YOKY RIDGE, Colombia-On a hilltop base shielded with sandbags, police sharpshooter Jose Diaz gazed into thick jungle as a fellow commando checked tripwires protecting the stronghold. A radioman listened in on the fighters they were battling. "They're always looking for the right moment to attack our base," said Hector Ocampo, commander of the Colombian detachment in a cocaine-trafficking corridor near Panama. Their adversaries weren't the FARC rebels that security forces had long fought, but a cocaine-trafficking gang known as the Gulf Clan. In the year since the powerful Marxist guerrillas disarmed, drug gangs like this one have battled each other and the state for control of the booming cocaine trade in remote regions where the FARC once ruled. [continues 872 words]
That old New Orleans con of, "I betcha I can tell you where you got them shoes," just took on a whole different meaning. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration's just released list of "Drug Slang Code Words," for 2018, "shoes" is one of 353 terms the cool kids are using for cannabis these days. (I bet you thought there would be 420.) So, offering to tell the tourists where they obtained their footwear could spark a panic. [continues 364 words]
Guns, gangs unit member has pleaded not guilty A suspended Hamilton police officer fed drug traffickers sensitive information and favours in return for cash payments, a Crown attorney said Monday during his opening address to a Toronto jury. Craig Ruthowsky, a former member of the Hamilton Police Service's guns and gangs unit, has pleaded not guilty to obstruction of justice, bribery, breach of trust, trafficking and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. He became ensnared in a Toronto Police Service wiretap investigation called Project Pharaoh aimed at gathering evidence of drug and firearm trafficking in Toronto's west end, Crown attorney John Pollard said in Superior Court. [continues 326 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]
When Attorney General Jeff Sessions last week jettisoned an Obama administration policy that had been aimed at sparing less-serious drug offenders from harsh sentences, he called his new, more aggressive approach "moral and just." But the verdict among law-enforcement and legal professionals is more mixed. Government data, along with interviews with former U.S. attorneys who advised the Justice Department under President Barack Obama, suggest the previous policy achieved several, though not all, of its goals. Then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced the policy that was to be embodied in what became known as the "Holder memo" in a 2013 speech to the American Bar Association. Mr. Holder pledged that federal prosecutors would focus on more dangerous drug traffickers and avoid charging less-serious offenders with crimes that required long, mandatory-minimum sentences. Mandatory-minimum sentences, he said, had led to bloated, costly prisons and disproportionately ravaged minority communities. [continues 702 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]
[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]
TRENTON - Ed Forchion wants to film a reality show chronicling the impact of the country's so-called War on Drugs on his life. He has a couple titles in mind: "The War on NJ Weedman." Or perhaps even better, "Marijuana Martyr." Forchion pointed to prosecutors' desire in a drug case in Trenton that could land him in prison for years to protect the identity of a confidential informant who allegedly purchased weed from him several times at his downtown city business. [continues 814 words]
Suspicious Itineraries Pay Huge Dividends to Federal Drug Agency USA TODAY identified 87 cases in recent years in which the Justice Department went to federal court to seize cash from travelers. Federal drug agents regularly mine Americans' travel information to profile people who might be ferrying money for narcotics traffickers - - though they almost never use what they learn to make arrests or build criminal cases. Instead, that targeting has helped the Drug Enforcement Administration seize a small fortune in cash. DEA agents have profiled passengers on Amtrak trains and nearly every major U.S. airline, drawing on reports from a network of travel-industry informants that extends from ticket counters to back offices, a USA TODAY investigation has found. Agents assigned to airports and train stations singled out passengers for questioning or searches for reasons as seemingly benign as traveling one-way to California or having paid for a ticket in cash. [continues 1550 words]
DAGUPAN CITY The anti-illegal drug campaign of President Duterte is getting out of hand, and the public should not simply turn a blind eye to the killings. Sen. Leila de Lima acknowledged the gravity of the drug problem in the country, but stressed the measures against it should respect the rule of law. "We cannot simply believe that all those who were shot dead grabbed the guns of arresting police operatives or they fought in an armed encounter with lawmen," De Lima said during a testimonial dinner for the successful 2015 Bar examiners of the University of Pangasinan on Friday. [continues 515 words]
A religious group regularly visits the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) to preach love and hope to inmates and offer women and illegal drugs on the side, according to reports reaching Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II. "We have found out some of the possibly religious personnel who were conducting preaching inside the penitentiary have been used to bring drugs as well as prostitutes inside the penitentiary," Aguirre said, citing information he received from a member of a non-government organization and three NBP guards who visited him recently. [continues 717 words]
Drug Conviction Quashed A man who hid drugs in his rectum had his trafficking conviction overturned Wednesday because Sarnia police detained him for 43 hours waiting for him to defecate before taking him to a justice of the peace. In throwing out the conviction, Ontario's highest court also criticized officers for how they treated Jeffrey Poirier during their "bedpan vigil search." "I do not accept that the officers were acting in good faith," the Appeal Court ruled. "The manner in which the search was carried out was a flagrant breach of the appellant's rights." [continues 296 words]
When Mexico declared an all out war on drug cartels and drug dealers, they had a real war on their hands. Thousands, not just hundreds of Mexican citizens and criminals were slaughtered and the killings continue to this day because the drug cartels are not willing to give up the illegal trade. In the Philippines, if the situation is as bad as authorities have said: 80 percent of barangays infiltrated by drug dealers - approximately 2 million +/- drug users - and a billion dollar industry, then "You ain't seen nothing yet!" [continues 944 words]
A group of men met among the tombstones of a Paso Robles cemetery sometime in 2014. Two of them were lawmen from the SLO County Narcotics Unit, a multiagency group dedicated to tackling drug crime in the county. The third was a civilian. A man with a wife and kids and a past checkered by drug use and criminal charges. They were there for different reasons. The lawmen knew drugs were flowing into the county. They wanted to root out the criminals responsible for selling them and put the dealers behind bars. The third man was just looking to stay away from the wrong side of those same bars. [continues 3166 words]
WAVERLY, Ohio - Sure, some people grow marijuana in Pike County. And, yes, some people nurture the tender plants near clearings where the sunshine will hit them and where a water source - generally the Scioto River or one of its feeder creeks - is readily available. Increasingly often, though, people are moving their operations indoors, adding grow lights and irrigation to keep it all under roof, hidden from nosy neighbors and men and women with badges. This is not just a Pike County problem. Growing marijuana as a cash crop isn't uncommon in Appalachian communities, where the land is fertile and the opportunity to make money doing something else often isn't. [continues 1033 words]
UPPER DARBY - The life of Bernadette Scarduzio wasn't always a struggle. As a young girl she was active, played sports, enjoyed freedoms that most neglect as liberating experiences - the ability to walk without support, the dexterity to open a can of soda, the strength to climb a set of stairs. At only 36 years old, due to a rare neurological disorder, she relies on a motorized chair for mobility and requires caretakers day and night to assist with otherwise uncomplicated tasks. Strenuous physical therapy multiple times a week is simply to stave off the rapid effects of muscle degeneration. [continues 2753 words]
Law enforcement should not be allowed to seize a person's assets before there is a criminal conviction and a clearly established nexus between someone's assets and criminal activity. This very simple set of premises is completely rejected under the system of civil asset forfeiture, a practice which allows law enforcement agencies to take a person's property or cash with minimal due process and without a criminal conviction ever taking place. The practice incentivizes the allocation of law enforcement resources to crimes and strategies that maximize the potential for generating revenues that boost the budgets of local police and sheriff's departments. [continues 565 words]
The parents of a North Dakota State College of Science student found dead of a gunshot after working as an undercover drug informant want the FBI to take over the investigation. Andrew Sadek, a 20-year-old student at the Wahpeton community college, was a drug informant before he went missing in May 2014. About two months later, his body was found in the Red River near Wahpeton with a gunshot to his head. His parents, Tammy and John Sadek, who live in Rogers, have said they believe their son was murdered, possibly because of his work as an informant. However, autopsy results offered no conclusion on whether someone killed him or whether he killed himself. [continues 308 words]
