Drug WarRant

Somebody put these DEA and SWAT guys away somewhere. Please. For the safety of Americans.
SWAT team raids wrong home:
State Police and DEA agents frighten residents and tear up house

A State Police SWAT team and a swarm of federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents stormed a four-family home in Newark on Tuesday, kicking down doors, waving guns and ransacking two upstairs apartments.

The officers tore through an armoire looking for guns and shouted curses at frightened adults as they clutched their young children.

Then the officers apologized for being in the wrong house.

Home health aide Cedelie Pompee, 59, was livid yesterday as she recounted how police rushed through the Smith Street house that she has owned for 27 years, leaving cracked door frames, broken doors and scuffed walls in their wake. Pompee shares the home with her two sisters, their children and another family that rents a downstairs apartment.

They didn’t realize their mistake at once.

With guns drawn, they went room by room, breaking through locked doors as they went. When Desir and other family members complained, the officers cursed at them and demanded to know where the guns were kept.

But after 15 minutes of fruitless searching, the officers realized they had made a mistake.

This, of course, after cursing at them. ‘Cause that’s how you do law enforcement these days. The people you’re after aren’t human. They’re the enemy.

State Police Sgt. Gerald Lewis confirmed yesterday the officers and DEA agents raided the wrong house. He would not reveal the nature of the investigation that led them to the house, other than to say it is ongoing. Lewis also refused to disclose who they were looking for.

So just how clueless are these people?

This is the second time in four months the State Police have raided the wrong home. In May, officers stormed the home of a retired truck driver in Woodbridge in search of a prostitution operation.

Yesterday, both Pompee and Desir questioned what kind of investigation even led police to a household of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses in the first place. If any surveillance had been done of the house with the iron gate and small herb garden, Desir said, officers would have known that no one in the house so much as smokes cigarettes or drinks alcohol.

“You’re trying to work in a community and get bad people, but you don’t even know where they live,” Desir said. “When you’re dealing with these type of neighborhoods, there’s no room for incompetent police officers.”

In Thursday’s Washington Times: Colombia helps Afghanistan wage drug war
Illinois’ Henry Hyde, idiot and Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, got this bright idea: Colombia has done so well with its drug war, why not have them tell Afghanistan how to do it?

“We warmly welcome the restoration of formal relations between Afghanistan and Colombia and especially the joint efforts of Colombia and its elite national police to help Afghanistan tackle the enormous problem of heroin production, which also fuels terrorism,” Mr. Hyde said yesterday. […]

“The Colombians are the world’s experts on establishing sovereignty and security over ungoverned space, especially when fighting narcotics-funded terrorists,” said Andre Hollis, a top Pentagon counterdrug official in President Bush’s first term.

And Hyde, of course, takes every opportunity to play the terror card…

“Colombia … has a lot to share and help our Afghan partners with in the global struggle against drugs and terror,” Mr. Hyde said.

When I first read it, I laughed. As I continued to think about it, I just got angrier. So absurd. So stupid.
Remember, despite what morons like Henry Hyde may say, drugs don’t fund terrorism. Prohibition does.

Today’s New York Times article: Profiling Report Leads to a Demotion is interesting in that it describes a process that has become amazingly typical in government use of data (particularly as it relates to the drug war).
Amid all the reports of racial profiling in highway stops, the Justice Department did a study – more comprehensive than past ones. The results were important and should be discussed nationally.
But the administration decided that the press release should only contain one part of the results — the data regarding rates that drivers of different races were stopped (8.6% for Hispanics, 9.1% for blacks, 8.7% for whites). That made it seem like there’s not much of an issue.
What was left out? Percentages of drivers whose vehicles were searched, and percentages of drivers who had force used against them. Those figures gave dramatically different results.
Lawrence Greenfield, the director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics for 23 years and very highly respected in the field, objected to the partial truth press release.
He’s being demoted. Naturally.
Update: Here are some more of the data from the report (via the AP):

–Blacks (5.8 percent) and Hispanics (5.2 percent) were much more likely to be arrested than whites (2 percent).

–Hispanics (71.5 percent) were much more likely to be ticketed than blacks (58.4 percent) or whites (56.5 percent).

–Blacks (2.7 percent) and Hispanics (2.4 percent) were far more likely than whites (0.8 percent) to report that police used force or the threat of it. Force was defined as when an officer pushed, grabbed, kicked or hit a driver with a hand or object. Also included were police dog bites, chemical or pepper spray or a firearm pointed at the driver, or the threat of any of these.

–Handcuffs were used on greater percentages of black motorists (6.4 percent) and Hispanics (5.6 percent) than whites (2 percent).

–Black and Hispanic drivers and their vehicles were much more likely to be searched than whites and their vehicles. Black motorists were searched 8.1 percent of the time; Hispanics, 8.3 percent; whites, 2.5 percent. Vehicles driven by blacks were searched 7.1 percent of the time; by Hispanics, 10.1 percent; by whites, 2.9 percent.

Via Libby at Last One Speaks, I discover that there is a new blog with the title:
Notes on the MAPS/Craker/DEA hearing
concerning the establishment of a pilot medical marijuana production facility at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst
Rick Doblin is one of the bloggers, posting directly from the hearings.

Coverage of the attacked rave continues, and media sources in very conservative Utah are trying to figure out how to deal with it. The most confused appears to be the Daily Herald.
The first half of the opinion piece is paragraph after paragraph of law-and-order mantra, supporting the police activity and opining that the young people were wrong in their complaints about force, culminating in:

Clearly, some enforcement was needed in Diamond Fork on Saturday night.

Let’s state some basic facts, just for the record. Officers of the law carry guns. It is part of what they do. They often carry nonlethal weapons, too, such as bean-bag launchers or tear gas. They make plans for dealing with potentially difficult situations. Why? Because it’s their job to enforce the laws that have been duly enacted by elected authorities.

It’s called enforcement for a reason. Police don’t need to ask politely.

The best way to stay out of range of the police is to obey the law. It’s a lesson too many people have not learned.

But then, they veer off…

Having said that, however, we are concerned about the process that led to this raid, starting with Utah County permits. Commissioner Steve White was strangely evasive on this question. When asked point-blank whether a mass-gathering permit had been issued, he said he would not answer. He referred the Herald to law enforcement sources and the county attorney’s office.

Childs, the property owner, said all the permits were in order and that officers seized them at the gate. It was a legal gathering, she said.

To be sure, there were a number of drug- and alcohol-related arrests and citations arising from the rave. These are fair game by any measure. Once a crime is committed, a permit may be considered null and void. But of the 43 citations reported by the Utah County Sheriff’s Office, about half appear directly related to the raid itself — disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and related acts. Most of the others could have been dealt with on a case-by-case basis, without shutting down a concert at which the majority were not breaking the law.

A massive police assault on virtually any public gathering (a BYU football game, for example) would uncover similar illegalities, from drugs to weapons to expired driver’s licenses. But if a crime is committed during a BYU football game, the game is not stopped. Offenders are trundled off individually. A general suspicion that something illegal might happen at a public gathering, even a rave, may not be the best basis from which to launch a major law enforcement action.

What a shift in tone! Almost like they couldn’t possibly state the second half to their readers without first affirming their law-and-order credentials in the first half.
And it’s a very important statement that they make. Read it again…

But if a crime is committed during a BYU football game, the game is not stopped.

Exactly.
The Salt Lake City weekly had less concern about establishing their bonafides in their article: Iraq in Utah.
Just a slight nod…

Law-enforcement officers — so often overworked, underpaid and underappreciated — deserve the respect of citizenry. But based on personal accounts and digital-camera footage of that evening that have flooded the Internet since, even the most die-hard supporter of the local constabulary would feel remiss not asking questions.

And then go for the jugular:

There’s something telling, too, about the fact that the Sheriff’s Office learned at noon that day where the rave would commence, but waited more than two hours into the music — until 11:30 p.m. — to make 60 arrests and demand the area be cleared. Much was made of one young raver who “overdosed on ecstasy,” and then was released to her parents. If disaster was so imminent, and warranted 90 men in uniform, why wasn’t the rave politely stopped before it started? Perhaps because the spectacle of an outdoor event, like a rave itself, is a lot more fun than sitting at home.

Ouch.

What the press didn’t learn from the last drug panic
An interesting read from Jack Shafer.

Link
Good stuff — also includes transcripts from the hearings this week.

Among the DEA’s many faults is the extensive use of questionable or downright dishonest informants. (See my report on Bad Girl Michele Leonhart and the use of informant Andrew Chambers, who regularly lied on the witness stand.)
Here’s the latest.

The DEA first recruited [Essam] Magid as an informant in 1999 after an arrest on drug conspiracy charges. It has since paid him more than $77,000 and worked to get his drug charges dismissed, according to testimony.

The problem is that the FBI also used Magid, but dismissed him in 2002 for “revealing his undercover status and identifying two agents” (possibly endangering their lives).
That didn’t bother the DEA, so they continued to use Magid as an informant and, in testimony last week, his handler admitted that Magid may have intimidated a witness in a drug conspiracy case.
Magid seems perfect for the DEA. Maybe they can make him an agent next.

After only reporting the press release put out by the Sheriff yesterday (and getting some heat for it), Utah papers are starting to explore the other side:
In the Salt Lake Tribune:

Partygoers at a rave in Spanish Fork Canyon that was busted by police Saturday night say officers used brutal and excessive force to clear the crowd.

As many as 90 police officers from several agencies, including SWAT members and major crimes investigators, stormed the DJ-driven dance party around 11:30 p.m. dressed in full SWAT gear and holding automatic weapons.

A helicopter announced the police presence as it crested a nearby hill and began shining a spotlight on the outdoor dance area, said 19-year-old Scott Benton of Logan.

“The cops just came in wearing full Army [camouflage]. It was basically brute force,” Benton said. “I had a gun put in my face and was told to get out of there.”

Standing in a crowd of people near the main stage, Alisha Matagi says she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time when she was thrown to the ground, punched, kicked and handcuffed by police.

And it is so clear that the police really wanted to get these ravers. They weren’t interested in safety. And they certainly weren’t interested in helping promoters follow the legal complexities.

Saturday’s party, named Versus II, had been tracked by police for several weeks, Gilbert said. Police planned the bust when they discovered that the rave’s promoters had not filed for a mass gathering permit through the County Commission office. To have more than 250 at an event without that permit is a violation of the law, Gilbert said.

Party promotor Brandon Fullmer said he purchased a mass gathering permit through the Utah County Health Department about three weeks ago. The purchase of that permit, which ensures water, sanitation and medical services, was confirmed by County Health employee Jay Stone.

Fullmer did not know that a similar permit, which requires a security plan and event details, needed to be acquired.

The sheriff had little sympathy for the promoters or those at the rave. “They did nothing more than ensure this was a venue for illegal drug use and consumption,” Tracy said.

So the police knew for three weeks. They planned their assault, chortling to themselves that the promoter didn’t have all the paperwork. Now look at this picture. Instead of getting 90 officers, a helicopter, dogs and guns, paying overtime, etc., couldn’t somebody have called up Brandon Fullmer (his phone number was probably on the health permit that he got) and say “Oh, by the way, you also need this other permit.” No, they hate the culture and the people who are involved in raves so much that they wanted the event to happen so that Utah County Sheriff James Tracy could storm in like Lt. Colonel Kilgore in Apocolypse Now (“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”)
And now we learn that even the permit issue is still in question. In the Provo Daily Herald

Brandon Fullmer, manager of the Uprock Records company that promoted the event, argues that he also obtained the mass gathering permit. He said authorities were denying him a copy of it for proof, but a county official agreed to write a letter verifying it.

“We were not there to start any problems,” Fullmer said. “What the cops did was wrong.”
Regardless, Utah County authorities defended the raid.

“That’s all smoke and mirrors,” said County Commissioner Steve White. “They were selling drugs. They were committing illegal acts, and as soon as that happened it doesn’t matter what kind of permit they had.”

Oh, so now it didn’t matter what kind of permit they had? (sounds like an admission to me that Fullmer did have the right permits) I thought the lack of permit was the justification. But now they’re saying that the promoters were “selling drugs.”
But no, that wasn’t the case. And of course, even attempts by the promoters to limit drug use at the event were turned against them:

Among those arrested for drug possession were several security guards hired by Fullmer to patrol the event. Guards at security check points confiscated alcohol and drugs as ravers filed into the party, Fullmer said.

“[Security guards] have no legal statutory authority to take and hold controlled substances. It’s against the law for them to have them,” Tracy said.

Yep. No interest in safety. No interest in actually dealing with drug use. They just hate those young people and their music and their glow sticks and they want to arrest them and beat them and make them go away.
Sheriff Tracy — that’s not how this country works. And some day, you’ll be made to pay for your crimes (unfortunately, it’s the citizens in Utah who will probably have to pay — and the attorneys in the lawsuits who will benefit). But maybe that will make the citizens set up and say “Sheriff Tracy has to go.”)

So after Chavez kicked out the DEA from Venezuela (accusing them of spying and running drugs), the U.S. government retaliated by revoking Visas and threatening their “rating” with the U.S.
Now so-called religious leader Pat Robertson has weighed in to give the “Christian” solution:

“We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” Robertson said.

“We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,” he continued. “It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

He must have an unusual Bible.