Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Reno 911 strikes again We all had a good laugh a couple of days ago with the story of the undercover police selling drugs to the undercover Sheriff's deputy in Statesville, NC. Well, here's another one that looks like it came right from the files of Reno 911, this time from El Paso, Texas. The sheriff of Hudspeth County illegally detained a group of El Paso officers on a drug stakeout, then laughed as he told them that their operation was blown and they were free to leave, a lawsuit against the sheriff alleges. It's pretty confusing, but this is what I gather from the allegations in the lawsuit... The El Paso officers, who believed they were deputized by the DA to work narcotics in Hudspeth County as well as El Paso, got word of a possible drug shipment and set up a stakeout in Hudspeth County. Since the Hudspeth County sheriff doesn't come in that early in the morning, they couldn't notify him they were working his turf. They pulled over a car (the wrong one) and a Hudspeth County deputy saw them and asked them what they hell they thought they were doing. So they go back to their stakeout, get word that the Sheriff is trying to arrest them, decide to head back to El Paso, but get stopped in a Sheriff's roadblock. The Sheriff hauls them in and says they'd better let him know next time they work his turf, and then: "He concluded his presentation by announcing with a laugh: 'Whatever you were working on is f----d up now, and you're free to leave.' " So the El Paso narcotics officer is suing as a private citizen for, get this, a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights: His lawyer, Wyatt, said that "The Fourth Amendment protects everybody from being arrested without probable cause. In this instance there was no probable cause that anybody had committed a crime yet the sheriff of Hudspeth County ordered that several El Paso police officers be arrested and detained." Yeah, life's a bitch when you don't have Fourth Amendment rights, isn't it, Officer Dangle Short? When police can just pull you over and put you through hoops just because they don't like you, or they have a hunch you're doing something you shouldn't be... 6:44:18 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Cook County going to pot Again, i got all excited - today's Chicago Sun Times -- plastered across the entire front page is a picture of someone smoking a joint with the headline screaming Cook County going to pot If you're busted carrying a small amount of marijuana in portions of Cook County patrolled by the sheriff's police, you may get off with just a ticket. In a move that caught the sheriff's office off guard, the county board on Tuesday voted to decriminalize possession of less than 10 grams of pot in unincorporated areas of Cook County. Those are the parts of the county not claimed by Chicago or its suburbs. Oh. Still... Leading the charge was Cmsr. Earlean Collins, a Democrat who admitted her grandson was busted for carrying a small amount of marijuana. She said arrests like that clog the jails. "They got my grandson...he had a half of joint in the car," Collins said. "They stopped him. They took him to the police station. They impounded his car and let him out the next morning. Why do that? "A lot of kids make a mistake, have a little marijuana, and they can avoid going to jail or court." Yeah, it's a bitch when it hits your friends and family, isn't it? The measure still needs to be signed by Count Board President Todd Stroger, who said: "I don't know," Stroger told CBS2. "I wasn't paying enough attention to it. I'll find out about it later. I can't comment on it." 6:09:49 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Congress approves medical marijuana? ... wait for it ... I got pretty excited for a minute when I read the breathless news from Liberty Counsel reported on CNW: ... liberals in Congress have nonetheless passed a $768 million dollar Financial Services Appropriations bill [^] without allowing debate [^] that will force taxpayers to pay for the destruction of innocent human life in the District of Columbia. Additionally, the bill [^] which President Obama supports [^] would legalize medical marijuana, fund a needle exchange program to provide intravenous drug addicts with clean needles to continue injecting illicit and often deadly drugs, eliminate money previously allocated for a drug prevention campaign... Still... Too bad about taxpayers funding the prohibition apparatus that keeps killing innocents in the drug war, but the rest of that sounded pretty good. Why haven't I heard that much about his in other sources? Ah, it turns out the Liberty Counsel isn't a libertarian group, the CNW is the Christian News Wire, and the legalized medical marijuana is merely about lifting the ban that prevents DC residents from voting on it for their district. 5:03:15 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []