Drug War

[grokit]

This is still happening, and it needs to be stopped.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but this is really fucked up!
Why do we have to turn everything into a fucking war?


Turning Youth Into Snitches, then Sent to Their Deaths in the Drug War

December 8, 2015

Rachel Hoffman, 23, was a Florida State graduate who got busted with marijuana and a few pills of Ecstasy. Cops at the Tallahassee Police Department told Rachel she faces four years in prison, or she could help them carry out their biggest drug bust in recent history. Rachel, the girl who just liked to get high, was given $13,000 to buy 1,500 Ecstasy pills, 1.5 ounces of cocaine and a gun.

The cops undoubtedly assured Rachel that she would be safe as they had staged a 20-man team at the site. But when the dealers changed the location and got in her car, likely knowing that cops use informants, the cops lost her. The dealers found the wire in her purse and shot Rachel five times, leaving her body in a ditch and stealing her car and credit card.

Andrew Sadek, a top college student in North Dakota, was caught selling $80 worth of marijuana. The interrogation room video shows Chief Jason Weber telling the dejected Andrew, who lost his older brother in a train wreck, that he faces up to 40 years in jail. Weber, experienced in deception, tells Andrew that he can “help himself” by becoming a confidential informant.

Andrew had to buy drugs from three other people to preserve his freedom, and keep everything an absolute secret. After Andrew went missing, family and friends pleaded on camera for his return and held prayer vigils, but he never returned. Andrew was found dead in a river with a bullet through his head.

One former confidential informant told 60 Minutes, “It felt like I had a gun to my head. They almost convince you that — that you’re guilty. I was just so scared, I was just putty in their hands.”

A student at Ole Miss was entrapped by two other confidential informants, one dropping off LSD at his house and another picking it up. That innocent part of a fabricated crime brought terror to the hapless victim, who, after being coerced into a snitch, was repeatedly threatened over the phone for not turning in other people fast enough.

Attorney Ken Coghlan describes how schools like Ole Miss, which has an entire office devoted to creating confidential informants, create a vicious cycle of kids entrapping other kids. At Ole Miss, the victimized students are supposed to turn in ten others.

Coghlan said, “They don’t know 10 drug dealers. And they’re so desperate, they will go to their friend or their roommate or their frat brother, and they know this person smokes marijuana. And they’ll say, ‘I’m out of weed. Can I get 10 dollars’ worth of weed from you?’”

Keith Davis, the former head of the Ole Miss Metro Narcotics Unit resigned after he was caught on tape violently threatening another confidential informant.

It’s no wonder the cops are so greedy to catch more kids, as the factory farming of confidential informants is a lucrative endeavor for them. Just like civil asset forfeiture, this repugnant game brings more money into the coffers of police departments. The more arrests, the more grant money.

more here

 

[Adobewan]

Thanks for sharing this @grokit
Debated on the "like" button, not sure how to say, YES way to share valuable issues that may have passed us by in the news cycle, but I don't "like" the content.
Other buttons that might be useful beyond "like" and "report", are "Thanks", "I Feel Ya", "Disagree", and "LOVE THIS!!!". Not suggesting extra works to our beloved mods, just thinking out loud, ...or typing out loud?

 

[DisgruntledSmoker]

This is still happening, and it needs to be stopped.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but this is really fucked up!
Why do we have to turn everything into a fucking war?


Turning Youth Into Snitches, then Sent to Their Deaths in the Drug War

December 8, 2015

Rachel Hoffman, 23, was a Florida State graduate who got busted with marijuana and a few pills of Ecstasy. Cops at the Tallahassee Police Department told Rachel she faces four years in prison, or she could help them carry out their biggest drug bust in recent history. Rachel, the girl who just liked to get high, was given $13,000 to buy 1,500 Ecstasy pills, 1.5 ounces of cocaine and a gun.

The cops undoubtedly assured Rachel that she would be safe as they had staged a 20-man team at the site. But when the dealers changed the location and got in her car, likely knowing that cops use informants, the cops lost her. The dealers found the wire in her purse and shot Rachel five times, leaving her body in a ditch and stealing her car and credit card.

Andrew Sadek, a top college student in North Dakota, was caught selling $80 worth of marijuana. The interrogation room video shows Chief Jason Weber telling the dejected Andrew, who lost his older brother in a train wreck, that he faces up to 40 years in jail. Weber, experienced in deception, tells Andrew that he can “help himself” by becoming a confidential informant.

Andrew had to buy drugs from three other people to preserve his freedom, and keep everything an absolute secret. After Andrew went missing, family and friends pleaded on camera for his return and held prayer vigils, but he never returned. Andrew was found dead in a river with a bullet through his head.

One former confidential informant told 60 Minutes, “It felt like I had a gun to my head. They almost convince you that — that you’re guilty. I was just so scared, I was just putty in their hands.”

A student at Ole Miss was entrapped by two other confidential informants, one dropping off LSD at his house and another picking it up. That innocent part of a fabricated crime brought terror to the hapless victim, who, after being coerced into a snitch, was repeatedly threatened over the phone for not turning in other people fast enough.

Attorney Ken Coghlan describes how schools like Ole Miss, which has an entire office devoted to creating confidential informants, create a vicious cycle of kids entrapping other kids. At Ole Miss, the victimized students are supposed to turn in ten others.

Coghlan said, “They don’t know 10 drug dealers. And they’re so desperate, they will go to their friend or their roommate or their frat brother, and they know this person smokes marijuana. And they’ll say, ‘I’m out of weed. Can I get 10 dollars’ worth of weed from you?’”

Keith Davis, the former head of the Ole Miss Metro Narcotics Unit resigned after he was caught on tape violently threatening another confidential informant.

It’s no wonder the cops are so greedy to catch more kids, as the factory farming of confidential informants is a lucrative endeavor for them. Just like civil asset forfeiture, this repugnant game brings more money into the coffers of police departments. The more arrests, the more grant money.

more here

As sad and unfortunate these stories are in my opinion it boils down to two things. Bullys who become cops and citizens who dont know their civil rights. I was taught at a young age to demand a lawyer regardless of situation. You generally dont know the good cops from the bad ones and the bad ones will most surely use anything you say to pin you into a corner. Criminal Justice 101.

May God Bless the United Corporatist Fascist State of Amerika

Jack-Booted Thugs Unite!

 

[grokit]

So many tragic stories...

13 People Who Are Dead Because Of America's Futile War On Drugs

America's long drug war has produced countless tragedies, ruined lives and led to parentless children, as well as the deaths of drug warriors, nonviolent offenders and innocents. As marijuana advocates and drug policy reformers around the nation celebrate 4/20, take a look at 13 stories of people whose lives were cut short by the drug war.

Life #1:

Kathryn Johnston

In November 2006, a narcotics team from the Atlanta Police Department apprehended a man with a known drug history. They planted marijuana on him, then threatened to arrest him unless he gave them information about where they could find a supply of illegal drugs. He gave them the address of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. Instead of finding an informant to make a controlled buy from the address, the officer instead lied on the search warrant, inventing an informant and describing a drug buy that never happened.

When the police broke into Johnston's home on the evening of November 21, 2006, she met them with an old, non-functioning revolver she used to scare off trespassers. They opened fire. Two officers were wounded from friendly fire. The other officers called for ambulances for their colleagues. Meanwhile, they handcuffed Johnston and left her to bleed to death in her own home while one office planted marijuana in her basement.

A subsequent federal investigation revealed that lying on drug warrants was common in the APD, the product of a quota system the department imposed on narcotics cops. That system was the result of the pool of federal funding for drug policing, funding for which the department competed with other police departments across the country. The federal investigation and media reports also found numerous other victims of wrong-door police raids in the years leading up to Johnston's death. The entire narcotics department was later fired or transferred. While Johnston's death led to calls for changes in the way the city enforces the drug laws, there was little in the way of real reform. The city instituted a civilian review board to oversee the police department, but its powers were severely weakened after complaints from the police union, and its first director eventually resigned in frustration.

 

[DisgruntledSmoker]

So many tragic stories...

13 People Who Are Dead Because Of America's Futile War On Drugs

America's long drug war has produced countless tragedies, ruined lives and led to parentless children, as well as the deaths of drug warriors, nonviolent offenders and innocents. As marijuana advocates and drug policy reformers around the nation celebrate 4/20, take a look at 13 stories of people whose lives were cut short by the drug war.

Life #1:

Kathryn Johnston

In November 2006, a narcotics team from the Atlanta Police Department apprehended a man with a known drug history. They planted marijuana on him, then threatened to arrest him unless he gave them information about where they could find a supply of illegal drugs. He gave them the address of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. Instead of finding an informant to make a controlled buy from the address, the officer instead lied on the search warrant, inventing an informant and describing a drug buy that never happened.

When the police broke into Johnston's home on the evening of November 21, 2006, she met them with an old, non-functioning revolver she used to scare off trespassers. They opened fire. Two officers were wounded from friendly fire. The other officers called for ambulances for their colleagues. Meanwhile, they handcuffed Johnston and left her to bleed to death in her own home while one office planted marijuana in her basement.

A subsequent federal investigation revealed that lying on drug warrants was common in the APD, the product of a quota system the department imposed on narcotics cops. That system was the result of the pool of federal funding for drug policing, funding for which the department competed with other police departments across the country. The federal investigation and media reports also found numerous other victims of wrong-door police raids in the years leading up to Johnston's death. The entire narcotics department was later fired or transferred. While Johnston's death led to calls for changes in the way the city enforces the drug laws, there was little in the way of real reform. The city instituted a civilian review board to oversee the police department, but its powers were severely weakened after complaints from the police union, and its first director eventually resigned in frustration.

I used to annually read the FBI report on crime in the Republic. They used to list virtualy every statistic down to the sexual orientaion of perpetrators per type of crime, etc. Number one target of law enforcement is youth regardless of gender, race, ethnicity. The earlier you are in the system the more money the department makes annually via state and federal funding. When it comes to said funding you either tow the line or you get nothing and the justice departmentt migh just be called in to start turning over loose rocks. This happens regardless of which party is in power whether locally or in the bigger picture. They are merely opposite sides of the same coin and that coin will never be in our pocket so long as it is in the pockets of the International Elite. Or thats at least what the voices keep telling me.

 

[psychonaut]

Damn right it has to stop. Old news but we need to constantly produce this sort of garbage so people will see. So many people live in bubbles and are as naive to the injustice as anyone.

 

[1DMF]

I can't believe some of the scum western civilised societies have as police / law enforcement.

They are more evil than drug pushers!

Any copper found to falsify evidence or pressurise weak minded individuals into giving up their rights to the 5th and a fair trial should be put away for the maximum possible for the crime they tried to fit up an innocent person for.

And if an innocent person ends up getting killed due to corrupt police engaging is disgusting tactics like this, they should be sentenced for murder.

Anyone who thinks it's OK to treat dope smokers and recreational drug users in this manner is one sick minded, fucked up individual who needs serious psychiatric evaluation and probably sectioning for the safety of the general public!

 

[kellya86]

I know I seem so bash the yanks alot. But the people that they make police officers is just ridiculous, nothing short of chief wiggam.

I see on these U.S cop shows. Overweight, under trained, Unintelligent, trigger happy, morons. Firing off round after round with no attempt at aiming. How they pass a phyc evaluation let alone a physical.

And their driving is not much better. Most American cops think they are rambo. There is obviously not much red tape over the pond. British police would have to consider the mountains of paperwork involved in anything mildly exiting.

But yes this is not just wrong, it's sickeningly wrong. They think they are doing good but if there is a god I'm sure he will judge the way I see it. There is an obvious devil.

 

[grokit]

Hopefully this, or something very much like it, will pass soon and help stop this kind of crap.


Cops Who Write Bull$hit Tickets May Soon Face Prison Time
December 14, 2015



It can be argued that police departments across the country practice a form of legal extortion, in which victimless misdemeanors and infractions are punished with excessively punitive citations. The generation of state and city revenue via Kafkaesque civil and municipal violations is perhaps most apparent in the application of parking tickets, whereby inscrutable, sometimes illegible street signs make well-intentioned motorists increasingly susceptible to fines.

In the city of Los Angeles alone, fine revenue has increased 50% since 2003 and is expected to reach $180 million by 2018. In recent years, many online social media movements have surged in response to this transparently fraudulent urban taxation, with many citizens demanding their local city governments take action against cops filling their ticket “quotas.”

A new bill introduced by Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri may soon push the movement forward. In the wake of the Department of Justice report regarding the police brutality and resulting riots in Ferguson, Missouri, Cleaver wants such unjust ‘policing for profit’ tactics to be considered federal civil liberty violations.

Calling the bill The Fair Justice Act, Cleaver wants any police officer charged with enforcing criminal or traffic laws for the sole purpose of raising revenue to face prison time — for up to five years!

“The time has come to end the practice of using law enforcement as a cash register, a practice that has impacted too many Americans and has disproportionately affected minority and low-income communities,” Representative Cleaver said. “No American should have to face arbitrary police enforcement whose sole purpose is to raise revenue for a town, city, or state.”

This echoes President Barack Obama’s comments following the release of the DOJ report on Ferguson.

“What we saw was that the Ferguson Police Department, in conjunction with the municipality, saw traffic stops, arrests, tickets as a revenue generator, as opposed to serving the community,” the President said. “And that it systematically was biased against African Americans.”

Do you think such a maneuver can withstand the grinding inequities of our legal system? Considering the recent difficulties in getting district attorneys to even prosecute cases of clear police brutality, it’s hard to be optimistic ‘policing for profit’ tickets will be yielding disciplinary action any time soon. But perhaps lawmakers like Cleaver can at least help bring the issue into the limelight.

http://www.activistpost.com/2015/12...GN&utm_term=0_b0c7fb76bd-158da0880c-387836405

 

[howie105]

I know I seem so bash the yanks alot. But the people that they make police officers is just ridiculous, nothing short of chief wiggam.

I see on these U.S cop shows. Overweight, under trained, Unintelligent, trigger happy, morons. Firing off round after round with no attempt at aiming. How they pass a phyc evaluation let alone a physical.

And their driving is not much better. Most American cops think they are rambo. There is obviously not much red tape over the pond. British police would have to consider the mountains of paperwork involved in anything mildly exiting.

But yes this is not just wrong, it's sickeningly wrong. They think they are doing good but if there is a god I'm sure he will judge the way I see it. There is an obvious devil.

TV? Dude American media/news is slanted because reality is boring and audiences usually walk away from boring.