Gangsters in Blue

by Kate Ager, via LadiesinKeene.com:

Around 6:30PM, April 12th in Greenland, NH, five police officers were seen standing on the front porch and peering into the windows of 517 Post Road. The officers were at the home to serve a ‘search warrant’ as part of a ‘drug related investigation.’ Kevin Clay from WMUR reports: “Police went to 517 Post Road and entered the home. They were confronted by an armed suspect.” A man who noticed the police officers on the porch and a cruiser on the lawn as he was driving by said that he then heard gunshots and saw police running away from the home. After the passerby pulled over to direct traffic away from that area, the cruiser went flying past him, presumably to the hospital with an injured officer.

A woman living across the street from the house said she was cleaning when she heard the gunshots and looked out the window to see four police officers running away from the house and three of them falling. More officers arrived very quickly and steadily continued arriving. The woman reported that an officer came to her daughter’s bedroom window and told her that they needed to stay in their basement. Other neighbors were told to stay in their homes and as the area was blocked off, other residents were prevented from returning home.

As of right now, the standoff is still underway: helicopters, SWAT teams, and police officers from numerous areas throughout the state are present in the area of the home. Portsmouth Regional Hospital, where the five officers shot – one who did not survive – were taken for medical attention, is swarming with LEOs from dozens of departments.

WMUR reports, “That [male] suspect and a female were still inside the home Thursday night as police tried to negotiate a peaceful resolution.”

It is very unfortunate that this incident occurred, and though many will blame the man who shot at police officers entering his home for the outcome of this interaction, he probably did not act with malicious intent. Reacting to an aggressor with force is commonly known as self-defense and generally viewed as acceptable and often applauded – unless the aggressor wears a badge or is deemed a “government official.”

Many have been conditioned to believe and accept the idea that police officers and other government officials have authority over them and that through the written word of ‘law’ and threats of imprisonment or force in other manners, it is acceptable for those with special uniforms or job titles to forcefully control the actions of others or use force to punish them for actions with which they or written ‘law’ disagree.

The officers who arrived at the home on Post Road were there to enter the man’s home without his consent, search through all of his belongings, take anything deemed ‘illegal’ if they were to find it, then try to put the man in a cage for possessing it. Although the men approaching the door of the Greenland home wore uniforms with “police” written on them and had a man in a robe also deemed to be a “government official” sign a fancy-sounding permission slip [search warrant] supposedly granting them access into another man’s home, they were there with the intent to break in to the home, steal his property, and force him into a cage.

I’m sure some will deny that police with a warrant entering a home constitutes breaking in; entering a person’s home against their wishes is breaking in. Some will say that taking items deemed to be ‘illegal’ isn’t theft, but taking somebody’s property without their permission is theft. Clearly a cell fits the definition of a cage.

Like I said, I’m sure many will blame the man who shot at police officers entering his home for the outcome of this interaction – but this could have been prevented. Due to the seemingly endless War On Drugs, a man lost his life tonight, four others were shot, and the occupants of the Post Road residence will either be killed by “government officials” trying to extract them from the home, or put in a cage for the rest of their life.

WMUR reported that the police were trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution, but peacefully is an inaccurate way to describe how this situation will end. As I just mentioned, many lives have been severely affected in a negative manner due to this interaction. Why? What did the man inside the home possess that would warrant people to come into his home and put him in a situation where he feels the need to defend himself and his property – a plant, a powder, a liquid? What drug voluntarily ingested by a person could possibly be more harmful than all the damage and despair caused by the War On Drugs?

People should be free to make their own decisions so long as they don’t initiate force on others.  If people did not feed in to the idea that badges or government titles grant extra rights, this horrible incident would have never unfolded. The trauma, injuries, and death that family members of the officer and others in the community now must cope with could have been avoided. I hope this event causes people to realize the harm caused by the War On Drugs is much greater than the harm caused by voluntarily ingesting the substance itself.

If I were the man inside the home in this situation, I probably would not have reacted to the officers on the porch in the same manner that the man in his Greenland home is, but the United States Government is one of the largest criminal gangs in the world and he wanted to protect his life and his property from them. I do not advocate violence or the initiation of force, but I can not condemn a man for acting in self-defense; it makes no difference whether one is defending themselves from a random aggressor on the street or a random aggressor with a badge.

“In an ideal world, cops would do nothing except protect people from thieves and attackers, in which case shooting a cop would never be justified.” - Larken Rose, “When Should You Shoot A Cop”

What do you think?

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The War On Drugs Claims Another Life is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

Detection dogs are an increasing aspect of, “Law Enforcement” formerly known as policing, in our country. They roam our schools, our places of work, and potentially our very homes. Sniffdogs.com encourages parents to hire a dog from them to search the family home for their children’s drugs. They go so far as to post this on their web site:

“It is essential that our parents understand that they’re the child’s most important teacher and that the message must be unequivocal: don’t use drugs.”

—President of the United States

They don’t specify which president said that.

The accuracy of the dogs has been called into question numerous times in both court and the media. Some states are beginning to push for laws governing one of law enforcement’s biggest accusers, dogs. The Supreme Court will rule this summer whether K9s can be brought to the front door of peoples’ houses to determine if the person possesses contraband. Most people understand that this special relationship between dog and handler is a suspicious one. Handlers have been accused of cueing these animals. This video by Barry Cooper of Nevergetbusted shows just how far some of these handlers will go.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkw8KgZ_LhU

Pator Steve Anderson

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ9OANYxgEQ

Defense attorney: “Okay Jerry is that the dog?”
Border Patrol agent: “Yes sir.”
Defense attorney: “The dog (Jerry) is trained to detect concealed and non concealed human beings within the vehicle?”
Border Patrol agent: “No sir that’s not what I said.”
Defense: “Okay could you help me understand that.”
Agent: “I said the dog is trained to find concealed people and the odor of narcotics.”
Defense: “How does the dog determine by sniffing whether or not the odor of the human that the dog is detecting is of a concealed person or of a non concealed person.
Agent: “Umm through training…we just understand that’s how the dog does it. We don’t know how the dog actually knows the difference, but they do.

This is a transcription I made from the Pastor Steve Anderson trial. He had been driving along I-8 which runs parallel to the US Mexico Border. It is located about 70 miles north of the border but is called a border checkpoint. This man had his windows in his car broken out, was tased, and had his face ground into shards of glass on ground while the BP agents “tuned him up.”  He hadn’t been wanted for murder or rape. His charge was made by a “Sniffer Dog” who alleged he was in possession of either drugs, explosives, or concealed humans. After the beating and search, he was found to have possessed none of these. The first case against Mr. Anderson was dismissed by the judge and in the second case a jury acquitted this man of essentially 2 charges of impeding traffic.

Florida vs. Jardines is a case to be decided by the US Supreme Court this summer. According to SCOTUSblog, Police were “tipped off” anonymously through crimestoppers that a man had marijuana growing in his home. The dog alerted at the front door and a judge signed a warrant based upon that sniff. In previous SCOTUS opinions allowing sniffs at traffic stops, dissenting Justices agree that for this type of dependence on dog sniffs, the dogs would need to be infallible, which isn’t the case.

Many police departments do not keep accuracy records for dog sniffs. Training and standards can vary from municipality to municipality. The (2)Chicago Tribune did an expose in January of 2011 citing just how accurate, or in this case inaccurate, detection dogs in their area are. Their “analysis of three years of data for suburban departments found that only 44 percent of those alerts by the dogs led to the discovery of drugs or paraphernalia. For Hispanic drivers, the success rate was just 27 percent.” With those numbers, logic would dictate that to increase accuracy, the police would take a dog indication for contraband as potentially exculpatory and let the driver of the car indicated go without further suspicion. Unfortunately this isn’t the case.

Police will say that the searches that don’t turn up contraband are the result of residue being in the car from drugs previously being there. According to CNN, 90% of US dollar bills contain cocaine residue.  It is reasonable to believe that 9 out of every 10 Americans could be subject to a search based solely on what the previous owner of our car did or based upon which dollar bills were given to us at the grocery store.

What an interesting conversation it would be to have with our founding fathers. Trying to convince them that these operations involved in this drug war are appropriate. Trying to convince them that we send heavily armed soldiers to break into private residences. They are sent into homes based on the suspicion of a dog that may be less accurate than a groundhog’s prediction of spring’s arrival. Fortunately for my household, Miller Lite and Folgers are our drugs of choice.

I intended on including the detection dog accuracy logs of 2 of my local police entities. They have both resisted my anonymous requests but have sparked my interest with their resistance and I’ll be writing a follow up soon.

In Liberty

-Anonymous

Pastor Anderson full trial links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c6Kh30vVeA&feature=related
(2)Chicago Tribune Article: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-01-06/news/ct-met-canine-officers-20110105_1_drug-sniffing-dogs-alex-rothacker-drug-dog
(3)CNN Article: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-14/health/cocaine.traces.money_1_cocaine-dollar-bills-paper-bills?_s=PM:HEALTH

Passing The Smell Test is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

A video allegedly depicting a very kind and wonderful cop has been circulating around the internet for a while now. I ignored it at first, but it keeps popping up – along with peoples’ maudlin and obsequious commentary about how touching and heart-warming this officer’s last act of kindness is, and how this surely is a stellar example of how police officers ought to be.

You may ask, what was this last act of kindness? Did the officer lay down his life for another? Did he save a child from drowning? Or perhaps he protected an individual from some kind of vile crime against the person, such as murder or rape?

No, no – none of that. Something far more glorious and admirable – he bought a kid $1 worth of cookies at McDonald’s. Daveon Tinsley purportedly asked Officer Jeremy Henwood for 10 cents to buy a cookie, and Officer Henwood in response bought the him 3 cookies. Subsequently, Henwood was gunned down and killed, allegedly in an unprovoked attack (more here).

The media frequently demonstrates their extreme bias when it comes to police; this is nothing new. When innocent people are murdered or beaten  by police for no reason, the media is quick to point out the victim was a criminal, was drinking, or was engaged in some other mild offense, as if to justify police actions. Funny how it works though – when police die in unfortunate circumstances, the media has no interest in digging up dirt on the dead officer, but instead rushes to point out any inane, worthless factoid that will “humanize” the officer. Yet, one cannot blame the media, when people demonstrate that this kind of nonsense is exactly what they prefer.

While it is lamentable when anyone dies in an unprovoked attack, a logical assessment of this situation leads one to the inevitable conclusion that many people in America are idiots. The first clause of the previous sentence is bolded because no matter how clear I make it, any time I show anything less than uncontrollable anguish at the news of an officer’s death, I am accused of the utmost depravity, and of cheering on their deaths. Nevertheless – buying someone a cookie would not be news in any other context for other people who die in tragic circumstances, but somehow, when a police officer dies, a non-negligible number of Americans start incoherently babbling about how fucking great it was that some man bought a kid some cookies. Americans get so excited about this that it actually is reported as news.

This is to say nothing of the fact that people like Henwood are basically gang members in nice uniforms. They spend their lives prowling the streets, extorting people of their hard-earned money based on stupid crimes like jaywalking, speeding, rolling stop signs, drinking on the beach, or smoking marijuana. This is a fact, because most people in jail/prison are not there for violent crimes or property crimes. They are there for drugs or other offenses which involved no victim. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude police spend most of their time on drug and victimless offenses, rather than on offenses involving personal or property crime.

Accordingly, police officers dedicate their lives to essentially terrorizing people. At the worst, they kill children in drug raids, chase down and beat innocent people,  kill harmless pets or abuse wildlife. At the very least, they drive around and make everyone they pass feel anxious. They have a dress code, and adhere to the Blue Code of Silence, which is a loyalty oath they make to each other. Really, the gang member analogy could not be more apt.

No one posts videos such as, “Crip member’s last act of kindness,” or “M13 leader shows last act of kindness by buying boy a sammich,” but for some reason, people wet themselves over Henwood’s last act of kindness – completely ignoring the fact he spent most of his days being an asshole to people.

This is surely reminiscent of the hysterical behavior exhibited by the mourning citizens of North Korea when Kim Jong Il passed, although on a milder level. Here, we have the same kind of bizarre hero-worship of a man who in all likelihood had the moral integrity of a local thug. Inexplicably, people’s reactions are of greatly exaggerated sorrow, followed by diarrhea-like outpours of lament. Are you one of the Americans who thought North Koreans were insane for putting on such histrionic displays of sadness when Kim Jong Il died? Better check the mirror; you might be an only-slightly-less-insane, only-slightly-less-ignorant version of them.

Heroism bar set remarkably low for police officers is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

The Brooklyn South narcotics detective who was convicted of planting drugs on a woman and her boyfriend was sentenced to five years’ probation and 300 hours of community service. Former cop Jason Arbeeny, a 14-year NYPD veteran, was previously found guilty of eight counts of falsifying records and official misconduct for planting drugs on innocent suspects—a crime he claimed he did in order to reach quotas. Arbeeny broke down in tears at his sentencing today: “I can’t look at myself in the mirror anymore,” Arbeeny told Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach. “Sir, I am begging you, please don’t send me to jail.”

Arbeeny tearfully apologized to his victims: “My oath went down the window, my pride went out the window,” he said. And Reichbach was moved by his tears: “I came into court this morning determined that the nature of this crime requires some jail time,” he said. “I frankly didn’t expect the defendant, at the 11th hour, to be making these claims.” Arbeeny, who mentioned that his young son is in therapy after threatening suicide over his father’s fate, was facing up to four years in prison.

Arbeeny had been found guilty of “flaking”—planting a twist of crack under a car seat during a Coney Island bust in January 2007—and for doctoring paperwork to make the arrest last. Altogether, “flaking” has reportedly cost the city $1.2 million to settle cases of false arrests.

During the trial, Justice Reichbach made a direct connection between “flaking” and the arrest quotas which the NYPD has repeatedly denied exist, or referred to as “productivity goals”—Reichbach noted that several witnesses said narcotics officers were expected to make 60 percent of their arrests for felonies and that cops would spread collars around so they could all meet the quotas. He specifically pointed to the “mindset in Narcotics that seemingly embraces a cowboy culture where anything goes in the never-ending war on drugs.”

This post was submitted by an Anonymous source and originally posted at http://gothamist.com/2012/02/02/drug-planting_cop_cries_at_sentenci.php

Feel free to send local stories, like this, of police abuse to CopBlock.org’s submission tab, we’ll gladly post them for you and you’ll help (by being a part of) CopBlock.org cover more stories.

Drug-Planting Cop Cries At Sentencing, Avoids Jail is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

One would think Rick Van Wickler, Superintendent of the Cheshire County “Correctional” Facility, was committing career suicide when testifying at the House Criminal Justice Committee (See video above) – you know, that committee focused on justice and stuff – in New Hampshire. Only when employed by the government is it logical for y0u to take a “vacation day” (which is still paid for the same way – taxes – as “regular days”) and testify for something that would cost your employer billions of dollars – and keep your job.

Now I don’t want to take anything from Rick and the courage he has for speaking the truth about the war on drugs. He honestly has my respect for that but as a man who’s been “on the bad end of him doing his job so well” (a statement I made to him at his Keene State College speech) I find it questionable, in terms of his character, to have such a clear understanding of the “War on Drugs” and still go to work where the majority of ‘his’ inmates are there due to drug prohibition.

Don’t you just want to ask him, “How can you know that [prohibition failed] and go to work everyday and continue to contribute to this problem?”

He may even say something like, “I’m advocating against the system – just like you do. I’m sure you, like me, dislike the compromises we make against our principles. You don’t like to pay taxes of any kind knowing they’ll go to fund more things you rather not support. I feel guilt when I see marijuana users in my jail but I’m doing what I can and trying to fix it the only way I know how.”

Though I bet Rick would feel better if he weren’t part of the system that was built off something he seems to despise. Regardless, it’s nice to see someone not blinded by the paycheck, who has the courage to speak the truth. Thanks.

Superintendent Advocates Against Drug War is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

The text below was sent to us via our submission tab from Grace, who thinks:

Police officers are brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, and children. Showing up to traffic stops with signs saying they are harrassing us is just rediculous. I’ve gotten a couple tickets in my life, yea it sucks but its the law. Go do something to help the homeless, donate your time to a womens shelter, help kids who have nothing, or go work at an animal shelter. Saying the police are harrassing citizens, come on. The streets are already dangerous enough without you trying to interfere with them doing their jobs. Do something to better your community which is not standing around with signs protesting the people actually out there trying to protect us.

-Grace

Grace, let me ask you this. What would you do if I forced your car to the side of the road, demanded your identification, yelled at you for your speed or broken tail light and demanded money from you for the encounter? What if I get eight of my friends to raid your home and search it for whatever we consider to be illegal? What if I also used some more of my friends to force you to pay for my actions? What if I did these things to you? Would you then hold a sign in displeasure outside my office? Or film me while me and my friends did the same to others? What would you do?

What if, by targeting the police, who seem to do any act their told to because ‘it’s their job’, we’re actually making the homeless, batter women and kids who have nothing at all lives better? After all, the homeless are routinely harassed by the police, at times even murdered. Spouses of police officers have a higher rate of domestic abuse than most professions, maybe because of all the guilt/pressure that comes with their jobs. Or by questioning police about victimless crimes and the failed war on drugs, we’re really helping the kids who have nothing. Since their parents where carted off by Drug Task Force and SWAT members – again on your dime -, leaving them with nothing.

I hope to target, highlight and protest policing until the money – and we’re talking BILLIONS  of dollars – that is spent on the police state is allocated to starter programs for the homeless, abused people to leave their abusers and kids who’s parents are addicts. Of course, you’d get to decide what to spend your money on and no one would be able to force you, via taxation, to pay for anything you didn’t want. But what do I know, I’m the disrespectful one who’s harassing people by holding a sign and pointing out the double standard of police today.

Be Respectful… is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

NOTE: Names have been changed to protect the identities and legal situations of the people involved.

I first met Joe during my sophomore year in college. We became fast friends, hanging out whenever we weren’t in class or at the library, and eventually became roommates the next year. Joe was always a pretty quiet and shy guy, but we got to know each other quite well over time and he gradually opened up more around me. I always knew him as generally a good person who had some struggles with depression, but I never thought anything would happen anywhere near what happened the first semester of my junior year.

We were both avid pot smokers, and because we were unemployed at the time we sold small amounts of weed – nothing too significant, just enough to have some money in our pockets – on and off. One night I was driving back from the store with another friend of mine when Joe called. He said that someone had gone into the room and stolen all our weed and cash when he was outside smoking a cigarette and to get back to our building as soon as possible. When I got back, Joe told me he had a decent idea of who might have robbed us, so we went to talk to the guy. Dave, the guy we suspected of robbing us, didn’t take the accusation well at all; he started yelling and pushed Joe to the ground but we walked away before it got out of hand and that was it for a while. To this day neither Joe nor I know for sure if Dave robbed us or if it was someone else, but pretty soon I basically forgot about it and thought Joe did too because our weed man was a great guy – he was understanding of the situation and agreed to front out product with a small interest fee so we could stay in business.

A couple weeks later, I had just gotten back from class when I heard a knock on the door. I had a bad feeling right away so I looked through the peephole before answering, and sure enough, it was the cops. I stepped out into the hallway, locked the door behind me, and the cops started asking if they could come in. Knowing my rights, I told them they couldn’t come in without a warrant and I wouldn’t answer their questions without a lawyer present. They kept trying and failing, refusing to leave until they talked to Joe as well. Joe eventually got back from class and told the cops the same thing, that they couldn’t enter our room without a warrant. Everything was normal except for a higher level of caution for the next couple weeks, but the overall mood was one of triumph because we had successfully kept the cops at bay. But things started going to hell pretty soon afterwards. Joe apparently never completely got over the robbery and was completely convinced that Dave had masterminded the whole thing, so he went out in the middle of the night and did a number on Dave’s car with some rocks. This was the first of a long list of things he did that fucked things up for both of us.

A few days after the incident with Dave’s car, the dean of students came to our room accompanied by school security and a few cops. The dean produced an internal search warrant, the document required by the housing contract for school officials to enter residences. Luckily neither Joe nor I was selling at the time, but he admitted to having a small amount of pot. Once his bag was located, the cops took over. I didn’t have much of anything in the room – they charged me with paraphernalia, which I’ll quite possibly be able to fight successfully – but they found a few hundred dollars and a scale in Joe’s desk. Because the amount of pot found was so small, the cops were unable to find enough evidence to show intent, but Joe’s downward spiral went out of control after that night.

Almost immediately after the search warrant, I started noticing Joe’s depression getting worse. He bought a huge bottle of Klonopin (a benzodiazepine, or type of downer) and started binging on it. The only time he wasn’t on Klonopin was when he woke up in the morning, and the first thing he’d do was pop a couple pills before class. He started getting even quieter and more withdrawn than usual, not even saying all that much to me beyond how much he hated Dave and how pissed off he was that we got arrested. He eventually stopped going to class and sleeping more and more. He also started stealing around the same time the binge started. It got so bad that I couldn’t take him to the store without him shoplifting something, and his favorite activity at night became car shopping. He rarely took anything of value at first; I think the stealing was more a way for him to briefly escape the reality of the legal situation and school discipline hanging over our heads.

Unfortunately, his stealing quickly escalated to more expensive things in much riskier locations as the disciplinary hearings got closer. Shoplifting turned into car shopping, car shopping turned into stealing bagfuls of books from professors’ offices, and stealing books turned into full-on burglary. The last weekend before finals week, I woke up Saturday morning to a phone call from my friend Chris. Someone had gone into his room the night before and taken his laptop and Xbox, as well as other electronics belonging to his roommate. Chris and I both suspected Joe because of his recent actions, causing me to look through Joe’s stuff when he wasn’t around, but I didn’t find anything from Chris’s room. Sunday morning I woke up quite hung over and decided to run to the store. I walked out to my car to find that the driver’s seat had been moved up and there were boxes of various electronics and other valuables on all the other seats. I called Chris over to see if his stuff was in my car – it wasn’t – so I went back to the room and asked Joe if he knew anything about the stuff in my car. It turns out that on Saturday night, after I was in a deep drunken sleep, he had broken into a nearby building and used my car to bring back what he stole. We got the stuff out of my car and Joe stashed most of it in an abandoned warehouse while he figured out what to do with it. He brought a few of the smaller things that could be quickly sold back into the room, which ended up being the fatal mistake.

A few days later, I was in the library working on my final paper for a class. I realized I’d forgotten my notes from that class in my room so I packed up and started walking back to my building to grab them. While I was on my way, Joe texted me saying to stay away from the room because he had a girl over and that he’d text me again when she left. Not wanting to violate man law, I decided to write what I could without my notes and then head to the bar for a while so he could do his thing. Several hours went by without him texting me, so I assumed he forgot but just in case I waited a while longer before going back to the room. When I finally got back, I found out that there was no girl – Joe was lying in a pile of blood and vomit, barely conscious, with several cuts going up and down his forearms. He told me he’d tried to commit suicide and when I asked him why all he said was “shit sucks” and “I don’t want to live anymore.” I called 911 to get him to the hospital and the cops found a few things he’d taken from the building he robbed the previous weekend. They also searched my friend Steve’s room, not finding anything stolen (which they claimed they were looking for) but finding his drugs as well as some I’d stashed in there to keep them away from Joe. Joe later admitted from the hospital that he had stolen Chris’s laptop and Xbox and told us where we could find them and seemed to genuinely feel bad about everything he’d done – Steve and I went to visit him and the first thing he said was “I fucked everything up, didn’t I?” Joe and I both ended up being kicked out of school; the official reasons for his expulsion were the indicia of dealing found in the initial search of the room and the reasons for mine were accusations of selling harder drugs such as cocaine (which I don’t even use) and making a violent threat, both false.

School situations aside, I firmly believe that if it weren’t for drug prohibition – especially cannabis prohibition – Joe would not have attempted suicide. I also believe that he wouldn’t have smashed up Dave’s car, robbed Chris, or broken into that building. Obviously he would have suffered from depression regardless of any law or lack thereof, but every one of the events that led to his downward spiral and eventual suicide attempt was made possible by prohibition. Whoever robbed us when we were selling – whether it was Dave or someone else – was in all likelihood another dealer looking to make some extra money. If not for prohibition, it would have been more like having a case of beer stolen and even if we had lost a lot of cash we would have had the option of trying to get it back through legal channels. Certainly not motivation to smash up a car. If not for prohibition, the tip that led to the room being searched wouldn’t have happened. Even if the cops had searched our room based on accusations of violence or violent threats, they wouldn’t have assumed “well, they have drugs so it’s probably true” and they would have realized that there was nothing more dangerous than a Swiss Army knife. There wouldn’t have been any charges, no reason for the school to discipline us, and no reason to send a mentally unstable person deeper into his depression, changing his drug habits and turning to stealing in search of a way out. If not for prohibition, we would still be in school. Joe would still be the quiet and shy guy he is, he still would have battled depression, but he wouldn’t have started stealing and his arms would be minus about 30 scars. Sad to think that compared to the other lives ruined or even ended by the war on drugs he’s one of the lucky ones.

- Anonymous

Send your stories (or videos) about police abuse, police issues and/or suggestions on improving police tactics to CopBlock.org, via the submission tab.

How Prohibition Almost Killed My Friend is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

Some people out there, even our regular readers, get squeamish when we liken police to gang members. I’ll stand by that analogy, which I elaborated upon in another article -

Mostly, this comparison is based on the fact that police, like gangs claim ultimate dominion over a particular territory. They stake out these particular territories, and demand “protection money” for reasons mostly out of the control of local residents. If their demands are not met, they resort to violence.

They swear an oath of  loyalty to each other, and will cover up for each other’s gruesome crimes at the expense of good sense and morality. Officers have purposely failed to take reports, covered up evidence, and even turned a blind eye to sexual battery and torture by their fellow gang-members (see here). Those who do not abide by the code of loyalty are ostracized or otherwise punished (see examples here and here). They even have a gang color – blue.

See the full article here. As long as government police exist in their current form, I will never retract my sentiment in this regard. However, for the sake of argument, let us assume police are ordinary human beings like the rest of us. Fair enough? (More than fair, in my opinion).

When was the last time the public got their panties in a bunch when 5 armed men in dark clothing were shot because they were mistaken for intruders after they busted into someone’s house?

Probably never.

How about if the homeowner at issue was suspected of growing marijuana plants, and the armed men, dressed in dark clothing were allegedly there to “protect” the public from a dangerous weed smoker? If you still think it was an evil tragedy the armed men were shot, then it’s because you’re still thinking about police. Think harder.

Imagine your friend Joe has been growing a little pot in his living room. Imagine a bunch of your neighbors, against all scientific evidence, believe that because Joe smokes weed occasionally, he is a dangerous individual. Instead of knocking on Joe’s door, talking to Joe about his “problem” or asking him politely to refrain from smoking, or engaging in about a million other peaceful and civil ways of addressing the issue, at least twelve of them decide to dress in all black, arm themselves, and kick down Joe’s door to “solve” this frightening problem of weed propagation. They declare to you they have a piece of paper that gives them such authority and will present it to Joe as proof they have a right to seize his little plant. They kick down Joe’s door at night. As a result, Joe mistakes them for burglars and opens fire, killing and injuring several of them, while also receiving injuries himself.

What would you think about these neighbors? You would think they are insane. You would think they are fucking stupid. You would wonder why it takes twelve (or more) grown, armed men to give your friend Joe a piece of fucking paper. You would think they are juvenile, violent, self-righteous assholes who mirror something out of Lord of the Flies, who think reckless use of violence and guns is some sort of game (you’d half expect to find Piggy with his smashed eyeglasses lying amid the bloodshed). If you are a bit of a judgmental prick, you might wonder why Joe keeps such offensive plants if the consequences can be so severe, but even so, if you are a reasonable person, you would not blame Joe for opening fire in terror upon seeing twelve or more armed men in his house after having his door broken down.

On the other hand, because the juvenile, violent, self-righteous assholes who don’t know how to mind their own damn business are police, the public is horrified, and the media is soliciting donations for the fallen and injured police officers gang members (see full story here). This is a travesty. The media literally is soliciting funds and sympathy for a bunch of aggro psychopaths whose careless indiscretions created the entire situation to begin with. Meanwhile, the victim of all this is being changed with crimes, and will likely suffer draconian legal penalties.

No one forced these officers to enforce bad laws. No one put a gun to the heads of these upstanding members of society and said they had to arm themselves, put on dark clothing, and kick down someone’s door to “serve a warrant” because the suspect had a certain plant in his living room. They did it anyway, and as a result, 6 of them were shot and 1 died.

This is not to say that any of them deserved to die, or that death is an appropriate punishment for burglary, but really – what is there to be so sorry about? If they were ordinary people, Americans would be flabbergasted at why these idiots believed rounding up a gang of armed people to solve a non-violent situation was necessary. Americans would rightly question the intelligence of those who claim drawing guns and breaking into houses at night in furtherance of eradicating a plant somehow makes society safer.

Anyone who feels truly terrible for these wounded/killed officers, without acknowledging the officers’ own stupidity, recklessness, and unwarranted aggression that brought on these consequences has unfortunately bought into the police state mentality – that police can do whatever they want because different – or perhaps no moral and legal standards apply to them.

Gang attacks homeowner, media solicits donations for fallen gang members, public laments gang member death. is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

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This month marks the anniversary of the day my home was attacked in military fashion by my local police, who after breaking down my door and running through my home with automatic rifles while screaming, handcuffed me and took me away to jail while my young granddaughter and daughter watched. Luckily we didn’t have a pet dog or it would have most assuredly been shot. Most know my story but in summary, this dramatic assault occurred for one reason only; I had ordered less than a months worth of some meds online so that I could live, which in theory could be gotten from any doctor. I assure you, there is nothing more to the story as far as why they did what they did and what my “crime” was. It’s a matter of public record.

The attack happened on the 5th of November 2010. To tell you the truth, that day came and went this year without a thought.  Although I didn’t remember on the exact day it actually occurred, it is definitely an event that I will never forget. It was the day my reality was given a huge perspective shift and while not pleasant, it was certainly instructive and cause for growth. I’m a huge fan of growth.

I’ve had a pretty busy year, which included creating a web site full of resources on the topic at hand and also writing and publishing a book. So, I thought in tribute to that life experience, I would list what I’ve learned this past year. Some things I knew about but had not experienced first hand until now.

THINGS I LEARNED THE PAST YEAR

1. If you can’t afford the astronomical cost for medical testing or treatment you indeed do not get tested or treated. The medical system is about profit only.
2. Millions who suffer severe chronic pain do not get relief because of the prohibition/drug war.
3. American prisons are the fullest in the world because of the prohibition/drug war.
4. The wide spread abuse that goes on in our prisons make GITMO seem like summer camp.
5. Constitutional and civil rights are ignored frequently because of the prohibition/drug war.
6. The wide spread corruption seen in law enforcement is because of the prohibition/drug war.
7. Over 150 military SWAT raids a day (over 70,000 a year) happen on nonviolent citizens because of the prohibition/drug war.
8. A great deal of our crime and violence is because of the prohibition/drug war.
9. Asset forfeiture is used and abused constantly because of the prohibition/drug war.
10. Police corruption is at an all time high because of the prohibition/drug war.
11. The reason we have prohibition and the drug war? Corporation profit and mass funding for those who fight it.

It was a very educational year for me, though what was learned was not pleasant. In fact, its downright scary. There are many things in our society that cause a good deal of damage but the War on Drugs seems to trump them all. And the reasons it continues, despite facts and proof of its damage, are the most disturbing of all.

Thousands of law enforcement officers, ex-narcotics agents, judges, lawyers, prison workers etc. speak out constantly and with great integrity against prohibition and the War on Drugs, having seen the damage it is doing and the lives being lost because of it. They know it does not work. They know the huge cost of its failure. They’ve seen men, women and children killed because of it. They’ve lost fellow officers because of it. They’ve seen families torn apart and destroyed because of it. They’ve seen the system so overburdened that they are not able to focus the real crimes because of it.

“Jailing people because they put certain chemicals into their bloodstream is a gross misuse of police and criminal law. Jailing drug users does not lessen drug use, and incarceration usually destroys the person’s life and does immense harm to that person’s family and neighborhood.” ~Joseph D. McNamara, Former Police Chief, 35 years in law enforcement.

There does seem to be a glimmer of hope as more and more American’s are realizing that things are not as they seem and what they have been told is not always the truth. If only social change were not such a slow process. But 40 plus years of lies are hard to undo. Again, I’m a huge fan of constant learning and growth; so, here is to my year of eduction and here’s hoping my next year will bring more of the same. I only hope its of a less dramatic nature.

I am a 52 year old mother, wife of 34 years, voter, student, web designer and author. (Though my “right” to vote has now been stripped away)

Nancy Rector

I’ve Been Raided and All I Got Was This Lousy Felony is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

By Radley Balko via Huffington PostCHICAGO — As Jessica Shaver and I chat at a coffee shop in Chicago’s north-side Andersonville neighborhood, a police car pulls into the parking lot across the street. Then another. Two cops get out, lean up against their cars, and appear to gaze across traffic into the store. At times, they seem to be looking directly at us. Shaver, who works as an eyebrow waxer at a nearby spa, appears nervous.

“See what I mean? They follow me,” says Shaver, 30. During several phone conversations Shaver told me that she thinks a small group of Chicago police officers are trying to intimidate her. These particular cops likely aren’t following her; the barista tells me Chicago cops regularly stop in that particular parking lot to chat. But if Shaver is a bit paranoid, it’s hard to blame her.

A year and a half ago she was beaten by a neighborhood thug outside of a city bar. It took months of do-it-yourself sleuthing, a meeting with a city alderman and a public shaming in a community newspaper before the Chicago Police Department would pay any attention to her. About a year later, Shaver got more attention from cops than she ever could have wanted: A team of Chicago cops took down her door with a battering ram and raided her apartment, searching for drugs.

Shaver has no evidence that the two incidents are related, and they likely aren’t in any direct way. But they provide a striking example of how the drug war perverts the priorities of America’s police departments. Federal anti-drug grants, asset forfeiture policies and a generation of battlefield rhetoric from politicians have made pursuing low-level drug dealers and drug users a top priority for police departments across the country. There’s only so much time in the day, and the focus on drugs often comes at the expense of investigating violent crimes with victims like Jessica Shaver. In the span of about a year, she experienced both problems firsthand.

THE BATTERY

On the night of May 13, 2010, Shaver was smoking a cigarette with her friend Damon outside the Flat Iron bar in Wicker Park. She said she saw a woman walking away from the bar alone when two men began shouting profanities at her. The men then began walking toward the woman. “I made eye contact with her, and she looked like she was in trouble,” Shaver said.

Shaver shouted at the men to leave the woman alone, at which point she says the the two men turned their attention to her, approached her, and began shouting at her. Damon told the men to leave Shaver alone. They jumped Damon and began to beat him. Shaver said she then tried to pry the men off her friend, and managed to free him long enough for him to get away and call 911. Shaver said she was punched repeatedly, including in the face. She fell, stood up, and was hit in the face again. The men then robbed her and left. When she woke up the next morning with bruises, she went to the hospital. Doctors found a concussion and several contusions.

Two weeks later, Shaver still hadn’t heard from the detective assigned to her case. When she finally went to the police station in person to get an update on the investigation, she was told there was no record of the incident. She filed another report, but was told it was unlikely police would be able to track down the witnesses again, and that even if they were, the witnesses’ memories were likely to have faded. Shaver says she decided to investigate on her own. She went back to the Flat Iron and questioned customers and employees herself. A bartender gave her the men’s nicknames: “Cory” and “Sonny,” the guy who hit her. Shaver learned that Sonny was also a reputed cocaine dealer. She heard he had a violent streak, and had been banned from a number of neighborhood bars.

“I was scared,” Shaver said. “I’d heard bad things about this guy, and he knew who I was.”

Shaver is thoroughly tattooed, which makes her easy to recognize. So she dyed her hair, covered her tattoos with clothing, and kept investigating. She worked her way through social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace until she was able to put actual names to her attackers’ faces and nicknames. And yet she still couldn’t get anyone at Chicago PD to help her. “I gave them the guy’s name and everything,” she said. “There were even hip hop videos online with him in them. I told them, ‘That’s the guy!’ They still wouldn’t listen to me.”

In August 2010, three months after the attack, Shaver contacted a reporter for Time Out Chicago, who began asking around about her case. Shaver also met with Chicago Alderman Joe Marino. Shortly before the Time Out article went to press, a detective finally called Shaver down to the police station to identify her attacker. But even with her identification, the police didn’t arrest “Sonny.” He wasn’t charged with the assault until the following month, when he was arrested on an unrelated domestic violence charge.

Shortly after she finally identified her attacker at the police station, Shaver said the detective in charge of her case told her, “Now I don’t want to hear any more bitching from you.”

MISPLACED PRIORITIES

Arresting people for assaults, beatings and robberies doesn’t bring money back to police departments, but drug cases do in a couple of ways. First, police departments across the country compete for a pool of federal anti-drug grants. The more arrests and drug seizures a department can claim, the stronger its application for those grants.

“The availability of huge federal anti-drug grants incentivizes departments to pay for SWAT team armor and weapons, and leads our police officers to abandon real crime victims in our communities in favor of ratcheting up their drug arrest stats,” said former Los Angeles Deputy Chief of Police Stephen Downing. Downing is now a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an advocacy group of cops and prosecutors who are calling for an end to the drug war.

“When our cops are focused on executing large-scale, constitutionally questionable raids at the slightest hint that a small-time pot dealer is at work, real police work preventing and investigating crimes like robberies and rapes falls by the wayside,” Downing said.

And this problem is on the rise all over the country. Last year, police in New York City arrested around 50,000 people for marijuana possession. Pot has been decriminalized in New York since 1977, but displaying the drug in public is still a crime. So police officers stop people who look “suspicious,” frisk them, ask them to empty their pockets, then arrest them if they pull out a joint or a small amount of marijuana. They’re tricked into breaking the law. According to a report from Queens College sociologist Harry Levine, there were 33,775 such arrests from 1981 to 1995. Between 1996 and 2010 there were 536,322.

Several NYPD officers have alleged that in some precincts, police officers are asked to meet quotas for drug arrests. Former NYPD narcotics detective Stephen Anderson recently testified in court that it’s common for cops in the department to plant drugs on innocent people to meet those quotas — a practice for which Anderson himself was then on trial.

At the same time, there’s increasing evidence that the NYPD is paying less attention to violent crime. In an explosive Village Voice series last year, current and former NYPD officers told the publication that supervising officers encouraged them to either downgrade or not even bother to file reports for assault, robbery and even sexual assault. The theory is that the department faces political pressure to produce statistics showing that violent crime continues to drop. Since then, other New Yorkers have told the Voice that they have been rebuffed by NYPD when trying to report a crime.

The most perverse policy may be asset forfeiture. Under civil asset forfeiture, police can seize property from people merely suspected of drug crimes. So long as police can show even the slightest link of drug activity to a car, some cash, or even a home, they can seize it. In the majority of cases, most or all of the seized cash goes back to the police department. In some cases, the department has taken possession of cars as well, but generally non-cash property is auctioned off, with the proceeds then going back to the department. An innocent person who has property seized must go to court and prove his property was earned legitimately, even if he was never charged with a crime. The process of going to court can often be more expensive than the value of the property itself.

Asset forfeiture not only encourages police agencies to use resources and manpower on drug crimes at the expense of violent crimes, it also provides an incentive for police agencies to actually wait until drugs are on the streets before making a bust. In a 1994 study reported in Justice Quarterly, criminologists J. Mitchell Miller and Lance H. Selva watched several police agencies delay busts of suspected drug dealers in order to maximize the cash the department could seize. A stash of illegal drugs isn’t of much value to a police department. Letting the dealers sell the drugs first is more lucrative.

Earlier this year, Nashville’s News 5 ran a report on how police in Tennessee are pulling over suspected drug dealers and seizing their cash along I-40, often without bothering to make an arrest. The station combed through police reports showing that officers spent 10 times as long policing the side of the interstate where a drug runner would be leaving after he sold his supply — and thus would be flush with sizable amounts of cash — than on the side where he was likely to be flush with drugs. The police were letting the drugs be sold in order to get their hands on the cash.

Back in Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn (D) recently signed a new law that will require convicted drug dealers to reimburse the police agencies that arrested and prosecuted them. The law will provide even more incentive for departments to devote time and resources to drug crimes — and that shift comes at the expense of solving more serious crimes.

The bill does not require reimbursement from convicted rapists or murderers.

Which means battery victims like Shaver can expect even less cooperation from police as more officers are moved to investigations that pay for themselves — and then some.

THE RAID

Shaver’s next encounter with Chicago police came in April of this year. She and her then-boyfriend were living on the first floor of a three-story graystone in the Edgewood neighborhood. “Nate,” a friend of Shaver’s boyfriend whom Shaver describes as a “stoner hippie,” was between residences, and asked if he could sleep on their couch while he waited for his new apartment to become available. They agreed.

“He never had keys,” Shaver said. “He’d text us when he was coming home to sleep, and one of us would let him in. He had been here about a week before the raid.”

The raid came on the night of April 14, 2010, part of a series of drug raids across Chicago that night by the city’s Mobile Strike Force and Targeted Response Unit, essentially a SWAT team.

Shaver, her then-boyfriend and a roommate were in the apartment with her four dogs when the door flew open with the crash of a battering ram. “I thought we were being robbed,” Shaver recalled. “It wasn’t clear to us that they were cops at all. I had a flashback to my attack. I was just terrified. I peed myself. I had peed myself, and I was shaking, trying to gather my dogs while they were pointing these guns at me — these huge guns that could blow me apart. My Vizsla mix ran off, and I was afraid they were going to shoot it. I asked if I could get it, and they said ‘We don’t give a fuck about your dog.’”

According to the search warrant, the police were searching for Nate. Shaver said they looked through Nate’s belongings gathered on the couch and found about $900 and a sandwich bag filed with marijuana. They didn’t leave a receipt for what they took.

“They were going through his mail,” she said. “They tried to say he was my brother. They kept looking for some way to say he had always lived here. He had mail here, but it was mail he brought from his old place. It all had his old address on it.”

Shaver’s boyfriend and roommate were handcuffed. Shaver started to panic. She told the police about her prior assault, and asked if she could take some anti-anxiety medication and change her clothes. They refused.

“There were 20 to 25 cops in my apartment now. Some of them were in street clothes. Some of them were in SWAT clothes with face masks. They told me I wasn’t allowed to move. I wasn’t even certain they were police until about two hours later, when a uniformed cop showed up with the warrant,” she recalled.

Shaver says she heard laughter from her bathroom and bedroom. “They went to my bathroom and started going through all of my medication, laughing about how messed up I was,” she said. “I also have a ‘lady drawer,’ where I keep sex toys and some sex-related gag gifts friends have given me.” Shaver said that when the cops finally left, they had left her place a shambles. When she looked in her bedroom, the police had emptied the drawer and laid all of her sex toys out on her bed.

The raid ruined the door to Shaver’s apartment and she has since been evicted. She filed a complaint with Chicago PD, but never heard back. When she attempted to get a copy of the affidavit for the search warrant to see what probable cause they had for such a violent raid, she was told that since she was not the target of the raid, she is not allowed to see the affidavit. As for “Nate,” authorities have yet to issue a warrant for his arrest. Chicago PD and the officer who left Shaver his number after the raid did not return The Huffington Post’s requests for comment.

FIGHTING CONSENSUAL CRIMES IN A VIOLENT CITY

“This case is a perfect example of how the war on drugs distracts police from doing the job we hired them for,” Downing said.

Chicago is one of the most violent cities in the country, and is home to America’s most violent neighborhood. The city is usually left out of annual “Most Dangerous Cities” lists because of disputes between the state of Illinois and the FBI on how crimes are reported, but Chicago has roughly triple the murder rate of New York City, and double that of Los Angeles. Crime has gone down in Chicago over the last 20 years as it has in the rest of the country, but at a slower rate than in cities of similar size.

Perhaps more tellingly, the city’s clearance rate — the percentage of homicides solved by police — was 70 percent in 1991. It dropped to under 40 percent in 2008 and 2009. According to a report (PDF) from the criminal justice reform advocacy group The Sentencing Project, drug offenses made up 4.8 percent of Chicago PD arrests in 1980. In 2003, they made up 28.2 percent. The overall number of drug arrests increased 264 percent over that period. An analysis by the Marijuana Policy Almanac found that from 2002 to 2007 alone, overall pot arrests in Cook County jumped from 25,776 to 32,996.

The drug war’s financial incentives appear to be having an effect. A drug offender is much more likely to be arrested in Chicago than he was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. But kill someone in Chicago, and you’re only about half as likely to be caught as you were in the early 1990s.

Last July, more than a year after her attack, Shaver’s assailant “Sonny” was finally convicted. He was sentenced to six months of probation. Reflecting back on the last tumultuous two years, Shaver says, “It just doesn’t make sense. Repeat violent offenders get to walk while casual pot smokers get terrorized by SWAT teams. I’m pretty disappointed in the justice system.”

Driven By Drug War Incentives, Cops Target Pot Smokers, Brush Off Victims Of Violent Crime is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights