Download Link: Secret Stash - Register to access
Standard Podcast Feed (27.5MB 64Kbps) | High-Def Podcast Feed (82.5MB 192Kbps)
Download audio file (NORML_SHOW_LIVE_2011-12-05.mp3)

Hemp Headlines

Brought to you by Cannabis Fantastic

1. Study finds lower traffic fatalities, less alcohol use, in medical marijuana states
2. Washington and Rhode Island governors petition federal government to reschedule cannabis
3. Dispensaries in California closing in wake of US Attorneys Crackdown
4. Radley Balko on the rise of paramilitary SWAT raids in American policing

Daily Toker Tunes

Roots Monday: Brought to you by “Radical” Russ

• The Tallbrothers – “Smokin’ What We Want for Christmas”

Cannabis Conversations

• Terry Franklin from the Freedom Bus Caravan, planning protests at New Hampshire primary campaign rallies

Radical Rant

• “The Danger of Dabs” article elicits controversy over portrayals of hash oil

I'm Jose Guerena. I served two tours as a Marine in Iraq. I fought foreign enemies to defend America. I was killed by American cops as I defended my family.

Radley Balko from Reason Magazine is my hero for his unparalleled coverage of police malfeasance in the service of armed no-knock raids, usually on drug suspects.  His reporting in the Huffington Post on the story of Jose Guerena, while shocking, is not surprising when you’ve read as many “botched drug raid”* (as HuffPo titles it) stories as I have.  Just peruse the database at http://cato.org/raidmap for a few minutes to get a feel for how the War on Drugs has become an actual shooting war with cops gunning down citizens who are often innocent of any crime or merely committing personal-use drug crimes.

In short, an armored and armed SWAT team was conducting no-knock raids on a set of homes believed to be involved in marijuana trafficking.  Jose Guerena, a Marine with two tours of Iraq under his belt, awoke from sleeping after working a night shift to the sounds of armed intruders breaking into his home.  Remembering that two of his wife’s relatives were murdered by home invaders and their three-year-old wounded, Jose orders his wife and four-year-old in the closet to hide while he grabbed his AR-15 rifle to meet the intruders.

When the cops see Guerena at the end of the hallway, they fire 70 rounds in 7 seconds, hitting Jose with 60 of them.  At first, cops claimed they saw the flash of his rifle’s muzzle, indicating he was firing, but later recanted and told reporters that actually Guerena’s AR-15 safety was still on as he was shot.  As Guerena lie bleeding to death, the cops prevented any paramedics from attending him for over an hour.  They claim it is because the raid was still a volatile situation… I guess, unlike the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, where medics were treating victims within minutes even as the scene had yet to be secured.

Please visit Huffington Post and read Balko’s coverage of the cops’ latest double-speak, innuendo, and outright lying as they desperately try to cover their ass over the senseless murder of an American veteran.  

*I hate the term “botched drug raid” when there is a no-knock SWAT raid on a drug suspect.  You’re breaking into a person’s home without warning, pointing guns, and somebody gets killed?  There’s nothing “botched” about that.  That is the intent of the raid: go in with overwhelming force, subdue suspects if you can, kill what fights back.

That's a mighty nice looking watch you're wearing, son. Now, you don't want us to have to go into the station, do you?

Once again, Reason contributor Radley Balko looks at how the drug war is corrupting police officers and creating injustice:

Morally, it is not much of a leap from legal asset forfeiture—in which cops take property from people who have never been charged with a crime, sell it, and use the proceeds for their department’s budget—to simply pocketing money from suspected drug dealers. Consider what was happening in Tenaha, Texas, until recently. Cops would pull over motorists, accuse them of drug activity with little or no evidence, and give them a choice: They could sign the cash, jewelry, and other property in their possession over to the police department and be on their way. Or they could fight the charges, risk a felony conviction, spend one or more nights in a jail cell, and possibly pay more in legal fees than their property was worth.

Legal niceties are often the only distinction between civil asset forfeiture and a shakedown. It is not hard to see how cops who routinely engage in the former might grow morally complacent enough to contemplate the latter. Audio from a 2008 raid on the home of Monroe County, Michigan, resident Rudy Simpson, which hit the Internet last month, catches two state police officers deciding whether to take his recording equipment, flat-screen TV, and computers. Simpson says they also took DVDs, a camera, a gold ring, and $400 in cash. The raid, justified by an “anonymous tip” that Simpson was selling pot, netted a small bag of marijuana and half a pain pill.

 

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Reason) More than 80 percent of federal seizures are never challenged in court, according to Smith. To supporters of forfeiture, this statistic is an indication of the owners’ guilt, but opponents argue it simply reflects the fact that in many cases the property was worth less than the legal costs of trying to get it back.

The average Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) property seizure in 1998 was worth about $25,000. In 2000 a Justice Department source told the PBS series Frontline that this figure was also the cutoff under which most forfeiture attorneys advised clients that their cases wouldn’t be worth pursuing. So a law aimed at denying drug kingpins their ill-gotten millions ended up affecting mostly those with so little loot it didn’t even make sense to hire an attorney to win it back.

Forfeiture [has] been sending money to police departments and prosecutors’ offices for 16 years, so even in the few states that passed laws to make the process more fair, officials found ways around them. Once the authorities have a license to steal, it turns out to be very difficult to revoke.

A very good look at the abhorrent mutation of American law known as Civil Asset Forfeiture.  You want to know why marijuana remains illegal and law enforcement fights tooth and nail to maintain prohibition?  Read this article.  You’ve got to keep illegal the drug that (a) is very popular so (b) you have plenty of candidates for forfeiture that (c) aren’t so burned out by the drug that they (d) still have enough money and stuff to seize but (e) not rich enough to fight a lengthy case against the government.

(CNN) — A coalition of Democrats and some Republicans reached a compromise that trimmed billions in spending from an earlier version of the Senate economic stimulus bill.

Senators worked late into the night to trim billions from the original stimulus bill.

CNN obtained, from a Democratic leadership aide, a list of some programs that have been cut, either entirely or partially:

• $300 million for federal prisons
• $300 million for BYRNE Formula grant program
• $140 million for BYRNE Competitive grant program

What are these BYRNE grants and why do they matter to us?  Radley Balko explains it quite well at The Agitator:

Byrne Grants, meanwhile, are often tied directly to drug arrests, warping police department priorities by encouraging low-level drug busts to juke up department arrest statistics . . . so they can apply for more grants. We have Byrne grants to thank for the civil rights disasters in Tulia and Hearne, Texas, and for the continuing problem of out of control multijurisdictional drug task forces.

It’s the economy, stupid.  They just can’t afford the luxury of playing drug war like the old days.  Add that to how the public will react to other cuts, like:

• $200 million from Environmental Protection Agency Superfund (original bill $800 million)
• $98 million for school nutrition
• $2 billion for broadband

We can’t afford to borrow to spend money on protecting the environment, feeding kids school lunches, or spreading broadband across the country.  How eager will the public then be to see money being prioritized on flying helicopters to eradicate marijuana plants?

As my British friends say, “spot on!”  Radley Balko at The Agitator has nailed it with a sledgehammer:

Dear America,

I take it back. I don’t apologize.

Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.

Go read the whole thing, it’s brilliant, especially the “let’s see you rationalize in your next lame ONDCP commercial how the greatest motherfucking swimmer the world has ever seen . . . is also a proud pot smoker” part.  The comments are pretty good, too, especially this one from Eric Ogunbase:

You know who I feel bad for? Everyone who competed against him in the pool.

“You mean I’ve been training my whole life for these events and I STILL got my ass kicked by a dude who smokes the chronic?!”

Also, my diary at DailyKos could use some comments and recommendations.  Let’s bump this one up!

Cops Employing Robbers: Did police misconduct lead to another fatal marijuana raid? – Reason Magazine
Ryan Frederick, the 29-year-old Chesapeake, Virginia man facing capital murder charges after shooting and killing a police officer during a nighttime drug raid on his home, was back in court for a preliminary hearing earlier this month. What came out at the hearing may be the beginning of the unraveling of the state’s case against him.

Frederick has said he was asleep in preparation for an early shift when police raided his home at 8:30 p.m. on January 24. According to search warrant affidavits, officers were acting on a tip from an informant that Frederick was running a major marijuana growing operation in his garage. The raid turned up only a misdemeanor amount of the drug—about a third of an ounce.

Frederick has said in interviews and in letters to his family that he was awoken by his dogs barking at the intruders, then heard the sound of someone breaking down his front door. He says he grabbed his handgun and ran to his living room, where he saw that the bottom panel of his door and been busted out and saw someone reaching up through the broken panel toward the door handle. Frederick says that’s when he fired, striking and killing Det. Jarrod Shivers. Police and prosecutors counter that Frederick fired through the door, hitting Det. Shivers as he was standing on Frederick’s front lawn. Police say they announced themselves before attempting to enter Frederick’s home. Frederick and at least two neighbors say they heard no announcement.

Frederick’s case is only one recent example of the inherent danger and disproportionate absurdity of using violent, forced-entry police tactics to serve nonviolent drug warrants. This raid on a man with no prior criminal record left a police officer dead, his wife widowed, and his children without a father, while effectively ruining Ryan Frederick’s life. He’s facing one count of capital murder for the shooting of Shivers, a felony drug distribution charge, and a charge of using a weapon during the commission of a drug crime.

Now, disturbing new questions have emerged about the quality of the police investigation and the way the Chesapeake Police Department’s narcotics officers may have been using confidential informants in their drug investigations.

“Confidential informants”, a.k.a. “snitches”.  I’m not talking about people reporting a crime – that’s not “snitching”, that’s being a good neighbor and citizen.  I’m talking about the people, usually repeat crimanl offenders, who are bribed with lenient sentences in exchange for the dirt on somebody else.  This can be a good thing in the case of capturing a mob informant who gives up bigger fish, but it has been misused in the Drug War to pad arrest totals and manufacture criminal charges where no crime has been committed.

These “snitches” have incentive to lie.  An acquaintence with a baggie of weed becomes a “major marijuana growing operation”, the bigger the fish given up, the better the deal for the “snitch”.

Then there’s the militarization of our domestic police.  Our SWAT teams were originally intended to cope with violent situations in our cities, not to create them.  I find it especially ridiculous when it comes to these “major marijuana growing operations”.  What’s the big rush?  Afraid the “perp” is going to flush all the evidence… all those big leafy plants, pots full of soil, huge lights and ballasts?  And what’s with the guns?  Are you really afraid that if you knock on the door of the big bad marijuana grower and say, “Police, we have a warrant,” that he’s going to come out guns blazing?

The guns and the shouting and the breaking down doors aren’t about subduing the alleged indoor pot grower.  It doesn’t even matter if the person subdued isn’t really growing pot indoors.  It’s about subduing and terrorizing the neighbors, the other people not involved with pot, to convince them that marijuana is dangerous and its users are violent.  Because otherwise, most people get along just fine with their pot smokin’ and growin’ neighbors.