Archive for the ‘War on Drugs’ Category

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Legislating morality

February 8, 2014

Here’s an interesting article at Slate about the Noble Experiment as its supporters called it.

The Chemist’s War

It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.

Before hospital staff realized how sick he was—the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom—the man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.

Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Daniel Okrent’s book Last Call is an interesting history of Prohibition (though I found it a little verbose).

It’s amazing what people will do when they start doubling down on a bad bet. You have to wonder, don’t you, why anyone felt they should conduct such an experiment – much less try to conduct it using these means. What had become of their sense of humanity? Evidently they felt that the Power of the Majority was a license to kill.

To quote Mencken: "I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave."

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Policing for profit (2)

February 3, 2014

Another good clip from the Institute for Justice.

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Policing for Profit

November 24, 2013

This snippet comes from the latest article in a series of reports on Policing for Profit by reporter Phil Williams with WTVF in Nashville, Tennessee. Mister Williams has done quite a job reporting on this topic.

There’s video at the link (and for all of his reports, I believe).

Task Force Head Claims ‘Terrorism’ Behind $160,000 Seizure

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — There was stunning testimony Wednesday before a state Senate committee as a local drug task force found itself facing tough questions.

The director of the 23rd Judicial District Drug Task Force responded to those questions — about whether his agency was “policing for profit” — with new claims that agents are really taking money out of the hands of terrorists.

While there’s absolutely no evidence that the terrorism claim is true, the task force director ended up inadvertently conceding that interstate interdiction units do indeed have a profit motive.

“You said if the money is not there they could potentially lose their jobs or they could potentially lose those bonuses,” observed Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, toward the end of the hearing. […]

Via The Agitator

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Fourth Amendment dissed yet again

November 19, 2013

Paul sends a link to this story from station KXAS in Dallas-Fort Worth. There’s video at the site (which starts with an obnoxious, unavoidable 10-second ad).

North Texas Drivers Stopped at Roadblock Asked for Saliva, Blood

Some drivers in North Fort Worth on Friday were stopped at police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood. The request was part of a government research study aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers.

Some drivers along a busy Fort Worth street on Friday were stopped at a police roadblock and directed into a parking lot, where they were asked by federal contractors for samples of their breath, saliva and even blood.

It was part of a government research study aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers.

“It just doesn’t seem right that you can be forced off the road when you’re not doing anything wrong,” said Kim Cope, who said she was on her lunch break when she was forced to pull over at the roadblock on Beach Street in North Fort Worth.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is spending $7.9 million on the survey over three years, said participation was “100 percent voluntary” and anonymous.

But Cope said it didn’t feel voluntary to her — despite signs saying it was.

“I gestured to the guy in front that I just wanted to go straight, but he wouldn’t let me and forced me into a parking spot,” she said.

I understand why Ms Cope didn’t tell these folks to take their ‘voluntary participation’ and stuff it. But how great would it have been if she had?

Remember to ask: Am I being detained?

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Traffic stop leads to forced colonoscopy

November 6, 2013

How many more times do events like this need to happen before we put a stop to them? This comes from station KOB in Albuquerque; the video of their TV news report can be seen at the link.

4 On Your Side investigates traffic stop nightmare

[…] The incident began January 2, 2013 after David Eckert finished shopping at the Wal-Mart in Deming. According to a federal lawsuit, Eckert didn’t make a complete stop at a stop sign coming out of the parking lot and was immediately stopped by law enforcement.

Eckert’s attorney, Shannon Kennedy, said in an interview with KOB that after law enforcement asked him to step out of the vehicle, he appeared to be clenching his buttocks. Law enforcement thought that was probable cause to suspect that Eckert was hiding narcotics in his anal cavity. While officers detained Eckert, they secured a search warrant from a judge that allowed for an anal cavity search. […]

What Happened

While there, Eckert was subjected to repeated and humiliating forced medical procedures. A review of Eckert’s medical records, which he released to KOB, and details in the lawsuit show the following happened:

1. Eckert’s abdominal area was x-rayed; no narcotics were found.

2. Doctors then performed an exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

3. Doctors performed a second exam of Eckert’s anus with their fingers; no narcotics were found.

4. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

5. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a second time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

6. Doctors penetrated Eckert’s anus to insert an enema a third time. Eckert was forced to defecate in front of doctors and police officers. Eckert watched as doctors searched his stool. No narcotics were found.

7. Doctors then x-rayed Eckert again; no narcotics were found.

8. Doctors prepared Eckert for surgery, sedated him, and then performed a colonoscopy where a scope with a camera was inserted into Eckert’s anus, rectum, colon, and large intestines. No narcotics were found.

Throughout this ordeal, Eckert protested and never gave doctors at the Gila Regional Medical Center consent to perform any of these medical procedures. […]

Update
Orin Kerr writes at The Volokh Conspiracy (my emphasis in the penultimate sentence).

A Preliminary Legal Analysis of Eckert v. City of Deming, the “Clenched Buttocks” Case

A lot of folks in the blogosphere have been writing about this story on Eckert v. City of Deming, a Fourth Amendment civil case involving a routine traffic stop that turned into the government forcing a suspect to undergo invasive medical procedures looking for drugs. I thought I would run through some of the allegations as well as the major legal issues they raise. Unfortunately, the case is too complicated to give a full and complete picture of all the legal issues in the time I have. But I hope to at least hit some major points.

The facts alleged in the case are complicated and filled with many allegations, but here’s the gist of it. […]

Finally, the officers came to the conclusion that Eckert had no drugs in him, and they returned him home. To add insult to injury, the medical center then billed Eckert for the medical procedures that they forced him to undergo. (Not relevant to the Fourth Amendment issues, I realize. But damn, that’s cold.)

This sounds like another case of injustice becoming law. I believe the medical people billed Mr. Eckert somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.000 for their services to the police.

Ignoring the Fourth Amendment issues and looking only at the money trail, where’s the downside for the police? There is no downside: they could do this to anyone. By forcing the victim to pay for medical procedures he doesn’t consent to in their search for drugs, all the police lose is their time.

Update from KOB (1/12/14)

City, county settle in controversial anal probing case

In November, a KOB 4 On Your Side investigation outraged the nation and the story of David Eckert went viral.

From coast to coast, people wanted justice for the New Mexico man who was anally probed and forced to undergo a colonoscopy after police suspected he had drugs in his rectum.

Sunday, Eckert tells KOB that he is finding some justice after a major court decision in his case. […]

In December, Hidalgo County and the City of Deming settled.

Through a records request, 4OYS learned that settlement amount is set at $1.6 million.

“The gratifying aspect of this case is the media attention that it has gotten and the opportunity for discussions in the law enforcement and medical communities about how to deal with these opportunities and what to do with requests from law enforcement about medical exams for people in custody,” Eckert’s attorney Joseph Kennedy said.

Here is the settlement breakdown: Hidalgo County will pay $650,000 and the City of Deming will pay $950,000.

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Misplaced priorities

October 2, 2013

Here’s a good video about the practical effects of the War On Drugs. It seems like a good argument to me, even for those who disagree with legalizing drugs on principle.

Via Carpe Diem

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A license to steal

August 12, 2013

Here’s the start of a long article on civil forfeiture by Sarah Stillman that appears in The New Yorker. RTWT.

Taken
Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing?

On a bright Thursday afternoon in 2007, Jennifer Boatright, a waitress at a Houston bar-and-grill, drove with her two young sons and her boyfriend, Ron Henderson, on U.S. 59 toward Linden, Henderson’s home town, near the Texas-Louisiana border. They made the trip every April, at the first signs of spring, to walk the local wildflower trails and spend time with Henderson’s father. This year, they’d decided to buy a used car in Linden, which had plenty for sale, and so they bundled their cash savings in their car’s center console. Just after dusk, they passed a sign that read “Welcome to Tenaha: A little town with BIG Potential!”

They pulled into a mini-mart for snacks. When they returned to the highway ten minutes later, Boatright, a honey-blond “Texas redneck from Lubbock,” by her own reckoning, and Henderson, who is Latino, noticed something strange. The same police car that their eleven-year-old had admired in the mini-mart parking lot was trailing them. Near the city limits, a tall, bull-shouldered officer named Barry Washington pulled them over.

He asked if Henderson knew that he’d been driving in the left lane for more than half a mile without passing.

No, Henderson replied. He said he’d moved into the left lane so that the police car could make its way onto the highway.

Were there any drugs in the car? When Henderson and Boatright said no, the officer asked if he and his partner could search the car.

The officers found the couple’s cash and a marbled-glass pipe that Boatright said was a gift for her sister-in-law, and escorted them across town to the police station. In a corner there, two tables were heaped with jewelry, DVD players, cell phones, and the like. According to the police report, Boatright and Henderson fit the profile of drug couriers: they were driving from Houston, “a known point for distribution of illegal narcotics,” to Linden, “a known place to receive illegal narcotics.” The report describes their children as possible decoys, meant to distract police as the couple breezed down the road, smoking marijuana. (None was found in the car, although Washington claimed to have smelled it.)

The county’s district attorney, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with feathered Charlie’s Angels hair named Lynda K. Russell, arrived an hour later. Russell, who moonlighted locally as a country singer, told Henderson and Boatright that they had two options. They could face felony charges for “money laundering” and “child endangerment,” in which case they would go to jail and their children would be handed over to foster care. Or they could sign over their cash to the city of Tenaha, and get back on the road. “No criminal charges shall be filed,” a waiver she drafted read, “and our children shall not be turned over to CPS,” or Child Protective Services.

“Where are we?” Boatright remembers thinking. “Is this some kind of foreign country, where they’re selling people’s kids off?” Holding her sixteen-month-old on her hip, she broke down in tears.

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