Free Talk Live

More than 1.6 million people were arrested for drug offenses in the US last year, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report 2010, and more than half of them were for marijuana. That's a drug arrest every 19 seconds, 24 hours a day, every day last year. The numbers suggest that despite "no more war on drugs" rhetoric emanating from Washington, the drug war juggernaut is rolling along on cruise control.

According to an Albany City Council member, the Albany Police Department has decided to back out of an agreement with Berkeley Police Department and UCPD to purchase an armored vehicle through a federal grant.

The $170,000 federal grant to purchase a Lenco BearCat will come from the Urban Areas Security Initiative, a Department of Homeland Security nonprofit organization that is intended to financially support agencies that are at high risk of a terrorist attack with “security enhancements.”...

Florida inmates convicted of non-violent drug crimes spent 194 percent more time behind bars in 2009 than they did in 1990, costing the state billions of dollars but providing little public safety benefit, a new study found. The study, by the Pew Center on the States, examined trends in 35 states that provided data on incarceration for inmates convicted of violent crimes, property crimes and drug offenses. It found that nationally, state inmates across all categories of offenses served an average of nine additional months in custody, a rise of 36 percent since 1990.

House Democrats have scheduled a horrible drug war bill for a vote tomorrow (Wednesday). The Drug Trafficking Safe Harbor Elimination Act of 2010 (H.R. 5231), would expand problematic drug conspiracy laws, apply mandatory minimum drug sentences to more people, increase racial disparities, and subject Americans to incarceration for drug offenses and public health interventions that are legal in the foreign country in which they’re committed.

End a Failed Drug War (and Boost Entrepreneurship?)

The global war on drugs is a failure, a high-profile commission funded by Richard Branson declares, as it calls for governments to consider decriminalizing some drugs. Could ending the decades-long battle be an opening for entrepreneurs?

There were 500 riot police, 17 law enforcement agencies and 75 arrests in the raid of Occupy Oakland on October 25th. There were 200 police, 12 agencies and 32 arrests today. Oakland PD is losing ground.

Authorities in Tempe, Arizona, dismantled a drug trafficking cell associated with Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, arresting 20 people and seizing three tons of marijuana, 30 pounds of methamphetamine and $2.4 million in cash, police said. A six-month investigation by Tempe police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency also concluded with the seizure of an airplane, 10 vehicles and 14 firearms, police said Friday.

When Pompton Lakes police seized Darren Richardson’s car on a rainy September afternoon, they told him it was headed for an impound lot. When they returned it three weeks later, he says, the 2004 BMW belonged in a junk yard. According to police reports, the damage to the black BMW 325i came in the aftermath of a traffic stop during which officers detected a "strong odor of raw marijuana" inside the vehicle. Searching for a cache of drugs, members of three different police agencies and a detective from a federal drug task force spent two days tearing the car apart, the reports said.

This is an FBI report on what to watch out for. Short blurb below.

They could be dismissed as a nuisance, a loose network of individuals living in the United States who call themselves “sovereign citizens” and believe that federal, state, and local governments operate illegally. Some of their actions, although quirky, are not crimes. The offenses they do commit seem minor: They do not pay their taxes and regularly create false license plates, driver’s licenses, and even currency.