THINK OF ALL the stupid - and criminal - things you did as a teen: Drinking in the woods with your friends. Smoking marijuana. Fistfighting. Or worse, stealing. Was it wrong? Yes. Did you get caught? If you grew up in white suburbia, probably not. But think about what could have happened if you grew up poor in a black or Latino neighborhood, where the "War on Drugs" felt like a war on you; where police officers routinely targeted you, just because you looked like you might be up to no good. And what if you were up to no good? Should the cops, prosecutors and judges write you off as a lost cause, lock you away and set you on a course of failure? [continues 649 words]
THE CITY IS still paying thousands of dollars in court-related overtime to four narcotics officers taken off the street after being accused of fabricating evidence and other crimes. The officers are being paid to go to court for cases that are delayed or withdrawn. They show up at the Criminal Justice Center and do nothing. Officers Jeffrey and Richard Cujdik, Robert McDonnell Jr. and Thomas Tolstoy, in addition to their $58,000-a-year salaries, have collectively earned more than $15,500 in overtime since being taken off the street, city payroll records show. [continues 1224 words]
City prosecutors yesterday dropped charges against a suspected drug dealer after a judge denied their request to continue the case pending the outcome of an investigation into the arresting officer, Jeffrey Cujdik. Cujdik is at the center of an FBI and local police probe that arose after Cujdik's longtime informant, Ventura Martinez, said in a Feb. 9 Daily News article that Cujdik had instructed him to lie about some drug buys so that officers could obtain search warrants to enter homes of suspected dealers. [continues 244 words]
Shopkeepers Say Plainclothes Cops Barged In, Looted Stores & Stole Cash ON A SWELTERING July afternoon in 2007, Officer Jeffrey Cujdik and his narcotics squad members raided an Olney tobacco shop. Then, with guns drawn, they did something bizarre: They smashed two surveillance cameras with a metal rod, said store owners David and Eunice Nam. The five plainclothes officers yanked camera wires from the ceiling. They forced the slight, frail Korean couple to the vinyl floor and cuffed them with plastic wrist ties. [continues 2385 words]
Cartoon Found in Locker of Narcotics Squad Member INSIDE the locker of a narcotics cop, Philadelphia police officials recently made a shocking discovery: A cartoon of a man, half as an officer in uniform and half as a Klansman with the words: "Blue By Day - - White By Night. White Power," according to police officials. The officer, Scott Schweizer, who has arrested countless drug suspects in predominantly African-American neighborhoods, was removed from his undercover police duties and given a desk job earlier this month, authorities said. [continues 908 words]
Looking back, Teri Appleton sees lots of red flags. Like the times Appleton discovered money missing from her purse or couldn't find a piece of jewelry. She had trouble rousing her teenage daughter from sleep. While driving, Appleton recalled looking in her rearview mirror and seeing the girl nodding off in the back seat. When Appleton opened a roll of coins, she found them stuffed with tinfoil and hardware bolts. But the moment she knew - really knew - came on an average ho-hum morning inside Appleton's comfortable split-level home in Pennsauken. [continues 1668 words]
At the height of the war on drugs, federal authorities classified the enemy as Mexican, Colombian, and Jamaican drug couriers traveling the nation's highways. In this new war on terrorism, the enemy, federal authorities say, is a cadre of Islamic extremists who feel it's their religious obligation to kill Americans. While the wars are vastly different, they pose the same law enforcement dilemma: how to recognize the enemy among America's ethnically and racially diverse faces. "The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends," President Bush said while addressing the nation Thursday night. "It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists." [continues 1316 words]
Crime declined again in New Jersey last year and dipped to its lowest level in nearly 30 years, according to a report released Thursday. "As today's statistics demonstrate, New Jersey continues to be a safer place to live and work," acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco said in a statement. DiFrancesco attributed the dwindling crime to good police work and tougher sentencing laws, while law enforcement officials credited better police training, advances in crime-fighting technology, community outreach, and bicycle patrols. [continues 598 words]
Thomas White says he boiled with anger when a state trooper asked permission to search the trunk of his Buick after a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. But the 70-year-old black Philadelphia resident says he stifled his rage, tried to radiate a demeanor as warm as the June 1998 day, and replied, "Absolutely." "That wasn't my true feeling," recalled White, a retired corrections officer. "I didn't want to do nothing to provoke the gentleman. . . . He was using the term 'sir' a lot, but between the 'sirs,' I could hear the arrogance in his voice." [continues 1315 words]
Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. released more than 90,000 documents Monday showing that high-ranking state officials embraced a "war on drugs" at the cost of violating the civil rights of black and Hispanic motorists. Farmer said the state's anti-drug policy encouraging New Jersey troopers to consider race as a factor when determining whom to stop on the roadway yielded "pretty good" drug catches, but resulted in a disastrous erosion of trust between minorities and troopers. Troopers began using race as a factor in the late 1980s at the height of a federal drug interdiction program, known as Operation Pipeline. But last year, the Attorney General's Office ended the practice, prohibiting troopers from considering race at all, even though federal courts have ruled that it was legal for law enforcement officers to consider race as one of several factors when stopping and searching motorists. [continues 1167 words]
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - There are 540 ``Cheez Balls'' in an 11.75 ounce Planter's canister. That's a problem for New Jersey's prison guards. People on the outside are slicing open cheese puffs, delicately scraping out the orange crust, filling them with marijuana, gluing them shut and delivering the can to inmates. Corrections officers spend hours inspecting each puff and every other piece of food or item in prisoner care packages. So starting Monday, family members and loved ones won't be allowed to give care packages to inmates. No Cheez Balls. No magazines. No hand-knit hats. No baby powder. Nothing unless inmates order it from an prison-approved outside vendor. [continues 407 words]
