Drug Cop Admits His Career Was Built Around Lies and Wrongful Convictions
Even if you support arresting people for drugs, do you trust the people who are paid to fight the drug war? Via DrugWarRant, here is but one example of what can happen when police are given too much authority and not enough oversight:
"They called it Doomsday work and instructed me to take this dreadful secret to the grave," O'Brien wrote."In every case I lied to the courts and I lied to the juries to obtain convictions against my targets.
"Telling lies was easy - 'policemen don't tell lies' - and my targets never stood a chance." [New Zealand Herald]
This happened in New Zealand in the 1970’s, and we only found out about it now and only because the officer could no longer contain his guilt. Imagine how many people sit in prison around the world at this very moment because of this kind of viciously dishonest drug war policing. And if you think police aren’t taking advantage of the innocent right here, right now, just scroll down an inch or two.
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redditI don't see it
Comment posted by Anonymous on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 3:21amThe official ONDCP line is still that drugs fund terrorism, period. Drug war prosecutors would simply claim that anyone killed in a terrorist attack was the "victim" of anyone caught with an eighth of homegrown from down the street and press charges on their behalf. As long as there are laws prohibiting drugs on the books, there will be those pushing for less emphasis on individual rights in the name of "successful" prohibition.
Homicide is a problem...
Comment posted by Giordano on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 4:06amin the voluntary, complaining victim model because the victim is dead and therefore cannot voluntarily complain about anything. It would not be practical for murder prosecutions to wait for a complaining victim to emerge.
But if you look at how most criminal offenses are prosecuted, say someone gets robbed or assaulted, these types of crimes have a complaining victim, someone who voluntarily comes forward and files a formal complaint and maybe identifies the culprit.
Among consensual adults who indulge in a bit of weed now and then, there is no victim, despite the hysterical ravings that emerge from moral crusaders who try to link pot to terrorism. Attributing victimhood doesn’t make it so.
Giordano
Fundamentally Flawed
Comment posted by Giordano on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 3:03amLacking any effective scheme involving entrapment or informants, lying under oath and falsification of evidence necessarily follow.
The testilying NZ cop is typical of what happens when criminal laws forego a complaining victim.
If prosecutors were required to present a voluntary, complaining victim to the court in any and all drug cases, there would be very few drug cases. The drug prohibition empire, as we know it, would collapse.
Giordano