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Law Enforcement: Facing Budget Woes, Minneapolis Axes Dope Squad
Facing a $5 million budget deficit, the Minneapolis Police Department responded Monday by disbanding its narcotics squad. That makes Minneapolis the only major city in the US without one.
Last year, the 14-member narcotics squad investigated nearly 4,000 cases resulting in 519 federal and state charges. Officers seized about $300,000 in drug money, as well as 24 guns and 26 vehicles.
Police Chief Tim Dolan said the department still has sufficient resources to handle drug cases. He said community resource teams in the departmentâs five precincts will handle street-level and mid-level dealing, while the Violent Offender Task Force will work on high-level cases. The department also has officers seconded to an anti-drug task force with state, local, and DEA members, and it has just started a gang unit, he said.
"Are we going to be as good as we were before in dealing with drug cases? I don't know," he said. "Their stats speak for themselves."
The former head narc, Lt. Marie Przynski, was not happy. "This unit has been highly productive, if not the most productive unit in the Minneapolis Police Department," Przynski said. "I'm disappointed, and so are my officers, about this decision."
The 14 former narcs will be reassigned, with three of them joining the Financial Crimes unit, including an asset forfeiture specialist and a specialist in pharmaceutical investigations ranging from forged prescriptions to insurance fraud. Other members of the defunct dope squad will be assigned at least temporarily to street patrols.
The department still needs to cut 50 positions to get under budget. It may also reduce the number of deputy chiefs from three to two. Still, Dolan said neither street patrols nor key units, such as homicide, robbery, sex crimes, juvenile, and domestic abuse would be reduced.
One city council member, Ralph Remington, suggested that the department could have more money if its members quit misbehaving. Just three weeks ago, the city paid out $495,000 to a man slugged by a Minneapolis police officer during a drug raid last year. That was only the most recent high-profile settlement paid by the city for departmental misbehavior.
"The department could save a lot of money if they corrected the bad behavior of a few bad cops," said Remington.
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Europe: Dutch Border Town Cannabis Coffee Shop Owners Lose Court Battle Against Ban--UPDATED, Shops Now Closed
UPDATE: Seven of the eight shops in the two towns are closed as of today. The eight remains open, but says it is selling only coffee.
Six Dutch border town cannabis coffee shop owners seeking to block local authorities from shutting them down lost a court battle last Friday. A judge in Breda in the southern Netherlands ruled that the coffee shop owners had chosen the wrong judicial venue for their challenge of the ban.
The coffee shop owners are challenging a decision by the mayors of Roosendaal and Bergen-op-Zoom, both near the Belgian border, to close all eight coffee shops in their communities in a bid to stop âdrug tourism.â An estimated 25,000 foreigners pour into the two towns each week to take advantage of the Dutch policy that tolerates retail marijuana sales. They are blamed for causing problems ranging from public urination to traffic congestion to hard drug dealing.
Under the ban, the coffee shops could stay open and serve alcohol, but could not sell marijuana. If they continued to sell marijuana, they could be punished with a five-year closure. The lawyer representing the coffee house owners, Harry Nieland, said Tuesday that his clients had not yet decided whether they would abide by the ban on marijuana sales or challenge it.
The ban by the mayors comes as the Dutch government wrestles with how to reduce or eliminate the number of foreigners coming to Holland from more repressive neighboring countries to buy marijuana. Last week, a leaked letter from three Dutch ministers suggested the government would seek a âmembers onlyâ policy for the coffee houses.
Under European Union law, countries cannot discriminate by nationality, so the Dutch cannot ban foreigners from becoming coffee house members. But the Dutch government wants to subvert the law by requiring that marijuana be purchased only with credit cards issued by Dutch banks.
In The Trenches
TV Ads Air, Pleading for Medical Marijuana Law Despite Rejection by CBS, ABC, Fox
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEÂ Â Â
SEPTEMBER 16, 2009Â Â Â Â
TV Ads Air, Pleading for Medical Marijuana Law Despite Rejection by CBS, ABC, Fox
Spots Debut in Key NY Districts as Local Polls Show Strong Support
CONTACT: Bruce Mirken, MPP director of communications ............... 415-585-6404 or 202-215-4205
ALBANY, NEW YORK -- Two new TV ads featuring patients who have benefited from medical marijuana began airing today in media markets covering key New York Senate districts. Rejected by ABC, CBS and Fox, the spots will nevertheless air on WNBC in New York City and on cable outlets around the state, including the New York City, Buffalo and Rochester metropolitan areas, Westchester and Rockland counties and the rest of the Lower Hudson Valley, Watertown, Oswego, and Ogdensburg.
    Local polls in these districts show overwhelming, bipartisan support for medical marijuana legislation. For example, Mason-Dixon polls conducted Sept. 1-3 in Senate Districts 12 (Queens), 48 (Watertown, Oswego), and 58 (Buffalo and nearby areas) showed support for the legislation running at 72 percent, 69 percent, and 74 percent, respectively. Full results of these and earlier district polls on the medical marijuana bill are at mpp.org/nypolls2009. A separate set of polls from 2007 is at http://www.mpp.org/nypoll2007.
    One of the spots features Conservative Party member Joel Peacock of Buffalo, who suffers from chronic pain as the result of a serious accident. In the ad, he describes running out of his prescription medication while on a work assignment in the south after Hurricane Katrina and being given marijuana by a client. "It took away the pain," Peacock says in the ad. "It took away the nausea. I didn't have stomach cramps. I slept. It just did everything my medicine doesn't do. Please, ask your senator to have compassion."
    Both spots, sponsored by the Marijuana Policy Project and New Yorkers for Compassionate Care, can be viewed at mpp.org/NYTVads. In nearly all areas, the ads are customized to name the specific state senator who voters should contact (in New York City and Orange County, the configuration of Senate districts and TV markets made this impractical).
    Kevin Smith, M.D., of Saugerties, who appears in the second spot and who suffers severe pain from a genetic disorder known as ankylosing spondilitis, was angered by the stations' rejection of the ads. "As a patient whose well-being would be dramatically improved by the medical marijuana bill, I am appalled that these TV stations won't even let us tell our stories to their viewers," Smith said. "These stations are out of touch with the public, 76 percent of whom support protecting patients."
Â
    With more than 27,000 members and 100,000 e-mail subscribers nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP believes that the best way to minimize the harm associated with marijuana is to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. For more information, please visit http://MarijuanaPolicy.org.
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No Matter How Bad You Think the Drug War Is, It's Worse
As I was writing the post below about asset forfeiture, I felt once again the familiar frustration of knowing in my heart that the drug war survives only because so many people don't even know what it really is. They may form an opinion about whether or not drugs should be legal, but do they know how often police confiscate cars from people who never committed a crime? How many innocent teenage girls got their underpants searched for nothing? How many mothers lost their children over a false positive drug test? How many people have gone to jail not because they broke the law, but because a cop lied?
Just imagine what would happen if the average American actually came to grasp the full breadth of abject unfairness that characterizes the application of our drug laws in every conceivable circumstance. The totality of injustice in the war on drugs is its own galaxy. Even as someone who actively tries to keep track of it, I'm routinely stunned by the magnitude of systemic corruption, callousness and incompetence that festers in every corner of the massive drug war juggernaut.
As advocates for change, we must accept that we can never teach everyone among us to truly understand and appreciate the full spectrum of cruelty and perversion that defines the war on drugs. Fortunately we donât have to. To vividly depict just one small fraction of the drug war's infinite injustices would do the job and it's just a question of keeping the dialogue going long enough for reality to begin sinking in.
The flipside of no one fully appreciating the harms of the drug war is that when it finally ends, the benefits will exceed every expectation.
Just imagine what would happen if the average American actually came to grasp the full breadth of abject unfairness that characterizes the application of our drug laws in every conceivable circumstance. The totality of injustice in the war on drugs is its own galaxy. Even as someone who actively tries to keep track of it, I'm routinely stunned by the magnitude of systemic corruption, callousness and incompetence that festers in every corner of the massive drug war juggernaut.
As advocates for change, we must accept that we can never teach everyone among us to truly understand and appreciate the full spectrum of cruelty and perversion that defines the war on drugs. Fortunately we donât have to. To vividly depict just one small fraction of the drug war's infinite injustices would do the job and it's just a question of keeping the dialogue going long enough for reality to begin sinking in.
The flipside of no one fully appreciating the harms of the drug war is that when it finally ends, the benefits will exceed every expectation.
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Using Drug Laws to Steal From Innocent People
Radley Balko has a story in the Jackson Free Press noting that the Supreme Court has decided to hear a disturbing asset forfeiture case from Illinois. In case anyone needs a refresher on the absurdity of our forfeiture laws, this sums it up nicely:Â
Balko goes on to explain why the Supreme Court isnât likely to curb the practice and I agree with his analysis. Hopefully, however, the case will at least afford us a rare opportunity to spark national discussion about the chronic abuse of asset forfeiture laws.
As sad as this sounds, the best case scenario here might a New York Times headline that reads "Supreme Court Rules Police May Confiscate Property Without Evidence of a Crime." If nothing else, I hope we can all at least acknowledge that this is happening.
Civil asset forfeiture is a particularly odious outgrowth of the drug war. While few would argue that criminals ought to be able to keep the proceeds of their crimes, civil forfeiture allows the government to seize and keep property without actually having to prove a crime was committed in the first place. Hence, forfeiture cases tend to have names like U.S. v. Eight Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty Dollars, or U.S. v. One 1987 Jeep Wrangler. Proceeds from civil forfeiture at the state and local level usually go back to the police departments and prosecutors' offices, giving them a clear and unmistakable incentive to seize as much property as often as possible.
Balko goes on to explain why the Supreme Court isnât likely to curb the practice and I agree with his analysis. Hopefully, however, the case will at least afford us a rare opportunity to spark national discussion about the chronic abuse of asset forfeiture laws.
As sad as this sounds, the best case scenario here might a New York Times headline that reads "Supreme Court Rules Police May Confiscate Property Without Evidence of a Crime." If nothing else, I hope we can all at least acknowledge that this is happening.
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U.S. Forest Service Apologizes for Racist Marijuana Warning
Remember a couple weeks ago when the U.S. Forest Service warned campers to watch out for people who drink Tecate, eat tortillas, and listen to Spanish music because they might be dangerous marijuana growers? Yeah, they're kinda backtracking on that one a little bit:
The Forest Service says they've "learned some valuable lessons from this experience," presumably including why you shouldn't try to scare the hell out of everyone with wildly racist public announcements. What they did was absolutely crazy. Apologies and regrets won't change the fact that they carelessly insulted millions of people in a deranged fit of drug war delirium.
Denver, Colo., September 14, 2009 â On Sept. 2, U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Rick Cables and members of his organization met with 17 Hispanic community leaders, representing a variety of Hispanic organizations in Colorado, to issue an apology for regrettable references used during an Aug. 26 briefing to news media concerning illegal marijuana cultivation activities on national forests in Colorado. [Dept. of Agriculture]
The Forest Service says they've "learned some valuable lessons from this experience," presumably including why you shouldn't try to scare the hell out of everyone with wildly racist public announcements. What they did was absolutely crazy. Apologies and regrets won't change the fact that they carelessly insulted millions of people in a deranged fit of drug war delirium.
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Southeast Asia: Indonesian Parliament Enacts New Drug Law; Reformers Criticize it on Human Rights Grounds
After four years of debate, Indonesiaâs parliament passed a new drug law Monday. It was immediately criticized by reformers on numerous counts.
The new law maintains the death penalty for some drug offenses, criminalizes drug addiction, and makes it a crime for parents to fail to report their addicted children to authorities. The law also transfers responsibility for fighting drug trafficking from the government to civil society.
"The drugs law will save our children and young generation. It will be essential in the fight against drug trafficking,â said Minister for Law and Human Rights Andi Mattalatta after the bill was passed. âCurrently, drug dealing is not only conducted by individuals but by drugs syndicates that operate neatly,"
But the Indonesian Coalition for Drug Policy Reform (ICDPR) begged to differ. âThis law classifies drug addicts as criminals and therefore subjects them to criminal charges, while doctors have said that drug addiction is a curable disease,â Asmin Francisca, the groupâs coordinator told reporters outside parliamentâs plenary session hall. âThe law should have recognized that a proper solution to drug addiction is to empower drug addicts, not to punish them as criminals.â
Asmin warned that the article in the law transferring responsibility for fighting trafficking from the government to civil society could lead to vigilante justice. âThe article, however, does not clearly elaborate on what kind of civil participation is needed to fight the war against drug trafficking,â she said. âWithout clear regulations, the law is open to many forms of exploitation by civil groups, including acts of vigilantism.â
Asmin also condemned the retention of the death penalty for some drug offenses.
âDeath penalties are not in line with the purpose of modern criminal charges that aim to rehabilitate a person rather than punish them for their actions,â she said. âBasically, I believe this law is not in line with the basic principles of human rights.â
According to the Indonesian National Narcotics Agencyâs extremely precise figures, there are 27,000 drug users in the country, including 12,689 aged 30 or older, 6,790 between 25 and 29, 5,720 between 20 and 24, 1,747 between 16 and 19, and 109 users under the age of 16.
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