Shortly after Jared Loughner allegedly opened fire in the parking lot of a Tucson grocery store last January, we saw much hand-wringing about the threat of violence against the government. In fact, violence against government officials is actually pretty rare. But just three days before Loughner's rampage, police in Framingham, Mass., raided the home of 68-year-old Eurie Stamps. Stamps wasn't the target of the drug raid. Police were after the son of Stamps' girlfriend, and actually apprehended him outside the home. They raided the house anyway. Stamps, who was unarmed and broke no laws, was shot and killed by a police officer. By my count, he's at least the 46th innocent person killed in a botched drug raid. Every politician in Washington condemned the Loughner shootings, and rightly so. But nearly every politician in Washington supports the laws and policies that led to the death of Eurie Stamps.
--
Radley Balko continues his lonely crusade documenting the ongoing militarization of America's police forces.
posted by empath
on Dec 5, 2011 -
62 comments
Many listeners have written to us since our episode about Georgia Judge Amanda Williams, asking what ever happened to her. Did she face any consequences for the things we documented on our program? Yesterday, Georgia’s Judicial Qualifications Commission filed formal charges [PDF]
against her. The twelve counts include a number of things reported in our episode: sending away inmates for indefinite detention, jailing Charlie McCullough for 14 days for exercising his right to contest a drug screen, and using “rude, abusive, or insulting language” with individuals appearing before her. Local reporting from the
Altanta Journal-Constitution. Previously.
posted by gerryblog
on Nov 10, 2011 -
43 comments
Attention all units, please respond to Central and Broadway, reference a large crowd. It's a war on drugs.
Just Say No: a music video featuring former Albuquerque sheriff
Darren White. On vocals.
posted by NoraReed
on Jul 16, 2011 -
29 comments
No one asks or answers this question: How does such an escalation benefit the drug smuggling business which has not been diminished at all during the past three years of hyper-violence in Mexico? Each year, the death toll rises, each year there is no evidence of any disruption in the delivery of drugs to American consumers, each year the United States asserts its renewed support for this war. And each year, the basic claims about the war go unquestioned. Who Is Behind the 25,000 Deaths In Mexico?
posted by HP LaserJet P10006
on Jul 27, 2010 -
60 comments
In a pilot Phase II
study of PTSD sufferers with a median of 19 years since diagnosis, MDMA-assisted therapy resulted in 10 out of 12 patients no longer meeting the diagnostic criteria.
[more inside]
posted by daksya
on Jul 24, 2010 -
88 comments
The Changing Racial Dynamics of the War on Drugs. The
Sentencing Project has just released a
report (pdf) finding that, for the first time in 20 years, the
number of Black Americans in state prison for drug offenses has fallen. Between 1999 and 2005, the number of White drug offenders in state prisons rose about 43 percent, while the number of Black offenders declined by 22 percent. One cause may be a rise in the use of
drug courts, which are locally administered programs that divert offenders into treatment rather than incarceration. The Sentencing Project has a recent
report (pdf) on this issue as well.
posted by lunit
on Apr 16, 2009 -
32 comments
In May 1995, the American government's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) made an attempt to disrupt the supply chain of methamphetamine precursors, such as pseudoephedrine, by shutting down two major suppliers of the precursors under authority granted by the Domestic Chemical Diversion Control Act. Was it successful?
Only temporarily, according to new research by
Carlos Dobkin and
Nancy Nicosia. (
via)
posted by Pants!
on Apr 8, 2009 -
47 comments
Strip searching 13 year old girls is bad mmmkay. Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in a 6-5 decision that students cannot be strip-searched based on the uncorroborated word of another student who is facing disciplinary punishment. In an even bigger twist, the court has found that the school official who ordered the strip search, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson, is financially liable in the case and cannot claim qualified immunity.
posted by Talez
on Jul 13, 2008 -
98 comments
DrugPolicyCases.com - Yakov Spektor, a New York-based attorney, combed through two decades of US Supreme Court opinions "to discern certain trends in the Court's treatment of various issues" related to the War on Drugs. The collection of opinions are organized by
case,
author and
topic.
posted by daksya
on Nov 26, 2007 -
8 comments
"An open society must be
prepared to listen to those who offer a critique of its conventional wisdom—and our conventional wisdom about drugs and addiction should be no exception."
posted by daksya
on Sep 22, 2007 -
50 comments
This video is a welcome conclusion to the
previous post regarding the arrest of Germ's drummer Don Bolles for possession of "GHB" in the form of Dr. Bronner's soap. In the video David Bronner, President of Dr. Bronner's demonstrates how
drug field test kits return false positive results for any true natural soap.
posted by well_balanced
on Aug 3, 2007 -
33 comments
Buy Sudafed, have a chat with Officer Friendly. Detective Brian Lewis returns to his desk after lunch, scanning e-mails he missed.
One catches his eye: It says a suspected member of a methamphetamine ring bought a box of Sudafed at 1:34 p.m. at a CVS pharmacy.
Minutes later, Lewis is in his truck, circling the parking lot, searching for the woman.
MethCheck is one of the new computerized tracking systems that will notify police of your decongestant purchases. Buy too much, or buy if you're already a suspect, and you'll be getting a visit from the law. Uncomfortable? Better hold your nose - the next version of the software will match you against everyone on your street to see if your aggregate buying warrants investigation.
We've discussed the
Sudafed
problem before, but this level of tracking opens up a new can of worms. It seems a small step before you get this tautology:
Why do you care that she bought Sudafed?
Because she's a suspected meth ring member.
Why do you think she's in a meth ring?
Because she bought Sudafed, silly!
posted by bitmage
on Jul 19, 2007 -
143 comments
The House of Death A DHS/DEA/DoJ/US Media coverup. Another victory in the War on Drugs?
When 12 bodies were found buried in the garden of a Mexican house, it seemed like a case of drug-linked killings. But the trail led to Washington and a cover-up that went right to the top.
Other online coverage (
1,
2,
3)
posted by i_am_a_Jedi
on Dec 3, 2006 -
26 comments
Seattle
is proud of the public policy success of
I-75, the marijuana enforcement deprioritization inititative. I-75 has been followed by similar local intiatives across the Western US, such as Oakland's
Measure Z and Denver's I-100 (sponsored by
SAFER).
These
grassroots initiatives presumably already rankle the federal government. But the council of San Francisco may be poised to
outdo them all with a new proposal that "would commit the city to refusing federal funds intended for the investigation or prosecution of marijuana offenses. It also would prevent a federal agency from commissioning or deputizing a city police officer for assistance in such cases."
posted by owhydididoit
on Sep 12, 2006 -
40 comments
