Tag: the war on (some) drugs

The Police Dog Who Cried Drugs at Every Traffic Stop

Don’t blame Karma. The police dog simply followed his training when he helped local agencies impound vehicles that sometimes belonged to innocent motorists in Republic, Washington, an old mining town near the Canadian border.

As a drug detection dog, Karma kept his nose down and treated every suspect the same. Public records show that from the time he arrived in Republic in January 2018 until his handler took a leave of absence to campaign for public office in 2020, Karma gave an “alert” indicating the presence of drugs 100 percent of the time during roadside sniffs outside vehicles.

Whether drivers actually possessed illegal narcotics made no difference. The government gained access to every vehicle that Karma ever sniffed. He essentially created automatic probable cause for searches and seizures, undercutting constitutional guarantees of due process.

Similar patterns abound nationwide, suggesting that Karma’s career was not unusual. Lex, a drug detection dog in Illinois, alerted for narcotics 93 percent of the time during roadside sniffs, but was wrong in more than 40 percent of cases. Sella, a drug detection dog in Florida, gave false alerts 53 percent of the time. Bono, a drug detection dog in Virginia, incorrectly indicated the presence of drugs 74 percent of the time.

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Cops Claim Ashes of Dad’s Murdered Daughter is Meth, Dump Them on the Ground

Body camera video released this week shows the extent in which police will go to justify their existence in the war on drugs — up to and including desecrating the the remains of a little girl.

In 2019, Dartavius Barnes, the father of Ta’Naja Barnes, experienced every parent’s worst nightmare when he found his daughter unresponsive in her home. She would later be pronounced dead in a Decatur hospital and an autopsy would reveal she was murdered.

Ta’Naja’s mother and her mother’s boyfriend would later be arrested on murder charges over her death.

Ta’Naja was later cremated and Barnes remembered his daughter by carrying around her ashes with him in a micro urn. Because the state is a soulless machine which knows no limit to destruction and terror when carrying out the arbitrary war on drugs, Barnes’ daughter’s remains would be desecrated by police.

According to a recent lawsuit filed by Barnes against the City of Springfield, he was unlawfully detained on April 6, 2020 and during this unlawful detainment, he was searched.

According to the lawsuit, officers placed him in handcuffs while they searched his vehicle without consent, valid warrant, or probable cause. During this search without consent, police removed the sealed micro-urn from Barnes’ vehicle that contained the ashes of his murdered daughter, unsealed it, opened it, and spilled his daughter out on the ground.

In the newly released body camera footage, we see that Barnes was pulled over for allegedly speeding when he was handcuffed and his vehicle searched.

“You got anything in your car?” an officer asks.

Barnes responded “Not really,” before telling the officer he had marijuana. In the state of Illinois, it is not illegal to have marijuana on your person as they voted to legalize it recreationally in 2019.

Nevertheless, the officer used this as a reason to search.

When officers discovered the urn, they began running field drug test kits on it.

“I checked for cocaine, but it looks like it’s probably molly,” the officer said.

“X pills,” the other added.

At this time, Barnes didn’t know what was happening but he would soon find out that police had dumped his daughter’s ashes out looking for non-existent drugs.

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How a Psychedelic 12-Step Program Is Saving Lives

In 2002, Dimitri M. was ready to die. He’d been addicted to heroin for over 20 years, and his once-promising artistic life had collapsed into a series of banal pit stops: from the methadone clinic, to the valet parking gig, to the coke dealer, to the dope dealer, to the bed, and over and over again. Eventually, his longtime partner succumbed to intravenous drug use, and, though they were married by common law, he was barred from attending her funeral.

Dimitri was ready to finally let the drugs carry him away, like an undertow. He planned to take a trip to Greece as a last goodbye to his ancestral homeland, but while researching his farewell voyage, he was reminded of a conversation with an old friend about a hallucinogenic plant with the purported power to heal opioid addiction. He embarked on his trip as planned, but scheduled a brief detour in the Netherlands to be treated with this so-called miracle drug: Ibogaine. Though the alkaloid extract of the Tabernanthe iboga plant with psychoactive effects is illegal in the United States, Ibogaine has been used for decades by the Bwiti people of Gabon as a sacrament in a coming-of-age ritual, akin to a Bar Mitzvah.

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Cops Claim Not Being Able to Arrest People for Weed Smell Causes Spike in Gun Violence

Over the past several years, the city of New York has been loosening their grip on the war on cannabis. In 2014, Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch famously grabbed a bad of oregano and gave a fear mongering speech about what was going to happen after New York stopped arresting people for possessing less than 25 grams of pot.

“We do not want police officers left holding the bag if crime rises because of poor policy,” Lynch said. “Writing a summons to someone who does not respect the law can result in a volatile situation. Police officers always have to be on guard for violent reaction and resistance which can put them in danger of physical harm and potential disciplinary charges.”

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REPORT: U.S. Special Forces Train Drug Cartel Enforcers Linked to Rape, Torture, Decapitation

Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) has become one of the most feared paramilitaries in Mexico over the last decade. Images of the group have become the standard depiction of the Mexican cartel writ large. Their propaganda videos often feature groups of masked men bristling with enough small arms to make them formidable against even conventional armies.

In an interview aired on Mexico’s Telemundo network in May 2019, a former CJNG soldier described his experience at a training camp and claimed that the cartel employed U.S. special operations forces (SOF) to train their recruits. According to the former sicario assassin: there were Marines, there were Navy from the United States, there were Delta Force, there was everything there.”

The cartel dropout’s account is consistent with years of reports which show that U.S. special forces training is diffusing into the service of paramilitaries in Mexico.

The Special Forces training has been funded under the Plan Mérida, which has resulted in the U.S. providing more than $1.6 billion for fighting the War on Drugs, most of it in military aid.

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DEA Report Shows Marijuana Arrests And Seizures Up In 2020

Data recently released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency shows that federal law enforcement agents and their state and local partners seized more than 4.5 million marijuana plants in 2020, a figure that is up nearly 20% over 2019. The annual DEA report also shows that federal law enforcement officers made nearly 5,000 cannabis-related arrests in 2020, a year wracked by the social and economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to the data published in the DEA’s yearly Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program Statistical Report, approximately 4.54 million cannabis plants were seized and eradicated in 2020, up from about 4 million plants in 2019. The totals include more than 3.7 million cannabis plants seized from 4,151 outdoor grow sites and more than 830,000 plants confiscated from 1,286 indoor cultivation operations.

“In 2020, the DEA continued its nationwide cannabis eradication efforts, providing resources to support the 127 state and local law enforcement agencies that actively participate in the program,” the agency wrote on its website. “This assistance allows the enhancement of already aggressive eradication enforcement activities throughout the nation.”

The data in the DEA report also showed that nearly 5,000 arrests for federal marijuana-related offenses were made by law enforcement officers in 2020. That figure is up slightly over 2019 when 4,718 arrests for federal marijuana crimes were made by agents. 

California saw the largest percentage of both arrests and confiscated cannabis plants in the country, a trend that continues from previous years. In 2020, approximately 82% of the seized cannabis plants and 40% of the marijuana-related arrests nationwide occurred in California. Nationwide, agents seized more than $41 million in assets related to the DEA’s marijuana eradication efforts in 2020.

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