WORMSCAN: WORMSCAN.&& [PART 3]
Involvement of Politicians, Judges, Lawyers, & Police in the Drug Business
NOTES: I made a few corrections to spellings but left the original document mainly untouched. All dates are in YYMMDD format. These files are only a portion of the entire WORMSCAN.&& file. I had to break it up due to length. There are hundreds of pages in these files.
This is a continuation of the file named WORMSCAN.&&.
WORMSCAN: WORMSCAN.&& [PART 1]
WORMSCAN: WORMSCAN.&& [PART 2]
Date: Fri Apr 26, 1996 7:58 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Re: Philly Cops News
Posted: Ronnie Dadone
http://www2.phillynews.com/inquirer/96/Apr/24/front_page/COPS24.htm
[The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Page One
Wednesday, April 24, 1996
U.S. and city reject cases of Pa. drug unit
Dozens of suspects have gone free since doubts were raised about the credibility of the task force here. Police-corruption investigators are now involved.
By Mark Fazlollah
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
1996, The Philadelphia Inquirer
In a move that already has let dozens of drug suspects walk free without standing trial, city and federal prosecutors are refusing to go forward with drug cases prepared by the state attorney general's narcotics task force in Philadelphia.
The U.S. Attorney's Office stopped accepting cases from the attorney general's Bureau of Narcotics Investigation several months ago after defense lawyers raised doubts about the credibility of BNI agents and after a federal judge said he found "a lot of aspects" of one BNI case "totally incredible."
The District Attorney's Office told Philadelphia police two weeks ago that it, too, would no longer prosecute cases from the BNI office in Southwest Philadelphia. The decision prompted the Police Department to withdraw five officers it had lent to the task force. A city-FBI team that has been investigating police corruption in Philadelphia has now turned its attention to the BNI as well and has been interviewing drug suspects arrested by the state agents, law enforcement officials said.
The collapse of confidence in the BNI is part of a nationwide pattern in which the veracity of police has increasingly been called into question by judges, juries and the public. In Philadelphia, misconduct by officers in the 39th Police District has led judges to overturn 116 criminal convictions.
The BNI works with state police, and until recently worked with city police, on major drug cases in Philadelphia and the city's suburbs in Pennsylvania. Since 1990, BNI agents have reported seizing 1,000 pounds of cocaine, 73 pounds of crack, and $13 million in cash and assets.
Allegations about the task force's office at 7800 Essington Ave. center on a pattern of cases in which BNI agents said they arrested alleged drug traffickers after seeing narcotics lying in plain view. Defense lawyers said the agents searched their clients without probable cause and fabricated their accounts of the arrests. Concerns were further heightened when a BNI agent, in recent court testimony, admitted that he had made false statements on a search warrant in a 1994 drug arrest.
State Attorney General Thomas W. Corbett Jr., who took office in October, confirmed yesterday that city and federal prosecutors wanted no part of BNI cases from the Essington Avenue office. In an interview, Corbett said he planned a shakeup of the task force and would transfer some of the 25 agents.
Corbett said he was reviewing complaints against the BNI that date back "many years." He said he could not provide any details of the allegations.
"Almost from the point that I came in, we had heard complaints about the Essington Avenue office from the U.S. attorney and the D.A.'s Office," he said. "We are taking every action we can."
Corbett said the problems in the BNI could lead to a cascade of challenges to drug convictions, similar to what has happened in the 39th Police District. Corbett said that any lawyer who had represented someone convicted on the basis of BNI evidence would now be "obligated" to seek reversals.
District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham and U.S. Attorney Michael Stiles declined to comment on why they had stopped handling BNI cases. In recent months, dozens of BNI cases have been jettisoned by prosecutors unwilling to proceed with what they regarded as suspect evidence.
Philadelphia lawyer Louis T. Savino Jr. said yesterday that in the last week alone, the District Attorney's Office had dropped charges against four accused drug dealers arrested by BNI agents.
Savino said that in one case, three Dominican men were allegedly caught in Philadelphia with three ounces of crack cocaine and charged with drug trafficking. All three were released after the District Attorney's Office refused to present evidence against them at a court hearing.
"It made my job easier. I don't know about the general public," Savino said. "They're just letting people skate. . . . These are allegations of significant amounts of drugs."
In another recent case, a Common Pleas Court judge dismissed charges against a man allegedly caught with three pounds of cocaine. Again, prosecutors said they would not present evidence. They provided no explanation.
The U.S. Attorney's Office stopped prosecuting BNI cases after defense lawyers pointed to a pattern of drug arrests in which the state agents reported finding incriminating evidence in identical circumstances.
In those cases, BNI agents arrested suspects after supposedly receiving information from confidential informants. Typically, the agents said they searched suspects' cars and made arrests after seeing packages of cocaine or heroin in plain sight, such as on a car seat.
Isla A. Fruchter, a Center City lawyer, said she found 11 drug cases in which a BNI agent described the same set of circumstances surrounding the arrests.
"It's exactly the same background," Fruchter said. "We think there's a problem."
At a May 17 postconviction hearing for convicted drug dealer Miguel Tapia, U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam sharply questioned a BNI agent's account of how Tapia was arrested. The agent had testified that he saw drugs in Tapia's car across the street from a drug house.
"I find it almost inconceivable," Fullam said, "that in what is alleged to be a store which was a hotbed for narcotics trafficking, that anyone would park a car, unlocked, catercorner across an intersection, with $20,000 worth of drugs in plain view."
"I find a lot of aspects of this case totally incredible and not understandable," the judge said.
Fullam is weighing a motion by Tapia's lawyer to toss out the conviction and grant his client a new trial.
The allegations about the BNI bear striking similarities to the unfolding 39th District scandal, in which rogue officers robbed and planted evidence on drug suspects, falsified police reports, and gave perjured testimony that helped send the suspects to prison. Six former officers have pleaded guilty and been sent to federal prison. Four others are awaiting trial.
George Craig, a deputy Philadelphia police commissioner, said in an interview that the Police Department had halted all cooperation with the BNI as of Friday because the District Attorney's Office told him that BNI cases would not be prosecuted.
Craig said five Philadelphia officers who were on loan to the BNI had been reassigned to the department's Highway Patrol. He said there were no allegations of wrongdoing against those officers.
A state police spokesman, Charles Tocci, said several state police agents still were working with the BNI. Tocci said the agents try to get around prosecutors' misgivings by omitting any reference to the BNI's Essington Avenue address in their arrest reports.
Tocci said an assistant Philadelphia district attorney threw out a state police case last week solely because the arrest report listed the Essington Avenue address. He said the state police officers working with the BNI now list the address of the state police's Belmont Avenue barracks on their reports.
Corbett was critical yesterday of the decision to stop prosecuting BNI cases, saying prosecutors were being indiscriminate. Other law enforcement officials, who asked not to be named, expressed the same sentiment.
"Let's look at this a little more intelligently," Corbett said. "This broad-brush approach is not appropriate. . . . To cut them off all of a sudden doesn't make sense."
Inquirer staff writers Thomas Gibbons and Richard Jones contributed to this article.
------------------------------
Date: Thu May 02, 1996 8:38 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: More PA Cases Dropped
Posted: Ronnie Dadone
http://www2.phillynews.com/daily_news/96/May/01/local/DROP01.htm
Local
[Philadelphia Online]
THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, May 1, 1996
DA considers the source: Drug cases dropped
by Dave Racher
Daily News Staff Writer
For the second straight day, the district attorney's office has dropped drug charges against a man arrested by cops working with the state attorney general's drug task force.
Yesterday, Common Pleas Judge Murray C. Goldman granted a request by the district attorney's office to drop drug charges against Karl Hawkins, 30, of Sterner Street near 9th.
Hawkins was accused of possessing 100 packets of crack, worth about $2,000, after being chased into a house on Sterner Street near 9th, on Aug. 7, 1994.
When Goldman asked Assistant District Attorney Harry Speath why he was dropping charges, the prosecutor said it was because the case was related to the state's drug task force.
Goldman didn't ask for a further explanation, commenting, "Well, your credibility is fine with me."
Defense lawyer James Lyons praised the DA's office for "seeking justice and not a conviction" in a retrial of the case.
Lyons pointed out that last year, a jury heard the case and couldn't agree on a verdict.
He said people inside the house testified that Hawkins was not chased into the house, but was sitting on a couch when police entered without a warrant and seized drugs.
On Monday, the charges against two men allegedly arrested in possession of $80,000 were withdrawn by the DA's office. Agents of the state task force were in on that arrest.
Sources in the DA's office said a probe of drug arrests made by state agents is underway to determine whether they bypassed regulations by making seizures without warrants.
Federal authorities are also said to be investigating the unit as part of an on-going probe of police corruption that began after officers of the 39th District were arrested for wrongdoing.
------------------------------
Date: Sat May 04, 1996 10:33 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: PA State Narcs Lying?
Posted: Ronnie Dadone
Subject: PA Drug Agents Lied
http://www2.phillynews.com/daily_news/96/May/04/local/BNII04.htm
Local
[Philadelphia Online]
THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
Saturday, May 4, 1996
Pa. drug agents targeted
Defense lawyer cites repeated lies in court about city cases
by Jim Smith, Daily News Staff Writer
A defense attorney claims there are compelling reasons to believe as many as seven members of a state narcotics unit have been lying in court in recent years about how they came to search and arrest Philadelphia drug suspects.
In a motion filed in federal court, defense attorney Guy Sciolla is seeking to overturn the conviction of Miguel Tapia, 26, formerly of Fisher Street near 15th, who was jailed for 63 months for trafficking in 2.2 pounds of cocaine.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Joel Goldstein, who prosecuted Tapia, said he could not comment on the motion.
The seven agents named in the motion have been assigned in recent years to the Pennsylvania Bureau of Narcotics Investigations, also known as BNI, a 25-agent unit headquartered in Southwest Philadelphia.
Some 16 state prosecutions and one federal prosecution already have been scrapped as the result of questionable conduct on the part of the BNI agents, Sciolla said.
Sciolla also noted in his motion that the Philadelphia district attorney's office and the U.S. attorney's office recently stopped prosecuting cases that the unit develops.
A spokesman for state Attorney General Tom Corbett yesterday said that Corbett has been meeting with federal and local prosecutors to resolve any problems with the unit.
Corbett also is conducting an internal investigation "to find out what changes need to be made," the spokesman, Jack Lewis, said. Corbett "feels the office, overall, has been doing good work. He's disturbed that the district attorney and the U.S. attorney are not taking cases," Lewis said.
Sciolla, meanwhile, contends that BNI agents working in Philadelphia have a long history of concocting "probable cause" to search and arrest suspects, then lying in court when questioned about their reasons for making arrests.
In seeking a hearing, Sciolla cited in his motion "the background and ongoing uncertainties of BNI investigators, the remarkable and repeated fact patterns of BNI arrest reports, the findings of various judges, of, at the least, testimonial inconsistencies and contradictions, and at the worst, outright fraud and deceit." Sciolla has succeeded once before in getting what seemed like an airtight federal drug case tossed out based on alleged wrongdoing by BNI agents.
In September 1994, U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody dismissed an indictment against two reputed heroin traffickers, but not before both men spent a year in jail awaiting trial.
In the 1994 case, BNI agents claimed they saw heroin packets spill from a paper bag that one suspect tossed into a car before fleeing into the building, where the pursuing agents found even more drugs. Witness accounts, however, indicated that the two suspects were arrested some distance from the apartment, and that the agents didn't chase anyone into the apartment but entered it on their own.
------------------------------
Date: Tue May 14, 1996 1:37 pm CST
From: Matthew Gaylor
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: freematt@coil.com
TO: Matthew Gaylor
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: freematt@coil.com
BCC: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Philadelphia Ex-Cops Call Offenses Routine
ACLU News
*From Prison, Ex-Cops Call Offenses Routine*
PHILADELPHIA -- In a front-page copy written report, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday detailed the stories of three police officers involved in the biggest police scandal in Philadelphia's history.
All three officers readily admit that they committed serious misdeeds in stealing an estimated $100,000 from suspected drug dealers. the Inquirer said. But they also say that much of their illegal activity -- including perjury and fabricating evidence -- was part of the system that police everywhere use in the war on drugs.
"It's the system, they say -- they only did what they believed their commanders, politicians and yes -- you the public wanted," Inquirer reporter Mark Fazlollah wrote. He quoted one of the former officers, John Baird: "We didn't own and operate the system. We didn't invent it. We were just some of the many thousands of custodians. We inherited it."
The ex-officers made a series of serious allegations, the Inquirer said, including:
-- Hundreds of arrests were "bad." Baird told the Inquirer that he never saw a legal drug arrest.
-- Groups of black youths hanging out on corners were routinely searched illegally. When drugs were found, the Inquirer said, police reports were fabricated to indicate that a drug sale had been witnessed.
The Inquirer said that the ex-officers allegations are likely to add fuel to charges by civil rights lawyers that the Police Department has failed to police itself.
David Rudovsky, a lawyer who is leading negotiations between city officials and civil rights groups -- and a member of the ACLU National Board -- told the Inquirer that what the ex-officers have said "reflects a pattern that we have seen independently."
Rudovsky told the Inquirer that what the ex-officers said "rings true."
"It's not only individual officers," he said. "It was a department that was indifferent to those facts."
The Philadelphia Inquirer can be found on the Web at
http://www.phillynews.com/inq/front_page/
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960130, Mexico City, Mexico, Reuters. Jose Armando Cruz
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 13:22:08 GMT
From: adbryan@onramp.net (Alan Bryan)
To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Subject: Re: Mexican "policeman of the year" held with drugs
Message-ID: <199601311224.GAA11361@MAILHOST.ONRAMP.NET>
It happens to the best of 'em.
Tue, 30 Jan 1996 12:00:13 PST:
MEXICO CITY (Reuter) - An agent who was voted "Policeman of the Year" in a northern Mexican state has been arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking after being detained with 436 pounds of marijuana, the Televisa television network reported Tuesday.
It said Jose Armando Cruz Gutierrez was voted policeman of the year just two months ago by colleagues in the Chihuahua state detective force who gave him a new car as a prize.
The attorney-general's office confirmed Cruz's arrest, adding in a statement that three other policemen were detained with him including Chihuahua state detective police commander Gerardo Maximiliano Coronel and his wife. The group were traveling in two official cars and were armed with pistols and AR-15 assault rifles. They claimed they had seized the drugs as part of their police duties but were unable to prove that, the statement said.
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960201, New York City, NY, NY Times. Police Officer Randolf
Date: Thu Feb 01, 1996 9:50 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: NYPD - Dirty Thirty - Cop Dope Pusher
Posted: Bob Witanek 2/1/96
NYPD - COP DOPE PUSHER - DIRTY THIRTY 6 MONTHS INSTEAD OF 25 YEARS TO LIFE!
(NY Times, 2/1/96)
By GEORGE JAMES
A police officer accused of attempting to sell drugs pleaded guilty yesterday to lesser charges of conspiracy to sell drugs in the second degree and second-degree assault. Under the terms of a plea agreement in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Officer Randolf Vazquez, 39, accused in the 30th Precinct corruption scandal, will be sentenced to six months in prison and four and a half years probation. Had Officer Vazquez been convicted of the original charge of attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance in the first degree, he would have faced 25 years to life in prison.
Officer Vazquez acknowledged in court that between October 1991 and April 1992 he engaged in a conspiracy with his partner, Officer Jorge Alvarez, to steal narcotics while on duty and sell them to dealers. He admitted to taking crack from an apartment in October and selling it. He also admitted to assaulting Paul Stevens while in a police car at West 150th Street and Broadway on Jan. 27, 1994. Mr. Stevens had been arrested for obstruction of government administration, but when he became verbally abusive, Officer Vazquez hit him in the face several times with a police radio, the authorities said.
Officer Alvarez, who cooperated with the authorities, pleaded guilty to third-degree grand larceny and faces up to seven years in prison. Of 33 officers arrested on corruption charges since March 1994, 20 have pleaded guilty, 3 have been convicted and 2 have been acquitted. Two cases were dismissed and six are pending.
Posted in pol-abuse@igc.apc.org
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960210, Mexico City, Mexico, Reuter. Up to 30 tons of cocaine
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 19:41:33 -0800
From: mregen@ix.netcom.com (Marnie Regen )
To: DRCTalk@drcnet.org
Subject: Tons of cocaine have disappeared in Mexico (Reuter)
Message-ID: <199602110341.TAA29385@IX2.IX.NETCOM.COM>
Sat, 10 Feb 1996
MEXICO CITY (Reuter) - Up to 30 tons of cocaine have disappeared into the hands of Mexican federal police over the last two years, the Mexico City newspaper El Financiero reported Saturday.
The newspaper said that in the last two years more than 100 tons of cocaine has entered Mexico by air, but police have seized and declared just a tenth of that amount.
It said much of the drug comes from Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador before being shipped through Mexico.
Earlier this week, the Mexican Attorney-General's office accused 19 Mexican police officers of helping Colombia's Cali drug cartel smuggle cocaine into the United Sates.
The officers were accused of helping to unload cocaine from a jetliner that crashed landed in Baja California in 1994 when the airplane exploded, injuring three of the officers.
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960212, Baja California Sur, Mexico, LA Times. 19 Mexican state
Date: Tue Feb 13, 1996 8:57 am CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Mexi-Cops and Cartels
From: Bob Witanek
Posted mnovickttt Mon Feb 12 23:46:37 1996
From: Michael Novick
In the L.A. Times of Feb 12, MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer reports that Mexican prosecutors have linked an air shipment of at least 10 tons of South American cocaine smuggled through the Baja Peninsula into the U.S., discovered last November, to police officials allegedly working for one of Mexico's powerful drug cartels.
19 Mexican state and federal police officers, including the deputy federal police chief in the state of Baja California Sur at the time of the shipment, were ordered arrested, according to the Mexican attorney general's office. The former commander of the state judicial police in the Todos Santos region and one of his agents have already been taken into custody.
Eyewitnesses said that in the November incident police met, unloaded and then destroyed a French-made Caravelle jet that was carrying cocaine for Colombia's Cali cartel when it broke its nose wheel landing on a clandestine airstrip at the tip of Baja California Sur. The top prosecutor's office there said the officials had ties to the Tijuana cartel, one of five major Mexican drug mafias that supply up to three-fourths of the cocaine sold in the United States.
President Ernesto Zedillo's attorney general, Antonio Lozano Gracia, has declared it will take years to separate his federal police and prosecutors from a smuggling industry that earns billions of dollars each year, according to the Times. The attorney general's office stated that the jet was traced to a Colombian company reportedly owned by Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the alleged leaders of the Cali cartel now jailed in Colombia. Copyright Los Angeles Times
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960213, Daytona Beach, FL, Philadelphia Inquirer. Francis
Date: Wed Feb 14, 1996 2:36 am CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Daytona, FL - Cop Dope Deals
From: Bob Witanek
Posted dadoner@chesco.com Tue Feb 13 10:30:49 1996
From: Ronnie Dadone
Subject: Philadelphia Inquirer: Suburban North
http://www.phillynews.com/inq/pa_north/NTHOM13.htm
[The Philadelphia Inquirer] Suburban North
Tuesday, February 13, 1996
Ex-officer guilty of drug deals
He ran the police evidence room in Daytona Beach, Fla. He stole drugs and guns and sent them to a nephew.
By Julia C. Martinez
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
A retired Florida police officer was found guilty by a federal jury yesterday of stealing cocaine and guns from his department's evidence room over seven years and giving them to a nephew in Philadelphia for sale on the streets.
Francis "Frank" Thompson, 52, of Ormond Beach, a veteran of the Daytona Beach Police Department, however, was cleared of two counts of distributing cocaine.
Judge Thomas N. O'Neill Jr. of U.S. District Court in Philadelphia scheduled sentencing for May 21 and released Thompson on bail.
Thompson and his nephew, Timothy Wardle, 35, were indicted by a federal grand jury last May on charges of conspiring to distribute 10 kilograms of cocaine in Philadelphia between 1987 and 1994, distribution of cocaine, and sending and receiving stolen firearms across state lines.
Wardle, a bookbinder from the 500 block of Tyson Avenue in the city's Burholme section, pleaded guilty to the charges and is awaiting sentencing.
The conspiracy count, for which Thompson was convicted and to which Wardle pleaded guilty, carries a mandatory minimum prison term of 10 years.
Thompson's attorney, Thomas Bergstrom, said that since his client was acquitted of two of the distribution counts, a mandatory sentence might not be warranted. Bergstrom said more than five kilograms of cocaine must be involved in the crime before a mandatory minimum sentence is imposed.
Thompson retired from active duty in September, after 22 years with the department. By then, a joint investigation by federal and Daytona Beach authorities had been started.
Thompson supervised the department's evidence and property room, where seized drugs and guns were stored. One of his jobs was to destroy narcotics and firearms no longer needed for evidence or other purposes.
In August 1994, Wardle was arrested in Philadelphia on drugs and weapons charges. Police confiscated 2.2 pounds of cocaine, 12 firearms, a bullet-resistant vest and $1,035 in cash.
The indictment said Thompson began pilfering drugs and guns from materials to be destroyed in 1987, a year after he became supervisor of the evidence and property division.
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960213, San Jose, CA, LA Times. Joseph D. McNamara, 35 year
Date: Fri Feb 16, 1996 11:48 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Why Cops Lie in Dope War
From: Bob Witanek
Posted dadoner@chesco.com Tue Feb 13 13:42:42 1996
http://www.phillynews.com/inq/opinion/MCN13.htm
[The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Opinion
Tuesday, February 13, 1996
Why cops lie about drug evidence
They don't feel lying under oath is wrong because politicians tell them they are engaged in a "holy war" fighting evil.
By Joseph D. McNamara
Are the United States' police officers a bunch of congenital liars?
Not many people took defense attorney Alan M. Dershowitz seriously when he charged that Los Angeles cops are taught to lie at the birth of their careers at the Police Academy. But as someone who spent 35 years wearing a police uniform, I've come to believe that hundreds of thousands of law-enforcement officers commit felony perjury every year testifying about drug arrests.
These are not cops who take bribes or commit other crimes. Other than routinely lying, they are law-abiding and dedicated. They don't feel lying under oath is wrong because politicians tell them they are engaged in a "holy war" fighting evil. Then, too, the "enemy" these mostly white cops are testifying against are poor blacks and Latinos.
The federal government reports that more than 1.3 million drug arrests were made in 1994, 480,000 of which involved marijuana. About 1 million of the total drug arrests were for possession, not selling.
Despite government drug-war propaganda that big-time dealers are its targets, only 24 percent of the total drug arrests were for selling. Almost all those arrested for selling are small-timers, in large part supporting their own drug use. Often they are inveigled by undercover police to up the ante. Many of the arrests for selling are made without search warrants and almost all the possession arrests are without warrants.
In other words, hundreds of thousands of police officers swear under oath that the drugs were in plain view or that the defendant gave consent to a search. This may happen occasionally, but it defies belief that so many drug users are careless enough to leave illegal drugs where the police can see them or so dumb as to give cops consent to search them when they possess drugs. But without this kind of police testimony, the evidence would be excluded under a 1961 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Mapp vs. Ohio.
I became a New York City policeman five years before the Mapp decision. We were trained to search people who appeared suspicious. I questioned the apparent contradiction posed by the Fourth Amendment, which guaranteed that people would be secure in their person and house from a search without a warrant. The instructor said not to worry. A suspect could sue in a civil action but no jury would find against a cop trying to stop dope from being sold. He went on to say that if the courts really meant it, they wouldn't allow such evidence into a criminal trial.
In its Mapp decision, the Supreme Court cited this police attitude and the routine violations of the Fourth Amendment as reasons enough to establish a national rule to exclude illegally obtained evidence.
Gradually, as police professionalization increased, police testimony became more honest. But the trend reversed in 1972, when President
Nixon declared a war against drugs and promised the nation that drug abuse would soon vanish. Succeeding presidents and Congresses repeated this false pledge despite evidence that drug use, drug profits and drug violence increased regardless of expanded enforcement and harsher penalties. Because the political rhetoric described a holy war in which evil had to be defeated, questioning police tactics was equivalent to supporting drug abuse.
Leaders of the drug war dehumanize their "enemy" -- not just foreign drug traffickers but also American users. This mentality pushes the police into making ever more arrests, arrests that can only survive in court because of perjured police testimony. The fact that enforcement falls most heavily on people of color also encourages illegal police tactics. Non-whites are arrested at four to five times the rates whites are arrested for drug crimes, regardless of the fact that 80 percent of drug crimes are committed by whites. The "war" dehumanizes the cops as well as those they pursue.
The eroding integrity of law enforcement officers and the resulting decrease in public credibility are costs of the drug war yet to be acknowledged. Within the last few years, police departments in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Denver, New York and in other large cities have suffered scandals involving police personnel lying under oath about drug evidence.
Some officers in the New York City police and New York State police departments were convicted of falsifying drug evidence. Yet, President Clinton appointed the heads of those agencies to be drug czar and chief of the Drug Enforcement Agency, respectively, and they were confirmed in the Senate. The message that politicians seem to be sending to the nation's police chiefs is that we understand that police perjury is a part of the drug war.
But recently a number of police leaders have conceded that racially disparate arrest rates and illegal police searches and testimony are a problem. Last year, for example, New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton warned his officers not to lie about how they obtained evidence, saying that he would rather they lose the case than commit perjury. Last month, Baltimore Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier ordered his cops to stop arresting drug users and to concentrate on criminals committing gun crimes and other violence.
The vast majority of police forces are still being pushed into waging a war against drugs by politicians who ignore history and mislead the public into believing such a war can be won.
Consequently, hundreds of thousands of illegal police searches take place and are lied about in court while drug-war hawks pontificate about the immorality of people putting certain kinds of chemicals into their bloodstream.
[Image]
Joseph D. McNamara, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the former police chief of San Jose, wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times.
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960221, New York City, NY, NY Times. Two United States Customs
Date: Sun Feb 25, 1996 10:19 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: 2 US Customs Agents Face Kidnap Charges
Posted: Bob Witanek 2/25/96
2 US CUSTOMS AGENTS FACING KIDNAPPING CHARGES
(NY Times, 2/21/96)
BYDAVIDKOCIENIEWSKI
Two United States Customs inspectors have been charged with kidnapping and beating a suspected drug dealer last year while trying to rob him of cash and cocaine, Federal prosecutors said. Richard Ramos and Gerasimos Kapsaskis, who worked as inspectors at Kennedy and Newark airports, were arrested on Friday and charged in the kidnapping of a man on Sept. 23, 1995, on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, said Mary Jo White, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in an announcement issued yesterday. Law enforcement officials said the inspectors conspired in the plot with Jose (Tito) Aleman, who directed them to a man who was believed to have received 220 pounds of cocaine in September, and then received cash for selling 22 pounds. Mr. Ramos, Mr. Kapsaskis and a 3rd man, Fernando Ramirez, put on bullet proof vests and police badges according to the complaint, and stopped the victim after identifying themselves as Federal agents.
Two witnesses identified Mr. Ramos and Mr. Kapsaskis as the kidnappers. Mr. Ramos and Mr. Kapsaskis then beat the man, handcuffed him, forced him into their car and drove off, witnesses said. The victim, whom Federal officials refused to identify, dashed from the car when it stopped at an intersection and persuaded a motorist to take him to a Police station.
Michael E. Gertzman, an assistant United States Attorney, said investigators traced the license number of the vehicle used in the incident and found that the car had been rented by Mr. Ramos.
All three suspects face possible life imprisonment if convicted.
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960224, Mexico, PNS, by Beatriz Johnston Hernandez. Accused drug
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 07:01:50 -0800
From: Annette French
To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Subject: #237 corrupt officials
Message-ID: <199602241619.LAA17735@MOJO.CALYX.COM>
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Well it certainly feels like the 237th attempt. Just as I had given up, I noticed this little button on the toolbar that said 'text + doc. It works when I send it to myself, so here goes.
Thanks to everyone who gave me advice on the car. Most of you were right, it was the alternator. It is now running, alternator and something that is attached to the battery cable having been replaced. Hopefully attached better than my first 236 tries on this article.
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U.S. Officials joined Mexican Drug Smugglers
by Beatriz Johnston Hernandez
Accused drug trafficker Juan Garcia Abrego, now awaiting trial in Houston, is notorious for bribing high-level Mexican officials to help turn Mexico into a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine. Less known is his role in bribing federal officials on the U.S. side of the border. Information gleaned from drug trials and gang insiders reveals that Abrego paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Immigration and Naturalization Service agents and National Guardsmen to drive cocaine and marijuana in their buses past U.S. customs checkpoints on the road between McAllen and Houston.
But Peter Lupsha, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico who has studied drug trafficking on the border for two decades, says he believes the true extent of Abrego's bribery of U.S. officials may remain hidden behind a "conspiracy of silence" aimed at preventing a meltdown of public trust. Abrego is being held without bond in the Harris County jail on a 1993 indictment on charges of cocaine trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. His arrest and deportation to the U.S. by Mexican anti-drug agents last month caused an uproar among Mexico's reform-minded elites who want him tried first in Mexico in the hopes of gleaning information on bribed Mexican officials. Abrego's trial in federal court, due to open on March 11, will focus little attention on corruption in Mexico and still less on corruption in the U.S. On the contrary, at least one star witness for the prosecution - FBI special agent Claudio se la O - will testify how he accepted $100,000 and a gold watch from Abrego in September 1987 as part of an undercover scheme to gain the defendant's trust and information on drug dealings.
Transcripts of he 1993 federal trials in Brownsville and Houston of four Abrego underlings, however, reveal how INS drivers would transport undocumented agents (aliens?) caught in Houston south to INS detention centers close to the border. On their way back north, the agents would load the empty buses with Abrego's marijuana and cocaine loads worth millions of dollars. "Agents were corrupted for brief periods. Once they got enough money, they decided it wasn't worth the risk, so they would stop doing it, but others came in to take their place," Peter Hanna, an FBI agent out of Houston who has focused on Abrego for the last seven years, told PNS in a telephone interview.
INS bus transfers weren't the only incidence of bribery revealed under oath. Jaime Rivas, a cocaine mule for the Abrego organization, was in charge of delivering coke to a safehouse in Harlingen and from there on a convoluted route through Houston and on to New York. Testifying at a 1991 trial in Corpus Christi of accused Abrego hitman Miguel Botello and again in the 1993 money laundering trial of Maria Lourdes Reategui and Antonio Giraldi in Brownsville , Rivas explained how the gang was able to transport between 1,000 and 1,400 kilos of cocaine each week past U.S. Customs checkpoints. In the 1993 trial he recalled how one delivery went awry at the Sarita checkpoint between McAllen and Houston. "Graciel Contreras and Juan Bananas were in the truck. The one (agent) at the checkpoint had been paid off, and Juan Bananas was the one who knew him, so he was the one to give the signal so the truck with the coke could pass." But something went wrong and the shipment was confiscated, said Rivas, who was watching from another car behind the truck.
Although the Houston FBI investigators knew that INS agents were involved in the drug trade since early 1991, only one agent has since been tried and sentenced to 10 years without parole. Another, according to a spokesperson at the U.S. attorney's office in Houston, "failed to appear in federal court to stand trial on charges of drug conspiracy, money laundering and bribery." Abrego's corruption of U.S. officials "goes beyond INS," Lupsha says. "Custom officials are very sensitive about the Abrego trial because some major corruption schemes could surface implicating former Customs officials. And it might go higher than local regional INS agents." Lupsha surmises many INS agents may have been seduced by women on the Abrego payroll who would then ask the agents to "do a favor for my uncle, or my cousin." Many agents avoided getting caught by applying for early retirement.
"Clearly," Lupsha says, "there is a reluctance within the United States, as in any system, to let the dirty laundry hang out publicly. To do so would mean the drug war has not only failed in the supply side, it's failed on the demand side and in the interdiction side as well. That's very bad for public confidence."
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Annette French
mercury@gvn.net
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960224, New York City, NY, NY Times. Police officer in the c.1996 N.Y. Times News Service
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
c.1996 N.Y. Times News Service
NEW YORK - It was one of those modest but bustling family businesses, investigators said, in which the owner's mother minded the shop and a brother-in-law, a New York City police officer, made deliveries on his days off. An acquaintance pitched in, they said, dressed in his Army National Guard uniform.
Their merchandise, the authorities said, was cocaine from Colombia.
In indictments unsealed on Friday, a Manhattan grand jury charged that Pedro Perez, 31, of the Unionport section of the Bronx, led a drug distribution business based in upper Manhattan, assisted by his 59-year-old mother, Aurea Amaya, and four others. The charges, which included conspiracy to distribute narcotics and criminal possession and sale of illegal drugs, carry mandatory life sentences for those convicted.
The case prompted related arrests of 85 people in recent weeks in Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and Newark, N.J., and the seizure of more than 5 tons of cocaine, a half-ton of marijuana, and nearly $12.5 million in drug proceeds, law enforcement officials said.
In New York City alone, the authorities seized more than 457 pounds of cocaine and $240,000 in cash.
"This is the dismantling of a nationwide, well-organized cocaine operation that operated in major cities in the United States," said Robert H. Silbering, New York City's special narcotics prosecutor.
"It shows that these organizations go beyond city and state boundaries," said Silbering, whose office joined in the investigation, which began last October. "They're national in scope." The task force included agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration and New York City and state police.
The police officer arrested in the sweep, Antonio Camacho, 22, of Unionport, who according to the indictment flashed his badge to beat a traffic infraction while carrying cocaine, was assigned to the 48th Precinct in the Bronx. He is the brother of Brenda Pacheco, the wife of Perez, who was also sometimes known as Piruli, officials said. Camacho was arrested on Dec. 10 while driving his sister's Cadillac, and the police said that there was six and a half pounds of cocaine packed inside the airbag.
After Camacho's arrest, Silbering said, Ms. Amaya hired a witch doctor to put a curse on Judge Leslie Snyder, who ordered him held without bail. Ms. Amaya was arrested early on Friday in front of her home at 45 Thayer Street in upper Manhattan.
Another accused courier, Edward Vasquez, arrested on Friday in Pennsylvania, spent 14 years in the National Guard and transported drugs in his Army sergeant's uniform to reduce the odds of getting caught, officials said.
Others indicted on Friday were Jose Cancel, 31, of the Belmont section of the Bronx, and Noel Valentine, 23, of the Soundview section of the Bronx.
A seventh alleged ring member, Robinson Chalas, 36, was arrested a month ago in Washington Heights, Manhattan, with a .357 Magnum pistol, a sawed-off shotgun, and 13 pounds of cocaine, officials said.
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Another example of our brave drug warriors at work on our behalf. Notice the byline. Christopher Wren seems to be a reporter specializing in drug stories for the Times.
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