WASHINGTON - One airman said he felt paranoia. Another marveled at the vibrant colors. A third admitted, "I absolutely just loved altering my mind." Meet service members entrusted with guarding nuclear missiles that are among the most powerful in America's arsenal. Air Force records obtained by The Associated Press show they bought, distributed and used the hallucinogen LSD and other mind-altering illegal drugs as part of a ring that operated undetected for months on a highly secure military base in Wyoming. After investigators closed in, one airman deserted to Mexico. [continues 807 words]
Suspended Hamilton cop Craig Ruthowsky revealed that he aided a drug dealer to cultivate his trust so he could snare a larger trafficker, his former best friend testified Tuesday. Sgt. James Paterson, who once considered himself Ruthowsky's "best friend," confronted Ruthowsky after he was suspended in 2012 while both were working for Hamilton's guns and gangs unit. "Craig Ruthowsky advised me that the dealer was dangling a bigger fish in front of him that he wanted to get, this major importer Officer Ruthowsky had said 'I was trying to make myself look like a dirty cop so that will trust me more, and he'd give up the bigger fish,'" said Paterson. [continues 118 words]
A former Pennsylvania narcotics agent will plead guilty to conspiring to launder money from a seizure of nearly $1.8 million in illicit drug proceeds in 2014, federal court records show. By pleading guilty Timothy B. Riley, a retired state attorney general's office agent, could be sent to prison for up to 20 years and fined up to $500,000, according to a plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg. Federal authorities charged Riley, 48, of Philadelphia, on Feb. 23 with accepting three cash payments totaling $48,000, which he knew was stolen from a drug dealer. Riley then deposited the money and used it in financial transactions, according to David Freed, U.S. attorney of Pennsylvania's Middle District. [continues 397 words]
A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy has been charged with operating a large-scale drug trafficking operation in which he boasted that he hired other law enforcement officers to provide security to drug dealers and could assault people for his clients, according to court records. Kenneth Collins, a deputy assigned to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and two other men were arrested by FBI agents Tuesday morning in a sting operation when they arrived to what they thought was a drug deal, according to records unsealed following the arrest. [continues 925 words]
Charges include fraud, bribery, trafficking A suspended Hamilton police gangs and weapons enforcement unit officer already awaiting trial for his alleged role in helping a drug trafficking organization is facing 16 new criminal charges. On Tuesday, Craig Ruthowsky was charged with bribery, two counts of breach of trust, two counts of obstructing justice, public mischief, two counts of weapons trafficking, fraud under $5,000, trafficking marijuana, perjury, two counts of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, robbery and two counts of trafficking cocaine. [continues 613 words]
Two former Kern County Sheriff's deputies avoided prison time Monday for stealing and selling marijuana that was seized during drug busts. Logan August and Derrick Penney were sentenced Monday to three years' probation for the charge of conspiracy to distribute and possess with the intent to distribute marijuana, according to the U.S. attorney office in Fresno. August, a 30-year-old Bakersfield resident, was also ordered to serve 1,500 hours of community service and forfeit $16,500 earned in the trafficking operation, federal authorities said. [continues 600 words]
Defence should have been present, judge conceded in granting request I ... mistakenly permitted him to bring the drug exhibits into my office where he remained with those exhibits for approximately 20 minutes. An Ottawa judge has declared a mistrial in a drug case after privately questioning an investigating officer in chambers violated an accused's right to be at his own trial. Paul Masilamany filed the mistrial application on May 12, 2017, the day the court was to decide on drug trafficking charges against him. [continues 960 words]
Rules he violated accused's rights to a fair trial by asking to meet with police officer An Ottawa judge has declared a mistrial in a drug case after privately questioning an investigating officer in chambers violated an accused's right to be at his own trial. Paul Masilamany filed the mistrial application on May 12, 2017, the day the court was to decide on drug trafficking charges against him. But just two days before, the lead drug officer, acting on a request from the judge himself, attended Superior Court Justice Paul Kane's office and brought drug exhibits for the judge's use in rendering his decision. [continues 928 words]
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A Florida teacher tipped off drug dealers that her detective husband was investigating them in order to get revenge for his alleged infidelity. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Wednesday that federal prosecutors want an eight-year sentence for 31-year-old Porsha Session, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to obstruction. In 2013, Session searched her then-husband's work email and found information about a drug investigation. She says he was cheating on her, and that to get back at him, she used a co-worker's phone at the elementary school where she worked to call one of the dealers and alert him that an informant had infiltrated his group. The informant later killed himself. Her attorneys are asking that she be sentenced to house arrest at her June 28 hearing. [end]
With battering rams and flash-bang grenades, SWAT teams fuel the risk of violence as they forcibly enter suspects' homes. Five months and 85 miles apart, two cases took starkly divergent legal paths. SOMERVILLE, Tex. - Joshua Aaron Hall had been a resident of the Burleson County Jail for about a week when he requested a meeting with Gene Hermes, the sheriff's investigator who had locked him up for violating probation. The stocky lawman arrived in the featureless interview room on the morning of Dec. 13, 2013, placed his soda cup on the table and apologized for not getting there sooner. He asked in his gravelly drawl if they would be talking about Mr. Hall's own case. [continues 6445 words]
A recent Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court decision tested the weight the justice system places on confidential police informants. The case revolved around a British Columbia man arrested and charged in Newfoundland with drug-related offences in February 2015. The accused applied to the court to have certain police evidence excluded from his case - particularly the police informant information - - stating that his rights under Section 9 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were breached. He claimed police did not have reasonable grounds to make the arrest nor search his vehicle. [continues 866 words]
America's sheriffs have given President Trump a woefully inaccurate view of civil asset forfeiture-the process through which police seize, and prosecutors literally sue, cash, cars and real estate that they suspect may be connected to a crime. "People want to say we're taking money and without due process. That's not true," a Kentucky sheriff told the president last month at a White House meeting. Critics of forfeiture, the sheriff added, simply "make up stories." In fact, thousands of Americans have had their assets taken without ever being charged with a crime, let alone convicted. Russ Caswell almost lost his Massachusetts motel, which had been run by his family for more than 50 years, because of 15 "drug-related incidents" there from 1994-2008, a period through which he rented out nearly 200,000 rooms. [continues 725 words]
[Name redacted], is charged with selling about a kilogram of heroin mixed with carfentanil -- the elephant tranquilizer -- and another potent opioid, fentanyl. A grand jury has indicted a Cincinnati man on charges of selling an elephant tranquilizer in Chicago, the first time someone has been charged here with selling the drug -- which is used by narcotics dealers to boost the potency of heroin, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. [Name redacted] is accused of selling the mixture of drugs to the informant on Sept. 9 in a vehicle near 93rd and Stony Island on the South Side. An audio recording was made of the deal, authorities say. [Name redacted] allegedly offered to sell the informant a kilogram of the mixture for $65,000. [continues 302 words]
An Indiana court has overturned a man's felony drug convictions because of a SWAT team's "unreasonable" search that endangered an infant, a decision that highlights growing concerns about the militarization of routine police work. The SWAT team executed a "military-style assault" and detonated a flash-bank grenade in close proximity to a 9-month-old after a confidential informant told detectives that he had seen marijuana, cocaine and a firearm in the home, according to the Indiana Court of Appeals' enumeration of the facts of the case. [continues 1243 words]
[photo] In this Jan. 5, 2010, file photo, a northbound Amtrak Acela passes through Middle River, Md. For years, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has engaged in a questionable use of thousands of informants. The DEA has used airline employees, parcel services workers and even staff at other government agencies, such as the Transportation Safety Administration and Amtrak, as its informants, in violation of Justice Department policies. According to a recent audit from the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, the DEA amassed an army of more than 18,000 informants between October 2010 and October 2015. Informants are offered cash rewards of up to $500,000 or 25 percent of successful cash seizures, whichever is less, and the DEA made $237 million in payments to more than 9,500 sources during this period. [continues 425 words]
The City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to approve the payout to the woman, whom LAPD investigators believe is one of at least four women James Nichols and Luis Valenzuela coerced into sex. The Times generally does not name alleged victims of sex crimes. Nichols and Valenzuela, both 41, were working as narcotics detectives in Hollywood in 2010 when they arrested the woman, according to one of her attorneys, Dennis Chang, and a search warrant affidavit LAPD investigators filed as part of their criminal investigation into the officers' conduct. [continues 449 words]
LUBBOCK, Texas - Across from a sprawling cotton field, among mobile homes in varying states of decay, one stood out: a double-wide with a new, expansive metal garage and the only paved driveway on the dead-end street. It was here that an unemployed former computer repairman with a bad back ran what a drug informant called the biggest fentanyl ring in Lubbock. All Sidney Lanier needed was a computer and an elementary knowledge of chemistry to order shipments of the potent synthetic opioid from China and turn it into a highly profitable - and dangerous - street drug. [continues 1455 words]
COLUMBUS - In a case closely watched by law enforcement statewide, a sharply divided Ohio Supreme Court on Friday said prosecutors must prove the weight of the actual cocaine - and not fillers - to get stiffer sentences in drug busts. For Rafael Gonzales, 58, convicted in Wood County in 2012 of first-degree felony cocaine possession, the 4-3 decision means his 11-year sentence could be slashed to one. Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger, writing for the majority, said state law's definition of "cocaine" does not provide for fillers such as baking soda. [continues 675 words]
A Kenton County jury recommended a 38-year sentence last week for a Covington man who sold heroin five times to a confidential informant with the Covington Police Department, according to the prosecutor's office. Donte Little will be 72 years old when he's released if he serves the full sentence. The 33-year-old was convicted of four counts of trafficking in a controlled substance and one count of complicity to trafficking in a controlled substance. The Covington Police Department's narcotics unit, known as the "D Team," purchased more than 14 grams of heroin from Little on five different days during the fall of 2014, prosecutors said. Investigators testified video and audio recordings were made of the transactions, which totaled more than $2,300. [continues 210 words]
I keep trying to imagine how frightened Kathryn Johnston, 92, must have been that night police stormed her Elm Street home. Here's what we know about the last minutes of her life. Sometime around 7 p.m. on Nov. 21, 2006, three Atlanta police officers, dressed in plainclothes and wearing bulletproof vests, forced Johnston's front door open. Johnson fired on the officers but missed. They returned 39 shots, hitting her five or six times. Prosecutors would later say that one of them, Officer Jason R. Smith, handcuffed the elderly woman as she was dying. [continues 54 words]
