A former Tempe police detective had an affair with the target of an undercover drug investigation and outed herself and two other detectives as law-enforcement officers after having sex with him, according to a police report. Detective Jessica Dever-Jakusz refused to speak with investigators and later resigned. Police sent a report last week to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office recommending that she be charged with two counts of hindering prosecution. A spokesman said last week that the case is under review. [continues 552 words]
Case Boosts Effort Vs. Synthetic Substances Federal officials lauded a jury's guilty verdict Friday as an important breakthrough in the crackdown against highly addictive synthetic drugs that have been blamed for suicides and irrational behavior. Michael Rocky Lane, 51, was accused of altering MDPV, a powerful stimulant added by emergency order in 2011 to the federal list of controlled substances, to create synthetic drugs with similar effects to methamphetamine and cocaine. Lane was found guilty Friday of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute controlled-substance analogues and possession with intent to distribute controlled-substance analogues. [continues 573 words]
Officials Say Unregulated Groups Using Loopholes to Distribute Medical Marijuana Acting on complaints from other businesses, Tempe police targeted a group of so-called compassion clubs on Tuesday by serving a series of search warrants and arresting the owner on possible drug charges. Police found a stockpile of high-grade marijuana when they heit two houses near Papago Park in north Tempe that had been turned into sophisticated hydroponic facilities to supply the clubs. As police cut down row after row of mature marijuana plants in a garage of one of the homes, the strong smell of marijuana filled the morning air. The crop's value was estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, with 120 plants seized as evidence along with eight guns, a plastic bag with stacks of cash and three vehicles. [continues 949 words]
MOUNT HOLLY - A medical-marijuana supplier is dropping its legal fight to run a facility in Westampton. Compassionate Care Foundation Inc. instead plans to grow and sell medical marijuana from a site in Egg Harbor Township, an attorney for the firm said Friday. The nonprofit will drop a lawsuit it had filed over a proposed site in Westampton, said the lawyer, Steven D. Weinstein. The Egg Harbor Township facility, expected to open in Atlantic County later this year, would be South Jersey's first outlet for medical marijuana. A second state-approved supplier for the region, Compassionate Sciences ATC, has yet to find a home. [continues 230 words]
Chandler police detectives were selling 500 pounds of marijuana in an operation called a "reversal" when they became the victims of a botched drug rip-off in south Phoenix, according to court records released Friday. Two defendants in the fatal shooting of Detective Carlos Ledesma, 34, who were identified in the documents as Thadika Singleton and John Howard Webber III, showed police $250,000, demonstrating they had the cash to buy the pot. They showed the money during a meeting with undercover agents at a fast-food restaurant at 19th Avenue and Broadway Road in Phoenix. [continues 622 words]
When authorities smashed a street gang that dealt drugs and violence in Camden, they swept dangerous figures off street corners along Broadway. But the alleged leader of the Nine Trey Headbustas was nowhere near the scene of the group's crimes between October 2003 and January 2008. Investigators assert Michael Anderson, a high-ranking Blood known as the Original, Original Gangster, oversaw the Headbustas from a state prison cell -- his home since 1996. Anderson, a 37-year-old career criminal from Essex County, still awaits trial on charges that include conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering and multiple drug offenses. But authorities says the alleged ability to run a group like the Headbustas from behind bars reflects the growing reach and sophistication of criminal street gangs. [continues 1760 words]
Overdoses of fentanyl, a powerful painkiller commonly mixed with street drugs, killed at least 94 people in Camden and Gloucester counties last year, state officials have reported. The drug, thought to be made in illicit laboratories, is also blamed for four deaths in Burlington County, according to the state Department of Health and Senior Services. The agency began tracking fentanyl-related deaths after an upsurge in fatal and nonfatal overdoses in the Camden area in April. Officials reported 133 deaths between April and September, including 21 in Mercer, Monmouth and Salem counties. [continues 257 words]
In the crowded list of measures on the Nov. 7 ballot, Proposition 301 is barely drawing notice. But it could land those convicted of first-time possession of methamphetamine in jail or prison. Arizona voters in 1996 passed an initiative that made it all but impossible for first- and second-time drug possession defendants to be sentenced to jail, steering them instead to probation and drug treatment. Now, citing the rise of methamphetamine use, backers of Proposition 301 want voters to make an exception among drug defendants. [continues 315 words]
CAMDEN -- Two more people have died of apparent heroin overdoses in Camden County, authorities said Friday. Officials also said drug overdoses may have caused three single-vehicle accidents in Camden on Friday. With the latest deaths in Barrington and Gloucester Township, about 30 people in the county have died from apparent heroin overdoses so far this year, said the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. About 40 such deaths occurred in all of 2005. Scores of drug users have been hospitalized for overdoses this year. Officials believe heroin, usually sold on Camden's streets, may be tainted with fentanyl, a powerful painkiller. [continues 120 words]
CAMDEN - Two more people have died of apparent heroin overdoses in Camden County, officials said today. With the latest deaths in Barrington and Gloucester Township, about 30 people in the county have lost their lives to heroin so far this year, said the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. About 40 such deaths occurred in all of 2005. Authorities said it was not clear if the latest deaths were related to two previous waves of drug fatalities. Locally, heroin overdoses are blamed for at least two deaths earlier this month and for at least eight deaths in April. Scores of drug users were hospitalized for apparent overdoses during those same periods. [continues 136 words]
CAMDEN -- One man died and more than two dozen people were hospitalized after they apparently bought tainted drugs on city streets, officials said Friday. It was the second wave of adverse drug reactions in South Jersey this year, noted the Camden County Prosecutor's Office. Eight people died and dozens were hospitalized after apparent heroin overdoses in April. Friday's victims "were looking for heroin," said Bill Shralow, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office. He said a 30-year-old man was found dead of an apparent overdose in his Gloucester Township home about 8:20 p.m. The Blackwood man was thought to have died during the afternoon. [continues 230 words]
Teenage boys were used as mules by the Mendivil Vega drug ring in central Mesa, driving drug shipments around the Valley and throughout the nation, police said. "It's very sad that they have to get juveniles involved in their crimes. They're corrupting juveniles," said Sgt. Chuck Trapani, a Mesa police spokesman. "They don't wake up wanting to be drug dealers. It's a learned behavior." The boys were 16 and 17, Trapani said. They were used to protect bigger players in the ring from arrest. [continues 514 words]
It Overturned a Ruling Barring Name Change A marijuana activist won a round Tuesday in his fight to change his name to NJWeedman com. A three-judge appeals panel overturned a lower-court ruling that barred the switch sought by Edward Forchion Jr., 39, of Browns Mills. Forchion will appear in Superior Court in Camden to argue in person for the name change, which the Camden County Prosecutor's Office opposes. The appeals court said the lower-court decision was flawed because Forchion was required to submit his arguments in writing while an assistant prosecutor appeared in person before Superior Court Judge Allan Vogelson. [continues 166 words]
A judge pro tem was fired Thursday, his first day on the job at a Mesa courthouse, for refusing to hear drug cases. Arizona Chief Justice Charles Jones fired Marc Victor, a Mesa defense attorney, saying Victor "expressly declared his inability to be impartial in the application of the law and the disposition of cases before him." But Victor, a marijuana legalization activist, said he recused himself only on drug cases, not all cases. "I thought it was the honest, up-front thing to do," said Victor, who brought a six-page proposed "minute entry" with him to Maricopa County Superior Court, outlining why he believes drug laws violate the U.S. and Arizona constitutions. [continues 198 words]
The second trial of a Gilbert man charged with killing three people in a northeast Phoenix traffic collision hinges on whether he was impaired and if he was speeding. Prosecutors argue Justin Eveland smoked marijuana and drank alcohol before the April 30, 1999, collision at Shea Boulevard and 57th Street, where his Nissan slammed into a Plymouth and killed Richard Zielinski, 74, his mother, Catherine Zielinski, 94, and her brother, Frank Minarich, 84. Deputy Maricopa County Attorney Michael Gingold said in opening statements Tuesday that Eveland tested positive for an active metabolite of marijuana and "the defendant was speeding like a bullet that cost them their lives." [continues 308 words]
MOUNT HOLLY - All law enforcement officers in Burlington County face random drug tests under a policy announced Monday by the county's prosecutor. The program, the first of its kind in South Jersey, will cover more than 1,000 officers at municipal police departments and county agencies, said Burlington County Prosecutor Robert D. Bernardi. "The public is entitled to know that police officers are drug-free," he said. "When you consider these people carry guns and are entrusted by the public to serve them, that's the way to go." [continues 267 words]
The drugs, in sealed plastic bundles, flowed through the Boston area to communities such as Malden, Mass., where traffickers stored and sold marijuana out of a bowling alley. Or to Saugus, Mass., where police say one woman helped supply steroids to her son, a farm team player for the Chicago Cubs. Authorities say the drugs share a common portal: Arizona. On Friday, authorities here and in Massachusetts broke up the drug ring, described as one of the largest distributors in the Boston area. Police arrested three people in Scottsdale and 19 in Boston, and seized 1,000 pounds of marijuana in Scottsdale. [continues 557 words]
