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Blue Nitro Worries Poison Experts (The San Francisco Examiner
tries to launch a nationwide drug menace over a legal "dietary supplement"
and chemical analog to GHB, or gamma-hydroxybutyrate - a colorless,
odorless substance known as liquid ecstasy that allegedly became popular
on the dance club scene and has been documented as one of several
date-rape drugs.)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 19:56:42 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US CA: Blue Nitro Worries Poison Experts
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: compassion23@geocities.com (Frank S. World)
Pubdate: Mon, 11 Jan 1999
Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA)
Copyright: 1999 San Francisco Examiner
Contact: letters@examiner.com
Website: http://www.examiner.com/
Forum: http://examiner.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: Anastasia Hendrix
BLUE NITRO WORRIES POISON EXPERTS
Touted by its promoters as a euphoric elixir that can boost your mood,
burn fat, rev up your sex life and even send you off into blissful
slumber, a trendy new brew known as Blue Nitro has hit San Francisco.
But even as phones at vitamin stores and sex shops ring with requests
for the potion, police and medical professionals are warning that the
chemical composition of the liquid creates more risks than benefits.
After a few too many comatose patients started arriving at emergency
rooms across The City, the police are going public with their concern.
On Wednesday, officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the
Food and Drug Administration and the Poison Control Center plan an
information session to describe the problems some people have
experienced after ingesting the green, minty fluid being sold as Blue
Nitro, or Vitality.
Even though Blue Nitro is legal to sell, recent tests in the crime lab
raised troubling questions about its safety, said Officer Sherman
Ackerson of the San Francisco Police Department.
"We found it has the same chemical composition as GHB, which is
against the law currently," he said.
GHB - or gamma-hydroxybutyrate - is a colorless, odorless substance
known as liquid ecstasy that became popular on the dance club scene
and has been documented as one of several date-rape drugs.
"Blue Nitro is a chemical analog to GHB," explained Jo Ellen Dyer, a
pharmacist with the San Francisco division of the California Poison
Control System.
Commonly put in beverages, GHB gives users a feeling of euphoria, but
when combined with alcohol or in an overdose, it can result in coma
and other serious respiratory problems.
The same is true of Blue Nitro, Dyer said.
"My concern is that I don't want someone walking around thinking this
is the latest form of vitamin C that can cure the common cold," she
said. "This is GHB, it can hurt people, and they shouldn't do it."
Though exact statistics were unavailable, Dyer said there have been at
least a half-dozen emergency room visits involving Blue Nitro
throughout the state since December, shortly after samples were
distributed legally to individuals and sex shops in The City by marketers.
In one case, a 71-year-old man from Monterey said he mistakenly
swigged a few sips from the bottle he left on his night stand,
thinking it was water.
He ended up in the hospital in serious condition, though he has since
recovered. Several other cases - many involving patients who arrive
comatose and in need of intensive care - have been recorded at San
Francisco General Hospital, Dyer said.
It is especially popular in gay circles because it heightens the
sexual experience by making users "feel amorous, like you want to be
touched and touch everybody," said Shawn O'Shea, the former editor of
the gay newspaper San Francisco Spectrum. It's also much less
expensive than ecstasy and other street drugs, often selling for
around $10 a hit, approximately two soda bottle capfuls of liquid.
Rick Alvarez is the exclusive distributor of Blue Nitro, which is
manufactured by a West Palm Beach, Fla.-based company called Alpha
Earth Inc. Alpha Earth is one of about 10 companies currently selling
similar products.
Alvarez defends the safety and legitimacy of his product - which was
introduced just five months ago - and insists that Blue Nitro is not a
drug, as many of its critics claim.
It is a dietary supplement that must be used with great caution to
achieve the benefits with no negative side effects, he said,
explaining that that is why it is not to be sold to anyone under age
21.
Here is the tricky part: While Blue Nitro does not contain GHB, it
metabolizes into GHB inside the body, Alvarez said.
In fact, the company Web site boasts that the positive effects of Blue
Nitro "may be due to the relation to GHB." And it goes on to assert
that the liquid is not toxic and "like GHB is 100% safe when taken as
directed." It also includes a disclaimer - in capital letters and with
exclamation points - that it should never be taken with alcohol or any
drugs.
"This product, when taken properly, does not have any negative side
effects," Alvarez said from his home in Miami.
"But if you abuse it, there is a dark side, no question about it, and
we will never deny that. You're always going to find somebody who
abuses it, just like you can walk into a liquor store and find someone
who will abuse something there."
It is the handful of cases where the product guidelines have not been
followed that gain widespread attention from the press and law
enforcement, he said.
There are thousands of people, who - like himself and his wife -
regularly use the drug and enjoy its benefits, said Alvarez.
"We use it safely as recommended and have great benefits from losing
weight to sleeping in the deepest stage of sleep so we have a lot of
energy," he said, adding that it has also proved to be an incredible
sexual enhancer.
Alvarez also points out that FDA officials in Florida, Alabama and
Georgia have purchased several bottles and sent inspectors down to the
manufacturing plant since the product was first created in August and
have yet to halt its production.
Meanwhile, the popularity of Blue Nitro continues to soar, according
to Alvarez, who heads a national network of 10 distributors.
Last week, for example, he said, he sold nearly 5,000 bottles of Blue
Nitro and the numbers keep climbing every week.
Even shop owners who don't sell the product are growing aware of the
demand for it.
Andy Nevarez, who works at Great Earth Vitamins on Castro Street, said
his store will not sell Blue Nitro but receives daily inquiries from
those looking to buy a bottle for the suggested retail price of
$64.95. "We get lots of requests for it, sometimes as many as three
calls in a day," he said. "I have tried it myself and it is the
nastiest thing in the world. I was sweating, cold, dizzy. It was terrible."
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Execution Of Farris Would Be Big Mistake (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram columnist
Bob Ray Sanders urges Texans to ask Governor George W. Bush to stop the
execution of Troy Dale Farris, convicted of the December 1983 slaying of a
Tarrant County deputy sheriff. Because his case involved an obviously bungled
investigation, destroyed and/or tampered evidence and, at the least,
misstatements by a law enforcement official, Farris should be a free man
today. One complication in the case involves marijuana discovered on the
slain deputy.)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 19:38:15 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US TX: Column: Execution Of Farris Would Be Big Mistake
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: adbryan@onramp.net
Pubdate: Mon, 11 Jan 1999
Source: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (TX)
Contact: letters@star-telegram.com
Website: http://www.star-telegram.com/
Forum: http://www.star-telegram.com/comm/forums/
Copyright: 1999 Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas
Author: Bob Ray Sanders
EXECUTION OF FARRIS WOULD BE BIG MISTAKE
The state of Texas, preparing for the Wednesday execution of Troy Dale
Farris, is about to make an unforgivable mistake.
All Texans should take note of this case, especially Gov. George W. Bush,
the Board of Pardons and Paroles, the Legislature, and all those who view
capital punishment as a God-given ritual to punish sinners, even if the
wrong person is executed.
Farris, found guilty of the December 1983 slaying of a Tarrant County deputy
sheriff, should not be executed. Period.
Frankly, I don't know if he is innocent or guilty of the crime. But I do
know that no one -- absolutely `no one' -- should ever be found guilty of a
crime based on the evidence (or lack thereof) presented in Farris' case,
much less put to death.
Because his case involved an obviously bungled investigation, destroyed
and/or tampered evidence and, at the least, misstatements by a law
enforcement official, Farris should be a free man today.
Deputy Clark Rosenbalm Jr. was shot to death on an isolated road near
Saginaw after, police said, he interrupted a drug transaction involving
Farris, Vance Nation and Charles Lowder.
Eleven months after the killing, someone told police that Nation had
mentioned the shooting at a party. That led to the arrest of the three men,
who were charged with capital murder.
Nation would testify that he thought Farris had shot the deputy, and Farris'
former brother-in-law, Jimmy Daniel, testified that Farris had confessed the
killing to him, and said he had thrown the .357- caliber Magnum pistol into
Marine Creek.
Divers "trained in underwater investigation systematically searched" Marine
Creek, but never found the gun.
Daniel also took officers to an area where he said Farris had fired
.357-caliber bullets into a tree trunk about a year earlier, but the .357
rifling marks on those slugs did not match the ones that were recovered from
Rosenbalm's body.
Farris, in an interview with `Star-Telegram reporter Jack Douglas Jr., said
that, as he drove away from the scene, he saw Nation tackle the officer. And
Lowder told Douglas that he believes the officer was killed by someone else
after all three men had driven away.
About a year after the trial, capital murder charges were dropped against
Nation. He did, however, plead guilty to possession of marijuana and was
given a seven-year probated sentence. Capital murder charges were also
dropped against Lowder, who was granted immunity in the case.
Complicating the case even more was the fact that marijuana was discovered
on the slain deputy, and investigators had a long discussion at the homicide
scene about what to do with it.
Sheriff's Capt. Johnny Prince initially said he took the marijuana from
Rosenbalm's coat pocket, but he would tell at least three different stories
about what happened to it. Regardless, the evidence disappeared from the
crime scene.
Prince took the Fifth Amendment in Farris' trial. Subsequently, he was
indicted on perjury charges, but a special prosecutor recommended that he
not be tried because of lack of evidence. The prosecutor also recommended
that Prince not be returned to the Sheriff's Department.
Today, he is a captain in that department.
Even the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, in an opinion that upheld Farris'
conviction and sentencing, noted: "the circumstantial and forensic evidence
offered at trial not only failed to connect [Farris] with the killing of
Rosenbalm, but also failed in nearly all material respects to confirm the
testimony" of Nation and Daniel.
The opinion goes on to state, "We are not unmindful that Daniel's
credibility was seriously undermined by the fact that he had previously
testified under oath before the Grand Jury in a manner inconsistent with his
trial testimony and, therefore, inconsistent with [Farris'] guilt." Despite
that finding, the court said Farris' alleged confession to Daniel was enough
to uphold his conviction. In 1994, Farris was just hours away from execution
when he received a stay.
But by the time the appeals court acknowledged in 1994 that it had made a
mistake on at least one of the 12 points of Farris' appeal -- the trial
court erred by disqualifying one juror -- Farris' case was already in the
federal courts.
Now, after 13 years on Death Row for a crime he says he did not commit (and
which the state did not prove he committed), Farris is just days away from
being put to death by lethal injection.
There were too many errors made in this case, and too many questions still
remain.
Justice screams for this execution to be stopped.
Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.
(817) 390-7775 Send your comments to bobray@star-telegram.com
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The Flip Side Of A Fair Trial (The second part of a five-part series
on prosecutorial misconduct, in the Chicago Tribune, says a Tribune analysis
of hundreds of all types of criminal cases since Dec. 31, 1977, found 326
state court convictions in Illinois - 207 of them in Cook County - have been
reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. Eight defendants in Cook County
who had been sentenced to death won new sentencing hearings due to
prosecutorial misbehavior, with only two resulting in reimposition of a death
sentence. A Tribune study of homicide cases across the country also revealed
381 reversals since 1963 for two of the most serious types of misconduct -
using false evidence or concealing evidence suggesting innocence.)
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 16:14:41 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US IL: The Flip Side Of A Fair Trial
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Steve Young
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Contact: tribletter@aol.com
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Forum: http://www.chicagotribune.com/interact/boards/
Copyright: 1998 Chicago Tribune Company
Pubdate: 11 Jan. 1998 Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Author: Maurice Possley and Ken Armstrong
Note: This is the second part of a five-part series on prosecutorial
misconduct. The first part did not make any specific references to drugs,
so it was not posted. This article has some drug references. To see the
first part, or other subsequent parts of the series go to
http://chicagotribune.com/go/trial/
THE FLIP SIDE OF A FAIR TRIAL
On his first day as a prosecutor assigned to a trial courtroom at the
Criminal Courts Building, Michael Goggin slid into the chair next to the
judge's chambers and his shoes struck a most unusual object--a bathroom scale.
"What's this?" Goggin recalls asking another prosecutor.
"That's for the Two-Ton Contest," came the response.
"The Two-Ton Contest?" Goggin replied, quizzically.
More than two decades later, as Goggin, now a defense lawyer, recalls the
moment, his original amazement is still apparent.
There was an ongoing competition among prosecutors to be the first to
convict defendants whose weight totaled 4,000 pounds. Men and women, upon
conviction, were marched into the room and weighed.
Because most of the defendants were African-American, Goggin recalls now,
with no small degree of discomfort, the competition was described in less
sensitive terms behind closed doors--"Niggers by the Pound."
Those were different days in the state's attorney's office at the Cook
County Criminal Courts Building at 26th Street and California Avenue, when
prosecutors were mostly white men who ate, slept and breathed their cases,
working and partying side by side. "It was us against the worst of the
worst," Goggin recalls.
It was an era where being politically correct meant being a part of Mayor
Richard J. Daley's Democratic machine. It was a time when the state's
attorney's office kept a chart of wins and losses, each victory earning a
prosecutor a green sticker next to his name, and each loss an embarrassing
red one.
It was a place where winning was so important and commonplace--Goggin's
record in one courtroom was 58 wins, two losses and two hung juries--that
the Two-Ton Contest evolved as another measure of success, with
African-Americans as game tokens.
And it was a time when some prosecutors hid evidence, overreached in
courtroom argument, reneged on promises, sat idly by while their witnesses
shaved the truth and, in some instances, were the unwitting pawns of
unscrupulous law enforcement officers who concealed evidence or lied,
according to a Tribune analysis of hundreds of cases.
Goggin himself was involved in six reversals--four murder convictions set
aside and two death sentences vacated--because of misconduct in the
courtroom. No other prosecutor in Cook County has more reversals in the
past 20 years, according to the Tribune study.
Gregg Owen, Goggin's partner in four of the reversed cases and now a
private defense lawyer in Schaumburg, says they did what other prosecutors
did. And they earned plenty of green stickers for it.
"Nobody told us to cheat. Nobody told us to do wrong," he says. "It was to
be smart, be tenacious. We were told we were the best prosecutors in the
office."
"I didn't do anything wrong," Goggin adds.
More than 16 years after Goggin left the ranks of prosecutors to go into
private practice in west suburban Oak Park, the Two-Ton Contest is long
gone. Prosecutors no longer openly refer to the suburban courthouses in
Markham and Rolling Meadows as "Darkham" and "Rolling Ghettos." And the
team of three dozen prosecutors at 26th Street has grown to more than 200,
with their ranks now including many minorities and women.
But cheating, misconduct, and in a more subtle form, the racism of the
1970s still persist.
As a result, about once a month, on average, for the past two decades, a
conviction has been set aside in Cook County because of a judicial finding
of improper conduct by prosecutors.
For the guilty, each new trial represents yet another opportunity to go
free by convincing a judge or jury that the evidence is insufficient to
convict.
In addition, the reversals exact a toll on victims and their families who
are forced to come back to court, reopening sometimes barely healed
emotional wounds. There is a cost in time and effort for investigators,
defense lawyers, judges and jurors in an already overburdened court system.
A Tribune examination of all types of criminal cases since Dec. 31, 1977,
found 326 state court convictions in Illinois--207 of them in Cook
County--have been reversed because of prosecutor misconduct.
Nearly half of the reversals in Cook County were for homicide convictions.
In addition, eight defendants in Cook County were sentenced to death and
won new sentencing hearings due to prosecutor misbehavior. When new
hearings were held, only two resulted in reimposition of a death sentence.
A Tribune study of homicide cases across the country revealed 381 reversals
since 1963 for two of the most serious types of misconduct--using false
evidence or concealing evidence suggesting innocence. The review of more
than 5,000 Illinois and Cook County cases covers all types of crimes during
the past two decades and focused on all forms of misconduct that result in
a reversal.
Most of the reversed convictions--93 percent--involved jury trials, which
prosecutors tend to win. A Tribune examination of court records shows that
in the 10-year period ending in 1995, Cook County prosecutors won about 82
percent of the murder cases tried before juries.
And while the number of reversed cases is a small percentage of the tens of
thousands of criminal charges that were filed during that period, an
examination of thousands of pages of transcripts and evidence in the Cook
County cases reveals trial after trial where prosecutors cheated, lied or
spun out of control during arguments before a jury.
Not a single prosecutor has been dismissed for misconduct since 1990,
according to Cook County State's Atty. Richard Devine and his predecessor,
Jack O'Malley. Mayor Richard Daley, who was state's attorney from 1980 to
1989, declined to comment, but top officials who worked for him also could
not recall any firings. Michael Shabat, formerly first assistant for the
late Cecil Partee, who served from 1989 to 1990, said he cannot recall
dismissals.
David Erickson, first assistant Cook County state's attorney, says that
prosecutorial misconduct is rare, occurring over the past three years in
only an infinitesimal fraction of criminal cases.
"But even one case is too much," he adds. "As small as that is, it's too
many."
The line between misconduct and hard-nosed lawyering is thin and a matter
of integrity and self-control. Misconduct ranges from an overexuberant
argument to maliciously hiding evidence of a defendant's innocence. And it
is frequently the subject of fierce debate in appellate courts, with
prosecutors defending their actions while being condemned by defense lawyers.
Goggin, who rose to become a supervisor in the state's attorney's office,
portrays himself as a well-intentioned prosecutor who lost control in the
heat of battle, driven to win by a complex blend of factors, including
appeasing the family of a victim, earning accolades of fellow prosecutors
and "getting the bad guy."
Some misconduct, such as hiding evidence, is not easily discovered. And
other kinds, such as improper argument and bullying tactics, happen in
court, where judges have the power to declare a mistrial.
Misconduct occurs in the courtrooms of permissive judges who favor the
prosecution--possibly because of friendship or a get-tough attitude toward
criminals. It occurs in the courtrooms of stricter judges who, reluctant to
declare a mistrial and start the case all over again, attempt to correct
the imbalance with a rebuke.
"There are a lot of good prosecutors out there who want to win and can take
a loss," says criminal defense attorney William Murphy, a veteran of 31
years in the Cook County courts. "And there are prosecutors who so don't
want to lose they would rather win dirty."
An examination of the cases shows that no charge was too serious and no
case was too small--convictions have been voided for a wide variety of
offenses, ranging from murder, sexual assault and armed robbery to
resisting arrest, public indecency and even the sale of stolen pigs.
- Prosecutors Chris Cronson and Daniel Franks rejected a 62-year-old
African-American man as a juror in the murder trial of Peter Sims in 1984,
saying that at his age, he should have a better job than a stock clerk at a
shoe store. That explanation, the Illinois Appellate Court declared, was a
sham to cover their improper attempt to reject him because of his race. The
court labeled the excuse "ludicrous." Sims, who had been sentenced to 66
years in prison, was granted a new trial. He pleaded guilty and received a
reduced sentence of 33 years.
- Prosecutor Nick Ford told a jury that he would be fired if his witnesses
lied--a blatant attempt to use the good name of his office to vouch for the
witnesses. The act, combined with judicial errors, resulted in a reversal
of the 1995 murder conviction of Christopher Henyerd, accused of the
robbery and murder of West Side grocer Nick Martini. Two months after the
reversal, Ford was named a Cook County judge. The retrial is pending.
- Ralph Harbold, once a prominent chiropractor, is now awaiting his third
trial on a charge of murdering a wealthy businessman in 1981. His first two
trials were reversed--in 1984 and 1991--because prosecutors introduced
prejudicial evidence and made improper closing arguments. A third trial is
scheduled to begin later this year.
The 326 reversed convictions uncovered by the Tribune represent only a part
of the problem. Some cases are dismissed prior to trial for a variety of
reasons, including misconduct in the grand jury.
Reversals also occur in rulings by trial judges and in unpublished
appellate court opinions, neither of which are recorded in official legal
databases. In the past 13 months, there have been eight reversals in
unpublished opinions in Cook County.
Defense lawyers also say that when they raise a serious allegation of
prosecutorial misconduct, the issue is frequently resolved without an
official finding of wrongdoing or public exposure by cutting deals for
reduced sentences or immediate release.
Last year, a defense lawyer accused Cook County prosecutors Kent Sinson and
Peter Goutos of hiding evidence that one of their witnesses had been
promised a light sentence on a drug charge in return for his testimony
against accused murderer Bernard Benjamin. The prosecutors stood silent
when the witness denied in court that he'd been promised a deal, and
Benjamin was convicted. When the defense later learned the witness received
only probation, the prosecution agreed to a new trial, characterizing it as
"newly discovered evidence."
Some of the cases examined by the Tribune were never retried, but instead
were plea bargained for reduced sentences because evidence had deteriorated
or disappeared, memories had faded, and witnesses had died or moved away.
In one case, a clerical error resulted in a murder case being dropped
entirely. After the murder conviction of Henry Lee Thomas--accused of
stabbing Dorothy Terrell to death and dumping her body in a forest
preserve--was reversed because prosecutors improperly told jurors that he
had flunked a lie detector test, it was sent back for a new trial. But due
to an error in the Cook County clerk's office, prosecutors did not discover
the reversal until it was too late to bring Thomas to trial within the time
required by law. The delay forced them to dismiss the case.
And in some instances, the appeals process took so long that defendants had
already served their time and been released, rendering the reversal
practically meaningless.
Still other cases ended in acquittal.
The gatekeepers
While thousands of defendants pour through dozens of courtrooms across Cook
County, which has one of the largest court systems in the nation, the hub
remains the seven-story courthouse known as "26th and Cal."
Here, justice often is imperfect. And frequently, the Tribune examination
shows, it is unfair. Prosecutors and defense attorneys square off over
charges of drug dealing and robbery, sexual assault and murder; to cajole
and shout, to argue and debate, to wheel and deal, and, ultimately, to win.
The journey of a criminal case from arrest to conviction travels an often
lengthy and tortuous legal path. The reversals in Cook County show how
misconduct can occur at virtually every step of the way.
The key figure during the entire proceeding is the prosecutor, the ultimate
gatekeeper of the state's evidence and witnesses. The prosecutors control
the paperwork--the test reports of bullets, weapons, clothing, blood, hair;
statements taken from defendants and witnesses; and police reports. They
determine which of these items are turned over to defense lawyers, and when.
How does improper prosecutorial behavior make a trial so fundamentally
unfair that a conviction is set aside?
The basic right to a fair trial, even for those accused of the most
abhorrent crimes, was established in the U.S. Constitution with few
specific rules beyond the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Over the past two centuries, a vast array of rules of engagement have
evolved through decisions, usually by the U.S. Supreme Court. These rulings
control how juries are selected, what questions may be asked of a witness,
what evidence may be presented and what lawyers can and cannot say during
the arguments to the judge or jury.
Misconduct can occur before a trial and even before charges are filed.
In 1984, David Lee's rape conviction was thrown out because his confession
came only after Assistant Cook County State's Atty. Mark Schroeder told Lee
that his fingerprints had been found in the victim's apartment--even though
none of his prints were there. Although police officers are allowed to
mislead suspects during questioning, prosecutors, the court ruled, cannot.
Once charges are brought, defense lawyers are entitled to receive before
trial all information that could be viewed as favorable to a defendant, as
well as names and addresses of prosecution witnesses and their written or
recorded statements. Although it is a fundamental rule designed to prevent
trial by ambush, 25 convictions have been reversed in Cook County in the
past two decades because prosecutors failed to turn over such evidence.
Prosecutors also are responsible at trial for the acts of police and other
law enforcement officials who investigate crimes.
That was the case in 1995 when defense lawyers for accused murderer Donald
Kalwa discovered that for nearly two years, Chicago Police Detective
Richard Schak knew that a fingerprint lifted from the car window of murder
victim Rachel Rachlin--whose body was found in the trunk--did not match
those of Kalwa, but he never told anyone about it. Defense lawyers said
such a print could point to another suspect.
The concealment of evidence that suggested someone other than Kalwa may
have been the killer prompted Circuit Court Judge Fred Suria to set aside
Kalwa's conviction and order a new trial. Prosecutors Robert Berlin and
Richard Kayne said they were unaware of the evidence. Kalwa was retried and
convicted.
Some of the most insidious examples of misconduct in the Cook County courts
have occurred at the outset of trials when prosecutors reject jurors
because of their skin color. At least 22 different convictions have been
vacated in the past 12 years because prosecutors allegedly discriminated
against minorities in jury selection, according to the Tribune analysis.
In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case entitled Batson v. Kentucky,
provided a new test to determine whether prosecutors were keeping
African-Americans off juries. Before the Batson ruling, when the threshold
for proving discrimination was so high that prosecutors excused
African-Americans without the least worry of being reversed, juries in Cook
County frequently were all white.
Some former prosecutors admit privately that African-Americans were
routinely excused in the past because prosecutors believed that they were
more likely to accept assertions that police mistreated a defendant during
questioning. And some Cook County prosecutors still attempt to keep
African-Americans from juries, in some instances with judicial help.
In 1993, for example, the appellate court found that Cook County Circuit
Judge Ronald Himel had "coached" prosecutors Georgia Buglass and Edward
Schreiber as they scrambled to find race-neutral reasons for dismissing
African-Americans from a jury. In reversing the armed robbery conviction of
Robert Banks, the appeals court noted that Himel called the Batson decision
"poorly written, poorly understandable . . . certainly wrong . . .
ludicrous and ridiculous."
As recently as September 1996, the appellate court ripped the Cook County
state's attorney's office for perpetrating "the charade" that the jury
selection process has become.
"Surely, new prosecutors are given a manual," Justice Alan Greiman noted
sarcastically, "probably entitled, `Handy Race-Neutral Explanations' or `20
Time-Tested Race-neutral Explanations.' "
Such a book, he suggested, might include the following reasons, all of them
gleaned from actual cases: too old, too young, divorced, unkempt hair,
freelance writer, wrong religion, social worker, renter, lack of family
contact, single, lack of maturity, improper demeanor, improper attire,
lives alone, lives in apartment complex, misspelled place of employment,
unemployed, employment as part-time barber, unemployed spouse, spouse
employed as school teacher, failure to remove hat, living with girlfriend,
deceased father.
Crossing the line
Most cases of misconduct occur during the trial, which begins with opening
statements, moves into presentation of the prosecution and defense evidence
and concludes with final arguments.
It is in the heat of battle, during argument before a jury or
cross-examination, that the trial misconduct frequently occurs and is
either not corrected by the judge overseeing the trial or is so egregious
that a judge's rebuke is later deemed inadequate to correct the prejudice
to a defendant.
"That adrenalin rush can push you over the line," says Michael Ficaro, a
former supervisor in the state's attorney's office in the 1970s and now a
lawyer in private practice. Ficaro prosecuted two of the reversed cases
examined by the Tribune.
It happens, according to Goggin, when "you see a defense attorney
attempting to whittle away at your evidence. A fear starts to enter into a
prosecutor's mind that you might lose this case. You try to remember what
is allowable and what's not allowed. Sometimes the things you say were
already ruled proper or harmless and they now, under certain circumstances,
different judges, different fact settings, are held to be error and they
reverse the case."
Once again, the rules of engagement bend to the will and strategies of the
lawyers and judges in the courtroom.
A Tribune examination of the Cook County cases shows reversals occurring
before more than 80 different judges, with most judges having only one or
two such cases. However, two former judges--James Bailey (17 convictions
reversed) and Thomas Maloney (10 convictions and two death sentences
reversed)--stand out.
Maloney, now serving a 15-year prison term for taking bribes to fix murder
cases, was known as a hard-nosed jurist who was openly contemptuous of
defense lawyers and imposed severe sentences on defendants.
Bailey was considered a fair-minded judge, but also one whom prosecutors
remember as allowing them wide latitude. "He would let us say just about
anything we wanted to say," recalls one former prosecutor.
Bailey acknowledged that many of the reversals were the result of improper
argument, including two cases prosecuted by Owen and Goggin and another
handled by Michael Ficaro. "They were very good, but overly aggressive,
prosecutors, very flamboyant," Bailey said. "You can't do a damn thing
about it unless the other side objects."
Most of the reversals involved death penalty cases, he noted. "In those
cases, people get inflamed. They're usually very brutal murders. And on
death penalty cases, you had to have a perfect record or get reversed."
Similarly, some prosecutors take advantage of lax or incompetent defense
attorneys who fail to object when assistant state's attorneys step over the
line. The Tribune examination of the 326 reversed convictions in Illinois
shows that the assertion of prosecutorial misconduct was accompanied in
dozens of cases with a claim of incompetence of defense counsel.
Textbook example
When professors and legal scholars attempt to illustrate how not to try a
case, they often cite the murder trial of Mitchell Weinger. The Illinois
Appellate Court overturned the conviction in 1981. The prosecutors
involved: Goggin and Owen.
"That's the one they use at the seminars," Owen says unabashedly.
The opinion as first issued was a scathing indictment of Owen and Goggin,
citing more than 50 instances of misconduct and mentioning both prosecutors
by name--an unusual practice for an appeals court. Owen said that the
original opinion was withdrawn shortly after it was issued and rewritten to
lower the misconduct count to 35 and to remove their names.
The trial's fatal flaws included the prosecution's opening statement, in
which jurors were told that a witness would say the killer was wearing a
turquoise necklace. The witness identified Weinger as the killer, but never
said he was wearing such a necklace. The error was compounded when Goggin
and Owen elicited testimony from a police officer that such a necklace had
been found in Weinger's apartment, creating an impression that the witness'
identification of Weinger had been corroborated by the police officer who
found the necklace.
In addition, the appeals court cited 20 instances where Goggin and Owen
persisted in asking witnesses to answer questions, despite the repeated
rulings by the trial judge, Frank Machala, that the questions were
improper. The tactic of continuing to pose such questions was, the appeals
court said, designed to force defense lawyers to repeatedly object in hopes
that the jury would view them as obstructionists.
After the conviction was reversed, Weinger pleaded guilty rather than go to
trial again. He served less than seven years in prison.
"Everything I did in Weinger had been upheld in the past in other cases,"
Owen says. "I tried 64 jury trials and I was 62 (wins) and 2 (losses).
Goggin and I never lost together as a team; we won almost 40 cases in a row."
Rampant emotion
Sometimes overreaching by prosecutors can taint even the most
straightforward cases.
There was never any doubt that Richard Stack killed his wife and their
13-month-old son on a sunny Mother's Day afternoon in 1980, but because
prosecutors mishandled the case, it continues to linger in the courts. And
once again, Goggin was at its center.
When police arrived at the Stack residence at 6400 S. Kildare Ave. on that
May 11, Stack, shirtless and bloody, was leaning from a shattered 2nd-floor
window, screaming, "God died for our sins!" and babbling about "devils and
demons."
Inside the modest home, Carol Ann Stack, 22, had been kicked repeatedly in
the head and was stabbed and slashed more than 100 times. Shards of a
shattered pool cue were embedded in her chest. The couple's 13-month-old
son, Richard Jr., had been stabbed repeatedly and then hurled into a wall.
Almost immediately, Stack confessed, telling police: "I just killed my wife
and kid."
Ultimately, the case boiled down to a legal struggle over whether Stack was
sane enough to be convicted and sent to prison or whether he was so
unbalanced as to be found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a
mental institution, where he might one day be deemed mentally fit enough to
be released.
Twice the case went to trial and twice Stack was convicted. And both times
the convictions were set aside because prosecutors broke the legal rules.
In Stack's first trial, Goggin and co-prosecutor Ernie DiBenedetto fought
vigorously for a guilty verdict that would send Stack to prison for life.
By the time Goggin stood up to give his closing argument, the case already
was critically damaged by legal miscues, including the presentation of
testimony that Stack must have been sane because he invoked his right to
remain silent. It is a violation of a defendant's rights to suggest a
defendant's silence--a constitutional right--is evidence of guilt.
But Goggin's final address to the jury was a study in rampant emotion and,
the appeals court later said, a perilous misstatement of the law.
Lacing his address with explosive words and phrases--"butcher," "stomped
their heads," "cracked that baby's skull"--Goggin pointed to the bloody
photographs of the victims. "This case is about Carol Ann Stack and Richie
Stack Jr. being transformed from two living human beings into two mutilated
carcasses.
While such language indicated how passionately Goggin wanted a criminal
conviction, none of it was outside the bounds of fairness. It was what he
said next that crossed the line, the court said.
"We all have responsibilities," Goggin declared. "And you will live with
your decision today and so will the rest of us in our society. And so will
the rest of the people from that neighborhood--if you let him escape
responsibility for his crime."
The jury heeded Goggin's words, convicting Stack of murder. But two years
later, in 1984, an appeals court ordered a new trial, saying, in part,
Goggin misstated the law by suggesting that a verdict of not guilty by
reason of insanity would set Stack free to return to the community.
Stack was convicted for a second time in 1987. Once more, the conviction
was set aside because DiBenedetto and his co-prosecutor, Richard Stock,
repeated Goggin's mistake, telling jurors they had to convict Stack to
avoid the possibility he would go free.
In reversing the case for a second time, Appellate Court Justice Calvin
Campbell noted, "It is regrettable that the victim's family will be forced
to endure a third trial. The people of the state of Illinois, including the
victim's family, are not well served by prosecutorial misconduct."
When the third trial concluded in 1996, Stack was convicted again. The case
is now on appeal and defense lawyers contend that prosecutors Charles Burns
and John Murphy presented evidence of Stack's post-arrest silence before
the jury--an error that contributed to the reversal of the first trial.
The state denies any misconduct occurred. Burns is now a judge.
Missteps in closing arguments have become the prosecutorial error cited
most frequently--108 times out of 207 reversals--in Cook County cases in
the past 20 years.
The close of a trial is when the pressure reaches its zenith, when even the
most experienced prosecutors--perhaps wearied by stress and fearful of an
acquittal--are overcome by adrenalin, sarcasm and fear of losing.
In the past 20 years, prosecutors have been criticized for referring to
defense lawyers as "slicksters" and "hired guns" and for branding
defendants as "scum" and a "lying, raping, attempt-murdering dog." In one
case, a conviction was reversed because the prosecutor asked the jury to
remember, as they deliberated, that if they acquitted the defendant, he was
"just an `L' ride" from their front door.
Erickson, who was an assistant Cook County state's attorney and then a
judge before resigning to work for Devine, summed up how it happens.
"You've tried a tremendous case. You've got a ton of evidence. You've got
an eyewitness. You've got a fingerprint. You've got a confession," he said.
"And then you get up in closing argument and you go nuts on the guy. You
start saying things over and over that you don't have to say because you've
proved it 12 times over. What you wind up with is an overkill process where
your case is reversed and sent back."
Owen pursued victories with an almost religious fervor that was born of a
loss in his second jury trial.
"It was an armed robbery and we lost," he recalls. "A year later, one of
the defendants who had been acquitted in my case broke into a man's house
and killed him. I felt responsible for the death of that man."
Owen prayed before closing arguments.
"I said, `Lord, if this guy didn't do it, don't give me the strength to do
this.' I was like a crusader and the Lord was on my side.
"All I cared about was making sure the defendant would not hit the street,"
he says. "There ain't no appeal if I lose."
***
TRIAL & ERROR
THE SERIES
PART 1. TIPPING THE SCALES
A Tribune investigation finds 381 people who had homicide verdicts
overturned because of prosecutor misconduct since 1963.
TODAY'S INSTALLMENT
PART 2. WINNING AT ALL COSTS
About once a month for the past 20 years, a Cook County conviction has been
reversed because of prosecutor misconduct.
PART 3. THE CRUZ CASE
Prosecutions of Rolando Cruz now defendants in historic DuPage trial.
PART 4. PROFILE OF A PROSECUTOR
Ex-prosecutor Scott Arthur and the Ford Heights 4 case.
PART 5. REWARDING MISCONDUCT
The consequence of misconduct? A better job.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Mainers likely to vote on medical use of marijuana (Without explaining how
or why, Foster's Daily Democrat, in Dover, New Hampshire, says the proposal
by Mainers for Medical Rights will first go before state lawmakers. If the
Legislature does not approve the measure, it will be sent to a referendum
in November because it is a citizen initiative. The latter part of the
article includes a medical marijuana patient's persuasive testimony
about the herb's effectiveness.)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 13:33:07 -0600
From: "Frank S. World"
Reply-To: compassion23@geocities.com
Organization: Rx Cannabis Now!
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/7417/
To: DRCNet Medical Marijuana Forum (medmj@drcnet.org)
Subject: US NH: Mainers likely to vote on medical use of marijuana
Sender: owner-medmj@drcnet.org
Source: Foster's Daily Democrat (Dover, NH)
Contact: letters@fosters.com
Website: http://www.fosters.com/
Pubdate: 1/11/99
MAINERS LIKELY TO VOTE ON MEDICAL USE OF MARIJUANA
By GORDON BONIN
Maine Statehouse Writer
AUGUSTA, Maine - Mainers will mostly likely vote next fall on a citizen
initiative to make marijuana legal for people suffering from certain
diseases.
The proposal by Mainers for Medical Rights will first go before lawmakers.
If the Legislature does not approve the measure, it will be sent to a
referendum in November because it is a citizen initiative.
The purpose of the initiative is to legalize the use of marijuana "to
provide important therapeutic and palliative benefits to many patients who
suffer from debilitating conditions resulting from certain diseases or
treatment of these diseases."
The diseases and side effects of treatment covered by the measure are
persistent nausea, vomiting and weight loss caused by AIDS or radiation and
chemotherapy; heightened intraocular pressure from glaucoma; chronic
seizures such as those caused by epilepsy; and persistent, debilitating
muscles spasms associated with diseases such as multiple sclerosis.
People suffering from any of these would be allowed to grow "a small amount"
of marijuana to meet their needs, under the counsel of a physician, without
fear of criminal prosecution.
Six states have already approved similar measures at referendum, most
notably California.
But even before the medical argument over marijuana can be joined in Maine,
the battle is "very much a legal one," said Dr. Dora Ann Mills, director of
the state Health Bureau.
"No matter how you pass it," she said, "you put health care providers in
violation of federal law."
The federal government could prosecute physicians and patients or revoke the
licenses physicians need to prescribe controlled drugs, she said.
Another problem is that marijuana is not certified by the federal Food and
Drug Administration, said Gordon Smith, executive director of the Maine
Medical Association. "Doctors are used to dealing with drugs whose purity is
certified by the FDA."
The Maine Medical Association has opposed such measures in the past.
The research on the benefits of marijuana is "very cloudy," Dr. Mills said.
Some research suggests that marijuana - actually a chemical in it called THC
- can help those with AIDS or suffering the side effects of radiation or
chemotherapy for cancer.
Michael Lindey, a 66-year-old retired veterinarian in Freeport, vouches for
the relief it provides.
For three months in 1995, he resorted to smoking marijuana to "allay the
adverse effects" of chemotherapy for cancer.
Though he is a cigarette smoker, prior to those three months he had never
smoked marijuana, he said in a telephone interview with Foster's Daily
Democrat.
In January 1995, Lindey was diagnosed with a "first-class case of cancer,"
he said. He underwent the first of two chemotherapy cycles from February
into April of that year.
The treatment was "pretty rugged," he said. But "I was grateful they treated
it aggressively."
He also underwent four operations during the two years after his diagnosis
to remove the cancer. After those operations he was given morphine to ease
his pain.
Lindey started the first chemotherapy cycle when weighed 185 pounds. By
April, he weighed 40 pounds less.
"That first cycle was a horror show," he said. "I had a lot of discomfort
and malaise. I had a terrible depression."
Though it is natural to be anxious and despondent right after a cancer
diagnosis, the emotions are "not helpful," he said.
"I was constantly nauseous," Lindey said. "I'd walk around the house with a
bucket in my hand because the nausea was so pressing, so unrelenting."
"I kept eating a lot of small meals all day, and then at night I'd lose it,"
he said.
The weight loss made him weak and contributed to his depression.
"Your clothes hang on you," he said. "Everything is down, down, down."
During that session he said he tried Marinol tablets, a legal medication
that contains the key chemical THC from marijuana. But the tablets "just
didn't work," he said.
Six months after the first chemotherapy cycle, he underwent a second. It was
during this cycle that he smoked marijuana.
The weight loss this time was slight, he said. "The marijuana alleviated the
nausea, minimized it."
And there was no depression, he said. "I had a will to live."
"The marijuana gave me a sense of well being that was not justified," Lindey
said. "But maybe that helped me."
"The restless anxiety was gone," he said. "You don't sleep well while under
this gun."
In the second chemotherapy cycle, he would "sleep in perfect peace,"
sometimes for eight to ten hours.
His "dosage" was just a few puffs each night, he said. "I never smoked a
whole joint."
Lindey dismissed the assertions that marijuana is a "gateway" for harder
drugs.
"Since concluding smoking, I haven't had a craving for it," he said. "Nor
did I have a craving for morphine after the four operations."
However, smoking marijuana without the guidance of a physician, Dr. Mills
said, can put a person in "medical jeopardy."
The marijuana could create adverse reactions in combination with other
medication, she said.
The Marinol that Lindey took is "grainy and shiny like a white milk dud,"
she said. "You chew on it like gum."
The chemical THC is absorbed through the skin in the mouth, she said.
However, some people think that this is less effective delivery than
smoking.
When it comes to glaucoma, Dr. Mills said, the research on how much
marijuana helps is "very weak."
"There is no medical efficacy in marijuana for treating glaucoma," Smith
said.
The American Academy of Ophthalmology has said that although it appears
marijuana can provide possibly short-term relief of intraocular pressure
from glaucoma, there are no long-term benefits, according to Smith.
For those suffering from multiple sclerosis, Dr. John Morgan, a pharmacology
professor at the City University of New York, testified in 1997 before Maine
lawmakers that marijuana helps relieve convulsive muscle contractions.
When a similar measure was before the Maine Legislature in 1997, the only
formal opposition was a letter from Gov. Angus King's administration, signed
by the Health Bureau director, public safety commissioner and substance
abuse office director. The letter asked legislators to "defer state
activity."
Measures legalizing marijuana "would contravene current federal criminal
law, creating serious uncertainty for the citizens of Maine and the law
enforcement community,'' the administration's letter stated.
Federal research on the medical efficacy of marijuana is under way.
The pending citizen initiative would mark the fifth time medical marijuana
bills have been before the Maine Legislature.
The 1997 version was rejected by the Legislature. The one in 1992 was
approved in both chambers but vetoed by then Gov. John McKernan. The bills
of 1979 and 1983 both become law, but each were automatically rescinded, the
first in 1981, the second in 1987.
Smith said the federal government must clarify and settle its policy on such
state laws.
"The feds are kind of a moving target on this," Smith said. In California,
the federal Drug Enforcement Agency took "an aggressive stance," threatening
to take away physicians' licenses to prescribe prohibited drugs but then
"backed off."
This is an issue that "really needs to be dealt with at the federal level
before states can clearly deal with it," Dr. Mills said.
Christopher McLaughlin, a lawyer for Mainers for Medical Rights, said, "The
hope is that a grassroots, state-led effort will convince the federal
government that it is a ridiculous waste of time to prosecute drug laws
against people who could benefit from them."
When those in Congress are faced with the "dichotomy" of federal and state
law, he added, "I assume they would begin to take notice."
(c) 1999 Geo. J. Foster Co.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Snaring Criminals In The Web (The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel,
in Florida, describes the work of a member of the Palm Beach County
Sheriff's gang unit, who trolls the Internet trying to monitor gang activity,
and to turn that surveillance into drug arrests.)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 20:28:41 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US FL: Snaring Criminals In The Web
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: General Pulaski
Pubdate: Mon, 11 Jan 1999
Source: Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 1999 Sun-Sentinel Company
Contact: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/services/letters_editor.htm
Website: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Forum: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/community/interact1.htm
SNARING CRIMINALS IN THE WEB
Detective Tracks Drug Trade With The Aid Of The Internet
Detective Mike Bowman is used to masking himself as a teen to catch
pedophiles trolling for little boys on the Internet. But pretending
to be a graffiti-savvy punk hip in the ways of the teen drug world,
was a new challenge.
But there he was, a relatively new member of the Palm Beach County
Sheriff's gang unit, surfing for the "411" on "gangsta" activity in
the south end of the county. Before he knew it, a 16-year-old girl he
began chatting up from Boca Raton was talking about "rolls,"
"marshmallows" and "beans."
"I didn't know what she was talking about," Bowman said.
It sounded like your garden-variety grocery list, but the detective
soon learned that those were slang references to Ecstasy, the drug of
choice among many wayward teens.
Just days later, Bowman and fellow officers arrested the girl's
17-year-old friend, who showed up at a Winn-Dixie parking lot west of
Boca Raton ready to sell a guy named "Mike" 10 "trips," or hits of
acid. Officers found 37 more hits at the boy's Boca Raton house.
"That's how easy it is to be Joe little 17-year-old and get dope,"
Bowman said.
Bowman has been able to file two more drug cases since that July 3
arrest using the same tactics, though in those instances, the young
men he met with tried to sell him counterfeit drugs. Still, he said,
the point had been made: Drugs have joined the wares available on the
Web.
The cases show how cyber-sleuths are widening their net on the
computer screen to catch more pedophiles, pornographers and con men.
At least in South Florida, Bowman appears to be the first to use the
Internet to try to monitor gang activity and to turn that
surveillance into drug arrests. Officials at the Florida Department
of Law Enforcement, the Broward Sheriff's Office and the Metro-Dade
Police Department say they have not yet used their computers in this
way. But they all predict that it will catch on with other cyber-
sleuths.
"It's like anything else on the Internet -- we're finding something
new every day," said Jim Leljedal, spokesman for the Broward
Sheriff's Office. "I'm sure that if a detective in Palm Beach County
is using the Internet to search for gang activity, we'll pick up on
that as well."
Bowman learned about online networking as a way to catch the bad guys
when he worked in the Palm Beach County Sheriff's crimes against
children unit. There he took a class on how to ferret out pedophiles
and child pornography lovers.
When he reached the gang unit more than a year ago, Bowman realized
the same tactics can be used to detect gangs.
He has so far been unable to turn his Internet surveillance into
concrete leads on illegal drug activity. In the process, he has
gotten an instant education on how accessible drugs seem to be to
Palm Beach County teens.
"there's mad s--- in boca!" one 15-year-old girl wrote to Bowman's
teen-age alter ego on America Online, using the lowercase letters
common to Internet conversations.
"easy to get down ther?" Bowman wrote back.
"i walk down the street 6 houses. n-e [any] thing i want," the girl
responded.
Nothing came of that July 5 conversation, but the next month, Bowman
hooked up online with a girl named "Dawn," who eventually led him to
Nicholas Schmidt, 20.
Schmidt, of Delray Beach, and a 16-year-old girl were arrested on
Aug. 14 when they pulled up to the Boynton Inlet prepared to sell
Bowman five iron vitamin pills at $30 apiece, saying they were
"emerald" Ecstasy pills. Both were charged with sale of a controlled
substance in lieu thereof, a third-degree felony.
In a police report, Schmidt said he didn't trust Bowman from the
start, but he decided to try to sell him the fake drugs because he
was in debt. He agreed to enter a pretrial intervention program to
avoid prosecution and keep the conviction off his record.
Even for the unsophisticated computer user, Bowman's technique is
relatively simple.
He opens up an account on American Online, and uses a screen name
that makes him appear part of the crowd. He first began using
"Tagit," a modification of the term, "tag," which many teens use to
describe graffiti.
Bowman makes up a profile, saying he likes to "roll" (take Ecstasy),
"spray" (graffiti) and party. He then looks up the profiles of other
AOL users and tries to start conversations with teens who either seem
the type to be into gangs or drugs.
"It's amazing how easy it is," he said.
To those who think the tactics might border on entrapment, legal
experts say entrapment would only be called into question if the
officers made an effort to put the idea for a criminal undertaking in
the mind of someone who would not otherwise be predisposed to crime.
Defense attorney Richard Lubin, who lectures on entrapment, said, "If
you are someone who is into the drug culture, and a law enforcement
officer merely puts himself in the position of someone who is a
buyer, that is not entrapment."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Police, for Now, Hold the Power In the Liberty City Drug Wars
(The Washington Post says more than 200 city, state and federal
law enforcement officials have been a powerful presence in one of Miami's
most chronically troubled neighborhoods in recent days, questioning young
black men on street corners, nosing their cruisers through the trash-strewn
streets, and watching the rhythms of life from unmarked cars. "Operation
Draw the Line" is intended somehow to pacify Liberty City's war on some
drug users, which has caused a dozen deaths in recent months, five
in December alone. Most major American cities have their versions
of Liberty City.)
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 18:54:21 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: US FL: WP: Police, for Now, Hold the Power In the Liberty City
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: DrugSense
Source: The Washington Post
Copyright: 1999 The Washington Post Company
Page A04
Pubdate: Mon, 11 Jan 1999
Contact: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Sue Anne Pressley, Washington Post Staff Writer
POLICE, FOR NOW, HOLD THE POWER IN THE LIBERTY CITY DRUG WARS
Miami Community Repeats a Pattern of Violence and Hope
MIAMI-The bicycles flit by the window of the Rev. Richard Bennett's office
in Liberty City, one of Miami's most chronically troubled and violent
neighborhoods. They are not ridden by children, but by young men who seem
too big, too bulky, for the small, low-slung seats.
"If the police come to catch you on the corner loitering, as long as you're
moving, well, you're not really loitering," explained Bennett, 42,
executive director of the African American Council of Christian Clergy.
"They're brilliant young men. They just need to get jobs."
The police have been a powerful presence here in recent days, questioning
the young men on street corners, nosing their cruisers through the
trash-strewn streets, watching the rhythms of life from unmarked cars. More
than 200 city, state and federal officers, overseen by Miami Police Chief
William O'Brien, have taken part in "Operation Draw the Line" to curb a
drug war in Liberty City that has claimed a dozen lives in recent months,
five in December alone.
"There are so many policemen around here, it's like the president is in
town," Bennett said.
Most major American cities have their versions of Liberty City, a poor,
largely black community with high unemployment that seems to make the news
mostly when there are riots or gang wars. Violence tends to erupt in waves
in these neighborhoods, sending children indoors to play for fear of being
caught in the gunfire and prompting shrieks of terror whenever a vehicle on
the street backfires. Then a spate of arrests calms residents or the
criminals slip underground again, until another siege begins.
So it has been recently in Liberty City, where last week was a remarkably
successful one for law enforcement. Early Tuesday, police arrested
peacefully one of Miami's "Most Wanted" suspects, alleged drug kingpin
Anthony "Little Bo" Fail, who was squirreled away in a West Palm Beach
motel with a couple of friends. During one of Fail's most notorious
exploits, in August, he was caught on videotape lunging over a Liberty City
store counter in pursuit of a member of an enemy gang; the 8-year-old
daughter of the store owner was wounded by a ricochet bullet.
"He went meekly," said Miami Police Lt. Bill Schwartz. "He's cooperating
and crying. There are other players, but he was a major one, and we are
grateful he is out of the picture."
Then on Thursday, U.S. Attorney Thomas Scott announced indictments against
two rival drug gangs that had operated in Liberty City, the John Does and
the Cloud Nines. The indictments, involving about 25 people, many of them
already in custody, ranged from money-laundering and weapons charges to
murder.
"Some may ask, 'Won't another gang just step up and take the place of the
John Does and Cloud Nines of the world?' " Scott said at a news conference.
" . . . We're willing to take them on."
The news brought more people out onto the streets of Liberty City Friday,
and an atmosphere that seemed freer and less tense, but no one seemed
particularly convinced that the community's troubles are over. They never
have been before.
"Those boys have no respect for anybody," said Larry Sims, a security
guard, shaking his head.
"I'm never really home and I don't really want to know what's going on. I
just keep my head down," said Beverlyn Carr, 42, a cashier.
"It's nothing new that's going on in Liberty City," said T. Willard Fair,
executive director of the Miami-Dade chapter of the Urban League. "It's
simply highlighted by the fact that several people were killed in a
specific time, but it's not new behavior. You can tell it's not new because
of the way we are reacting to it. We have developed a pattern: When
somebody is killed, we come and place flowers on the spot or if it's a
child, we place teddy bears, then we have a couple of days of discussion
about what happened. Then most of the community goes back to business as
usual."
Originally, Liberty Square was the name given 50 years ago to a low-income
housing development in northwest Miami near 62nd Street NW, which remains
home to about 2,000 people, Fair said. But Liberty City, as police and
residents view it today, is a much larger and more populated area,
including nearly 100,000 people and stretching some nine square miles north
of city center and west of Interstate 95.
It is unquestionably Miami's largest African American community, with 70
percent of its households headed by women.
As greater Miami developed, Fair said, Cuban immigrants tended to turn
west, toward the Hialeah community; Haitians went east and northeast; and
American blacks moved north. "It always has been a segregated community and
it always will be," he said.
Much of that has to do with the political and cultural nature of Miami. In
some measure, the attention bestowed on arriving Cuban exiles in the 1960s
distracted Miami from the civil rights and economic improvements that were
getting underway then for blacks in many other U.S. cities. Arthur Teele
Jr., the only African American on the Miami city commission, represents
Liberty City. He says local government has followed an immigrant-driven
"salad" philosophy, and that even today "lettuce remains lettuce and
tomatoes remain tomatoes."
Business owners in Little Havana or Little Haiti, for example, still do not
dream of hiring Liberty City residents, he said. In addition, the African
American community here, unlike its counterparts in Atlanta or Birmingham,
has never developed its own banks or insurance agencies or other major
businesses to provide jobs. Liberty City's dilemma is complicated further
by its lack of a solid business corridor; public-housing projects line one
of its main thoroughfares.
"What you have in Liberty City is a once very stable neighborhood with a
lot of homeowners and it still has one of the highest-voting precincts in
the state," said Teele, who served as undersecretary of transportation in
the Reagan administration. "But it has no industrial base, no job base.
It's a very vicious cycle."
The absence of tall buildings makes Liberty City look somewhat less urban
and menacing. There are fewer palm trees and flowering bushes than
elsewhere in Miami, but the pastel motif remains, with houses painted
yellow, lavender, aqua and pink. Coin laundries seem to operate on every
corner and small food stores dot the streets.
But it is the churches that are most notable. Bennett says Liberty City is
home to 319 churches, and 15th Avenue NW offers a large sampling of
storefront houses of worship: the Church of the Old and New Testament, the
Apostolic Revival Center, the Jesus is Alive Ministries Praise and Worship
Center, the Nationwide Holiness Church of Brotherly Love.
Vacant lots are still plentiful, remnants of the most recent riots here in
January 1989, which began in the neighboring Overtown community and spilled
over into Liberty City after a Hispanic police officer shot a black
motorcyclist. Sniper fire and looting were widespread then, and police
officers were pelted with bottles and rocks. In 1980, riots here left 18
persons dead and $100 million in fire-bombed buildings after an all-white
jury acquitted four white former police officers in the beating death of a
black Miami insurance salesman.
Through the eyes of Bennett, who moved here at 10, graduated from school
here, left as a grownup and then came back to work for community
improvements, Liberty City still has an air of hope. Good families have
lived here for generations, he said. Children flourish in the community's
schools. The drug customers who flock here, he said, are not Liberty City
residents for the most part, but people from elsewhere who use convenient
Interstate 95 to zip into Liberty City, make their buys, then leave.
Fair of the Urban League said his agency has devised a "comprehensive,
holistic plan" that he will take to the mayor in a few weeks to address
Liberty City's problems -- and, he said, hopefully, reduce the number of
"Anthony Fails" the community produces. It asks the city to "fix Liberty
City's infrastructure -- the roads, the housing, the job opportunities" --
and it asks the police department to keep efforts like "Operation Draw the
Line" in place for the long haul, something Chief O'Brien has pledged to do.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
DrugSense Focus Alert - Ann Landers (DrugSense asks you to take a few minutes
to write a letter to the syndicated advice columnist, responding to her
recent column saying "the laws regarding marijuana are too harsh. Those who
keep pot for their own use should not be treated as criminals.")
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 12:10:21 -0800
To: mgreer@mapinc.org
From: Mark Greer (MGreer@mapinc.org)
Subject: DrugSense FOCUS Alert - Ann Landers
PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE
TO SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, DONATE OR UPDATE YOUR EMAIL
ADDRESS PLEASE SEE THE INFORMATION AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS
FOCUS ALERT
***
DrugSense FOCUS Alert #93 1/11/99
ANN LANDERS SAYS "BE LENIENT ON RECREATIONAL POT USERS"
NOTE: MAKE A COMMITTMENT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN 1999. A number of Media
Awareness Project (MAP) letter writing activists are making New Years
resolutions such as committing to writing at least one letter a week
responding to articles selected from the DrugSense Weekly newsletter, FOCUS
Alerts, or any of our other news services. If you are willing to make any
commitment even a letter a month please send us a note to that effect at
MGreer@mapinc.org or post it to MAPTalk if you are subscribed.
If all of our letter writing volunteers wrote just one letter a month we would
generate over 30,000 letters in 1999. Since about 10% get published (see the
URLs below to improve your odds of getting published) that would be
3,000 published letters and likely have an advertising value over
3 MILLION DOLLARS!!
You CAN make a BIG difference
***
This week's assignment should you choose to accept it:
Ann Landers is read by well over _1 MILLION PEOPLE_ every day. Below she has
suggested a more sane policy on treatment of recreational marijuana users. Such
a courageous and sensible statement deserves accolades and encouragement.
Please write a letter responding to this important opinion and send it to as
many of the contact newspapers provided below as possible. All these papers
printed the Landers column below.
HINT: For best results DO NOT BCC: send a separate email to each paper. Most
papers will not print a letter that has been sent to them via BCC:
Don't forget to include your name city and phone number (required for
publication of your letter at nearly all newspapers)
Thanks for your effort and support.
WRITE A LETTER TODAY
It's not what others do it's what YOU do
***
PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER OR TELL US WHAT YOU DID ( Letter,
Phone, fax etc.)
Please post a copy your letter or report your action to the MAPTalk list if you
are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy directly to MGreer@mapinc.org Your
letter will then be forwarded to the list with so others can learn from your
efforts and be motivated to follow suit
This is VERY IMPORTANT as it is the only way we have of gauging our impact and
effectiveness.
***
CONTACT INFO
Contact info to respond directly to Ann Landers:
Mail: Ann Landers, P.O. Box 11562, Chicago, IL, 60611-0562
Website: http://www.creators.com/lifestyle/landers/writelan.asp
Copyright: 1999 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
EXTRA CREDIT - Send a copy of your letter to any or all of the papers below
that printed the Ann Landers column.
Thanks to Richard Lake for compiling this info and list
NOTE: Different headlines for this column create very different impressions.
The
San Francisco Examiner headline was misleading, besides making little
sense: "Marijuana arrest with intent to distribute hurts." The Santa Rosa
Press Democrat headed it with "Laws regarding pot too harsh." Big difference.
It has been reported by newshawks as printed in the following newspapers
(shown with column title (when available), and contact for LTEs):
Akron Beacon-Journal (OH), Punishment for having pot doesn't fit the crime,
vop@thebeaconjournal.com
Charlotte Observer (NC), 'Good kid' caught by harsh marijuana laws,
opinion@charlotte.com
Dallas Morning News (TX), Mother says possession of marijuana doesn't
deserve prison time, letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
Des Moines Register (IA), letters@news.dmreg.com
Grand Rapids Press (MI), Drug Addicts Need Treatment Not Prison,
pulse@ccmail.gr-press.com
Houston Chronicle (TX), viewpoints@chron.com
Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN), Marijuana laws are too harsh,
http://www.startribune.com/stonline/html/userguide/letform.html
Newsday (NY), letters@newsday.com
San Jose Mercury News (CA), Be Lenient On Recreational Pot Users,
letters@sjmercury.com
Spokesman Review (WA), Thirty years is too much time, editor@spokesman.com
The Blade (Toledo, OH), Pot charge too harsh, distraught parent says,
letters@theblade.com
The Fresno Bee (CA), letters@fresnobee.com
The Glenwood Post (CO), Marijuana laws too harsh, glenwoodnews@sopris.net
The Lansing State Journal (MI), http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/letter.html
The Oakland Tribune (CA), eangtrib@newschoice.com
The Paducah Sun (KY), jpaxton@sunsix.infi.net
The Philadelphia Inquirer (PA), Marijuana laws paint the user in harsh
tones, Inquirer.Opinion@phillynews.co
The San Francisco Examiner (CA), Marijuana arrest with intent to distribute
hurts, letters@examiner.com
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat (CA), Laws regarding pot too harsh,
letters@pressdemo.com
The Tampa Tribune (FL), Mother thinks marijuana laws are too strict,
tribletters@tampatrib.com
The Toronto Star (Canada), lettertoed@thestar.com
The Washington Post (DC),
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
***
US: Ann Landers: Be Lenient On Recreational Pot Users
Newshawk: General Pulaski
Pubdate: 5 Jan 1999
Source: Ann Landers
Contact: Mail: Ann Landers, P.O. Box 11562, Chicago, IL, 60611-0562
Website: http://www.creators.com/lifestyle/landers/writelan.asp
Copyright: 1999 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Contact: letters@sjmercury.com
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Author: Ann Landers
BE LENIENT ON RECREATIONAL POT USERS
[Snipped to avoid duplication. Please follow the link. - ed.]
***
ADDITIONAL INFO to help you in your letter writing efforts
3 Tips for Letter Writers http://www.mapinc.org/3tips.htm
Letter Writers Style Guide http://www.mapinc.org/style.htm
***
SAMPLE LETTER
by stuart kocher (stuart_k@HOTMAIL.COM)
Dear Ann:
After reading the letter from the mother in Va. whose son was arrested
for marijuana, I just had to write you.
America now has more people in it's prisons than any country in the
world. The current figure of 1.7 million Americans behind bars has and
will grow by leaps and bounds thanks to the drug laws in this country. I
don't understand how this nations congressional leadership can justify
this horrible waste of human life. 80 % of those behind bars are there
for non-violent consensual drug crimes. Most of those are first time
offenders with no real criminal records.
As a Christian, I find it hard to justify the destruction of these
peoples lives and the ruination of their families in the name of the war
on drugs. I am also at odds with the official position of my church and
have been chastised by many of our members for preaching tolerance of
those who use drugs and compassion for those with addictions. I have
heard many people say that this countries policies are morally right and
justifiable and yet I cannot find a single biblical instance where Jesus
would have treated the sick with as little compassion as we do those
afflicted with the medical condition of addiction.
The 'moral leadership' of this nation should be chastised for supporting
this unholy war fraught with lies and deceit. Could you find someone who
can explain to me the Christian ethic behind treating the afflicted with
torture and imprisonment instead of compassion and tolerance?
Sincerely,
Sick of the hypocrisy.
(CONTACT INFO)
***
Just DO It!
***
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REMINDER:
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related issue to editor@mapinc.org
***
NOW YOU CAN DONATE TO DRUGSENSE ONLINE AND IT'S TAX DEDUCTIBLE
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-------------------------------------------------------------------
Chasing Andy Sipowicz (An angry but well-written column in the Toronto Globe
and Mail by Spider Robinson insightfully criticizes the mindset of
prohibition agents in Abbotsford, British Columbia, who carried out a
marijuana bust while a children's birthday party was going on - after first
surveilling the residence for two hours. Andy Sipowicz on television's NYPD
Blue has been perhaps the most eloquent exponent - at least since Clint
Eastwood quit playing Dirty Harry - of the proposition that sometimes an
officer just has to "tune up" a suspect - that is, beat a confession out of
him, or kill him. Ah, "but only when you know you're right." That's who I
want arbitrating the complex moral dichotomies of our time, someone sure to
be infallible: an ill-educated overweight civil servant with a jaundiced
world-view and a 9 millimetre.)
Newshawk: Alan Randell
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Contact: letters@globeandmail.ca
Website: http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Forum: http://forums.theglobeandmail.com/
Copyright: 1999, The Globe and Mail Company
Author: Spider Robinson
Pubdate: Mon, 11 Jan 1999
CHASING ANDY SIPOWICZ
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? In the vernacular it means, "Who will police
the cops?" It has been a good question for a long time, as evidenced by the
fact that it's proverbial in Latin. The Romans were probably paraphrasing
earlier epigrams in Hyksos. There may even be an expression for it in Great
Ape.
Humans are inherently disorderly, yet crave order -- every blessed one of us
wants to be the ONLY one allowed to break taboos. The only solution ever
found is to separate out the biggest, meanest mothas, give them the best
weapons and the exclusive right to commit deadly violence, and let them
enforce whatever taboos the old men and women can dream up. What prevents
them from running wild? Innate moral integrity. . . plus the fear that OTHER
big men with weapons will come for them if they do.
And they will, if the king has half a brain. Nothing -- nothing -- can more
quickly or surely shatter a social contract than the general realization
that the police have gone rogue. Any hope of a civilized society immediately
becomes a doomed joke.
So we have to have cop-cops. But, oddly, we don't want them to be too good
at it. An entire generation of movies, TV shows and novels about cops, a
relentless onslaught of propaganda, has persuaded us that the folks in
Internal Affairs are the VILLAINS: the handicap the noble hero must bear in
his struggle with Evil. Internal Affairs officers are always depicted as
heartless swine who live to destroy a good cop's career, just because he
committed some trivial technical mistake while Doin' What He Hadda Do. "The
Rat Squad," they're generally called. Nothing could be lower than a cop who
would look to hurt another cop (merely because he disgraces the badge),
right? Ask any cop.
Can there be any clearer proof that deep down, most cops think of themselves
as at least potential criminals?
Requiring cops to adhere to the laws they enforce hobbles them, we're told.
After all, the other side gets to cheat. Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue has been
perhaps the most eloquent exponent (at least since Clint Eastwood quit
playing Dirty Harry) of the proposition that sometimes an officer just has
to "tune up" a suspect -- that is, beat a confession out of him, or kill
him.
Ah, "but only when you know you're right." That's who I want arbitrating the
complex moral dichotomies of our time, someone sure to be infallible: an
ill-educated overweight civil servant with a jaundiced world-view and a 9
millimetre.
In Abbotsford, B.C., a band of these secular popes recently surrounded a
house where they had reason to believe marijuana existed. Naturally they
were armed to the teeth and keyed up; everyone knows pot-sellers love a
shootout with overwhelming forces. This house, which they had under
surveillance for two hours, had a gigantic banner in the front window
reading, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY," and was surrounded by children playing street
hockey, who all cheered and went inside when a grownup yelled, "Cake and
presents!" Imagine the astonishment of the officers when, kicking the door
in and brandishing cocked firearms, they found a birthday in progress and
the house full of children.
It must have been during those two seconds it would have taken a reasonably
considerate fool to safety and holster his weapon that they received their
second stunning surprise: The dog they knew was there WAS THERE. The one
they'd had to pepper-spray the last time they'd busted this suspect in this
house, five weeks earlier. Who could have expected such a thing?
Furthermore, the dog had apparently spent the time practising transcendental
meditation, for he now evinced an ability to levitate and, it says here,
"bit one of the officers on the upper arm." (He was also a disguise expert.
Although the police swear he was a "pit bull," his photo looks nothing
whatever like one -- even his owner was fooled.)
But much had changed in those five weeks. Pepper spray was now out of the
question, even for a dog, so the officer's partner did what his bosses
maintain was the correct, reasonable thing: He blew the dog away.
Say that again: A policeman popped two caps in a room full of children to
save his partner from the bite of a flying dog, and his superiors have no
problem with that.
They refuse to say what kind of gun was used, so one must presume it was
non-reg, a hand-cannon. Children as young as six months were spattered with
blood. So were their parents. As I write this, the TV news just reported
that the police response to their loud complaints has been to arrest one for
assaulting an officer (if true, good man!) and criticize the rest for
allowing their kids to attend a party at a "drug house."
One sees the sad truth of this: They should indeed have known that smoking
pot is an activity known to attract trigger-happy idiots. It was in this
part of the world, only a few years ago, that a boy was shot dead for making
the fatal mistake of having a TV remote in his hand when officers kicked HIS
door in. They were looking for a pot- dealer who'd once lived in another
part of the building.
Nor has British Columbia a monopoly on this sort of thing. In Sunderland,
Ont., a foolish young man utters a threat against a cop. A few weeks later,
the officer and three other cops decide to discuss it with him at his home
at 8 p.m. They end up gut-shooting his father and kid brother. One cop has a
black eye, another "barely escaped death when a bullet passed centimetres
from his nose," even though there is no indication any of the civilians had
guns. The cops don't want to talk about it; there's a publication ban.
The hell with Andy Sipowicz and Dirty Harry! I want MORE Internal-
Affairs-type cops, with bigger budgets and broader powers. What a good
policeman does is a holy chore, and the power he is given is sacred: He MUST
be worthy of it. Otherwise good people start to fear the cops more than the
crooks. . . and then the Crazy Years come.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Birthday party raid is the latest SWAT fiasco (Kenneth Whyte, editor-in-chief
of the National Post, in Canada, pens a column about prohibition agents'
ill-fated home invasion in Abbotsford, British Columbia. The frightening fact
is that so-called SWAT teams mess up like this all the time.)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 20:19:19 -0800 (PST)
To: editor@mapinc.org
From: arandell@islandnet.com (Eleanor and Alan Randell)
Subject: Birthday party raid is the latest SWAT fiasco
Newshawk: Alan Randell
Source: National Post (Canada)
Pubdate: January 11, 1999
Contact: letters@nationalpost.com
http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary.asp?f=990111/2170893
Birthday party raid is the latest SWAT fiasco
Kenneth Whyte
An illustration of a SWAT officer popping out of a cake, holding and
firing an automatic rifle at a party of children.
A week ago Sunday, a seven-year-old Abbotsford boy had just blown out
the candles on his birthday cake when a police tactical squad crashed
his party and blew away his dog, Cona. The parents of 13 children who
were in the home are furious at the violence of the raid and the
danger it presented the guests.
They have a point. Police may argue that Cona is the author of his own
misfortune (he went out with a mouthful of cop). They may defend the
objective of the raid: Marijuana, heroin, and magic mushrooms were
found on the premises, and if the man of the house is convicted on all
counts there'll be a few more candles on the cake next time he hosts
his son's birthday. But storming a home full of children -- a home the
"tactical" squad supposedly had under surveillance -- is indefensible.
Caught up as we are in hysteria over personal security and crime
rates, we seldom look at the consequences of our cries for aggressive
policing. Yet the frightening fact is that so-called SWAT teams mess
up like this all the time.
A few years ago in Surrey, a 20-minute drive down the Fraser Valley
from Abbotsford, a couple were asleep at home when special forces
charged in looking for suspected drug dealers who'd moved out six
months earlier. Not long before that, a Vancouver tactical squad was
caught on videotape beating a blameless Chinese man they dragged out
of an apartment house; they'd got the wrong address. Also in
Vancouver, officers sent to evict supposedly dangerous squatters from
abandoned buildings arrived, armed to the teeth, to find a ragged
bunch of street people banging pots and pans.
But the lower mainland's tactical squads are rather harmless compared
to, say, their Ottawa counterparts.
Two years ago Ottawa tactical officers fired a packet of lead pellets
that finished off a suicidal man who'd refused to drop a knife he was
using to castrate himself. Earlier, they fatally shot a drunken,
mentally disturbed, marginally menacing man who wouldn't drop a gun
he'd been alternately holding on his shoulder and pointing into his
own mouth. Before that, in a drug raid, they plugged a man believed to
be carrying a dangerous weapon; it turned out to be a guitar.
Battling for the title of most dangerous tactical teams in Canada are
Montreal and the Ontario Provincial Police.
In 1995, a SWAT squad, forgoing warrants, launched a drug raid into a
Montreal apartment to find only a frightened mother and child. In 1994
an elderly and mentally ill Montreal man armed with a cement pick died
after being hit with a barrage of rubber bullets fired by a SWAT team.
In 1991, a tactical squad used an assault rifle to kill a young black
Montrealer they'd mistaken for a suspect in a murder attempt.
Worse still, a Montreal SWAT team burst in on a young family in what a
judge later called "an act of vengeance" for the husband's beating of
an off-duty policeman days earlier. The man was shot to death. The
Quebec Superior Court found that the tactical squad showed "supreme
contempt for the privacy of the home, and in truth, for the . . .
lives of the occupants."
As for the OPP, one of its tactical officers was in 1997 found guilty
of criminal negligence causing death in the shooting of Dudley George,
an unarmed native involved in a protest at Ipperwash Provincial Park.
In 1992, a 43-year-old Sarnia man and his wife were sitting in a car
by the St. Clair River eating french fries when a SWAT team opened
fire and shot him in the side. They mistook him for his son, an 18-
year-old murder suspect.
And then there is the famous 1988 rural Ontario case of autoworker
Bernard Bastien, who like the birthday boy in Abbotsford watched as a
tactical squad invaded his property and shot his dog, a beagle slow to
warm to armed strangers. Bastien wasn't thrilled at the intrusion
either and walked out of his house with a firearm; he was hit by 13
OPP bullets and killed. Officers soon determined they'd got the wrong
address. They weren't after Bastien but his suicidal neighbour. They
found him down the road and shot him twice.
There are many more examples of SWAT overkill (I am indebted to
reporter David Pugliese for most of the above). A sniper's near miss
on a blameless target in Gustafsen Lake, B.C. Children at risk in
another case of mistaken identity in Calgary. Members of a Quebec
Provincial Police unit charged with torture, forcible confinement, and
assault.
It's perhaps no accident that SWAT units seem at war with the
citizenry. These are paramilitary units, after all, trained in special
weapons and tactics for the purpose of meeting serious violent threats
such as terrorist attacks and hostage takings. They were first formed
in Canada in the mid-1970s to secure the Montreal Olympics against the
bloody terror that befell Munich in 1972. They have a mindset
different from conventional police. As one expert says, they think
"not about making an arrest but instead about crushing the opposition.
They treat everything like a commando raid."
SWAT teams, however, have now proliferated to the point where every
backwater detachment has one, and they're using their submachine guns,
night-vision goggles, and fast trigger-fingers not to battle
Palestinian terrorists but for routine police work. In Edmonton
tactical officers answer an average of 10 calls a week, a small
majority of them involving high risk of violence. Additionally, they
turn out in full costume to pull over drunk drivers and answer
domestic disputes.
Tactical squads have no business in day-to-day policing. They are by
their nature provocative. They raise the temperature, up the ante,
everywhere they go, and create all these mini-Wacos as a consequence.
These aren't the '70s. The substantial threats for which SWAT teams
were intended have subsided (if, in most jurisdictions, they ever
existed). The majority of them should be disbanded.
Those cities that have a legitimate call for tactical units need to
train them more carefully and deploy them sparingly. (Toronto,
interestingly, might be an example to the rest of the country. It's
Canada's biggest, nastiest city but I see no instances of SWAT
overkill there.)
Meanwhile, Canadians, and especially their political leaders (and
foremost among these the law-and-order lobbies) need to rethink their
enthusiasm for aggressive policing. The same attitudes driving the
boom in tactical work are driving the increases in armed officers on
our streets, and our tendency to respond with "zero-tolerance"
measures to all manner of public threats, perceived or real.
We've convinced ourselves, and our police forces, that Canada is a far
more menacing place than is really the case. Rates of violent crime
have fallen substantially. Canadians are by and large a civil, law-
abiding people. At the moment we're literally overwhelming the federal
government with our readiness to comply with its absurdly stringent
gun registration laws.
We can't have it both ways. We can't, on the one hand, call for more
aggressive policing, and, on the other hand, be outraged when Cona
gets popped at a birthday party.
Kenneth Whyte is Editor-in-Chief of the National Post.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Fighting Rising Drug Abuse Inside Mexico's Borders (The New York Times
alleges an increase in drug abuse among Mexican youth, especially with regard
to cocaine. A 1997 report by the Ministry of Health says that in the last six
years cocaine use has quadrupled among Mexicans ages 12 to 19, although
Mexico's drug problem remains small compared with that of the United States.)
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 14:44:43 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: Mexico: WIRE: Fighting Rising Drug Abuse Inside Mexico's
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: Jim Galasyn (blackbox@bbox.com)
Pubdate: Mon, 11 Jan 1999
Source: N.Y. Times News Service
Copyright: 1999 N.Y. Times News Service
Author: Ginger Thompson
FIGHTING RISING DRUG ABUSE INSIDE MEXICO'S BORDERS
MEXICO CITY, Jan. 11, 1999 -- If he could take control of the millions
of dollars Mexico spends each year to combat drug trafficking, Miguel
Gonzalez Espinosa would spend a little less of it on high-tech,
heavily armed operations at airports and along the border, aimed at
stopping the flow of drugs from Colombia on their way to the United
States. Gonzalez, who proudly calls himself a recovering alcoholic,
directs a small drug rehabilitation center in the downtrodden
neighborhood that surrounds the city's Basilica de Guadalupe. He sees
firsthand the toll taken by a less-talked-about, but increasingly
damaging problem: the rise in drug abuse - especially cocaine and
crack - among Mexican youth.
In just the last two months, his residential treatment center, which
relies entirely on private donations, has taken in 12 new clients and
is running above capacity, with 40 residents.
One of them is Gloria Acevedo, 15, who had been living on the streets
for two years, stealing and working as a prostitute to support her
cocaine habit. Marco Antonio Salazar, 19, arrived stoned after he beat
up his sister and was kicked out by his parents. And an addiction to
crack led Isaac Perez, 22, to quit his job, sell all his belongings
and steal cars.
"We are in a drug crisis up to our necks,'' said Gonzalez, president
of the Fundacion Dr. Sergio Berumen, the residential treatment program
named for a philanthropist who gave seed money for the center. "When
traffickers cannot get their drugs across the border, they sell it
here.''
Mexico has been recognized for years as a major transit station for
drugs. More than half of the cocaine smuggled into the United States
passes through Mexico, as well as much of the heroin and marijuana.
At a U.N. meeting about the drug trade last summer, President Ernesto
Zedillo characterized his country's crisis as one that is generated by
drug consumer nations, especially the United States. There are new
signs, however, that the number of Mexican consumers is on the rise.
A 1997 report by the Ministry of Health says that in the last six
years cocaine use has quadrupled among Mexicans ages 12 to 19. Among
patients at government-run treatment centers in Mexico City, whose
numbers have increased from 4,500 to 13,500 in the last six years,
marijuana remains the drug of choice for most adolescents, health
officials report. But cocaine, particularly crack, ranked second -
before cheaper choices like glue and paint thinner.
The government has responded to the problem with increased funding to
its own drug treatment centers. It has also created a public service
campaign called "Live Without Drugs.'' The campaign includes radio and
television announcements, educational programs in schools and a Web
site that answers questions about drug abuse.
In cities across the country, including Culiacan, Ciudad Victoria, San
Luis Potosi and Hermosillo, the police have proposed a program known
as Operation Backpack, which would allow them to search students for
drugs and weapons, although some parents have expressed reservations.
Parents have started community patrols around school playgrounds and
parks.
Compared with the voracious consumption of drugs in the United States,
Mexico's drug problem remains small. But to Gonzalez even one
drug-addicted child is too many. "Every day I see how drugs are
destroying young people,'' Gonzalez said.
As in the United States, drug abuse in Mexico is spreading fastest in
poor communities where unemployment is high and education levels are
low, Gonzalez said.
Ms. Acevedo, a flirtatious girl who dyes her hair strawberry blond and
wears sparkly pink lipstick, ran away from a shattered family. She
said her mother, a waitress, and her father, a street vendor, began
using drugs when she was just an infant. Both would stay away from
home for days at a time, leaving her to beg for food from neighbors
for herself and her three younger brothers.
At 11, she said, she began stealing her parents' drugs and hiding in
the cluster of fruit trees in her backyard to get high.
"The first time I ever got high, I thought, this is what life is
supposed to be,'' she said. "I had found something that would fill the
emptiness.''
She ran away at 12 and lived in train stations or abandoned offices.
Last October she nearly died from an overdose.
"All I wanted was drugs,'' she recalled. "Suffering for me was when I
didn't have anything to get to make me high.''
When it opened 10 years ago, the Fundacion Dr. Sergio Berumen
primarily served alcoholic adults, who needed a place to dry out so
they could go home to their families. Over the last five years,
Gonzalez said, younger people started coming for help, and they were
addicted to drugs, not alcohol.
Today, Gonzalez said, more than 80 percent of the residents are drug
addicts between 13 and 20. The white metal front door is almost always
left open, Gonzalez said. Residents are free to leave anytime they
please.
Group meetings are held five times a day for the residents to talk
with one another about their addictions and any other distress.
At a recent meeting, the 19-year-old Salazar spoke from the podium for
more than 15 minutes. This time of year is especially hard for him, he
said, echoing the feelings of many in the room.
It hurt, he said, that he could not celebrate the holidays with his
8-month-old son.
"I want to be with my family,'' he said. "But I am afraid of what I
would do if someone offered me drugs.
"I wonder if I will ever feel ready to go home.''
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Experts Question Strength Of Colombian Rebel Group (The Dallas Morning News
says there is a growing consensus that estimates of FARC's strength and links
to drug trafficking are nowhere near what Colombian and U.S. officials
are asserting. International human rights groups, including Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch, have accused U.S. officials
of exaggerating rebel links to drug traffickers in order to justify an
expanded military involvement. U.S. officials say they do not accuse all
or even most FARC members of involvement in the drug trade. Some government
estimates suggest that only around 20 percent of FARC members provide
protection for drug facilities and farmers.)
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 19:48:32 -0800
From: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org (MAPNews)
To: mapnews@mapinc.org
Subject: MN: Experts Question Strength Of Colombian Rebel Group
Sender: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Reply-To: owner-mapnews@mapinc.org
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/lists/
Newshawk: adbryan@onramp.net
Pubdate: Mon, 11 Jan 1999
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 1999 The Dallas Morning News
Contact: letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/
Forum: http://forums.dallasnews.com:81/webx
Author: Tod Robberson
EXPERTS QUESTION STRENGTH OF COLOMBIAN REBEL GROUP
But Drug Aid Makes Guerrillas A Threat, U.S. Says
BOGOTA, Colombia - It is billed in Washington as one of the most
well-trained and equipped guerrilla forces in the world, having used
drug-trafficking profits to finance a series of devastating victories
recently against the Colombian army.
But according to specialists in guerrilla warfare here and in the
United States, something doesn't quite add up about the military and
financial might being attributed to the 15,000-member Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.
Although the military prowess of Latin America's largest and
longest-surviving guerrilla group has been proved repeatedly in the
last year, there is a growing consensus here that estimates of its
strength and links to drug trafficking are nowhere near what Colombian
and U.S. officials are asserting.
"There are those in Washington who say the 'narcs' are FARCs and the
FARCs are narcs. But the evidence suggests that's not the case," said
Matthew Baker, chief analyst of the Austin-based risk-analysis firm
Stratfor. "I've talked to members of the U.S. Special Forces who have
been there, and they're just not seeing it in the field."
International human rights groups, including Amnesty International and
Human Rights Watch, have accused U.S. officials of exaggerating rebel
links to drug traffickers in order to justify an expanded military
involvement.
U.S. officials say they do not accuse all or even most FARC members of
involvement in the drug trade. Some government estimates suggest that
only around 20 percent of FARC members provide protection for drug
facilities and farmers.
In the name of fighting drug traffickers and their guerrilla-support
network, however, the Clinton administration will earmark $289 million
in military-related aid to Colombia this year, making it the
third-largest recipient of U.S. direct foreign assistance in the
world, behind Israel and Egypt.
That figure is dwarfed, U.S. and Colombian officials say, by the
largess being funneled to the FARC by international drug traffickers,
who allegedly are paying high prices for rebel protection of their
laboratories, clandestine airstrips and crop fields in southern Colombia.
"There's been a great debate over narco-guerrillas and whatever," said
White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey during a visit here last August.
'Heavily involved'
"The facts of the matter are that the FARC is heavily involved in
protecting, transporting and in some cases operating drug labs," he
added. "It's given them such an enormous source of wealth that
arguably their firepower, their pay scales, their intelligence
services are more sophisticated than that of the forces that guard
this democracy. And that's a problem."
The FARC's military dominance of Colombia's countryside was
underscored last week when President Andres Pastrana, joined by U.S.
Ambassador Curtis Kamman and hundreds of other dignitaries, traveled
to the guerrilla heartland to personally appeal for peace. Mr.
Pastrana already has ceded to the rebels a chunk of Colombian
territory more than twice the size of El Salvador.
In another nod to the FARC, U.S. officials met with senior rebel
leaders in Costa Rica last month to discuss the peace process, despite
what Washington asserts is the FARC's role in international drug
trafficking and terrorism.
U.S. and Colombian government estimates of the amount of money being
earned by the FARC from the drug trade have varied widely. Recent
Colombian news media reports have mentioned figures as high as $1
billion a year. Late last month, the Washington Post, citing U.S. and
Colombian intelligence sources, said the FARC was earning $500 million
a year from Colombia's cocaine and heroin trade.
"Those figures are not believable," said Colombian military analyst
Rafael Nieto. "I have no doubt there are strong links between the FARC
and drug traffickers. But I don't believe there is a 'Cartel of the
FARC,' as some suggest."
Little evidence
Despite having scored various military victories in the last year, Mr.
Baker said, there is little in terms of hard battlefield evidence to
suggest that the FARC is reaping huge profits from the drug trade.
Weapons that the army and national police have captured from the
guerrillas indicate the FARC is relying heavily on improvised devices
such as handmade rocket-propelled grenades or "poor-man's bombs"
crafted from dynamite wrapped around natural gas cylinders.
Although senior commanders were seen carrying modern automatic assault
rifles during peace talks that convened last week in the rebel-held
town of San Vicente del Caguan, the FARC rank-and-file more commonly
uses Soviet-era AK-47s or even older carbines, some with wooden stocks.
The combat boots worn by the rebels typically consist of knee-high
rubber galoshes.
And while senior Colombian military officers say the FARC pays its
fighters around $300 a month, or $100 more than an army conscript
receives, government intelligence indicates the FARC is relying
increasingly on forced conscription. That would suggest, analysts say,
that the rebels are not having success luring new recruits with the
promise of higher pay from drug profits.
"The fact that the rebels are using improvised weapons is extremely
significant," said a Stratfor analysis published in November. "There
is no good reason to use improvised weaponry unless there is nothing
else available. Improvised weapons are often unreliable, dangerous to
use, and less accurate when compared to standard military hardware."
The FARC's heavy reliance on such weaponry, the report added, "could
indicate that estimates of FARC income have been greatly exaggerated
or have recently fallen off. In either case, this would suggest that
the reported relationship between the FARC and narcotics traffickers
may not be as strong as is suspected."
Funds used elsewhere
One of the most prominent proponents of the "narco-guerrilla" concept,
former Colombian army commander Harold Bedoya, agreed that the FARC is
not plowing its drug-related income into the purchase of more
sophisticated weaponry for its fighters.
"They don't need sophisticated arms. They're winning the war without
them," he said. "They don't need to use their drug money to pay higher
salaries, because they force any peasant boy over the age of 12 into
service at the point of a gun. They take their drug money and invest
it outside the country, where nobody can find it."
Another analyst, Juan Manuel Charry, said a more plausible explanation
for recent FARC battlefield victories is not drug money but rather the
overall level of combat experience among the group's commanders and
fighters. He noted that FARC commander Manuel Marulanda, 68, has been
involved in guerrilla warfare for more than 40 years. Other top
commanders have received extensive training in Russia and Cuba.
In addition, Mr. Charry added, the FARC has selected remote jungle
areas to launch its attacks, limiting the army's ability to respond
quickly. FARC rank-and-file members, he said, tend to be recruited
from the areas where they are fighting. They are better acquainted
with the territory and have far more time to carry out jungle training
than the average army conscript.
"In my opinion, the guerrillas and the narcos are not one in the same.
They coexist only," he said. "Yes, the guerrillas impose taxes on
people involved in the drug trade, just like they impose taxes on
anyone else under their control. But these are peasant farmers, who
might make a few hundred dollars a year out of growing coca or opium.
If you collect money from them, that doesn't necessarily make you
rich, and it doesn't make the FARC an international drug mafia."
to the 1999 Daily News index for Jan. 8-14