With guns drawn and flashlights cutting through darkened rooms, Polk County undercover drug investigators stormed the home of convicted drug dealer Michael Difalco near Lakeland in March.
As investigators searched the home for drugs, some drug task force members found other ways to occupy their time. Within 20 minutes of entering Difalco’s house, some of the investigators found a Wii video bowling game and began bowling frame after frame.
Saturday, April 25th, 2009 at 9:20 am | By: Dudemaster
Sometimes one really should say NO to another toke, especially if one is driving directly behind a police car.
Steven B. Clarke
On Tuesday, April 21, 2009, Steven B. Clarke, 21, fell asleep directly behind a police car at a busy interception after toking on some Ganja. He apparently woke up after Police spotlighted him through his window and tapped on the glass.
Likely in a ganja-ridden Jeff Spicoli haze (reference to my favorite stoner movie of all time, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” with a very young Sean Penn in the staring role), he rolled down his window and exposed the officers to enough pot smoke that gave them probable cause to yank him out of his car and conduct a search. After finding 45 grams from his pocket, Clarke was placed under arrest. Although Clarke stated to officers, “I am from Jamaica and smoke a lot of marijuana,” officers weren’t persuaded in releasing him without charges.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Steven B. Clarke may have done something incredibly stupid by using his choice of medicine and driving, but the real crime is that will he will be paying for this mistake for the remainder of his life in this country. In Evansville, Indiana, the penalty for possession of Marijuana greater than 30 grams is a misdemeanor and carries a maximum incarceration of 6 months to 3 years, $10,000 in fines, court costs and any possible diversion treatment he may be ordered to attend. If the district attorney chooses to do so, they can escalate his charge to a felony.
Is anyone still laughing? How about the hand picked audience who attended the town hall meeting where President Obama laughed at us for asking him to open a dialogue for science over politics, are you still laughing?
The ratio of prisoners to citizens in the wonderfully green and beautiful country of Finland is 50 incarcerations per 100,000, while the United States leads the bold charge of locking up a considerable portion of our citizens at a rate of 738 per 100,000. According to 2008 statistics, the United States ranks first in the world for the number of incarcerations per citizens with those evil Chinese prisons a DISTANT second. In America, 7.2 million people are either behind bars, on probation, or parole. More than 1 in 100 adults were incarcerated at the start of 2008.
Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton isn’t some run of the mill beat cop, this man has the kind of record that most officers would envy. Bratton served in Vietnam, holds a BS in Law Enforcement from UMass, graduated from the FBI National Executive Institute and was a Senior Executive Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Don’t get me wrong, this man is no friend of the kind, but the situation that Law Enforcement is in has obviously gotten unsustainable in his eyes.
“I think that the policy of the federal government at this time is unfortunate. I think the policy of this state is Looney Tunes,” Bratton said Wednesday at a Parker Center news conference.
“While I fully support its use for medicinal purposes, why don’t we regulate it like we do Lipitor or Viagra,” Bratton said. “You can’t buy those two without getting it through a legitimate pharmacy. If this drug is so important and so helpful, why is it not regulated like every other drug?”
Bratton is crying out for a directive that he can follow. He wants to beat pot smokers heads in, but he can’t figure out when he can do so. It was so simple just a scant 20 years ago, if you found pot you locked the Citizen up and gave him a record that would haunt them until the day they died. Now his deputies have to check cards and give back plants to patients, you can’t even bust a dispensary anymore without some mob showing up to harass you.
The simple point that Bratton makes is a telling one, that the War on Marijuana is unsustainable, and it might as well be treated the same as any other medication (or alcohol for that matter).
[This echoes what I've heard when I talk to cops at Seattle Hempfest or Portland Hempstalk. One said, "I wish you guys would just legalize it! This half-and-half thing, some medical, some not, is just ridiculous. Either everybody goes to jail for weed or nobody goes to jail for weed, but the way it is now just makes our jobs a whole lot harder!" And he's got a point - why is the guy in a wheelchair a patient but the guy who can walk is a criminal if they're both smoking a joint? Because the second guy committed the crime of being too healthy to smoke pot? -- "R"R]
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 10:17 am | By: Radical Russ
Tonight: Interview with Kerlikowske predecessor Norm Stamper on Drug Czar appointment – 4:20pm
Download today’s Daily Audio Stash at 4:20pm Pacific when I discuss the potential appointment of Chief Kerlikowske as Drug Czar with his predecessor, former Seattle Police Chief and current member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Norm Stamper.
(Seattle P-I) Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske has accepted a job in the Obama administration, most likely overseeing the nation’s drug policies, according to sources familiar with the chief’s plans.
Kerlikowske, who has led the department for more than eight years, has told the department’s top commanders he expects to leave to take a top federal position, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren’t officially authorized to disclose the information.
Sources say Kerlikowske is expected to be named head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a Cabinet-level position otherwise known as the drug czar. The office, established in 1988, directs drug-control policy in the U.S. It’s subject to Senate confirmation.
Kerlikowske had also expressed an interest in the top job at the federal Drug Enforcement Administration but apparently has not been tapped for that post, one source said.
Kerlikowske won credit for stabilizing the police department after the stormy departure of Norm Stamper as chief in the wake of the 1999 World Trade Organization riots in Seattle, as well as the department’s initial failure to unearth a detective’s alleged theft of money at a crime scene. A genial Kerlikowske reached out to citizens. In addition, crime rates dipped during his time as chief, reaching historic lows in recent years.
Kerlikowske lists one of his accomplishments as the development of less-than-lethal force options for officers, equipping dozens of officers with Tasers. He also oversaw the installation of cameras in the department’s patrol cars.
He has been an advocate of gun control and fought to pass the assault-weapons ban and has championed closing the background-check loophole at gun shows.
Kerlikowske’s possible role in shaping drug policy for the Obama administration was applauded Tuesday by local medical-marijuana advocates.
In 2003, Kerlikowske opposed a city ballot measure, approved by voters, to make marijuana possession the lowest law-enforcement priority, saying it would create confusion. But in doing so, he noted that arresting people for possessing marijuana for personal use was already not a priority.
“Oh God bless us,” said Joanna McKee, co-founder and director of Green Cross Patient Co-Op, a medical-marijuana patient-advocacy group. “What a blessing — the karma gods are smiling on the whole country, man.”
McKee said Kerlikowske knows the difference between cracking down on the illegal abuse of drugs and allowing the responsible use of marijuana.
Douglas Hiatt, a Seattle attorney and advocate for medical-marijuana patients, said his first preference would be for a physician to oversee national drug policy.
But Kerlikowske would be a vast improvement over past drug czars, who have used the office to carry out the so-called “war on drugs,” Hiatt said.
Kerlikowske is a “very reasonable guy” who would likely bring more liberal policies to the job, Hiatt said.
Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 11:59 am | By: Radical Russ
“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”
Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States. I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life. Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed. Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.
There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis. Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision. ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.
Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 1:09 pm | By: Radical Russ
The new student at Millington Central High School was freaking out in study hall.
She’d just been talking to a boy about scoring some drugs one late September day when she turned to get her purse and couldn’t find her cell phone inside.
The slight, pretty girl with dark blonde hair and a darker secret went nuts.
She jumped up and dumped the purse out onto the table, demanding, “Who took my cell phone!?”
The phone’s loss itself was of no importance.
But if the thief bothered to call the stored numbers, he’d hear such greetings as: “This is Inspector Charlie Coleman of the Millington Police Department …”
Police shut her phone off in an hour, before anyone stumbled upon its secrets.
Operation Trojan Horse would continue for three more months until police swarmed campus on Dec. 16.
The day before, the new girl had quietly left school for good.
Officers arrested 13 students for selling drugs to a person they thought was one of them. All transactions were recorded.
This is the story of a 21-year-old female officer who infiltrated a high school with a fake 17-year-old identity. I always hate these “21 Jump Street” stories of teenagers building confidence and trust in a friend, only to find it is an undercover police officer sent there to lock them up. There always seems to be plenty of money to fund these undercover operations, but teachers are still forced to buy school supplies out of their own pockets.
If we spent half the time and money and priority on public school education as we spend on fighting the drug war, you’d have half the number of kids in school doing drugs, I guarantee. Now you’ve got a large portion of the student body, some who were already having trust and authority issues, who will hate school and police and authority so much more for having their emotions tinkered with.
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 9:10 am | By: Radical Russ
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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Wow, I got the Stash in with one minute to spare! What do you suppose the chances are of that? (Uh, zero, since I modified the post date. But I wouldn’t want to mess up the RSS feed for Tuesday, would I?)
Today’s Stash features a two-part interview with former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper who was kind enough to talk at length about Barack Obama’s lack of response to the Change.gov questions on legalization, and why cops are saying yes to the formerly unthinkable “L”-word.
And now, I go off to bed to make some more platelets. ’Night!
Investigators said Deputy Jason Rowland answered his cell phone and someone asked if he had any “smoke.” Rowland played along and the caller ordered $40 worth of marijuana.
The buyer showed up and police charged him with solicitation of drug sales.
Misdialing your dealer and getting the police isn’t stupid, it’s unlucky. But calling a cell phone number to order weed in the first place, that’s stupid. Every call you make is not only a log of who ordered what from whom and at what time, but also a triangulated position of everyone involved in the call. And cell signals are pretty easy to intercept even without a warrant.
Naw, I changed my mind. It’s stupid, period. Even if you are making this ill-advised call, you don’t use some sort of code and identify the person you are speaking with first? Bad form.
Voters elected last November to remove the criminal penalty for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. Since the law went into effect Jan. 1, offenders are now subject to a civil fine. That fine, like a parking ticket, can be appealed in court.
[Lancaster Police Chief Kevin] Lamb said last week that he still has questions and concerns over the new law.“There’s going to be problems if you issue a $100 ticket and they don’t pay it. Who is going to chase them around for it?” he said. “There are all kinds of issues that are going to come up in the next few months.”
Lamb also referenced a hypothetical situation in which one of his officers could sit in a police cruiser, smoking a joint, and the only thing the chief could do is have a citation issued. No further disciplinary action could be taken because the new law classifies the possession of less than one ounce as a civil offense. Conversely, Lamb noted, an officer could be fired if found smoking a regular cigarette in that same cruiser.
“That just doesn’t make sense,” Lamb said.
It’s nice to see that Massachusetts has gone to such great lengths to employ the mentally handicapped. Really, are you guys that bummed out about not being able to just cuff and stuff pot smokers that you’ve lost all sense?
Chief Lamb, the new law makes marijuana possession like a parking ticket. Who is chasing around the folks who don’t pay parking tickets? Nobody! But if you have an unpaid ticket, then what? You get cited for contempt, you get a bench warrant, and the next time you interface with a police officer, you’re going to jail.
And you really think you have no grounds to fire a police officer smoking cannabis in a police cruiser? First off, is this a huge problem in Massachusetts? Do you not have the standard human resources-approved legal mumbo-jumbo in your employment contracts about “conduct unbecoming an officer” or a “morality clause” or something?
Geez, the way you guys whine you’d think that we haven’t seen twelve other states deal with exactly this same situation!
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Cops caught playing Nintendo Wii during drug raid
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