Phillip S. Smith, Writer Editor

Hit hard by a double whammy of drought and economic slowdown, California's Central Valley has become a hotbed of methamphetamine and other injection drug use.

America's war on drugs claimed another victim last week: Jonathan Ayers, 29, a Georgia pastor shot and killed

In yet another perfect illustration of the colossal stupidity of modern drug enforcement, here's the story of a drug transaction in which both parties turned out to be police:

An undercover Iredell County Sheriff's Office deputy recently purchased drugs from undercover Statesville police officers, raising questions about communications between the two agencies.

Statesville Police Chief Tom Anderson said undercover officers from his department were working a week-long case when they met with someone interested in selling a small amount of marijuana.
…
After the arrest, investigators from the sheriff's office arrived and confirmed the seller was an undercover deputy and he was released, Anderson said. [Statesville Record & Landmark]

Pete Guither gets it right:

Good thing they were able to stop that small amount of marijuana they were selling from reaching the streets.

Seriously, this is what happens when you have police posing as perps at every level of the drug business. Drug enforcement is all about creating crimes that would never otherwise have occurred, and there are about a million ways that it can go wrong. As funny as this story is, the harsh reality is that frequently when police sell drugs, it's not part of a planned operation. It's because they are actually just straight-up selling drugs.

There is talk of marijuana legalization in the air, talk about sentencing reform, talk about second chances for drug offenders.

A 77-year-old Foley, Alabama man was shot and killed during a pre-dawn raid by police officers with a search warrant for marijuana.

Law enforcement officials justify the frequent use of heavily-armed SWAT teams and no-knock warrants -- police do about 50,000 SWAT raids per year -- as protecting officer safety.

Law enforcement likes to argue that it needs to resort to heavy-handed tactics such as SWAT-style raids and no-knock warrants because drug law enforcement is just so darned dangerous. You know the spiel: "We're outgunned and up against crazed drug dealers, so we need to come on like gangbusters for our own safety."

But I'm in the process of reviewing police deaths in the drug war since the beginning of 2008 for a Chronicle article that will appear Friday, and so far, I've only found two officers who were killed in drug raids during this time. I'm using the Officer Down Memorial Page and the National Law Enforcement Memorial data bases and I still have to dig a little deeper into the numbers and the discrepancies between the two, but so far, it doesn't appear that enforcing the nation's drug laws is that dangerous for police.

For civilians, it is perhaps a different story. Nobody's keeping a data base of citizens killed by the police, let alone those killed by police enforcing the drug laws, although I have a few ideas on where to come up with some figures, or at least some especially horrendous cases. I'll be looking into that, as well.

I'll be talking to as many cops, criminologists, and other interested parties as I can, but at this point, it seems that it is going to be hard to justify the overwhelming use of force typical of police drug raids. As much as they would like to think they are, cops are not US military Special Forces units, and drug law violators are not terrorist fugitives. Look for the story on Friday.

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.

Allegations of weird and inappropriate behavior by narcotics officers have become so commonplace that one struggles to feign shock or surprise upon learning of them.

A drug informant's allegations that a Marin narcotics agent offered her leniency in exchange for three-way sex - and then sent a photo of his penis to her cell phone - have left a legal mess at the Hall of Justice that could take months to clean up. [Marin Independent Journal]

This poor woman agreed to cooperate after being arrested for selling an ounce of marijuana, and the next thing she knows, there's a penis in her phone. Prosecutors subsequently dropped the charges against her, so the penis was ultimately the only punishment she received. Not a bad deal by drug war standards, but it does make you wonder…

Will investigators be contacting other female informants this detective worked with? My understanding is that people who like to show other people their penis tend to do so habitually. For all we know, this cop could have been going around for years targeting women for arrest and then texting them pictures of his penis.

The bottom line is that the entire process of turning arrestees into informants is inherently coercive and morally dubious to begin with. When you have undercover cops making shady deals with drug defendants, it's just a matter of time before someone sees a penis.

80-year-old Isaac Singletary had a habit of chasing drug dealers off his property. Then, one fateful day, he emerged with a pistol to threaten two dealers that were creeping around his yard. They turned out to be undercover cops, and Singletary was promptly shot and killed.

That was six months ago, and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is almost ready to explain what the hell happened:

While a Jacksonville Sheriff's Office review of the shooting is scheduled for next week, State Attorney Harry Shorstein said in April that while he was very concerned with how undercover operations like this one were conducted, he would not file criminal charges against the officers. [News4Jax.com]

That's how this works, folks. The determination that police weren't at fault tends to emerge quickly, while actual reports explaining what happened take several months. How they figure out that the police were innocent without yet completing the report is a trade secret, I guess.

Perhaps they're right that the police didn’t do anything illegal, but that's a huge part of the problem. It should be illegal for police to dress up as drug dealers and trespass on private property. And it should be even more illegal for police to shoot innocent people who don’t know they're the police.

If police act so much like criminals that well-intentioned citizens can’t tell the difference, those officers should not be permitted to defend themselves with deadly force. So, once again, if these officers' actions turn out to be legal, it's time to change the law.

Last Thursday, two Atlanta narcotics officers pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in the shooting death of an elderly woman during a botched drug raid, but that is just the beginning in what loo

Juan Medina has an IQ of 77. Suffice to say he ain't no rocket scientist. Medina's limited mental capacity precludes many potential employment opportunities, but it was good enough for the DEA, which made him a secret agent. It didn't work out very well.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Medina, who had no previous criminal record, said he became involved with the D.E.A. in the fall of 2004, a few months after his father was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on drug conspiracy charges. He said he was told that if he helped the agency, his father might win an early release.
...

Mr. Medina said he signed a contract even though he told agents he knew little about his father’s criminal associates.

Despite his limitations and the "unremarkable life" he'd led, Medina managed to infiltrate a gang of drug dealers in Brooklyn. Things took a turn for the worse when Medina's criminal associates took him along on a robbery. He claims to have notified DEA of their plans and even waited around for police after the heist went down. To his surprise, no one at DEA would corroborate his story.

The D.E.A. has acknowledged that Mr. Medina, 24, was under contract as an informant. But the agency has not come to his aid, and is, in fact, helping prosecute him on charges of burglary, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon stemming from the robbery at a Bronx apartment. If convicted, he could be sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Whether or not the DEA knew about the robbery, as Medina claims, they bear full responsibility for his actions. They took a man with a limited mental capacity, exploited his love for his father, and sent him on dangerous missions. Their assistance in his prosecution is a rather transparent attempt to cover up their mistake.

This is a perfect example of the reckless abandon with which the DEA operates. Their insatiable greed compels them to create crime and confiscate the proceeds. Sadly, innocent people like Juan Medina are the easiest prey.

Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Paul Howard is moving to indict three Atlanta narcotics officers on charges including murder in the killing of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, who opened fir