Press Release: Marijuana Sales to Begin in Colorado January 1

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 30, 2013

Contact: Darby Beck: darby.beck@leap.cc or 415.823.5496

COLORADO TO START LEGAL SALES OF MARIJUANA WEDNESDAY

Amid Rapid Changes Elsewhere, State Becomes First Government in World to Control and Regulate Marijuana

DENVER, CO – The eyes of the world will be on Colorado this New Year’s Day as adults 21 and over become eligible to legally buy marijuana for the first time anywhere. Sales will be tightly controlled, regulated like alcohol is currently, and subject to a number of restrictions preventing sales to minors, intoxicated driving, smoking in public and other undesirable behavior. The Colorado Legislative Council estimates marijuana will generate $67 million in tax revenue annually.

“This Wednesday Coloradans stop buying marijuana from street gangs and cartels and start buying it from licensed, regulated sellers who create jobs and pay taxes to the government,” said 36-year policing veteran Lieutenant Tony Ryan (Ret.), a board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Soon our jails will be less crowded, our schools will be better funded, and our police more able to focus on violent crime.”

Initially only licensed medical marijuana dispensaries in good standing (of which there are about 500) are eligible to apply for sales licenses. As of early last week, the state had approved 348 total licenses, including 136 for retail stores, 178 for cultivation facilities, 31 for product manufacturing facilities, and 3 for testing facilities. Each shop must also apply for a local license, and localities are able to pass bans or temporary stays on the stores if they so choose. Adult Coloradans are eligible to buy up to one ounce of marijuana; out of state visitors up to one quarter-ounce.

LEAP’s executive director Major Neill Franklin (Ret.) had this to say: “Though, as with any new system, there will be issues to be worked through at first, the people of Colorado are about to show the world that legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana benefits the economy, public safety and ordinary citizens. I predict that after a year or two, once the media stops focusing on anecdotes of people behaving badly and we start to see hard data on the real benefits of ending prohibition, there will be a domino effect that echoes across the world.”

Washington state voters also chose to legalize marijuana in November of 2012 and retail sales will begin there later this year. Since that election, the Uruguayan legislature approved President José Mujica's legalization proposal and Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico City and many other places are considering adopting similar systems.

 “It's a tough day to be part of a street gang in Colorado. Not only did they just lose one of their biggest sources of income, now that police don't have to focus as much on nonviolent offenders, they'll be coming after real criminals with everything they've got,” added Franklin.

The first customer will be an U.S. Marine Corps veteran who appeared in several commercials for the Amendment 64 campaign which successfully legalized the drug. Sean Azzariti suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by two deployments to Iraq, which is not among the conditions covered under Colorado's medical marijuana law.

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Press Release: Parents of Autistic Teen Entrapped by Cops Sue School District

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 30, 2013

Contact: Darby Beck: 415.823.5496

Tony Newman: 646.335.5384

Catherine and Doug Snodgrass: 951.643.4212

PARENTS OF AUTISTIC TEEN ENTRAPPED BY COPS SUE SCHOOL DISTRICT

Lawsuit Highlights Cruel Practices and Ineffectiveness of Undercover Narcotics Operations in Schools

TEMECULA, CA – The parents of a 17-year-old special needs student arrested in an undercover police operation announced today they are suing the school district that authorized the operation. The student, who suffers from a range of disabilities, was falsely befriended by a police officer who repeatedly asked the boy to provide him drugs. After more than three weeks, 60 text messages and repeated hounding by the officer, the student was able to buy half a joint from a homeless man he then gave to his new – and only – “friend,” who had given him twenty dollars weeks before. He did it once again before refusing to accommodate the officer, at which point the officer broke off all ties with the child. Shortly thereafter, the student was arrested in school in front of his classmates as part of a sting that nabbed 22 students in all, many of them children with special needs.

"Our son is permanently scarred from the abuse he suffered. Right now, our focus is on him, and our entire family," commented Catherine and Doug Snodgrass, the boy’s parents, who are suing the Temecula Valley Unified School District, Director of Child Welfare and Attendance Michael Hubbard and Director of Special Education Kimberly Velez for negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and other charges. They hope that this suit will send a message to schools around the country that these raids will not be tolerated.

 “What we have witnessed here is the polar opposite of good policing and an example of how the drug war skews the priorities of law enforcement officers. There was no crime here until the police coerced a special needs student into committing one. They didn't lessen the amount of drugs available and they didn't provide help to any students who may have had a legitimate problem. Instead, they diminished the life prospects of everyone they came into contact with. As a parent, as a retired police officer, as a human being, this outrages me,” remarked LAPD Deputy Chief Stephen Downing (Ret.), who now speaks on behalf of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of law enforcement officials opposed to the drug war.

The LAPD stopped using undercover stings in schools in 2005 after a review suggested police were targeting special needs children and that operations were ineffective at reducing the availability of drugs in schools. A Department of Justice study would later confirm the finding that such operations do little to affect the supply of drugs.

“Sending police and informants to entrap high-school students is sick,” said Tony Newman, director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance. “We see cops seducing 18-year-olds to fall in love with them or befriending lonely kids and then tricking them into getting them small amounts of marijuana so they can stick them with felonies. We often hear that we need to fight the drug war to protect the kids. As these despicable examples show, more often the drug war is ruining young people's lives and doing way more harm than good.”

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Press release: Police arrest more people for marijuana than for all violent crime combined

MONDAY, September 16, 2013

NATIONWIDE, POLICE MAKE MORE ARRESTS FOR MARIJUANA THAN FOR VIOLENT CRIME in 2012

One Drug Arrest Every 20 seconds in US; A Marijuana Arrest Every 42 Seconds

New FBI Numbers Reveal Failure of "War on Drugs"

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The FBI released a new report today showing that nationwide, police in the U.S. conduct one drug arrest every 20 seconds and one marijuana arrest every 42 seconds. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of police, prosecutors, judges and other law enforcement officials opposed to the war on drugs, pointed to the figures showing almost 750,000 marijuana arrests and more than 1.5 million total drug arrests in 2012 as evidence that no matter how aggressively we conduct it, this is a war that can never be won.

"These numbers represent a tremendous loss of human potential. Each one of those arrests is the story of someone who may suffer a variety of adverse effects from their interaction with the justice system,” said LEAP executive director Neill Franklin, a cop for 34 years. “Commit a murder or a robbery and the government will still give you a student loan. Get convicted for smoking a joint and you’re likely to lose it. This is supposed to help people get over their drug habit?”

"Every time a police officer makes an arrest for drugs, that's several hours out of his or her day not spent going after real criminals. As the country has been investing more and more of its resources into prosecuting drug 'crime,' the rate of unsolved violent crime has been steadily increasing. Where are our priorities here?" asked retired lieutenant commander Diane Goldstein, another LEAP speaker.

Today's FBI report, which can be found at http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/persons-arrested/persons-arrested, shows that 82.2 percent of all drug arrests in 2012 were for possession only and 42.4 percent of all drug arrests were for possession of marijuana (88% of all marijuana arrests).

Marijuana arrests were down slightly this year from 2011, but arrests for all drug abuse violations increased. This is perhaps reflective of the growing number of communities who have legalized marijuana for medical and recreational use.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is a group of more than 100,000 law enforcement officials and other supporters who, after fighting the war on drugs, now advocate for its end.

#      #      #

United Nations Drug War 2013

           In 2011, the most recent year for which figures are available, drug-law enforcers seized over 60 tons of meth amphetamines worldwide,[1] and globally, synthetic stimulants represented the greatest increase in the use of prohibited drugs.[2]

 

            According to UN reports, cannabis remained the most widely used prohibited substance with between 199 million and 224 million persons age 15-64 using it at least once in the previous year.[3]  Amphetamine-type stimulants were the second most widely used prohibited substance with between 14 and 52.5 million people using the drug at least once in 2010.[4]  In that year, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) estimated that between 153 million to 300 million people ages 15-64 used a prohibited substance at least once in the previous year.[5]

 

            These stats and others – often reporting increased production, use and trafficking of cannabis, heroin, cocaine and new synthetic illegal drugs (49 new ones in 2011 in European Member States alone)[6] – depressingly dominated the reports of the Secretariat of the Governing Bodies of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) and the CND.  The Secretariat reports were directed to the CND for use during its annual weeklong March session held at Commission headquarters in Vienna, Austria. The reports, reading much like an annual rainfall maps, reflected increases and decreases in drug use and seizures, by region, and by drug.

 

As a former Cook County drug prosecutor generally opposed to drug use, I travelled to Vienna to attend the 56^thSession of the CND on behalf of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an international, nonprofit educational organization comprised of former drug cops, judges, and other law-enforcement officers who all formerly waged the war on drugs but who now universally oppose it.

 

Last year, I attended the 55^th Session and learned first-hand that the United Nations is the fountainhead of drug prohibition for the world.  By the terms of three international conventions (treaties) of 1961, 1971 and 1988, long and growing lists of drugs are criminalized.

 

As an example of the broad and sweeping prohibition flavor of the treaties, the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs provides in Article 36 that “…each Party [country] shall adopt such measures as ensure the cultivation, production, manufacture, extraction, preparation, possession, offering, offering for sale, distribution, purchase, sale, delivery on any terms whatsoever, brokerage, dispatch, dispatch in transit, transport, importation and exportation of drugs contrary to the provisions of this Convention… shall be  punishable offences when committed intentionally, and that serious offences shall be liable to adequate punishment particularly by imprisonment and other penalties of deprivation of liberty.”[Italics added][7]

 

These UN treaties deprive mankind of liberty and foster wholesale incarceration worldwide with some 10 million people behind bars, 25% of them in the USA, the so-called “Land of the Free.”  Too many people are deprived of liberty for merely possessing or using an outlawed drug and others for cultivating, distributing or selling marijuana, two of the most obnoxious examples of drug-policy abuse.

 

LEAP recognizes what people the world over recognize after 52 years of treaty-dictated, drug-prohibition failure: zero-tolerance drug war does not work.  According to the UN’s own documents, 300 million people consumed drugs in violation of UN treaties last year.  Aware of the robust, UN-drug-policy failure, weeks before the 2013 CND session convened, LEAP sent a letter to world leaders of each Member State of the three, UN drug-prohibition Conventions. The letter called upon world leaders to authorize their representatives “to openly and freely discuss the most fundamental drug-policy questions” at the Vienna CND session.

 

            LEAP posited five such questions for discussion:

 

·         Does the UN policy of drug prohibition do more harm than good?

 

·         Does drug-prohibition policy itself cause increased drug availability, potency, use, abuse, addiction, disease and death?

 

·         Does drug prohibition also cause turf-war crime, violence, corruption, addict crime and injustice; does it erode freedom, liberty and human rights; and does it tear at the moral fabric of mankind worldwide?

·         Has massive drug-war spending compromised the role of the responsible elements of society (police, military, intelligence agencies, government, business, academia, media and international organizations) and aligned those elements with the interests of irresponsible drug purveyors and drug cartels, both sides supporting the continuation of drug prohibition for economic gain?

·         What drug policy should replace the UN/Al Capone-style drug-prohibition paradigm? 

Unfortunately though not surprisingly, the CND took up none of these questions.  (Encouragingly, Latin American leaders did at the June 2013 meeting of the OAS General Assembly in Guatemala did to a degree.)  Instead, as Cindy S.J. Fazey, a former high-ranking CDN official noted of CDN proceeding ten years ago, meetings of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) are no forum for debate and change.  “…UN conferences are like plays where all roles are carefully defined and the scripts written in advance. They are not places for debate but for statements of position, where any potential conflict has been headed off months before through a series of preliminary discussions and preparatory meetings.”[8]

 

Fazey explained that “In the Commission…no votes are taken.  Everything is settled by consensus.  This is because in the original charter for the UN only those countries that are fully paid-up members can vote.  Since the USA is behind with its dues, there is an informal agreement that nobody votes.”[9]  Although the USA paid a part of its debt to the UN in 1999 pursuant to the Helms-Biden legislation, the USA still owes the UN over $1.3 billion. Of this, $612 million is payable under Helms-Biden. The remaining $700 million result from various legislative and policy withholdings; at present, there are no plans to pay these amounts.[10]

 

The Commission (CND) comprises 53 UN Member States and most of the funding for the Commission comes from 17 major donors who for practical purposes, Fazey writes, have “decisive influence over both the CND and the UNDCP [United Nations Drug Control Program].”[11]  The Commission annually adopts resolutions regarding drug policy.  “If any member of the Commission were against a particular resolution, it would not go through,”[12] Fazey writes.

 

   Analyzing why the Commission is unable to extricate itself from the status quo (deep drug prohibition ruts), Fazey commented on the nature of the delegates to the Commission.  She said, “[The] preponderance of diplomats and law enforcement representatives militates against change and helps to perpetuate inertia within the Commission…..   Any changes achieved have never occurred through debates on the floor of the Commission.”[13]

 

Finally, Fazey observed that “The majority of UN Member States have long opposed any change of the Conventions….  [T]he three most vociferous opponents of change and slackening of the interpretation of the Conventions are the USA, Sweden and Japan.  Other countries that support this approach fall roughly into two categories: previous USSR states and dictatorships.”[14]

 

A more optimistic view of UN drug work is offered by the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Yury Fedotov, the former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation for International Organizations.

 

At the outset of the CND March session, Fedotov said: "UNODC is building a coherent response to drugs, crime and terrorism, which views them as global phenomena needing global solutions. To achieve this we are introducing integrated programmes that deliver effective assistance. As we continue with this strategy we will use our core strengths in analysis, technical assistance and helping to build capacities to support the Member States who confront these challenges."[15]

 

Sounds good, but LEAP and other drug policy reformers disagree.  The global, top-down, one-size-fits-all UN drug-prohibition policy is a drug cartel’s prayer and a street gang’s dream. UN drug policy, like that championed by the US, is an utter and irredeemable failure and inimical to the health, safety and welfare of the world’s children and adults, too.

 

While in Vienna LEAP members met with drug czars and delegates and pushed the need for Member States to follow Bolivia’s lead (Bolivia quitting the 1961 Single Convention over the criminalization of the coca leaf) and call for the UN drug treaties to be amended with two basic changes.  First, each nation of the world should reclaim its national sovereignty and retake control of its own drug laws and regulations.  This would enable drug policy to be tailored to fit the unique problems and circumstances of each nation.  Policies and programs that succeeded could then be exported and shared with other nations.  Second, the international drug-prohibition blanket must be replaced with a drug legalization and control model that reduces the harm of drugs, alleviates the inherent evils of prohibition like corruption, and importantly disengages the prohibition economic engine that puts more dangerous drugs, uncontrolled and unregulated, everywhere.

 

If the UN and its CND fail to amend its drug treaties to accomplish these two fundamental changes, then the Member States should withdraw from the UN treaties, reclaim national sovereignty and restore domestic peace, harmony and sanity regarding drug laws.  

 

 Now, returning home from Vienna, the representatives of the nations of the world each must contend with the realities of what drug prohibition means to them.

 

For me, returning home to catch up on a week of Chicago news underscores the need for world reform of drug prohibition.  I read that a gang shooting has murdered a 6-month-old Jonylah Watkins during a diaper change, the story supplanting the horrible news of the mistaken gangland murder of 14-year-old Hadiya Pendleton days after the president Obama’s inauguration and Hadiya’s participation in it.

 

During the week, a columnist suggested that Chicago police should use drones to police street gangs, over 100,000 members strong and flush with prohibition drug riches.  A South Side drug kingpin was sentenced to prison despite the “no-snitching” code of the streets and the fear of his “the killing crew.”

 

Before the annual spring outbreak of the worst of Chicago gang violence, the Cook County Jail is already overflowing with drug and gang defendants, the fact providing fun fodder for a cartoonist.  A dog detects 30 pounds of opium at O’Hare Airport valued at $500,000.  A Schaumburg chief of police resigns his post without accusation of misfeasance after three of his Schaumburg police officers were arrested and charged with ripping off drug dealers and selling their wares, and the executive director of Ceasefire, an anti-violence group of reformed gangbangers contracted to the City of Chicago to stop the violence, claimed that “We’re making progress,” although the shootings continue in the nation’s murder capital, appropriately the home of international celebrity Al Capone.

 

Drug-prohibition drugs, violence, corruption, disease, and death flourish around the globe like a Biblical plague but USA state, national and local leaders say nothing, do nothing and accomplish nothing.  Like the UN and its CND, American leaders acquiesce as bad drug policy causees what it was designed to prevent.  The cowardly inaction is a despicable complacency in time of crisis, a time when the answer is as easy and obvious as it was at the end of alcohol Prohibition.

 

James E. Gierach

LEAP Executive Board Member

Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko

In his new book, Rise of the Warriror Cop, Radley Balko provides a detailed history of our decline into a police state.

 He works his way through this history in a sound way describing police raid upon police raid gone terribly wrong, resulting in a useless loss of life.  He discusses police agencies that serve populations of only 1,000 people but receive federal funding for military-type weapons and tank-style vehicles.  We have also seen a total disregard for “The Castle Doctrine” which has been held dear by our citizens since the colonial days.  The “Castle Doctrine” is the idea that a man’s home is his castle and a warrant signed by a judge is necessary to enter and search the “castle.”  Balko cogently explains the reason for all of this: The war on drugs and the war on terror are really wars on our own people. 

 A profession that I was once proud to serve in has become a militarized police state.  Officers are quicker to draw their guns and use their tanks than to communicate with people to diffuse a situation.  They love to use their toys and when they do, people die.

 The days of the peace officer are long gone, replaced by the militarized police warrior wearing uniforms making them indistinguishable from military personnel. Once something is defined as a “war” everyone becomes a “warrior.” Balko offers solutions ranging from ending the war on drugs, to halting mission creep so agencies such as the Department of Education and the FDA don’t have their own SWAT teams, to enacting transparency requirements so that all raids are reported and statistics kept, to community policing, and finally to one of the toughest solutions: changing police culture. 

Police culture has gone from knocking on someone’s door to ask him to come to the station house, to knocking on a door to drag them to the stationhouse, to a full SWAT raid on a home.

Two quotes from the HBO television series The Wire apply quite appropriately to this situation.

 "This drug thing, this ain't police work. Soldiering and police, they ain't the same thing."

"You call something a war and pretty soon everyone's gonna’ be running around acting like warriors. They're gonna’ be running around on a damn crusade, storming corners, slapping on cuffs and racking up body counts. And when you're at war you need a f**king enemy. And pretty soon damn near everybody on every corner's your f**king enemy. And soon the neighborhood you're supposed to be policing, that's just occupied territory."

- Detective John J. Baeza, NYPD (ret.)

How to Go After Gangs

            Contrary to the views of Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez, cracking down wholesale on the worst of gangs and utilization of Illinois’ new RICO law is not an “an excellent part of the solution” to a low-crime, gang-free city.  These strategies will continue to fail just as her efforts to FIGHT drug abuse and drug trafficking failed as the former head of the Cook County state’s attorney’s Narcotics Prosecution Bureau.

            No personal criticism intended, it’s just that fighting gangs, violence and drugs with these strategies is like fighting a virus with an antibiotic when the virus is immune to antibiotics.  RICO and drug prosecutions can cause gangs and persons pain, individually and as a group, but cannot stop the forever-breeding, systemic virus fed by drug prohibition.

            The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is not a new idea or crime-fighting tool.  Federal prosecutors have had use of the tool since 1970 when it was enacted, the same year that the U.S. Congress enacted the Continuing Criminal Enterprise Statute (CCE), the later used against Gangster Disciple Larry Hoover.  Like Illinois’ RICO statute, the federal RICO statute and CCE (“The Kingpin Statute”) are aimed at criminal enterprises like the mafia, alias “the mob” or “organized crime.”

            RICO penalties are draconian and under RICO statutes authorities don’t even have to prove the targeted defendants actually were the ones who “did it,” not unlike the legal concept known as vicarious liability, where one person can be made responsible for the actions of another, like making an employer liable for the wrong committed by his employee.  RICO laws and targeting “the worst gangs” is not the answer.

            The answer to gangs, violence and drugs is unchanged and is as simple as ending the Al Capone era of gangs and violence – the answer is end substance prohibition.  Taking the profit out of the drug business by legalizing substances remains the essential tool in the fight to dismantle gangs, reduce gun violence, reclaim youth, and control dangerous drugs.

            Lauding RICO laws or targeting 18,000 gang members for arrest like Sen. Mark Kirk recently proposed will increase incarceration and foolishly drain more public resources for prisons and jails while accomplishing nothing of our common goal to restore neighborhoods, prevent violence, save our kids and control drugs.

            Lastly, the state’s attorney needs to realize that we need fewer Cook County indictments and felony convictions; and more misdemeanor charges, convictions and jail time, thereby avoiding time-consuming defendant-discovery rights, and re-prioritizing violent crime rather than “drug crimes,” consensus business transactions between willing adults.  These two suggestions will substantially fix our broken “drug war” and criminal justice system, and reprioritize the prosecution of violent crime.

-James E. Gierach is a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney and former candidate for the office in 1992, calling for drug policy reform and the re-prioritization of violent crime as opposed to drug crime.

Even the most important witnesses get betrayed when the powerful are threatened

The New York Times front page story by Ginger Thompson reports on the saga of Luis Octavio López Vega. For years, Lopez has been living underground in the U.S. He is former chief of police of Zapopan, a city of more than 1,000,000 near Guadalajara, and top aide to former Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebolllo (praised by ONDCP Director Barry McCaffrey for his bullet-proof integrity before he was arrested for his ties to a cartel).  Lopez was a key DEA informant. As the investigation of Gutierrez commenced, Lopez realized that he was a target for execution and went underground. The U.S. helped his family escape to the U.S.

For a dozen years, top Mexican officials have been trying to get the U.S. to arrest Lopez to turn him over to them, where it is likely, the Times suggests, that he will be tortured and killed. Yet the U.S. Marshals Service raided him -- but he spotted the surveillance and fled. He has been hiding out ever since.

This extensive report confirms our worst suspicions that considerations of justice are abandoned when powerful politicians and powerful criminals feel threatened, and when the trade and political interests of the U.S. may be affected. In this account, the decisions of the U.S. Attorney General and the Secretary of State about protecting a man who was offered protection by the U.S. for his life-endangering cooperation are swayed by political considerations. When does a government betray someone it has offered to protect?

Drug enforcement is such a peculiar species of law enforcement. No matter how zealously anti-drug agents, prosecutors or officials might be, they all recognize at some level, because the drug trade is so large and perpetual, that any individual load of drugs or any individual defendant is ultimately insignificant. Considerations of national security, national economics, and national politics -- if pressing -- will always trump any investigation.

Is this a form of corruption? Or is it a necessary exercise of discretion? Is letting a cartel leader go for reasons of state legally or morally different than letting a juvenile street dealer go for reasons of compassion and retaining the human capital of a community?

The Next in the Ladybud Series by Diane Goldstein

http://ladybud.com/saving-law-enforcement-from-themselves/

APR 10, 2013

Saving Law Enforcement Organizations From Themselves

Diane Wattles-Goldstein / Law, News & Editorial, Top / body cavity search, collateral damage,Columbia Police Officer's Union, constitutional law, Dale Roberts, dallas fort worth pd, diane wattles-goldstein, drug war, Keep Columbia Free, Lady Bud, ladybud, law enforcement, LEAP, marijuana,Mike Riggs, Reason Magazine, texas, Texas State Troopers, traffic stop /

PHOTO SOURCE: CBS Dallas Forth-Worth. Then officer Kelly Helleson caught on a dashboard camera preparing to perform a cavity search on a woman under the suspicion of marijuana possession.

In a recent Reason.com blog post author Mike Riggs points to a clear example of the many failings of the ongoing Drug War, the stigmatization of human beings. This stigmatization leads to the objectification of people, which in turn provides fodder for inappropriate humor. I am not a prude, and I participated in gallows humor for years, there were times as a police officer that it was my only way to maintain my sanity, but I always understood who my audience was, and always lived by the rule of laughing with people, not at people.  As a strong proponent of American civil liberties, I also believe in our First Amendment rights, but realize that those in law enforcement (even if they are not cops) or in positions of authority asDale Roberts is as a University of Missouri law professor and instructor at the same school’s Law Enforcement Training Center, should be held to a different standard even in their personal lives.

A Texas state trooper charged withsexually assaulting two womenduring a traffic stop was providing them with “customer service,” says Dale Roberts, the executive director of the Columbia Police Officers Association (CPOA) and a professor at the University of Missouri. (The CPOA is a part of the Fraternal Order of Police, one of the country’s largest police unions.) “It’s called Customer Service!” Roberts wrote in a March 27 Facebook post about the indictment of Texas State Trooper Kelly Helleson, who was charged with two counts of sexual assault after conducting an illegal roadside strip search of two women. “We just did it so they wouldn’t have to make the trip all the way down to the station,” he added. A screenshot of Roberts’s post was taken by Keep Columbia Free, a civil liberties blog run by Mark Flakne.

What I find most loathsome is that Professor Roberts, who is an attorney, former judge, Constitutional Law professor, and the head of the Columbia Police Officers Association, clearly does not recognize his moral failings as he laughs about two innocent women victimized by law enforcement.

On December 19, 2012 the victims were subjected to an unconstitutional body cavity search simply based on the allegation of the smell of marijuana. For those who are not familiar with the case, the women were driving and were pulled over for a littering violation. In California this is simply a traffic ticket, an infraction that should not result in anything more than a summons to court. Yet the trooper alleged that he then smelled marijuana. He conducted a search of the vehicle (I question the legality of the search, but that’s another article) while a female Texas State Trooper conducted an invasive road-side body cavity search that is alleged to include inserting her fingers inside the victim’s vagina and rectum without even changing her latex gloves. When no marijuana was found, the driver was given a field sobriety test and then released with a warning for the littering violation.

When I saw this story and viewed the videotape, I was simply stunned. The victims have filed a lawsuit and the female trooper was terminated and is awaiting a criminal trial.  The taxpayers will once again suffer by having to pay a large settlement for the malfeasance, while the media and our political and law enforcement leaders will label this an isolated event instead of looking at it as an example of the culture that surrounds the enforcement of the Drug War.

This case is a clear example of the Machiavellian effect that the Drug War has had on the police. What is so astonishing is the lack of judgment as expressed by Dale Roberts in his Facebook post. Given his gross lapse in judgment, I find it ironic that he is a lead instructor at a law enforcement training center as well as a Constitutional Law professor. But more chilling for me is that his statement is so similar to others that I heard while a sex crimes investigator that the victim is somehow to blame for the suspect’s actions, or that she enjoyed being victimized.

So the Drug War marches on with more victims, collateral damage to a futile attempt to control human nature. All the while, supposed criminal justice professionals like Roberts continue to influence a profession that I loved, changing our course from protecting those we have sworn to serve to victimizing them at unknown cost to our humanity. Professor Roberts, I would simply ask you that if this were your wife, your daughter or someone you loved, would you be so callous? I think not. So I offer a bit of advice that I used to tell my officers:  Before you say or do something, ask yourself if your mother would be proud of your words or actions, and would you be happy to see it on the front page of the news? Clearly, with this remark, you failed both standards, and would have done well to remember that even if you are not a real police officer, as the head of their union you don’t just represent yourself, but also a profession that you have brought to a new low.

Diane Wattles-Goldstein

Diane Goldstein is a 21-year veteran of law enforcement who retired as the first female lieutenant for the Redondo Beach Police Department, (CA). During her career she worked and managed a variety of patrol and investigative units. She is recognized as a subject matter expert and trainer in the area of crisis negotiations and critical incident management. During her career she was one of the original founders of the California Association of Hostage Negotiators receiving an Honorary Life Member Award in 2007. She is a speaker and Executive Board Member for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a guest columnist for The 420 Times and has appeared on radio, and television as a commentator.

→ Diane Wattles-Goldstein

Excellent Article by Diane Goldstein in Ladybud

http://ladybud.com/time-to-return-the-peace-to-peace-officer/

APR 1, 2013

Time to Return the Peace to Peace Officer

In 1983 I was hired as a police officer in the community that I grew up in. If you had asked my friends, they would have said law enforcement was an unlikely professional choice for me, but I understood that it would not just challenge me personally, but that I could also make an impact in other people’s lives. So I took my oath of office and attended the academy, where I was given the basic tools necessary to enter an incredibly complex profession. What I learned immediately is that the most vital skill that law enforcement uses is effective communication. I believe that words matter and that what is currently lacking in the administration of justice is that we no longer emphasize the “peace” in “peace officer.”

In the United States, law enforcement agencies have statewide credentialing organizations aptly named Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) which is tasked with ensuring the professionalism of the police. In California, in addition to POST, the law also designates us as peace officers with policing authority. Philosophically we have strayed from the mission of being peace officers and I would argue that we have instead become “police officers” by virtue of our failed national drug policy. The distinction is a subtle one, as there are times that as professionals we must “police” people who are harming others, but I believe our core mission is to be peacekeepers within our communities by serving others.

What I learned immediately is that the most vital skill that law enforcement uses is effective communication.

In order to discuss the impact of the drug war on policing we must understand the purpose of law enforcement. Law

Sir Robert Peel: Father of Modern Policing

enforcement authority was established as a theory of a social contract that recognized obligations between constituents and government. Kardasz notes that as members of a community we agree to abide by the rules and laws of our state and cede our right to defend ourselves and our property to the police. Sir Robert Peel, the father of modern policing, developed ethical principles that clarified the roles and relationship of the police and the public they serve. He posited that “The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.” As our federal government continues to impose a one-tool solution to the political problem of drug use in America, I believe the public’s support of law enforcement’s effort in waging the drug war is waning, and with it, the moral authority from which it derives it power.

In the court of public opinion, a recent Rasmussen poll reflected that only 7% of Americans believed that the United States is winning the War on Drugs. I stand with others polled who believe that our national drug policy is an abject failure. Every society in history has used mind-altering substances of one form or another. The smart ones have acted to reduce the harm of that use rather than trying to prevent it altogether. Throughout my 21 year career in law enforcement I saw the damage that this  war on human nature has caused. The unintended consequences of trying to achieve a drug-free America have done more damage to  those we have sworn to serve. From opinion pieces to headlines, we are inundated with stories of police misconduct, excessive force allegations, personal corruption and what is now known as Machiavellian police corruption, where the police officer believes they are acting correctly because the end justifies the means.

The survey revealed that when asked if the War on Drugs had been successful in reducing drug use 82% of our national law enforcement leaders stated no.

One recent example, a piece in the New York Times titled “Why Police Lie Under Oath” by Michelle Alexander, was gut wrenching to me, not less so because it’s a topic largely ignored by police professionals across the United States. Alexander clearly points out the Machiavellian effect the Drug War has had on our profession with distinct examples of how and why police lie in order to meet quotas, obtain promotions or simply because they can as they are more respected within the community. But these lies, although not publicly supported, can and do at times occur with a wink and a nod as just one more aspect of the means justify the ends in saving American’s from themselves.

The recognition that our national drug policy has not been successful is not news. Our law enforcement leadership cadre admitted as much in survey conducted in 2005 by the National Association of Chiefs of Police (NACOP).The survey revealed that when asked if the War on Drugs had been successful in reducing drug use 82% of our national law enforcement leaders stated no.In light of these findings, why have our political and law enforcement leaders not recognized the impact of the drug war on relationships between police and the communities they serve? Since Nixon initiated the “War on Drugs” in 1970, each and every president, attorney general and drug czar has tried to perpetuate the perception that we are winning the war. In addition to playing cheerleader, the federal government has funded the expansion of the War on Drugs through both increased grants and by allowing local police departments to share money and other property seized through federal asset forfeiture laws. Currently as a nation we spend more than 41.3 billion dollars a year in continuing to wage a rhetorical war on an unachievable goal of a “drug free” America.

But this continued optimism and funding has a significant cost to our society. It results in law enforcement and other policy makers’ unremitting support in a mandate that no one is willing to challenge contributing to a groupthink mentality. Consequently, the public recognizes the impact of the Drug War as a failure as they watch their neighbors, families and friends suffer the consequence of discriminatory laws impacting not just minorities but all Americans, and resulting in the tearing of the social contract between law enforcement and the citizens they serve.

Both the federal government and law enforcement leaders have largely refused to admit that in attempting to win an unwinnable war they have lost the trust of the very people they have sworn to protect. In a situation similar to our entrenchment in Vietnam, our politicians and law enforcement leaders know that this war is unwinnable, but continue to sacrifice their officers and their communities by not searching for the truth. In 399 B.C., Socrates, reflecting on life’s purpose, challenged the Athenian government, saying, “There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong – acting the part of a good man or of a bad.”

Both the federal government and law enforcement leaders have largely refused to admit that in attempting to win an unwinnable war they have lost the trust of the very people they have sworn to protect.

From my experience in law enforcement, I believe we have a moral imperative to critically analyze public policy by questioning how we enforce social order and demand that above all we aspire to conduct ourselves as Socrates envisioned governance by knowing and doing good above all else. By using this lens to study what the role of law enforcement should be, we can reflect upon and correctly assess the destruction of the peace officer and its effect on our society. Clearly, it is time to end the Drug War and return the peace to the term “peace officer.” We must engage in a discussion that challenges our politicians and law enforcement leaders to design policy based on science and harm reduction strategies that includes compassion and human rights.

Diane Wattles-Goldstein

Diane Goldstein is a 21-year veteran of law enforcement who retired as the first female lieutenant for the Redondo Beach Police Department, (CA). During her career she worked and managed a variety of patrol and investigative units. She is recognized as a subject matter expert and trainer in the area of crisis negotiations and critical incident management. During her career she was one of the original founders of the California Association of Hostage Negotiators receiving an Honorary Life Member Award in 2007. She is a speaker and Executive Board Member for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a guest columnist for The 420 Times and has appeared on radio, and television as a commentator.

2nd Report from UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs

This is the second report from LEAP board members present at the 56th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs this week. 

VIENNA

March 15, 2013

According to reports issued by the Secretariat for the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, methamphetamines represented the largest increase in illicit drug use worldwide in 2012 as reflected in part by the seizure of 60 tons of meth that year. Those same reports reflected that forty nine new psychoactive substances were identified and in use among European Union member states in 2011, compared with forty one new substances in 2010 and twenty four in 2009.

The Commission on Narcotic Drugs is charged with responsibility for establishing drug policy for the United Nations, consistent with three UN prohibitionist treaties adopted in 1961, 1971 and 1988. In March of each year, the Commission has the opportunity to study the Secretariat's reports and other evidence of drug use and trafficking, examine the effectiveness of its policies, and recommend revisions and changes to world drug policy. Given that responsibility and authority -- and given the Secretariat's facts regarding the explosion of meth use, meth seizures and new synthetic-drug proliferation -- a serious reexamination of the UN drug prohibition policy was warranted.

But it didn't happen. Concluding a week of meetings of the 56th session of the CND on Friday, the three UN drug prohibition treaties escaped alive and well without any significant policy change recommendations.

One reform group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a non-profit organization composed of drug cops, prosecutors, judges and other law enforcement personnel, who for years led the fight against drugs but who now oppose the failed drug war, expressed disappointment that the CND never engaged in a discussion of fundamental questions concerning world drug policy.

The CND failed to take up the question of whether drug prohibition does more harm than good. Despite the huge meth seizures and proliferation of new drugs in the market, the CND failed to take up the question of whether drug prohibition policy itself causes increased drug availability, potency, use, abuse, addiction, disease and death.

Ignoring other fundamental questions, the CND failed to consider whether drug prohibition policy itself causes addict crime and turf-war crime, violence, corruption and injustice; and whether it erodes freedom, liberty and human rights.

The CND failed to consider the fundamental question of whether the United Nations should repudiate the UN/Al Capone style drug-prohibition paradigm, instead adhering to the failed and harmful drug-war policy.

Triggered by unrelenting violence and other threats to the public health and safety of their people, some Latin American countries, such as Guatemala and Uruguay, are increasingly unwilling to accept the drug-prohibition status quo. Signs of change are also evident in the United States, where the people of Colorado and Washington have expressed unwillingness to live with nonsensical cannabis laws that feed Mexican drug cartels and deprive citizens of freedom.

In some European countries sentiment is also being expressed for a rejection of the top-down UN-mandated prohibition of drugs and for the restoration of national sovereignity that would enable each country to establish drug laws that best fit their people's problems and needs through a system of legalization, regulation and control.

Courageously, Bolivia, by insisting on the constitutional right of its people to preserve the traditional use of the coca leaf, has shown the nations of the world a way to throw off the straight-jacket, zero-tolerance UN prohibitionist conventions.

Following Bolivia's procedural success, other nations of the world could also reject the current prohibition policy and replace it with drug policies that are conducive to the public health, safety and welfare, through a system of legalization, regulation and control.

- Jim Gierach, Annie Machon, Terry Nelson, Maria Lucia Karam

Notes from the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs

Note: Four of LEAP's board members are in Vienna attending the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs this week, from which they sent us this special report.   

03/11/2013

VIENNA - Bolivian president Evo Morales again stole the show at the 56th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), proclaiming that the UN drug rules and conventions had failed to control drugs and had led to "more and more drugs on the market," "more violence," and "more hidden money in the banking sector."

More than one year ago, Pres. Morales created a CND stir and committed drug policy heresy by leading Bolivia to repudiate and withdraw from the UN 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. After initially requesting an exemption from the international convention in order to permit the chewing of the coca leaf for cultural, traditional and medical reasons, and being denied such relief, Bolivia unilaterally withdrew from the treaty, a first by any nation of the world.

Last year, at the same CND annual meeting, Pres. Morales asked that Bolivia be readmitted as a signatory to the Single Convention with the exception that the coca leaf be removed from the long list of UN prohibited drugs. Although the coca leaf has many constructive uses in food, beverage, and medicinal products, it is also the foundational ingredient for cocaine. Morales, however, made clear that he and Bolivian were opposed to legalizing cocaine.

In response to Morales 2012 speech, rather than being condemned by other Member States to the Single Convention, many delegates to the 55th Session applauded him. And during the past year, all Member States to the Convention, with the exception of 15 countries, approved the re-admittance of Bolivia to the drug prohibitionist UN family.

President Morales had more news for the 2013 Session.

Bravely, he declared that the international drug rules and conventions had failed. He proclaimed that despite UN anti-drug treaties, today "we have more and more drugs on the market," "more and more violence," and "more and more forbidden money in the banking sector."

He also pointed out that despite the UN war on drugs Afghanistan had an 18% increase in the production of poppies this year over last. The poppy is the plant from which opium, morphine and heroin are made. Morales pointed out that the mushrooming poppy crop occurred despite the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan, and that one-half of Afghan provinces and one-third more families were cultivating opium.

Morales contended that drug war has become an instrument of political domination. He also pointed out that without U.S. "occupation," Bolivia is doing much better in drug control than it did historically.

Contravening another UN mantra, Morales stated that drug control is not a "shared responsibility," explaining that Bolivia no longer receives any anti-drug money from the U.S. He further touted the fact that Bolivia does not use chemicals to eradicate the coca plants, and contented that thereby it was protecting "Mother Earth."

Challenging other UN conventional protocol, Morales claimed that alternative development in substitution for coca plant cultivation was a waste of time. He explained that the illegal market dictates the price of coca, and no legal crop is comparable in price. The only competitive product for the coca plant would be opium or marijuana. 

- Maria Lucia Karam, Jim Gierach, Annie Machon, Terry Nelson