In
The News
Snitch Culture Run Amuck
In mid-November, 35-year-old Chadwick Shane
Cochran was beaten to death by fellow inmates at Los Angeles
County Jail, according to the Associated Press. Authorities
report that gang members, who mistakenly thought he was an informant,
screamed "Snitch!" while beating and stomping Cochran
for up to a half-hour. Cochran, who was mentally ill, was in
jail for a nonviolent offense.
Also, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
reports that two criminal trials in October were brought to a
halt because of the presence of "Stop Snitchin'" t-shirts.
The shirts are an increasingly popular trend on the urban streets
of eastern cities.
"Snitching becomes a fact of life,"
according to Alexandra Natapoff, an associate criminal law professor
at Loyola Law School who published a University of Cincinnati
Law Review article on the phenomenon (see "Snitching:
The Institutional And Communal Consequences").
"At every barbecue, at every holiday
party, someone is under law enforcement pressure to snitch. That
in my mind is a destructive public policy."
For more on the Stop Snitchin' movement,
visit www.stopsnitching.com
DEA, local police raid San Diego medical
marijuana sites
In a coordinated sweep, the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) and state and local police raided 13 San
Diego-area medical marijuana dispensaries in early December.
The multi-agency raiders seized marijuana and medical records,
but made no arrests except for three people seized on outstanding
warrants. The search warrants were not issued by the feds, but
by California authorities, meaning if any criminal charges are
filed, defendants would be tried under California law.
According to reports from dispensary operators
and patients, the DEA and police came in like gangbusters. Eyewitness
accounts of raids around the city described raiders entering
the facilities with guns drawn, handcuffing staff and patients,
running warrant checks on everyone, then searching the premises
and seizing marijuana and records. Police reported seizing 50
pounds of pot, computers, and patient records from the raided
clubs.
"The cops acted as if they were raiding
Al-Qaeda headquarters", said Tony Amirine, who runs an Ocean
Beach dispensary called Utopia. "Guns to my forehead, handcuffed,
down on the ground," he told San Diego CityBeat. After a
group of eight to 10 heavily-armed officers secured the premises,
they searched the place for three or four hours, Amirine said.
"All I do is sell weed to sick people."
That is legal under California's Compassionate
Use Act, passed by popular vote in 1996, and supporting legislation
passed last year. At last count, the number of medical marijuana
dispensaries in the state hovered around 160. But California
dispensaries and even medical marijuana patients can be prosecuted
under federal drug laws, which do not recognize medical marijuana.
The raids came after a months-long investigation
that included sending undercover agents into the dispensaries
in an effort to obtain medical marijuana without the proper paperwork.
Law enforcement spokesmen claim they were able to do just that.
The response from medical marijuana supporters
was immediate and energetic, with San Diego activists meeting
Monday night and demonstrating downtown Tuesday, and the medical
marijuana defense group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) organizing
protests at federal buildings in cities around the country Wednesday.
But movement veterans also warned other dispensaries to shield
themselves from such raids by being extremely careful to operate
within state law. In other words: Don't sell marijuana to people
who cannot prove they have a doctor's recommendation to use it
for medicinal purposes.
US Marshals want to build Border Superjail
The United States Marshals Service wants
to build a 2,800-bed prison in Laredo, Texas. The Laredo Superjail,
if built, would be one of the largest private prisons in the
United States. The prison would house almost exclusively immigrants
convicted of low-level drug and immigration crimes.
The facility will be privately built and
operated. It will be one of the largest private prisons in the
country. A motley crew of private prison corporations is vying
to win the contract, including the Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut),
CiviGenics, Corrections Corporation of America, Correctional
Services Corporation, and Cornell.
A group of community and statewide organizations
have formed the South Texans Opposing Private Prisons Coalition
to oppose the prison. The STOPP Coalition is a partnership between
Laredo-based labor, civic, student and immigrant rights organizations
and statewide criminal justice and civil rights organizations.
Three main reasons to not build this Superjail:
First, a private prison corporation cashing
in on immigrant incarceration raises serious ethical and moral
questions. Forty-eight Southern Catholic Bishops signed a statement
in 2001 raising serious questions about the morality of incarceration
for-profit.
Secondly, the Superjail would be bad economic
development for the Laredo area. While communities often try
to attract prisons for economic development reasons, the most
recent, qualitative study done on this issue by researchers at
Ohio State and Washington State universities has shown that prisons
actually harm economic growth in the long-term. In addition,
private prisons provide poor-paying jobs and are notoriously
anti-union. The Webb County Central Labor Council opposes the
Superjail.
Thirdly, the Superjail would negatively
affect Laredo's quality of life. Laredo was recently ranked least
livable in a nationwide survey of 331 major cities. Highlighted
in the survey was the fact that Laredo lacks much intellectual
life, has few bookstores and libraries, and lacks much in the
way of entertainment.
To read more about immigrant detentions,
the proposed Laredo Superjail and the campaign to stop its construction,
please visit the STOPP Coalition at www.stoppcoalition.org.
Source: selected and edited for space
from www.notwithourmoney.org
Cannabis for PTSD
To help treat returning Iraqi combat soldiers,
California's Dr. Tod Mikuriya gave this online advice to a returning
Iraq War vet for coping with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome or
PTSD:
"Medically, cannabis is the treatment
of choice for PTSD but definitely would spell the end of your
military career. If you elect not to medicate with cannabis,
the regular exercise regimen - avoidance of drugs and alcohol
and a specialized debriefing - is the least worst response to
this chronic psychiatric disorder."
Source: www.ccrmg.org/journal/05spr/opinion.html#mik
Appalachian seniors charged with drug-dealing
The Associated Press reports on
a growing problem of senior citizens selling their prescription
medications to make ends meet. Floyd County (KY) jailer Roger
Webb told AP that seniors have a ready market for their
prescription pills, especially painkillers, and some may be succumbing
to the temptation of illegally selling their medications.
"When a person is on Social Security,
drawing $500 a month, and they can sell their pain pills for
$10 apiece, they'll take half of them for themselves and sell
the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries,"
Webb said.
The predictable response by local authorities:
lock 'em up!
Since April 2004, the anti-drug task force
Operation UNITE has charged more than 40 people who are 60 or
older with selling drugs in the mountains of eastern Kentucky,
including 87-year-old Dottie Neeley. In a telephone interview
from jail, the 4-foot 8-inch Neeley told AP she suffers from
emphysema and asthma, and uses oxygen daily. Neeley faces 10
years in prison if convicted of trafficking in prescription drugs.
Pulaski man cuts his wrists in court
A Pulaski man slashed his wrists in a federal
courtroom in Roanoke (VA) on August 17, 2005 after pleading guilty
to drug charges, and officials say the blade he used was so small
it could not be detected in a pat-down search.
John Timothy Underwood, 38, had just pleaded
guilty to conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of methamphetamine
plus two counts of carrying a firearm in relation to a drug trafficking
crime when he nonchalantly reached into the front pocket of his
jail uniform and made a rubbing motion at each of his wrists,
said supervisory deputy U.S. Marshal Ron Donelson.
Two courtroom security officers almost
immediately noticed the blood, witnesses said, and stepped forward
to clamp the wounds and act as human tourniquets. Underwood was
taken by medics to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, where
he was treated and released. He was placed on suicide watch at
the Roanoke City Jail later Wednesday, Donelson said.
Heidi Coy, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's
Office in Roanoke, said Underwood is facing 35 years in prison
in connection with his plea deal. "It is regretful that
Mr. Underwood harmed himself," she said, "and we commend
the quick actions of the U.S. Marshals and the courthouse staff."
Underwood, who came to court wearing a
knee brace and walking with crutches, was sitting before U.S.
District Judge Samuel Wilson when he cut himself. His co-defendants,
Joshua Roop, 20, and Stephanie Lane, 50, had also just pleaded
guilty to methamphetamine distribution charges.
Hagan and Underwood's attorney, Richard
Derrico, said they had never heard of an incident like that in
their combined 39 years in practice.
Source: The Roanoke Times (VA)
Iraqi heroin abuse is soaring
According to IRIN News Service,
there is a rising number of Iraqi addicts who also work as dealers
to make money and finance their expensive habit. When they can't
sell enough heroin to finance their next fix, many resort to
stealing from shops instead. The Ministry of Health has warned
that drug abuse is rising steadily among men and women of all
ages in Iraq, especially in the capital Baghdad and in the south
of the country.
Many consumers of heroin and cocaine say
they have been traumatized by the increasing cycle of political
violence in Iraq as Islamic insurgents step up their fight against
the US-led coalition which invaded the country in 2003 to depose
former president Saddam Hussein. And drug pushers have also found
a lucrative market amongst soldiers in the US-led occupation
forces. They report strong demand from Italian troops in particular.
"There has been a huge increase in
the consumption of drugs since last year," said Kamel Ali,
director of the Ministry of Health's drug control program. "The
numbers have doubled. In most cases the users are youths who
have become addicted and are now working as drug dealers under
pressure from the traffickers in order to keep themselves supplied,"
he said. According to Ali, the number of registered addicts in
suburban Baghdad has more than doubled over the past year, rising
to over 7,000 from 3,000 in 2004.
The Ministry of the Interior said police
had captured 45 cars carrying packages of smuggled heroin over
the past 15 months. Their drivers face life imprisonment or even
the death penalty, if convicted. But stiff penalties for drug
dealing are no longer an effective deterrent.
IRIN News (www.IRINnews.org)
is a United Nations news and information
service, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs.
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