Drug WarRant

NPR has the first of a three-part series titled The Case Of A Confidential Informant Gone Wrong by Carrie Kahn.

It’s the story of one of the uglier episodes in the ugly business of using informants in the drug war. The U.S. government paid and worked with an informant with full knowledge that he was, on an ongoing basis, participating in brutal murders in Mexico, all so they could try for a higher level collar. And they did so without informing the Mexican government about the murders or where the bodies were buried.

The informant would bring the duct tape to bind the victims and the quicklime to dissolve their bodies to the House of Death, whenever called by his cartel boss to prepare for a “barbeque.” He even held victims down while they were being murdered.

For this, he was paid a quarter million dollars by the U.S. Government, and encouraged to continue. Once the story broke, now the U.S. wants to deport the snitch in the hopes that he’ll be killed in Mexico.

The lawbreaking went high in our government, but they’ve tried to pawn it off as just the actions of a couple of agents (as though a couple of agents could organize a cross-border operation with a well-paid snitch involving major cartel targets and murder without higher-ups knowing).

This case needs more visibility, and it’s good to see NPR covering it.

Eventually, U.S. officials told Mexican authorities about the bodies buried at the House of Death.

Lorenza Magana, who works with victims of violence in Juarez, sat vigil with relatives of missing family members outside the house the night that Mexican authorities began unearthing the remains.

“We stayed there all night and watched as they pulled out bodies,” Magana says. “It was so horrible. With every new body, the smell would hit us — it was horrible. We came back night after night to see how many they dug up.”

In all, there were 12 victims. Magana says she couldn’t believe it when she found out that Lalo, the gatekeeper of the death house, was a U.S. government informant.

The story probably wouldn’t be out there at all if it wasn’t for Bill Conroy’s tireless coverage for years at NarcoNews.

Update: Here are the other two parts of the NPR series on informants.

• Part 2: Critics Blast Informant System Cloaked In Secrecy
• Part 3: Retired Drug Informant Says He Was Burned

Great editorial in the Aurora, Colorado Sentinal after the recent medical marijuana raid.

Sweetin’s comments raise serious questions about just who’s in charge of this federal agency, and how inappropriate it is for this agency to usurp state’s rights in contradiction to the will of the president. […]

As to Sweetin’s remarks about the medicinal properties of marijuana, he’s clearly out of his league as a law enforcer to be taking on the role of a medical research scientist.

All of his comments should be worrisome to state residents, no matter how they feel about the recent medical marijuana controversy.

Of course all of this points to the fact that instead of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into a useless war against marijuana and sending hundreds of billions of consumer dollars into the hands of murderous Mexican drug criminals, Colorado and the rest of the United States could be taxing and regulating a huge industry that will never go away.

And even numbers created by government officials who’ve come down closer to Earth on the matter make it clear that, just like alcohol, prohibition only serves to enrich criminals, while regulation and legalization could be made to serve us all.

Until common sense prevails, however, reasonable federal law and chain of command will have to suffice.

It would be nice if this started the kind of ruckus that got people in authority thinking it would just be easier if Sweetin wasn’t around — like maybe transferred to a weather station in the Antarctic.

Rather amusing train-wreck of a rant. He suggests parents rip apart their kids’ bedrooms and kick them in the balls if they find marijuana. He’s also quite convinced that all drug policy reformers are stupid. His logic is unassailable unavailable.

There’s a great editorial in the New York Times yesterday: A Blue-Ribbon Look at Criminal Justice

The nation’s criminal justice system is in need of an overhaul. This is particularly true of its incarceration policies. Too many people are being put behind bars who do not need to be there, at great cost to the states, and not enough attention is being paid to helping released prisoners re-enter society.

It goes on to endorse the Jim Webb blue-ribbon commission to review the Justice system. Is it possible that people are finally waking up to the notion that we shouldn’t be incarcerating everyone? For years, the default position in society has seemed to be that putting more people in jail was by definition somehow always good. But views are changing, and perhaps the Times has an idea why:

The high imprisonment rate has long been troubling as a matter of fairness, but with the recession it has become an enormous financial burden. States have begun, out of fiscal necessity, to parole prisoners faster and in larger numbers, and to look for alternatives to incarceration. This scattershot approach is far from ideal. It would be better to have experts address these issues at a national level in a more methodical way.

And yes, they even mention the drug war:

The commission also would look at sentencing policies for drug crimes, including their impact on minority communities, something that is long overdue, as well as the involvement of foreign-based gangs in crime in the United States.

Their conclusion:

The Senate leadership needs to push it to a vote, and the House needs to get to work on passing a companion bill. A broad consensus has emerged that the system is broken.

Very nice. I hope it gets a lot of play. It isn’t just that we need the blue-ribbon commission, but we need the discussion and the realization by the public that incarceration isn’t necessarily a good thing. Wouldn’t it be nice someday if we reached a point where the public demanded legislators, police, and prosecutors to defend the specific benefits to society of each use of what should be limited prison resources?

Now, is it just the New York Times talking about this?

No.

In a speech today before the house and Senate, [Missouri Chief Justice William Ray] Price [Jr.] said Missouri’s “broken strategy of cramming inmates into prisons” isn’t working and costs the state millions of dollars each year.

He said the state should focus on rehabilitating nonviolent offenders, instead of sending them to jail. Jailing nonviolent offenders, Price said, frequently leads to higher recidivism rates. 41.6 percent of nonviolent offenders who are jailed, then released, return to jail within two years, he said.

Perhaps we are making real progress. Perhaps people are ready to talk.

But what about leadership?

I was astonished to read this speech delivered yesterday by Attorney General Eric Holder to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives:
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Howard Wooldridge at Citizens Opposing Prohibition reports on a combined effort to lobby for a bill ending federal prohibition.

I received word this week that the major players on the Hill are now united in what direction to take regarding marijuana; namely push for a bill to repeal federal prohibition. COPs, MPP, DPA and NORML have all agreed on this strategy. MPP’s Aaron Houston produced an excellent one page sheet of FAQs. (provided below). We believe this bill will also help the ballot initiative in California to legalize adult use and sale.

It certainly seems obvious that something like this is going to have to happen eventually as a continuing (and partial) move toward full legalization/regulation. And now seems to be a very good time to start getting people used to it. It’ll be interesting to see the reactions of federal legislators on both sides of the aisle, control freaks all, as they adjust to the notion of letting states make actual decisions without them.
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Jesus wept.

The officers checked out the vehicle with Cesar, a federal drug-sniffing dog, who alerted them to three framed pictures of Jesus in the vehicle.

Apparently, Jesus won’t intercede to mask the odor of pot.

War on Drugs: Mexican President Felipe Calderón finds reception is mixed after recent slayings.

Not a good day for Felipe.

Anger, fear and skepticism received Mexican President Felipe Calderón in Juárez on Thursday.

Testimonials of leaders in the city where more than 4,500 people have died in the past two years had the same theme: enough with the violence.

Calderón, his wife, Margarita Zavala, and seven members of his Cabinet were surrounded by hundreds of heavily armed soldiers and police officers.

At the Cibeles convention center, business, religious and education leaders complained about the brutality of the drug war, human-rights violations by the military, unemployment and increasing taxes.

Granholm makes sensible case for prisoner clemency

One of the advantages of being a lame-duck governor is being able to pursue sound public policy even when it is politically unpopular. Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s sensible record of releasing ailing and elderly prisoners whose cost of incarceration outweighs any continuing threat to public safety is a case in point.

Granholm has commuted the sentences of 124 prisoners in her seven-year-tenure, the great majority since she was re-elected to her current and final term in 2006.

Good for her.

Every tax dollar spent on incarceration is a dollar unavailable for police protection, preschool education, drug and alcohol courts, and other programs that have been proved to reduce violent crime. Criminals who represent a continuing threat to the public must be kept behind bars. But a state that increasingly lacks the wherewithal to support even basic law enforcement functions simply cannot afford to incarcerate those who no longer pose a threat.

Or who never posed a threat to begin with…

Speaking of commutations and pardons…

Dear Mr. President. Yes, you can.

The ACLU is trying to get President Obama to commute the sentence of Hamedah Hasan, a grandmother who has spent 16 years in prison so far (with 10 more to go) for a first-time non-violent crack cocaine offense.

Go take action at their site.

President Obama has gone 387 days (and counting) without granting a single pardon or commutation. This makes him one of the slowest-acting Presidents in history to exercise the power of forgiveness.

Tell President Obama to send Hamedah Hasan home today.

Get your power back

Does anyone else find it ironic that Apolo Ohno, a top Olympic athlete who must endure countless drug tests to prove that he doesn’t have even the tiniest amount of hundreds of different banned drugs, is being sponsored by a drug company whose main products we’re no longer allowed to buy without registering and being put on a list? Opening of the ad says to the Olympic athlete… “Get your power back!” … with the understanding that you do it by using their drug.

I wonder what would happen if NORML tried to be a sponsor of the Olympics… (preferably snowboarding).

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.

Boy, the spammers are really out. I’ve had about 400 spam comments just today, more than twice my highest day so far. Fortunately, Akismet does a great job of catching most of them.

Could Decriminalization Be the Answer? by Jens Glüsing in Spiegel.

The massacre in Ciudad Juarez at the end of January made it clear that Mexico is losing the war on drugs. Narcotics-related violence is on the rise in other Latin American cities as well. An increasing number of voices are demanding that drugs be decriminalized.

We’re Blowing It: A new paper suggests U.S. military aid does nothing to reduce drug production in Colombia.

Yet a recent evaluation of military and anti-narcotics aid to Colombia argues that neither American nor Colombian interests were well served by U.S.-supplied training and arms. The authors find that rather than bringing stability, increases in military aid caused spikes in violence from Colombia’s infamous paramilitary organizations and had no impact whatsoever on coca production. Plan Colombia, it seems, may have served as little more than a conduit for channeling weapons to the destabilizing influences that it was meant to suppress.

City condemns Juárez violence: Resolution deletes marijuana reference

The City Council heard more than two hours of testimony, but in the end backed away from supporting legalized marijuana as a way to combat drug violence in neighboring Juárez.

The council voted 6-2 Tuesday to condemn the violence in Juárez and deleted a paragraph that called for the legalization of marijuana and government regulation of its sale.

The resolution that ended up passing called for a presidential summit on the drug war and for the U.S. government to make it one of its top foreign policy priorities.

Providence Journal Editorial: Decriminalize Pot

It’s time to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of pot in Rhode Island. Education is a more humane way than incarceration and a criminal record to help people and maintain order.

One thing seems clear: Our current approach has been an expensive flop.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy Candlelight Vigil — tomorrow (Thursday, Feb 11) in various locations around the world.

Fourteen young people were murdered among 25 shot at a party celebrating their high school soccer team victory and one student’s birthday.

In any other time and any other place, this would be unbelievable. In any other time and any other place, the world would be riveted to “on the scene” accounts of this outrage.

But these days, for the students of Mexico, there remains a stunning silence. It is as though the world accepts as normal the bloodshed of the innocent high school students because the bloodshed of the failing war on drugs is normal. This is not normal!

SSDP says this is too much blood.

Some excellent investigative journalism by Lee at HorsesAss about how the Washington State Department of Corrections has conducted a harassment campaign aimed at medical marijuana.

Michael Savage on marijuana. [Obligatory keep-things-that-can-break-away-from-you warning]

I got about halfway through it.

Kay Lazar of the Boston Globe does a strange and incomprehensible hit piece on marijuana: As Pot-Smoking, Pill-Popping Baby Boomers Age, New Health Problems May Arise.

It’s an entire feature article with absolutely no facts. A lot of random unfocused speculation that pot and “other drugs” (I love the way they lump them together to make wild speculations) will cause some heretofore unknown dangerous effect on an entire generation, that tons of old people will overwhelm treatment centers because of their pot addictions, and that doctors will misdiagnose pot’s short term memory effects as dementia. Complete with “experts” saying absolutely nothing.

“We need to help [patients] to either cut down or stop use earlier,” Delany said, “so we will have fewer problems when they’re older and it is more expensive to treat them.”

Treat what? The munchies?

Check out this headline in the Vancouver Sun: Marijuana Does Nothing To Help Memory In Alzheimer’s: Study

And the lede re-emphasizes the point:

Marijuana does not appear to improve memory or reverse effects of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a University of B.C. study…

That’s too bad. When there had been some preliminary evidence that marijuana might have some potential in treating Alzheimer’s, it sounded pretty exciting, and I was hoping there would be some more research to determine if it was true. But I guess this is just one of those things that doesn’t pan out. They obviously did a thorough study that proved that marijuana doesn’t have any value to human Alzheimer patients.

Let’s check it out. How many Alzheimer’s patients were involved in the study?

Six researchers affiliated with the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute used a synthetic derivative of cannabis called HU210, which is 100 to 800 times more potent than marijuana consumed by humans.

In experiments, mice were initially taught how to get to a desired location in a maze.

The mice that got high dose HU210 did no better than control subject mice, which got no drug, or those that got a low dose.

The study was done on a total of nearly 100 mice — a third that got a high-dose drug injection, a third that got a lower dose and a control group that didn’t get the drug but still had a sham injection to produce the same conditions. […]

After the experiments, mice were killed and their brains were examined. Post-mortems showed mice that got the highest dose of the drug had fewer brain cells, pointing to a detrimental effect of marijuana. [emphasis added]

Well, that certainly cleared that up. If you’re a mouse attempting to navigate a maze, don’t bother injecting yourself with a massive dose of HU210. It’s probably not going to help you.

And they’ll still remove your brain.

We’ve been talking about the drug cartels in Mexico, and one of the interesting things about this is how they are donating money to churches and communities — essentially cleaning up their image and capturing the heart and soul of the people, many of whom aren’t sure who else to trust.

It’s a powerful and pernicious tool.

Here’s another article showing how the cartel is spending money to help kids.

It has paid for batting helmets for a girls softball team. It has paid for a machine that helps fill water bottles for high school football players. And it has paid to send kids to an Atlanta Braves game.

All the way to Atlanta? Wow.

Wait.

My mistake. Turns out this article isn’t about Mexican cartels and the money they get from people voluntarily purchasing their product. No, this is about another out-of-control group that actually steals their money from people.

Tapping into money from drug seizures, Sheriff Jimmy Ashe has directed $10,588 since 2007 to sports programs, trophies, booster clubs and a high school chorus.

The sheriff often spent the money with no oversight. In one case he directed $3,000 to youth baseball teams – including one on which his son played.

Asset forfeiture is a particularly nasty business that leads to greed, corruption, and even death (see Donald Scott). One of the worst practices of asset forfeiture is giving a portion of the seized money to the law enforcement units responsible for the seizure. This provides perverse incentives and increases the likelihood of abuse.

And using it for self-promotion? That just makes it harder to break the cycle of corrupt practice, because now law enforcement has purchased the good will of the community.

Parents in Jackson County said Ashe’s decision on how to spend the money has made a difference.

“I think that Jimmy Ashe is great for doing that,” said Susie Fortner, a single mother of three. “If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know if we would have gone this far in sports.”

Click on the image for the larger version.