Drug mishandling may have tainted 40,000 cases

It’s always the money dwr
The cops depend on drug war money from seizures and drug war funding… prisons, treatment centers, drug testing companies, federal agencies, politicians, and more all profit from prohibition.

So it should be no surprise…

New Study Finds That State Crime Labs Are Paid Per Conviction

Funding crime labs through court-assessed fees creates another channel for bias to enter crime lab analyses. In jurisdictions with this practice the crime lab receives a sum of money for each conviction of a given type. Ray Wickenheiser says, ‘‘Collection of court costs is the only stable source of funding for the Acadiana Crime Lab. $10 is received for each guilty plea or verdict from each speeding ticket, and $50 from each DWI (Driving While Impaired) and drug offense.’’

In Broward County, Florida, ‘‘Monies deposited in the Trust Fund are principally court costs assessed upon conviction of driving or boating under the influence ($50) or selling, manufacturing, delivery, or possession of a controlled substance ($100).’’

So much potential for corruption. So many people benefitting from drug war money. Lost in that river of cash is any sense of justice or human rights.

Urging people to become ascended beings composed of pure thought dwr
Prohibitionists depend on a lack of conscious thought and sweeping generalizations. Here’s someone who took the impossible notion of “drug-free” even a step further… continued...

Ryan Grim on the reaction from some police groups… Police Groups Furiously Protest Eric Holder’s Marijuana Policy Announcement

A broad coalition of law enforcement officers who have spent the past three decades waging an increasingly militarized drug war that has failed to reduce drug use doesn’t want to give up the fight.

Organizations that include sheriffs, narcotics officers and big-city police chiefs slammed Attorney General Eric Holder in a joint letter Friday, expressing “extreme disappointment” at his announcement that the Department of Justice would allow Colorado and Washington to implement state laws that legalized recreational marijuana for adults. [...]

Local law enforcement agencies rely heavily on the drug war for funding. Police departments are often able to keep a large portion of the assets they seize during drug raids, even if charges are never brought. And federal grants for drug war operations make up a sizable portion of local law enforcement funding.

The letter warns that marijuana can cause suicidal thoughts, impairs driving and is a “gateway drug.” The missive does not, however, address the failure of law enforcement generally to reduce drug use, even while tripling the number of people behind bars.

Drug mishandling may have tainted 40,000 cases
By David Abel and John R. Ellement
The criminal cases of more than 40,000 people in Massachusetts may have been tainted by chemist Annie Dookhan and management failures at the now-closed state Department of Public Health lab where she worked, according to a long-awaited report released Tuesday by a special counsel hired by the Patrick administration.

That final tally, painstakingly compiled by Boston defense attorney David Meier since the scandal broke a year ago, includes 2,769 more people than he had previously estimated, bringing to 40,323 the total number of people potentially affected by Dookhan’s alleged mishandling of drug evidence.
Most of those cases involved minor charges, including possession of small amounts of drugs, Meier said at a State House press conference presenting his findings.

“My hope is that as a result of these efforts, each and every individual who was potentially affected . . . will have an opportunity to have his or her case reviewed by prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges and that the system will have the opportunity to get it right,” Meier said. full story at bostonglobe.com

Annie Dookhan case google

Cover-Ups, Prevarications, Subversions & Sabotage

One In Five High Schools Whiz Quiz Students

After his resignation, Turner joined with Robert DuPont and former head of NIDA, Peter Bensinger, to corner the market on urine testing. They contracted as advisors to 250 of the largest corporations to develop drug diversion, detection, and urine testing programs.

Soon after Turner left office, Nancy Reagan recommended that no corporation be permitted to do business with the Federal government without having a urine purity policy in place to show their loyalty.

Just as G. Gordon Liddy went into high-tech corporate security after his disgrace, Carlton Turner became a rich man in what has now become a huge growth industry: urine-testing.

Are You Drunk Correa?
CA SB 289 Clueless Legislation

“If I instituted drug testing at Cypress,
I would get a brick through my windshield, and I would deserve it.”
–T.J. Rogers, President, Cypress Semiconductor

Oh, btw... Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function. Maybe the tax money should fight poverty instead of liars and cheats perpetuating their own greed and paychecks.

Arianna Huffington: 02/13/2012
Drug War a 'War on Our Own People'
"[W]e're spending over $50 billion a year fighting a war that's become a war on our own people, especially among African-Americans and minorities in general."

The Drug War Industrial Complex April, 1998
Noam Chomsky interviewed by John Veit

POLICING FOR PROFIT

The vast majority of prohibitionists
still profit on the drug war,...
… and that is still their only motive.

Why Police Officers Lie Under Oath
nytimes news article.
"Police departments have been rewarded in recent years for the sheer numbers of stops, searches and arrests. In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence. Law enforcement has increasingly become a numbers game. And as it has, police officers’ tendency to regard procedural rules as optional and to lie and distort the facts has grown as well. Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland, Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in.

Who Profits From Drugs February 21, 1989
Illegal drug traffic adds up to one hundred billion dollars a year.

Who Really Profits From Drug Cartel Wars? February 21, 2011
Follow the money on the "War on Drugs" and it will expose a frightening truth: the drug cartels depend on a network of guardian angels and backers who come from where else: the ruling elites.

Who’s going to stop the thieves?
Americans for Forfeiture Reform reports: OIG releases and audit of DEA adoptive seizure process and equitable sharing requests

GOP Mogul Behind Drug Rehab 'Torture' Centers

DEAth Merchants

"A great deal of intelligence
can be invested in ignorance
when the need for illusion is deep."
-- Saul Bellow

Got SqWAT?
Money Grubbing Dung Worriers
Forfeiture $quads

According to CATO’s Radley Balko, there are approximately 40,000 raids per year which involve subjecting non-violent drug offenders and innocent bystanders to police terror by wrongfully having their homes invaded by police dressed as soldiers which at times can result in unnecessary death and injuries.

Radley Balko ‏@radleybalko
FBI informants committed 5,600 crimes in 2011 alone.

Kochroach & Aleech
Drug Detention Centers
NRA's Mandatory Minimum

Today many have had their eyes opened regarding the huge profits made off of what is commonly called the "Prison Industrial Complex." Suddenly awareness has turned from disbelief to anger as taxpayers realize the screwing private prison companies, their lobbyists and elected Legislators have been giving them for more than three decades now.

Nixon lied to schedule Ganja #1
"You're enough of a pro," Nixon tells Shafer, "to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we're planning to do, would make your commission just look bad as hell."
- Richard Milhouse Nixon

QUESTION: In Mexico, there are those who propose not keeping going with this battle and legalize drug trafficking and consumption. What is your opinion?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I don’t think that will work. I mean, I hear the same debate. I hear it in my country. It is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it,