Drug agents sniffed out a major marijuana patch at Palomar Mountain State Park a few months ago in the kind of raid that has become all too common on U.S. public lands. What officials initially thought might be a few hundred plants ended up being 15,000. Police also found two men and a woman tending the plots, whose yield would have been worth $60 million on the street. The crop tenders scampered into the woods, leaving behind trash and terraces they had formed on the hillside. Initial repairs to such an area can cost taxpayers $10,000 per acre for staff time and a helicopter to haul away garbage, said the Office of National Drug Control Policy. On average, ten acres are fouled for every acre of marijuana planted in forests and on other public lands, the agency said. [continues 1357 words]
A year before the North Richland Hills SWAT team shot and killed Troy Davis, two of the team's members told superiors they were concerned that lax standards for the unit could leave it vulnerable to lawsuits. Team leader Joe Walley asked his superiors to let him write standard operating procedures. He would later testify that he was "very uncomfortable going out on the street at night ... doing a tactical operation without anything to go on." Another officer returned from a national sniper school and warned that almost everything the SWAT team did was wrong. The Police Department had no objective criteria for choosing team members. No written exam. No psychiatric profiles. Those on the team didn't have to shoot better or be in better physical shape than other officers. [continues 1521 words]
GRAPEVINE - Flanked by his wife and his attorney, former Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin apologized to his fans and thanked God for delivering him from a drug charge that was tainted by faulty police work. "Make no mistake about it, I shouldn't have been in that apartment," Irvin said. "I have no doubt we would have won, but quite honestly, God stepped in." Irvin said that he has not decided whether to pursue a civil case and that he has forgiven the officers who handcuffed him. But his attorney said the police violated the Constitution by searching the apartment without a warrant. [continues 695 words]
Jim Spurlock is an unlikely activist. The prosperous airplane broker is a private pilot and a lifelong Republican. Since 1976, he has spent much of his time in an office at Fort Worth Meacham Airport putting airplane buyers in touch with owners, sometimes spending months arranging a single purchase. But in 1991 and 1992, the U.S. Customs Service seized two of his customers' jets because of a paperwork error. Spurlock said he spent nine months and thousands of dollars getting them returned. He said he learned that basic legal principles, such as presumption of innocence, could be upended by federal asset forfeiture laws. [continues 1006 words]
A month ago, 17 police officers converged on a brick home in a middle-class neighborhood in North Richland Hills. Without warning, they broke through the front door. Minutes later, 25-year-old Troy Davis was dead, shot in the chest. Police said he had pointed a loaded handgun at two officers, one of whom shot him. In the Davis case, as in many cases around the country, police said they used the "no-knock" entry for their search to protect officers from potential harm. [continues 1486 words]
NORTH RICHLAND HILLS -- Three weeks after true-crime writer Barbara Davis' son was killed in a drug raid, police and city officials are refusing to release key information about the case. Police and the city attorney won't say exactly how much marijuana was found during a search of the Davis property, where the drugs were found, or what else was seized after police battered down a door Dec. 15. Nor has the Police Department turned in its inventory of the search to the Tarrant County district clerk's office, which is standard procedure. [continues 985 words]
GRAND PRAIRIE -- Kristen Taylor's family urged her friends to remember the fearless, loving person she was before drugs took her life, and to try to help other young people struggling with heroin addiction. "This is a sickness, an epidemic," her sister Kiersten Taylor told mourners who packed Shady Grove Church yesterday afternoon for Kristen's funeral. "We have to come together and do something about this, because it is not going away." Kristen Taylor -- whose father, Tommy, called her "Krissy" -- battled a heroin addiction for three years before being found unconscious Tuesday at the North Richland Hills motel where she lived. She was pronounced dead on arrival at North Hills Hospital. Police have called the death an overdose, apparently of heroin, but an investigation is continuing. [continues 763 words]
