A Mountlake Terrace police sergeant who was fired in part for alleged dishonesty has gotten his job back and an $812,500 settlement from his department, Snohomish County and the city of Lynnwood.
Jonathan Wender’s battle to clear his name centered on allegations that police internal investigators and the prosecutor’s office targeted him unfairly because of his outspoken views in favor of limited decriminalization of marijuana and reforms in the nation’s war on drugs.
Wender joined the department out of college in 1990, and while working full time obtained a Ph.D. in criminology from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Though he stated in court he made more drug arrests than other Mountlake Terrace patrol sergeants, Wender came to believe the nation was wasting police resources jailing addicts, while failing to curb drug traffickers and to solve the underlying problems leading to drug use, including unstable families.
He joined a well-known organization — Law Enforcement Against Prohibition — and encouraged exploration of decriminalization of marijuana. He was quoted in a weekly newspaper on his views.
He said some fellow officers, including Lynnwood officers who were part of a drug task force, objected to his views and targeted him. Though he admitted smoking pot once — when he was 15 years old — he said he is not pro-drug.
The case against Wender was that he had received a call from a woman complaining that her ex-husband was growing a pot plant. She called in not to have him arrested, but just to get it on the record for future custody disputes. Wender calls the ex-husband and tells him to obey the law or face custody consequences.
It turns out the guy had a whole grow operation going on. Internal investigators seized on this and found a way to allege Wender was lying about how he reported this matter. Wender passed polygraph tests and the evidence against him fell apart. In his chief’s opinion, he was wrong to not bust the guy for even one pot plant, but that didn’t rise to the level of a termination.
But this case illustrates how difficult it will be to even begin the discussion on ending the Drug War, as so many people face severe consequences for just talking about it.
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The problem with Jonathan Wender is simple..
“Wender joined the department out of college in 1990, and while working full time obtained a Ph.D. in criminology from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.”
..he’s EDUCATED.
Once you have some level of education, the information you “know” is questioned regardless of its source whereas uneducated people believe what they’re told to believe. That’s why they had to get rid of him. He’d have corrupted the stupidity of the other officers with his logic, common sense, and education.