It does beg the question... should you buy a "Never Get Busted" video from a guy who just got busted?
(Odessa American) The former Odessa narcotics agent and producer of the promotional video series “Never Get Busted” was jailed Tuesday on multiple charges — including possession of marijuana — while conducting one of his notorious hoaxes on police in Florence, Texas, authorities said.
Williamson County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. John Foster said Cooper recently called in a suspicious package on the campus of the Florence Middle School. Foster said the package contained “a glass pipe that is normally used to smoke crack cocaine.”
“Apparently, he was doing this to test us,” Foster said. “When you do something like this on a school grounds, even though it’s after school hours … I’m sure the parents and faculty would probably have been quite alarmed to find a crack pipe on their campus.”
Foster said the officers were being filmed but did not know it at the time. Cooper was jailed on charges of filing a false report, a misdemeanor. Travis County authorities searched his house shortly after the arrest and reportedly located a small amount of marijuana, Foster said. Cooper also was charged with one count of misdemeanor possession of marijuana.
Say the name “Barry Cooper” in marijuana law reform circles and you’ll get a panoply of responses. Civil liberties champions cringe at Barry’s advice to “go ahead and let cops search your car” if you’ve followed his advice on proper smuggling of cannabis (I’m one of them – never surrender willingly your 4th and 5th Amendment rights!) But those same champions have to applaud his explanation of the fallacy of drug-detecting dogs as reliable unbiased tools, especially since he had first-hand experience training and handling these “K9 units”.
Marijuana consumers who’ve been the victim of corrupt lazy cops cheer when he sets up his famous “KopBusters” stings that prove what many of us have claimed about police malfeasance in drug cases. But others note that taking police away from real police work, even for the purposes of a sting, potentially endangers the victim of a real crime by misusing police manpower. It’s even more disturbing when the sting is taking place on public school property and involves hard drug paraphernalia.
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Nope, not at all, I’m printing you in full, unedited. I appreciate your point of view, but I was always taught two wrongs don’t make a right. I don’t think citizens should be setting up stings through falsified police reports to entrap police officers. I’m all for filming cops, exposing drug war tactics, FOIA requests, mandatory “cop cams” for all warrants served, citizen review boards, ombudsmen, and any other technique we can devise that doesn’t involve filing false police reports and planting paraphernalia and large sums of cash.
You guys disgust me. “Doing this with the same Gestapo tactics….doesn’t make him a hero. it just makes him another sleazy criminal” blah blah blah.
May i remind you that: the stupid “War on Drugs” started by the loathsome liar Richard Nixon had TWO purposes. One: to attack those horrible drug users, and Two: to destroy the hippie/radical movement which at that time threatened a US revolution. To do so, Nixon gave tacit (i.e. unspoken) approval to all the police state tactics we are so familiar with–bashing down doors, raiding homes by “mistake”, stopping cars driven by men with long hair, etc., etc. The Drug War sent plenty of people to jail for years, made plenty of others miserable AND kept thousands of hippies and radicals out of top jobs in their field. Remember, criminal background checks are now routine and ONE pot bust stays on your record to deny you that job or promotion. Later, after it didn’t matter any more, Nixon and his cronies were found to have committed far more crimes themselves, but received a slap on the wrist. Since then, the laws have gotten worse, not better, yet i make you a challenge. I say, i can go to any fairly large city in the US and buy pot, pills, heroin, cocaine and even crack and meth within 24 hours. the War on Drugs never intended to stop drugs; it was a war on hippies, radicals and revolutionaries.
What Barry did was expose the illegal, vicious and yes, Nazi tactics the police use routinely in every town and city in the country. Because of drug hysteria, we now have a massive police force doing who knows what to people whose basic “crime” is smoking pot. In Oregon, they can legally tow your car away if they find a J in it. (True, they rarely do, BUT THEY CAN, especially if they don’t like you. For instance, if you tell them they have to get a warrant to search your car.)
Instead of applauding this guy, you wimpy sad Medical Pot types attack him for “doing the same things they do.” HOW ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO CATCH THEM? You pot advocates have had 45 years to do it and haven’t!
I say, use whatever works to expose, persecute and convict these lying cheating cops/pigs. As Barry says, they get a hard-on when they grab some poor guy in front of his family and humiliate him. What sort of justice is that? Do you want to live in a country like that?
Your wimpy arguments, such as his hoaxes take valuable police time away from real police work are just plain stupid. Do you seriously think cops like this are qualified for ANY police work? By the way, they are on a special task force that ONLY goes after drugs and such. They are NOT out rescuing kittens from trees or pulling babies from burning buildings. Oh my gosh, he filed a fake police report. SO WHAT? His hoaxes make him a criminal himself. NOT IN MY BOOK.
Sure, it would be nice if we had a shining hero on a white horse, but Barry is a cop who saw the error of his ways, for whatever reasons. He has exposed some of the lying contradictions of the pompous USA, always dictating to other countries about justice and the rule of law but never applying it to themselves. i for one am happy he did what he did.
NOW, should you elect him as Attorney General? Hell no. He’s an unstable personality, doesn’t have a clue how to run an election campaign and most scary, we don’t know what his positions are on any other subject. As AG, he would be responsible for deciding which cases are dropped and which go to trial. Does he have his own prejudices? Before i would vote for him (I can’t anyway) i want to know where he stands on busting people of color, esp Latinos, and a lot of other things.
I should also say, i am a POT SMOKER. I do it because I like it and i have since 1964 (so much for the success of the War on Drugs) I have a right to smoke pot and i do. If medical marijuana or legalizing hemp are the only ways to make it legal, so be it, but I like to get high. Pot does have many medical uses, such as giving you long restful sleep, stimulating appetite and making my dick extra hard, but i hate wimping out. POT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEGAL IN 1966.
You’ve got my opinion, i’m sure you’ll do your best to discredit or unedit me, but there it is.
Don Goldman
ta
Barry Cooper For Attorney General?
NO THANKS!
At first glance Barry Cooper seems great.
We can all agree with many things he claims to stand for. Liberty, personal freedom, personal responsibility. All good.
Upon closer examination Barry is not all he seems.
It’s simple, “breaking the law” to catch others “breaking the law” is a fools errand. That what he does with his show “Kopbusters”.
Yes discrediting bad cops is a very good thing. Doing it by discrediting ones own self is at best contradictory, and at worst its a criminal act.
Barry filed a fake police tip to guarantee the “illegal raid” on his Kopbusters operation in Odessa.
So whatever good may ever come from finding those “bad cops” It will always be tainted by the lies he used to perpetrate those results.
Now it seems he had done the same thing in williamsen county, He doesn’t even follow his own training about “changing up” the routine.
Face it AT THE END OF THE DAY this guy is really just a turncoat cop, and a fake crying narcissist weed celebrity.
Possibly a CONVICTED criminal himself.
Now on top of everything else – he’s “incompetent” too?
If Barry is so “right” for this job, then why didn’t he take the few minutes to file the paperwork so he can actually be on the ballot for A
G in the fall elections.
Write-in AG candidacy? Thats a joke.
Too bad, once I had a great degree of hope in this man’s potential to actually help our beloved state of Texas.
It sucks to eventually realize that he is just another guy trying to make a little fame for himself so he can make some money off of that momentary fame.
Barry once said he was addicted to the adrenalin rush he got from “breaking down door, pointing guns, ARRESTING MEN IN FRONT OF THEIR FAMILIES and ruining their lives” ALL OVER MARIJUANA USE.
All he has done is replace that adrenaline rush he used to get from that, with the rush of the limelight, the buzz of celebrity, and a lust for cable tv fame.
“Dude just step away from the bong” it’s a nice dream for you, but it’s a REAL nightmare for Texas.
YOU COULD SET THE CAUSE OF MARIJUANA BACKWARDS WITH YOUR ANARCHIST APPROACH TO LEGALIZATION. IN TEXAS!
Leapin Lizard
Copbusters must have been an easy idea for Barry to cook up.
Barry was hired to discredit the cops that “set up” Yolanda Madden.
This whole thing was designed to get her out of prison by “setting up” those that had “set her up”.
All Barry had to do was “set up” his old partners.
Since Barry used to participate in the very same kind of lies, thuggery, and misconduct that the Odessa police usually does. So It was a very easy job to discredit them.
Lies, Thuggery, and Misconduct. It is his modus operondi
It is Barry’s legacy and it should be his shame.
Nonetheless with his detailed inside specific knowledge of how they so frequently operated “outside the law” they were very easy to “set them up” Barry was once a part of the most effective and vile gang in Texas (also known as PBDITF aka Permian Basin Drug Interdiction Task Force)
He knew they would swiftly act on any kind of a “tip” to raid any growhouse.
He knew after he tipped them off they would:
1) FLIR THE RESIDENCE to confirm the tip
2) Obtain an (ILLEGAL) search warrant based on a fabrication going something like this;
a) CI (Confidential informant) “saw the grow-op”, or
b) Peace officer “observed the odor of Marijauna”
Question: Do you really think the Odessa Police department is so efficient they raided the growhouse that fast?
Barry HAD TO TIP THEM OFF to get the police to raid that “growhouse” .
He was too impatient (cheap and greedy) to let them find it themselves
Remember Barry was really HIRED TO DISCREDIT THE BAD POLICE thats a very good thing.
doing it with lies and by cheating is still wrong, regardless of the good intentions.
DOING THIS WITH THE SAME “GESTAPO TACTICS” THEY CLAIM TO be FIGHTING DOESN’T MAKE HIM A HERO , IT JUST MAKES HIM JUST ANOTHER SLEAZY FLAVOR OF CRIMINAL.
IT CERTAINLY DOES NOT QUALIFY HIM TO EVER BE THE TOP RANKING COP IN TEXAS!
His misconduct in Williamson County is merely the tip of the iceberg.
this guy and his parasitic lifestyle is nothing to admire or follow.
We would all do better by following the lead of leaders within the NORML ecosystem like Radical Russ and Ron Paul. Barry is a crook and not a hero.
I have to say BRAVO Barry, and thanks for taking one for the team!
Those who have never been arrested for marijuana, do not know AT ALL what it’s like to have your life completely ruined by these lazy, misinformed police.
I wish more people with the knowledge that Barry has would set the police up in these ways.
Why? First to prove that there are dirty, lazy, stinkin cops out there who have no compassion, and sometimes no moral compass what-so-ever.
Second, to make the police feel wary about doing their next drug planting, or their next false dog alert.
If the police are scared to break the law to incriminate a harmless pot smoker, then maybe they won’t be so ready to screw up someone’s life, if for no other reason than to preserve their reputation and their career.
The police don’t police their officers in these regards. It’s very rare that you see the justice that Barry has brought to light!
This is my advice, on how to catch kops acting krooked!
Then the best thing for him to do was tail the cops in the course of their regular duties, NOT set them up…Someone here said it must have been a setup for them to nab this guy. So why is it ok that he was using a setup to nab the cops being dumb?
We have to be as honest as possible in order to maintain credibility, because it is prohibitionist dishonesty that we cite so often in our arguments…
Since most of his stings have happened in small towns I don’t think he misused police resources. Do small towns have that much crime? I think it is more important for him to prove that there are bad cops out there and they are being paid by MY tax dollars. I would rather have Barry catch the bad & good cops since they won’t police themselves. He is very fair in his videos. The latest he cited and showed one officer who followed correct procedure,
The guy is kind of a doofus but I learned a lot from the Never Get Busted videos. I’m betting they did an extra thorough search of his home.
Also, it’s not technically paraphernalia unless it’s been used, right?
Why were they searching his house if all he did was file a false police report? Total setup.