Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's foreign minister under President Vicente Fox, said Saturday that the Mexican military is engaging in the extrajudicial execution of members of drug trafficking organizati

Jazzed by the sense that the tide is finally turning their way, more than a thousand people interested in changing drug policies flooded into Albuquerque, New Mexico, last weekend for the

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One New Jersey prison guard gets indicted and another gets sentenced. There's also another Customs officer lured by lucre, a meth-slinging Indiana cop, and a Colorado cop turned pill provider.

by Bernd Debusmann, Jr.

Mexican drug trafficking organizations make billions each year trafficking illegal drugs into the United States, profiting enormously from the prohibitionist drug policies of the US government. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and called the armed forces into the fight against the so-called cartels, prohibition-related violence has killed over 12,000 people, with a death toll of over 5,000 so far in 2009. The increasing militarization of the drug war and the arrest of several high-profile drug traffickers have failed to stem the flow of drugs -- or the violence -- whatsoever. The Merida initiative, which provides $1.4 billion over three years for the US to assist the Mexican government with training, equipment and intelligence, has so far failed to make a difference. Here are a few of the latest developments in Mexico's drug war:

Wednesday, November 11

In Tijuana, several policemen were the victims of an assassination attempt after gunmen opened fire on them outside a hotel. A TV cameraman from TV Azteca who was at the scene to cover the event was detained and beaten with a rifle by a policeman, even after having identified himself.

Thursday, November 12

Business groups in Ciudad Juarez publicly called on the United Nations to send peacekeepers to quell the violence in the city. The groups, which represent various assembly plants, retailers, and others businesses, said they plan to submit a request to the Mexican government and to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. Daniel Murguia, president of the Ciudad Juarez chapter of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism, was quoted as saying that "We have seen the UN peacekeepers enter other countries that have a lot fewer problems than we have." Ciudad Juarez has had 1,986 homicides through mid-October. Antonio Mazziteli, regional chief of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, quickly dismissed the idea, saying that he believed that the situation in Mexico did not warrant peacekeepers, as they have not been requested by the government.

Sunday, November 15

In Managua, Nicaragua, police seized a large cache of weapons thought to belong to the Sinaloa Cartel. The weapons -- which included 58 assault rifles, 2 mortars, 10 grenades, and 30 sticks of TNT -- were seized after a car chase and shootout with suspected cartel members, who managed to escape. Police are now searching for a Mexican national who is thought to be the group's leader and who has rented a house in Managua for at least the last month. Mexican cartels are known to have a strong presence throughout Central America, which is an important route for drugs coming from South America on their way to the US border.

In Ciudad Juarez, at least 15 people were killed in violence across the city. Among them were a seven-year old child and his parents from El Paso who were killed after being attacked by several gunmen. In a separate incident, a university professor was killed after his car was ambushed. His wife was left wounded. In another incident, soldiers killed a suspected cartel gunman while wounding and capturing another. In Sinaloa, a high-ranking public security official was shot 38 times and killed. At least 6 other people were killed in drug-related violence in other parts of Mexico, including an army officer who was attacked while driving on the Guadalajara-Colima highway.

Additionally, 11 teenagers were wounded in Durango after gunmen opened fire inside a crowded bar. According to some reports, the gunmen had been chasing after rivals that sought refuge in the bar.

Tuesday, November 17

In Chihuahua, three men were killed after gunmen attacked a baseball game in which they were playing. Seven people were killed in various incidents across Ciudad Juarez, and three were killed in Sinaloa. Additionally, two men confessed to having been involved in at least 45 homicides committed in the Ciudad Juarez area.

Body count for the week of November 4th-November 10th: 196
Body Count for Last Week: 97
Total Body Count for the Year: 6,580

Read the last Mexico Drug War Update here.

As of last week, Rhode Island sentencing reforms that eliminate mandatory minimums for drug offenses have taken effect.

Faced with a demand from Gov.

Townhall Meeting to Support Clarence Aaron, Serving 3 Life Sentences for a First-Time, Non-Violent Drug Law Violation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 18, 2009
CONTACT: Tony Newman at 646-335-5384 or Roseanne Scotti at 609-610-8243

NJ Senate Judiciary Committee to Vote Monday on Groundbreaking Sentencing Bill that Would Give Judges the Discretion to Waive Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Some Nonviolent Drug Offenses

Advocates Commend Legislation as Common-Sense and Reasonable Reform that Would Increase Fair and Effective Sentencing and Save Taxpayer Money

On Monday, November 23, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider Senate Bill 1866, which would give judges the discretion to waive mandatory minimum sentences for some nonviolent drug offenses. The Assembly passed the companion legislation, A2762, last year and Gov. Jon Corzine has said he will sign the bill when it gets to his desk. This critically important legislation would be a groundbreaking first step in reforming New Jersey’s draconian sentencing laws for nonviolent drug offenses.

Roseanne Scotti, director of Drug Policy Alliance New Jersey, applauded the committee’s willingness to consider the bill and urged passage.

“Twenty years ago, New Jersey began implementing harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. These laws have been a spectacular failure. They have done nothing to decrease drug activity and have filled New Jersey’s prisons with nonviolent drug offenders at great cost to New Jersey taxpayers,” said Scotti.

It costs New Jersey taxpayers more than $46,000 a year to incarcerate an individual and New Jersey spends about $331 million a year just to incarcerate nonviolent drug offenders. Allowing judges some discretion would guarantee that justice is done and that taxpayer dollars are not wasted. At a time when New Jersey is facing serious budget deficits and cutting spending on education, health and other critical programs, advocates say New Jersey needs to take a hard look at policies that have mandated the warehousing of large numbers of nonviolent drug offenders at enormous cost to taxpayers.

S1866/A2762 is supported by a broad coalition of organizations including Volunteers of American Delaware Valley, Corporation for Supportive Housing, New Jersey Association on Correction, New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, Coalition of Community Corrections Providers of New Jersey, Women Who Never Give Up, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Hispanic Directors Association and Latino Leadership Alliance. Recently, both the Newark and Camden City Councils passed resolutions supporting S1866.

When New Jersey adopted the Comprehensive Drug Reform Act in 1986, the state ushered in a radical era of harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. This led to unprecedented levels of incarceration and massive taxpayer expenditures. These unfair and ineffective laws have also had an egregiously disproportionate impact on communities of color.

• In 1987, only 11 percent of the New Jersey prison population was incarcerated for drug offenses. Today, 29 percent of the prison population is incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses.
• Twenty years ago, only 11 percent of individuals in prison were serving mandatory minimum sentences—today 69 percent are serving mandatory terms.
• In the last twenty years, New Jersey’s Corrections budget has risen from $289 million to $1.3 billion.
• New Jersey spends $331 million a year to incarcerate individuals for nonviolent drug offenses.
• The budget for corrections has grown by a factor of 13 while the overall budget grew only by a factor of six.
• In the 1980s and 1990s, the Corrections budget grew at three times the rate of the budget for education.
• Although African Americans and Latinos account for just 27 percent of the population of New Jersey, they represent 81 percent of the prison population.

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Stories like this one about the endemic drug war corruption gripping Mexican law enforcement are a dime a dozen. But I don't get bored reading them, because there's always a new and compelling example of what a mess all of this is:

Reporting from San Luis Potosi, Mexico -  The lie-detector team brought in by Mexico's top cop was supposed to help clean up the country's long-troubled police. There was just one problem: Most of its members themselves didn't pass, and a supervisor was rigging results to make sure others did. [LA Times]

Yeah, it's awfully hard to purge corruption when the people in charge of investigating it are corrupt themselves. It's insane to spend a billion dollars trying to fix Mexican law enforcement, when the cartels can just spend more to make sure it stays broken.

The Drug War Chronicle has written several times about the trials and tribulations of medical marijuana patient Will Foster, who is currently sitting in once again in an Oklahoma prison, jerked back from the new life he had made in California by a vindictive and corner-cutting Oklahoma parole bureaucracy.

But while Foster certainly appears to have been the victim of vengeful parole department employees, who charged him with ficticious parole violations--causing him to be locked up in a California jail for 16 months before being extradited back to Oklahoma--the parole board itself has done the right thing. In a hearing last week, the board rejected the charges against Foster and recommended he be released.

But there's one more step. Under Oklahoma law, the governor signs off on all parole board decisions. This is where you can help. There is still time to write or call the governor to encourage him to follow the parole system's recommendation and FREE WILL FOSTER. Please ask that Will be given time served and set free to return to his family in California.

Please call Gov. Brad Henry's office at 405-521-2342

Or fax a letter to 405-521-3353.

Make sure you identify Will as Will Foster, #25271. The argument is simple: Will Foster is a non-violent offender who has served enough time and plans to leave the state to settle in California. Keeping him in prison or on parole in Oklahoma serves neither justice nor public safety and is not worth Oklahoma taxpayers' money.

Read the link above to get informed before you call or write if you need to. Be polite and to the point. Will Foster, who never did anything to anybody, has been in the clutches of Oklahoma justice for 15 years for growing some plants to ease his pains. He's almost free. You can help open that prison door. Do it.

A dirty Philly cop gets smacked hard, a dirty St. Louis cop gets his hands slapped, and two more jail and prison guards get caught. Let's get to it:

Ten months into the Obama administration, drug policy reform in the US Congress is moving along on a number of tracks.

The US Sentencing Commission has been ordered by Congress to review mandatory minimum sentencing.

A judge in Denver Tuesday overturned a state Board of Health decision last week that medical marijuana caregivers must do more than simply provide marijuana to qualify as caregivers.

Hundreds, possibly more than a thousand, people poured into the Convention Center in downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, as the Drug Policy Alliance's