroyed records of what he had done. Because he was offered immunity to testify to Congress, he never had to pay for his crimes. Instead, he was richly rewarded.

Oh, and he was involved in drug trafficking, too. Sure, he denies it, but everyone that he used in Iran-Contra (including the CIA) was involved in drug trafficking, and his own notebooks had at least 15 “entries related to drug trafficking. An entry from July 12, 1985 states ‘$14 million to finance came from drugs’.”

North isn’t any run-of-the-mill lawbreaker. Oliver North, and most of the Iran-Contra gang, are neocons, with their own internationalist agenda — one that can’t be bothered with things like laws, Congress, or the Constitution.

And you can bet that his sudden concern for the violence in Mexico has more to do with how that can be used for his own agenda.

So, what is this criminal’s solution to the drug war in Mexico?

If the Obama administration is serious about stopping the violence threatening Americans from our southern border, it needs to initiate some urgent diplomacy to reinstitute our access to SWIFT data — and stop talking about “legalization.”

um…

What?

Now there’s something I’ve missed. Has the Obama administration been talking non-stop about “legalization” behind my back? If so, how the hell are they talking about “legalization” when it isn’t even in their vocabulary?

And why would North want that discussion to stop (assuming it was even happening)? He doesn’t give a single reason why legalization is a bad idea, and, of course, we know that it’s the only idea that will actually work. He just tosses it out as if it was self-evidently a bad idea.

Instead, he proposes that we infiltrate SWIFT. What’s that?

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (“SWIFT”) operates a worldwide financial messaging network which exchanges messages between banks and other financial institutions.

A series of articles published on June 23, 2006, by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times revealed that the Treasury Department and the CIA, United States government agencies, had a program to access the SWIFT transaction database after the September 11th attacks called the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.

After these publications SWIFT quickly came under pressure for scrutinizing data privacy of its customers by letting a foreign government agency access sensitive personal data. In September 2006, the Belgian government declared that the SWIFT dealings with U.S. government authorities were, in fact, a breach of Belgian and European privacy laws. Additionally, the U.S. government has submitted “useful” data to U.S. companies (manufacturer – customer relations, prices, etc.).

So North is going to attack the cartels’ finances by having the U.S. Government snoop on world-wide legitimate banking information systems (all, of course, done in the name of terrorism and the drug war, and not to be used for any other reasons… right).

I really don’t see how having inappropriate access to SWIFT is going to help find the bundles of cash hidden in the gas tank of the Honda Accord crossing the border, which is then used by the cartels to pay off police and buy their own banking officials. No, by the time SWIFT chatter could do any good, the money has already successfully created the cartels’ power.

The only real option is to stop the money before it heads to the cartels, and that requires legalization.

Oliver North should be writing a column for the federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison Daily, not Townhall. He has no interest in solving the drug war in Mexico (his pathetic “ideas” in the column demonstrate that handily). All he sees is an opportunity to shoehorn his neocon agenda into an issue.

It’s a trait that is particularly dangerous about the neocons — they have absolutely no moral compass, and are willing to lie about anything if it can help their agenda (just listen to William Kristol any day of the week for examples). Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there that can be swayed by neocon lies and appeals to fear, and induced to act against their own interests and those of the American people.

So we have to fight back by pointing out the dishonesty whenever it appears.

On arguments for reducing the penalties for possession of cannabis…

A criminal record is a serious matter

A criminal record labels a person caught with possessing small amounts of cannabis as a criminal and severely limits their ability to find employment, professional certification and to travel to other countries. Criminalizing a behaviour has a number of effects: it may make it more attractive to some youth, and it may result in the further marginalization of some youth, making it more difficult to help them.

Reducing the severity of the penalty doesn’t seem to lead to increased use
… it is important that any change not result in increased use. Based on the experiences of those countries or states that have reduced their penalties, various reviews agree that there is no indication that this will happen. For example, the 11 US states that decriminalized marijuana possession in the 1970s did not see increases in use beyond that experienced by other states; neither did the Australian states that have introduced a civil offence model over the past decade.

Laws don’t seem to matter one way or another to young people
Over the past 10 years in most Western countries, the use of cannabis by young people has increased and attitudes have generally grown more tolerant toward the drug, with no difference between countries that had stiff or reduced penalties. For example in the Netherlands, where cannabis use is not a criminal offence, usage rates are lower than in the US, which has some of the toughest cannabis laws in the Western world. Young people who do not use cannabis generally say that their decision is based on health concerns or that they are just not interested. They aren’t as likely to mention the laws as being a factor in their decision. In fact, research with teenage students suggests that the criminalization of cannabis and the stigmatization of cannabis use as a dangerous and forbidden activity makes it even more attractive to some.

Resources could be better placed elsewhere
Cannabis offences can take one or two officers off the street for up to several hours + their time for court appearances + tying up other court resources. […] For example, laws cannot distinguish between levels of use, whereas educators can help young people by providing clearer messages (for example, all drug use contains some risk – heavy use can result in serious problems for young people, while light, infrequent cannabis use poses fewer risks).

This has been another edition of useful and true facts on the website of the United Nationals Office of Drugs and Crime that were deleted as soon as we pointed out that they were telling the truth for once.

• The archived UNODC page before they censored it.
• The new UNODC page, now missing section 4.
• The post from Transform noting the change.

Hilariously pathetic.

Yesterday, I noted that Transform had found a page on the UNODC site that was remarkably reasonable.

It actually talked about the effects of cannabis laws.

A number of countries are debating their marijuana laws, in most cases, trying to decide whether the penalties for possessing small amounts of cannabis should be reduced. Some advocate legalization of cannabis, that is, making it available through controlled, legal sources, as are tobacco and alcohol. However, most policymakers see that option as a huge social experiment, with outcomes that are difficult to predict. Others advocate that possessing personal amounts of cannabis should no longer be viewed as a criminal offence and penalties should be reduced. This is because, even though marijuana is not a harmless drug, an increasing number of health officials, researchers and politicians in these countries view the penalty to be out of proportion to the potential harm of using cannabis. The following are some of the arguments being made for reducing the penalties so that possession of small amounts of cannabis is no longer a criminal offence:

And it went on to talk about the damage that a criminal offense causes to people, the fact that changes in penalty don’t seem to affect amount of use, resources could be used better elsewhere, etc.

Great stuff. And true.

Well, it had been on their website for some time, perhaps years. The day after Transform found it and mentioned it, POOF!, it was gone. Wouldn’t do to have reasonable facts on their website.

Links:

• The archived UNODC page before they cleaned it up.
• The new UNODC page, now missing section 4.
• The post from Transform noting the change.

So what are we teaching our children in school? I don’t mean about reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic. I’m talking about what their role is as a citizen in a free country.

If we convince them that being a citizen means blindly following arbitrary authority, how will we ever stop abuses of authority in the future?

Already we force them to piss in a cup while authority figures watch, not as the result of legitimate suspicion, but merely as the entry fee to participate in chess club. We tell them they have free speech, but not if it has anything to do with bong hits (even outside school property).

And we teach them that authority doesn’t need to be logical, fair, or lead to a positive result. The mere fact of authority is all, and even innocent citizens should bow to it saying “Yes, sir, may I have another?”

On Tuesday at River Valley Middle School in Jeffersonville, Indiana, a 13-year-old student says someone handed her the prescription pill Adderall during gym and she quickly handed it back saying she didn’t want it.

But she was called to the office later and admitted she had the pills in her hand for a few seconds.

Patty Greer says her daughter is now facing a five day suspension because she had possession of the pills, even though it was only for a few seconds.

The district policy says even handling the pills for any period of time will land you a suspension.

The zero-tolerance nonsense has given us tons of stories like this one. What’s the lesson given? It’s not a lesson about drugs. It’s not a lesson about responsibility. It’s a lesson about being servile.

Or how about this one?

Robbins became aware of the surveillance in mid-November of last year when Harriton High School Assistant Vice Principal Lindy Matsko accused him of “improper behavior”—taking drugs—inside his bedroom. She warned Robbins that the school had the smoking gun against him: snapshots of him popping pills from the laptop computer’s webcam that he borrowed from the school. Robbins says the pictures show him eating “Mike & Ike,” his favorite candy.

Fortunately, that one is at least getting some attention. Feds are investigating. I guess the line of arbitrary authority maintained by school officials stops somewhere inside a child’s bedroom.