Tag: police state

Colorado Marijuana Retailers Have 99% Compliance Rate In Underage Sales Checks, State Regulators Say

Colorado marijuana regulators announced this week that out of 285 underage sales checks conducted at state-licensed cannabis stores this year, there have been only four failures—a compliance rate of about 99 percent.

“While any failure is unacceptable,” the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) said in the latest issue of its quarterly In the Weeds newsletter on Monday, “we’re pleased to report this very high compliance rate which is on par with the compliance percentage from 2022.”

Records from the state’s underage sales dashboard show an underage sales check compliance rate of 99 percent in 2022, which was a record high. Compliance rates were 95 percent in 2021, 97 percent in 2020 and 2019, 92 percent in 2018, 95 percent in 2017 and 94 percent in 2016.

“MED’s priority is protecting public health and safety, and nothing is more important than preventing youth access to regulated marijuana,” the agency said in the email. “While the data continually shows us that minors are overwhelmingly not getting marijuana from regulated stores, underage sales checks of licensed stores are a vital tool to keep it that way.”

Records of individual sales checks are listed on the MED dashboard, but none from 2023 are currently included. A Department of Revenue representative told Marijuana Moment that’s because “entries only appear in the dashboard once the administrative action has reached a final disposition,” which can take anywhere from a few months to more than a year after the initial violation.

Colorado requires that people show ID before they enter a Colorado cannabis shop and before making a purchase. MED has said retailers should also be aware of actions they must take if they suspect an employee is violating the rules or if a person presents fraudulent identification.

Colorado also has a training and certification program from dispensaries to receive a “Responsible Vendor” designation, which is meant to encourage compliance and also promote consumer transparency.

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Dozens of Israelis arrested for social media posts defending Gaza, advocates say

At least 100 Israelis have been arrested for social media posts supporting Palestinians in Gaza and 70 remain in detention, according to a legal advocacy group in the country. Adalah, which represents Arab Israelis in human rights cases, said the arrests are part of an unprecedented crackdown on freedom of expression in Israel.

“We’re seeing things we didn’t see before,” Adi Mansour, an attorney in Adalah’s civil rights unit, said in an interview. “There’s a change in the perception of what is allowed and what is prevented.”

Police arrested Dalal Abu Amneh, a prominent Palestinian-Israeli singer, for “incitement” after her social media team posted a Palestinian flag with the caption: “There is no victor but God,” her lawyer told The New Arab.

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Florida Attorney General Defends Firing Of Corrections Officer For Using Medical Marijuana To Treat PTSD

A case filed with the Florida Supreme Court tests whether the Department of Corrections properly fired a corrections officer because of his use of medical marijuana while off work.

Florida’s First District Court of Appeal upheld the firing, but Samuel Velez Ortiz now argues before the state Supreme Court that the action violates both the Florida Constitution’s sanction of medical marijuana and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings establishing a broad right to bear firearms.

The state Public Employees Relation Commission upheld the firing, reasoning that his medical marijuana use rendered him unqualified to carry a firearm—a condition of his employment—under federal law prohibiting use of the drug.

A petition that Velez Ortiz’s attorneys filed with the state Supreme Court cites 2022’s New York State Rifle Pistol v. Bruen, in which the justices in Washington established a public right to carry firearms outside the home for self protection. Subsequent rulings by a federal trial judge in Oklahoma and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the right of sober persons to carry guns even if they smoked marijuana on other occasions.

“This lower court’s [First DCA] opinion permits a sanction on medical marijuana patients, which results in loss of employment for being a qualified patient and strips a person’s right to bear arms for being a qualified patient,” it says. “The opinion states because he uses medical marijuana ‘he cannot lawfully possess a firearm. Each time he does, he is committing a felony.’”

The brief notes that Velez Ortiz was a qualified medical marijuana user because of his PTSD and never worked while under the influence. A random drug test flagged him for cannabis metabolites.

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NYPD COPS SUED FOR MISCONDUCT COST CITY MILLIONS IN SETTLEMENTS — THEN GET PROMOTIONS

NEW YORK CITY is on track to fork over more than $100 million this year in payouts for lawsuits alleging police misconduct against members of the New York City Police Department. Twenty of the officers stand out over the last decade for being named in the most suits or being named in suits with the highest payouts. Of the 20, the department has promoted at least 16 of the officers, some more than once. 

“They’re kind of failing upwards when they’re not only staying in the department but they’re also being promoted,” said Jennvine Wong, staff attorney with the Cop Accountability Project at the Legal Aid Society, a public defense organization in New York City. Last month, Legal Aid released an analysis of data on settlements in cases alleging police misconduct. 

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Meme Artist Douglass Mackey is Sentenced To Seven Months in Prison For Hillary Clinton Voting Meme

Douglass Mackey, a once well-known creator of memes on Twitter, has been sentenced to seven months in prison.

The conviction marks a dramatic escalation in how free speech is being handled in the United States. Rendered in the New York criminal court, Mackey was declared guilty of perpetrating a “conspiracy against rights”—the right to an unobstructed election being the one in focus here.

Mackey, who operated under the alias Ricky Vaughn, had made and shared memes critical of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Presidential race. His memes humorously suggested that Clinton supporters cast their ballots through text messages – a patently invalid method of voting.

Although such an improper method was clearly ineffective, Mackey was still convicted over the notion of election interference.

Quite interestingly, many have noted, other internet users who shared similar content regarding the option of text voting for Donald Trump were neither charged nor convicted.

The absence of evidence showing any voting attempt made following Mackey’s meme did not deter the US Department of Justice from declaring it an interference. Despite Mackey professing his mere intent of creating a viral meme, similar to those which his fellow Clinton detractors had created; he was singled out and penalized.

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Ban on protests supporting Palestinians is disproportionate attack on the right to protest in France

Following the request from the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin asking the prefects in France to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Jean-Claude Samouiller, President of Amnesty International France said:

“The ban on all demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in France constitutes a serious and disproportionate attack on the right to demonstrate.

Faced with the atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel, and also the blockade and very heavy bombings in the Gaza Strip, it is important that civil society actors can mobilize peacefully and publicly, in particular those calling on those engaged in the conflict to respect the rights of civilian populations. This is why there cannot be a systematic ban on the right to peacefully demonstrate support for the rights of the Palestinian populations.

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Should Governments Need a Warrant To Spy on You With a Drone?

A Michigan township sued a local family over a minor zoning violation, but the case could determine whether governments can spy on citizens without warrants. Today, the Michigan Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on the case.

Todd and Heather Maxon live in Long Lake Township, on five acres of land with two garages. Todd likes to work on cars, so he keeps some on the property. In 2008, the township sued, accusing them of storing “junk,” a zoning violation. In exchange for dropping the charges, the couple agreed not to expand their collection. Neighbors later complained that the Maxons had indeed acquired more cars, but the collection was not visible from the road.

Instead of getting a warrant—or, since nothing was visible from the road, dropping the issue altogether—the township hired a private drone company to fly over the property and take pictures several times between 2010 and 2018. Citing the pictures, the township sued the Maxons for violating the agreement.

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FBI Report Says 3 In 10 Drug Arrests Are For Marijuana, But Agency’s Inconsistent Data Hinders Policy Analysis

Arrests for marijuana made up nearly a third of all drug arrests in the United States in 2022, according to a newly released report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As with last year’s report, however, inconsistencies in the data and recent changes to the agency’s methodology make it difficult to draw year-to-year comparisons or meaningful conclusions about cannabis and broader drug enforcement trends.

The data, according to FBI, comes from more than 11 million criminal offenses reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, which is submitted by 13,293 law enforcement agencies and 2,431 other agencies whose jurisdictions comprise more than 90 percent of the country’s population.

“Of the 18,884 state, county, city, university and college, and tribal agencies eligible to participate in the UCR Program, 15,724 agencies submitted data in 2022,” the bureau said in a press release about its annual 2022 Crime in the Nation statistics.

Because not all agencies provide data for the complete reporting periods, FBI explains in a methodology section of its website, the bureau calculates estimated crime numbers, essentially extrapolating “by following a standard estimation procedure using the data provided.” In terms of total reported arrests for “drug abuse violations,” for example, FBI said there were 766,595 arrests. The estimated number of arrests for drug abuse violations, by contrast, is 907,958.

Those numbers, however, aren’t consistent throughout the FBI report. In a section on arrests by region, FBI said there were 726,746 total drug arrests in 2022—nearly 40,000 fewer than its top-level number. In an analysis of  historical trends, meanwhile, FBI reported just 633,576 drug arrests in 2022. A section on racial breakdowns says there were 714,442 drug abuse violations.

Other sections list “drug/narcotic offenses” for the year at 1,459,460, the number of arrestees for drug/narcotic offenses at 787,347 and the total number of drug/narcotics offenders at 1,755,788. The agency further said there were 902,482 crimes involving a person’s suspected use of drugs other than alcohol in 2022.

FBI’s press office did not immediately respond to an email from Marijuana Moment requesting clarification on the conflicting numbers.

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PITTSBURGH JAIL LET AUTISTIC MAN DIE DUE TO CULTURE OF NEGLECT, LAWSUIT SAYS

The family of a 57-year-old, intellectually disabled, and autistic man who died at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County Jail filed suit on Tuesday, alleging that atrocious medical care at the facility caused his death.

Anthony Talotta arrived at the Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) in September 2022 after being arrested at a group home he had been living in. About a week and a half later, he was dead. The lawsuit, filed by the Abolitionist Law Center and a local law firm on behalf of Talotta’s estate, claims that pervasive medical neglect at the jail contributed to his preventable death. The Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism has published multiple investigations into the jail—revealing systemic neglect of detainees’ health needs and a lack of transparency.

The complaint alleges the jail’s medical provider, the nonprofit Allegheny Health Network (AHN), routinely deprives detainees of basic medical care, leading to catastrophic consequences, particularly for those with disabilities. According to the complaint, of the 17 people who died between March 2020 and Talotta’s 2022 death, almost 90 percent were—or should have been—identified as needing chronic care.

“And for incarcerated persons who simultaneously had either mental illness or neurodevelopmental disorder with some other chronic care needs, the culture that AHN and Allegheny County created at the ACJ guaranteed that those individuals were discriminated against, and that their medical needs were not met,” the complaint states.

In response to emailed questions, spokespeople for Allegheny County and AHN told The Appeal they do not comment on litigation.

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NY State Bill Would Require Background Checks to Buy 3D Printers

New York lawmakers are looking at requiring consumers to first go through a criminal history background check before they can buy certain 3D printers. 

The legislation is designed to crack down on potential misuse of 3D printers capable of manufacturing gun parts. The proposal comes from Democratic Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar, who introduced the bill on Friday. 

Under the legislation, 3D printer retailers would need to request a background check from New York’s criminal justice services when a customer tries to make a purchase. Criminal justice services would then need to notify the retailer if the customer has received a felony or serious offense that would make them ineligible to possess a firearm. 

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