Drug WarRant

If you’ve had a hard time really understanding what the dynamics are in Colombia politically and how they relate to the drug war, this opinion piece from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs gives an excellent analysis.

Here’s another one that makes you slam your head against a wall.

While acknowledging that police made a mistake in bursting into the wrong apartment for a drug raid, Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer yesterday cautioned that the city needs to maintain aggressive drug enforcement.

Why is this important to Mayor Ellen?

Ensuring public safety is the city’s goal, she said.
“Citizens want a restored sense of personal and community security, peace of mind and they want to feel safe,” she said.

Sounds good. So how does the city of Annapolis make you feel safe?

Members of the Police Department’s special team sent to raid an apartment in the Spa Cove complex at 8:20 p.m. Wednesday broke open the door and threw in a percussion grenade. Once inside, the tenants said, the officers kicked a man in the groin, and handcuffed him and a woman.
Police quickly realized they were at the wrong address.

Kicked in the groin = feeling safe? In what alternate dimension?
But they eventually got the “bad” guy, right?

When they went to the correct apartment, nobody was there and no drugs were found, police said.

I’m betting there are a couple of citizens of Annapolis who would personally like to help Mayor Ellen O. Moyer feel.. “safe.”

This is rich.
A botched drug raid led to a five-day suspension for the officer who failed to verify the address before a forced entry raid. Now you might think that a five-day suspension is outrageously light for subjecting innocent citizens to a wrong-address drug raid.
However, on appeal the sentence was actually reduced to one-day, because — and this is truly amazing — there was so much incompetence involved that it was deemed unfair to give that officer a whole five days suspension. Of course, nobody else was given anything more than a written reprimand.

Hearing examiner Don Williams wrote that several circumstances that were beyond Caruthers’ control caused “catastrophic results.”
“The FBI was to verify the location but lost sight of the informant as to which house he was entering to verify the location,” Williams wrote. “Broadwater and Caruthers got tied up in other duties that prevented their getting together with the informant to verify the location.”
He also pointed out that other officers in Caruthers’ chain of command suggested no discipline in the case. Williams ruled that although the city had just cause to discipline Caruthers, he believed that a one-day suspension is reasonable.
“We’re happy it was reduced, but we still feel that at most, he should have gotten a written reprimand just like Tegan Broadwater,” [Caruthers’ attorney] Driskell said.

Incompetent? Corrupt? Join the Drug War! It’s not just a job… It’s a place where you’ll feel right at home.

The headline says it all:

At least 47 dead in 1 week; killings linked to drug war
Mexico violence leaves President blaming U.S. market

You know, there are times when I’d like to blame the law of gravity for something stupid I did, but I at least realize that there’s no practically useful point in doing so.

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The word is that Colombian President Uribe is going to face new challenges when facing a Democratic House as he lobbies for more drug war funding.
Chris Kraul writes in the Los Angeles Times:

When Republicans were in control of the U.S. Congress, Uribe, a U.S.-educated ally of President Bush, managed to convince the leadership that despite ongoing problems, he was still fighting against drugs and terrorism as best as could be expected.
Now as Uribe arrives in Washington today on one of his frequent trips to lobby Congress, the tables have turned. At this pivotal point in binational relations, he faces a Democratic majority far more prone to blame him for a slew of human rights abuses, the alarming alleged paramilitary connections to his government and the failure to slow cocaine production.
The latest setback occurred Monday, when the White House released a survey showing that despite massive spraying of defoliants to wipe out coca crops, farming of the base material for cocaine in Colombia grew 9% in acreage in 2006, the third straight year of increases. The growth came despite a 24% jump in spraying, prompting critics to call for a new approach to the Plan Colombia anti-drug and terrorism aid package, which costs the U.S. $700 million a year.

And Patty Reinert and John Otis in the Houston Chronicle:

President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, in Washington yet again to lobby for trade and aid, will be greeted by Democrats planning a dramatic change in U.S. support for the South American nation. The program would veer away from military and anti-drug efforts and toward development and human rights projects. […]
Instead of allocating close to 80 percent to the Colombian military and drug-eradication programs, as has been the case for the past decade, lawmakers are proposing that only 65 percent of the total aid package go to the military. The remainder would be designated as economic and humanitarian aid.

While I suppose this is a welcome trend, it still seems ridiculous to those of us who really understand the economics and dynamics of the drug war. It’s like saying that instead of giving an 80/20 split of school funding for beating/educating children we’re going to reduce it to 65% for beating children. Sure, it’s an improvement, but it’s still stupid.
Unfortunately, this appears to be the ongoing problem with the Democrats when they actually attempt to deal with drug war excesses. Rather than taking any kind of bold step that would make a significant difference, they sort of water down the bad policy a little, which sets themselves for accusations of being soft on drugs — the very thing that they were trying to escape by avoiding the strong decision.
…
There’s one thing that I’m waiting for right now from the Democratic Congress. It’s a tiny thing in the overall scheme of the drug war, but it’s a chance for the Democrats to make an actual change. It’s getting close to the time of year for the annual Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment. This is the amendment that would prevent the federal government from interfering with states that have medical marijuana laws. We need to gain about 50 votes over the past few years’ attempts.

Your tax dollars at work. Decades of taxpayer money spent, poor farmers’ lives ruined, excessive violence… And drug war success in Colombia is measured this way…

The results of the 2006 U.S. Government survey of cultivation in Colombia indicate that statistically there was no change in the amount of coca being grown between 2005 and 2006. The 2006 coca cultivation estimate is subject to a 90 percent confidence interval of between 125,800 and 179,500 hectares. The 90 percent confidence interval for the 2005 estimate was between 127,800 and 160,800 hectares. The significant overlap between the two years‰ estimates means that it is not possible to infer year-to-year trend information.
The survey estimates that there were 157,200 hectares under cultivation, an increase of 13,000 hectares from the 2005 estimate, subject to the confidence limitations described above. The 2006 area surveyed increased by 19 percent compared with 2005, and almost all of the increase was identified in these newly surveyed areas. Because they had not been previously surveyed, it is not possible to know with certainty if the coca found in these areas is in fact newly planted and had not been producing for a period of time.
Rapid crop reconstitution, a move to smaller plots, and the discovery of previously unsurveyed coca growing areas, have posed major challenges to the techniques and methodologies used to understand Colombia‰s coca cultivation and cocaine output. After losing one-third of the estimated coca cultivation to herbicidal spraying between 2001 and 2004, traffickers and growers implemented the widespread use of techniques such as radical pruning and replanting from seedlings. Such countermeasures result in crops that are initially unproductive or significantly less productive than mature fields. Yet, when surveying a field, it is impossible to know with certainty whether it is a mature, productive field, or a field which has been sprayed with glyphosate, and then pruned or replanted. […]

Translation from ONDCP-speak: We’re sure that the drug war in Colombia is a huge success, even though the facts say otherwise. And it’s not our fault anyway, because the drug traffickers aren’t cooperating with us. But we can solve the problem if we do more of the same.
It really burns me up that these people actually get a paycheck from us.

You cannot fight a military war against drugs. All that you will do is destroy your own country.

Three Mexican army officers and 16 soldiers were ordered detained Monday in connection with the weekend shooting deaths of two women and three children at a military checkpoint in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. […]
Three of the four women in the car were rural schoolteachers. The dead included Griselda Galaviz Barraza, 25, and her three children, ages 7, 4 and 2.
Defense officials said the troops were members of the 24th Motorized Infantry Regiment involved in “the permanent campaign against drug trafficking.”

Well, at least those kids won’t use drugs.
This is sickening. And inevitable. Using force to attempt to undo economic laws of supply and demand inevitably result in corruption and collateral damage. That’s a fact.

“bullet” thehim’s Shooting Fish in a Barrel discusses a High School undercover operation (where the officer approaches students asking them to procure drugs for them) and just how ridiculous it is to assume that arrests in that situation have any meaning at all. It’s also reminiscent of this despicable case, where an attractive female undercover cop gets H.S. boys with raging hormones to buy drugs for her.
“bullet” At Reason’s Hit and Run: The Minnesota Supreme Court chips away even more at the Fourth Amendment, in a case involving drugs and dogs, of course.
“bullet” This was in the Drug War Chronicle I posted yesterday, but it’s worth highlighting. Phillip Smith discusses the Ed Rosenthal trial and the interesting activist tactic of people in the medical marijuana movement refusing to testify against Rosenthal.
“bullet” Good post by Scott Morgan on ONDCP’s “Dr.” David Murray’s appearance at CATO for a discussion of “Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.” See also the comments there.
“bullet” Grits for Breakfast has several interesting posts: Austin Tells TV show COPS “No Thanks”, plus Unreliable urinalyses accuse innocent people, and A really bizarre reaction to police corruption.
“bullet” Alex at Drug Law Blog asks Will it Regulate?

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