A bizarre video posted online appears to show a police cruiser picking a man up from a house where he has just purchased meth and giving him a ride.
The post WATCH: Man Buys Bag of Meth And Is Filmed Leaving Crack House in Cop Car appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
The Obama administration “derailed” a massive investigation into drug trafficking and other illegal activities by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah over fears that it could anger Iran at a time when Obama was attempting to secure a nuclear deal with the nation, according to a 14,000 word report from Politico.
The article paints a clear picture of an administration that was willing to do whatever it takes, including allowing cocaine to flow into the United States, (which led to an unknown number of deaths of Americans by overdose) to pass a nuclear deal that many in his own party didn’t even support.
The law enforcement campaign that the Obama administration specifically and purposefully derailed was known as “Project Cassandra” and was launched in 2008 after the DEA had confirmed that Hezbollah was now in the business of selling drugs, and lots of them.
Politico reports:
The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.
Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.
They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.
Make no mistake, despite denials by the literal officials who allowed the drugs to be run into the country in the first place, this was a specific move by the Obama administration who decided a nuclear deal with Iran was more important than stopping a drug dealing terrorist organization, And they apparently had no problem openly undermining Project Cassandra.
The Politico report continues:
But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records.
When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.
The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force.
And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.
“They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down,” claimed David Asher who himself had helped establish the operation that Obama and his surrogates fought against.
Even more shocking, the Obama administration also BLOCKED efforts to arrest various terrorist operatives within Hezbollah, including a man known only as Ghost that authorities believe is one of the worlds biggest cocaine and chemical weapon dealers!
Project Cassandra members say administration officials also blocked or undermined their efforts to go after other top Hezbollah operatives including one nicknamed the ‘Ghost allowing them to remain active despite being under sealed U.S. indictment for years.
People familiar with his case say the Ghost has been one of the world’s biggest cocaine traffickers, including to the U.S., as well as a major supplier of conventional and chemical weapons for use by Syrian President Bashar Assad against his people.
You truly cannot make this stuff up folks! Keep in mind that this was published by a mainstream media outlet that the rest of the establishment press has considered one of their own for years.
With that being said, it is safe to assume that key Obama officials involved in allowing Americans to be killed by cocaine will deny deny deny and the larger mainstream media apparatus will mostly ignore this absolute bombshell of a story.
This is BY FAR bigger than anything released about Russia supposedly helping Trump win the election but we can safely assume that the deep state puppet media will continue to push the Russian narrative while ignoring what amounts to an epic level of corruption by the past administration.
Additional Reading:
(The Real Agenda News) People don’t have sugar cravings, they have sugar addiction. That is the bitter truth about sugar.
Just as cocaine addicts do, sugar addicts also reject the notion that they are hooked to the sweet drug, but recent and not so recent research reveals that sugar has the power to make people even more dependent to it that illegal drugs such as cocaine or heroin can.
If the food industry, at some point along the way, meant to keep people dependent on sugar, they succeded in an extraodinary way.
Most canned or boxed food is infested with artificial sweeteners or with large amounts of refined sugar that do nothing else than activate the same kind of “positive” neurological reaction than cocaine does in drug addicts, except that sugar does it even better.
In the early 1960s, evidence began to accumulate that sugar consumption was related to metabolic disorder and heart disease.
In 1965, the Foundation for Sugar Research, created and financed by the sugar industry, paid off the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most influential medical journals, to publish a technical article that discarded those results.
By 1970, the same pseudo-scientific foundation paid for experiments on animals with the intention of demonstrating the healthiness of their product.
When the results were the opposite of those expected, the foundation aborted the project and prohibited scientists from publishing those results. And those harmful practices last until today.
The comparison with the tobacco industry jumps at sight. One of the great arguments that allowed lawyers hired by the White House to paper the tobacco companies – a blow they have not yet recovered from – was just the evidence that these companies had known for decades the damages of tobacco.
After everything was said and done, the public learned that the tobacco industry had hidden, if not perverted, with the most obscene disregard for public health, and with an exclusive focus on their economic interests, all evidence that smoking was dangerous to humans.
Facts revealed on the science of smoking completely disqualified them as solvent social agents.
Sugary soft drinks, buns and sweets will soon follow the same path, if history teaches us anything.
The analogy of sugar with tobacco has another interesting angle. It is unlikely that there is a single earthling right now who does not know that smoking harms one’s health. And yet we keep smoking.
Human beings are not governed, in general, by rational arguments. The truth helps to contain our insane tendencies, but it is not enough to exterminate them.
Give a mouse a lever that will give him cocaine, another one that will provide him with food, and you will be amazed how the mouse will choose to starve to get a good bump. We do not distinguish ourselves from beasts in that.
Part of the pharmaceutical industry has incurred practices similar to those of tobacco and sugar, hiding the adverse results to their drugs, financing biased clinical trials and incurring in other bad practices that do not come from their scientific laboratories, but from their executive sharks.
If a company is not able to discern its ethics from its income statement, it does not deserve the public’s trust. The sugar lawyers have done a disservice to their employers, and an objective damage to the society that welcomes them swallowing buns and drinking poison.
Conclusion?
Only true research, for all that we are seeing, can promote the quality science that we need.
Food companies are losing the confidence of public opinion.
The post Sugar is 8 Times More Addictive than Cocaine appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) has almost doubled the amount of cocaine seized this fiscal year compared to the year before.
You will find more statistics at Statista
As Statista"s Dyfed Loesche notes, more than two months before this fiscal year ends on September 30 the agency has seized more than 121,000 million pounds of cocaine.
As our infographic shows, this year the greater share was seized by the biggest CBP branch, the Office of Field Operations. This arm of CBP mans all 328 ports of entry (seaports, airports, border crossings etc.) while Border Patrol officer operate out in the open between those ports.
We didn’t need any more data to definitively expose the many shortcomings of the US-led global prohibition on narcotics – but we got one today, courtesy of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
New figures show that cocaine production in Colombia reached an all-time high for the second straight year in 2016, as coca cultivation in the South American country surged 52 percent, spanning 146,000 hectares, compared with 96,000 in 2015. The 2016 crops produced an estimated 866 metric tons of cocaine, an increase of 35 percent compared to 2015. Meanwhile, cocaine use appears to be increasing in the two largest markets, North America and Europe.
While the UNODC said the survey results were “disappointing,” it noted that there were “some positives” in the report, including an increase of 49 per cent in seizures of cocaine - from 253 tons confiscated in 2015 to 378 tons in 2016. Of course, each seizure inevitably means some low-level trafficker – possibly working under the threat of violence – is being jailed, at an enormous cost to the public, while the seizure has little impact on the larger organization.
The rise in production comes as FARC, a communist insurgency that controlled patches of the Colombian countryside for more than 50 years, renounced drug trafficking under the terms of a peace agreement that was ratified by Colombia’s Congress in November. The group started disarming in March, but doubts remain: Can the group’s members will be able to work regular jobs. Meanwhile, FARC, which once supported itself mainly through selling drugs and kidnapping wealthy individuals, is transforming into a political party.
In any event, one Colombian law enforcement official who spoke with the Guardian sounded optimistic about the country’s ability to work with FARC to reduce coca production.
“José Ángel Mendoza, the head of Colombia’s counter-narcotics police, said Colombia faced “a difficult historical moment”, but stressed that the figures reflected the state of the country on 31 December 2016.
Since then, the government has put in place an ambitious plan to eradicate 100,000 hectares of coca by the year’s end. Half of that amount is to be forcibly eradicated, and the other half removed through crop substitution agreements with coca farmers.
The substitution program is part of a peace deal with Farc rebels, who renounced drug trafficking as part of their demobilization deal. During much of the group’s 53 years as an armed insurgency, it financed its fight through the drug trade.
Former combatants have committed to work with the government to convince farmers to replace coca crops with another way to make a living.”
This forced eradication program is already yielding results, the Colombians say.
“Already 40% of the goal of forced eradication has been met, and 86,000 families – who account for as much as 76,000 hectares of coca – have signed on to crop substitution programs in exchange for subsidies of about $11,000 per farmer over the course of two years, according to the government.”
As VICE noted, at a joint press conference in May, President Trump pushed for Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos to increase eradication efforts. Santos won the Nobel peace prize late last year for his work on the FARC deal.
Trump said Colombia is one of the US’s closest allies “in the hemisphere,” before reaffirming US support for destroying cocaine crops and refineries by providing DEA personnel and resources to augment localized eradication efforts.
“We have a problem with drugs and you have a very big problem with drugs,” Trump reminded Santos.
“Recently, we have seen an alarmed — and I mean really a very highly alarmed and alarming trend,” Trump said. “Last year, Colombia coca cultivation and cocaine production reached a record high, which, hopefully, will be remedied very quickly by the President. We must confront this dangerous threat to our societies together.”
Trump has said he believes his wall will help keep drugs out of the US ("walls work, just ask Israel"). Unfortunately, Trump and the Republicans" plans for reducing the flow of illegal narcotics are no different from their predecessors. Once FARC has left the countryside, a new criminal group will take its place – an organization possibly more violent and unpredictable than the one that preceded it. Indeed, as long is there is demand, somebody will find a way to meet it. Maybe it"s time for governments to acknowledge that prohibition has failed, and that regulation could be a more productive strategy.
To be fair, if Santos does manage to engineer a sharp drop in Colombia’s cocaine exports with his voluntary crop-rotation plan, he might earn a Nobel Prize in economics, too.
In an unprecedented move, Oregon is on its way to becoming the first state to decriminalize small amounts of hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy, while also lowering the penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor in some drug-related cases.
Two groundbreaking bills were passed by the Oregon legislature this week, and will go to the state’s Democratic governor, Kate Brown, for approval. House Bill 3078 reduces drug-related property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. It passed in the state House with a vote of 33-26, and in the Senate with a vote of 18-11.
House Bill 2355 seeks to decriminalize at least six hard drugs, as long as the user does not have any prior felonies or more than two prior drug convictions. It passed in the state House with a vote of 36-23, and in the Senate with a vote of 20-9.
Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D-Portland) told the Lund Report that he sees the criminalization of drugs as a major public policy failure, because it ignores the fact that addiction to certain drugs changes the physical structure of the brain, and should be treated as a health problem—as opposed to the current system, which labels users as felons, and sentences them to a life of rebounding in and out of the criminal justice system.
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“We’ve got to treat people, not put them in prison,” Greenlick said. “It would be like putting them in the state penitentiary for having diabetes. … This is a chronic brain disorder and it needs to be treated this way.”
READ MORE: NYPD Cops Dramatically Reduce Arrest Rate for Pot, and the City Didn"t Fall into Chaos
Both bills were supported by Sen. Jackie Winters (R-Salem), the longest-serving African-American woman in Oregon Senate history. During the Senate hearing, she silenced critics by referring to the current War on Drugs as “institutional racism.” The Lund Report noted that in addition to pushing for decriminalization, Winters has been fighting to decrease the prison population since 2011.
“There is empirical evidence that there are certain things that follow race. … We don’t like to look at the disparity in our prison system,” Winters said. “It is institutional racism. … We can pretend it doesn’t exist, but it does.”
HR 2355 also seeks to cut down on racial profiling among police. As the Portland Tribune reported, police would be required “to collect data on race and other demographic information during law enforcement stops,” and the Criminal Justice Commission would then “have the responsibility to analyze the data to identify any trends showing officers have singled out people with specific qualities such as the color of their skin.”
While law enforcement has worked to derail attempts to reform prison sentencing in the past, HR 3078 includes a provision that tasks the Criminal Justice Commission with providing local jurisdictions with $7 million for diversion programs. The bill would also reduce some mandatory minimum sentences for property crimes, and increase the number of prior convictions necessary for a felony offense.
Rep. Jodi Hack (R-Salem) was one of the few Republicans to support HR 3078, and she told the Lund Report that she has received threats as a result. However, she noted that the opportunity to keep families together, and to send drug users to a diversion program for help, instead of prison, was what anchored her support.
READ MORE: Police Kill Unarmed Man On His Doorstep As He Brought Dinner To His Family
“We are putting addicts and nonviolent offenders into prison,” Hack said. “We in the U.S. are 5 percent of the world’s population, but 20 percent of the prison population.”
Oregon became the first state to decriminalize small amounts of cannabis in 1973, before becoming one of the first states to legalize it for medicinal use in 1998, and then finally legalizing recreational use in 2015. This raises the question—if Oregon decriminalizes small amounts of drugs such as heroin, cocaine and ecstasy, will other states follow suit?
The push for ending the failed “War on Drugs” appears to be gaining traction, as the most popular medical journal in the United Kingdom, the British Medical Journal, argued in November 2016 that “laws against drug use have harmed people across the world, while stressing that drug addiction should be viewed as a health problem and police involvement must end.”
As The Free Thought Project reported last week, the United Nations is now calling for the worldwide decriminalization of drug use and possession. A statement from the World Health Organization called for “ending discrimination in health care settings,” as well as various “marginalized and stigmatized populations.”
An example of the power of decriminalization can be found in Portugal, a country that decriminalized all drugs in 2001. As a result, drugs usage rates have declined, and there are now approximately three drug overdose deaths for every 1 million citizens.
Image source: Wikimedia
Handyman Karlos Cashe spent three months in jail because police were unable to tell the difference between drywall powder and cocaine.
Cashe was arrested after Oviedo, Fla., police conducted a field test on white powder in his vehicle and determined it was crack.
“I sat there 90 days knowing I was innocent,” Cashe told reporters.
He was unable to make bail because of a 2015 arrest that was for cocaine possession. But he since has gotten his life back on track and has a job.
Tired Of Losing Freedoms And Looking For A Second Country? Read More Here.
“I know for a fact [that] it’s drywall because I’m a handyman,” Cashe said. “I said that continuously during the arrest stop.”
The powder tested positive for cocaine in a field drug test, but charges later were dropped and he was released after a laboratory test determined the substance was not cocaine.
“That little piece of crack was under his seat thing,” an unidentified cop said in bodycam video obtained by WESH 2 television. Police tested the substance after a drug-sniffing dog located it.
Disturbingly, Cashe is far from alone. Last year ProPublica reported that hundreds of people have been jailed due to inaccurate field tests.
“I want them to restore what I lost for those 90 days,” Cashe said.
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Oviedo, FL — An innocent man got a harsh dose of the incompetent police state recently after cops mistook his drywall for cocaine. He was subsequently kidnapped and thrown in a cage for months solely because of the ignorance of these officers and the faulty nature of their test kits.
To those who constantly say, “if you don’t want to get arrested, then don’t break the law,” consider the following.
In March of this year, Karlos Cashe was pulled over for a minor traffic ticket after he forgot to turn on his lights. However, it quickly went south after police saw drywall powder on his seat and floorboard and mistook it for cocaine.
Aside from thinking the innocent man had drugs, police also misread his terms of probation (for an unrelated drug charge years ago) and accused him of being out past curfew. However, hours later — after they arrested him — they realized they were wrong. But the false drug charges stuck.
During the arrest, police obtained a ‘positive’ result for drugs on the drywall using one of the known-faulty field drug test kits.
As The Free Thought Project has previously reported, the field tests, conducted by minimally trained police officers, are criminally flawed.
The $2 field drug tests, manufactured by The Safariland Group, have been proven to be unreliable. And according to the manufacturer, should not be used as a stand-alone test for convictions related to drug possession. But that’s precisely what happened to Cashe.
“I know for a fact (that) it’s drywall because I’m a handyman,” Cashe said. “I said that continuously during the arrest stop.”
READ MORE: Arrest of 94-year-old Veteran for Felony Marijuana Charges Highlights Absurdity of Drug War
As WFTV reports, a K-9 unit arrived at the scene and the dog alerted on Cashe’s vehicle and an Oviedo Police Department sergeant field tested substances he believed to be marijuana and more cocaine.
Both the dog and the kits were dead wrong. However, when those tests came back positive, Cashe was taken to the Seminole County Jail.
To make his unlawful kidnapping even worse, because he was accused of violating probation, he was denied bond.
After rotting in a cage for three months, a lab test eventually came back showing that there were no drugs inside Cashe’s car at the time of his arrest and he had broken no law.
Last week Cashe walked out of jail with no charges and has a new mission. He wants to raise awareness to make sure this injustice doesn’t happen to anyone else.
All new tonight:charges have been dropped for a man who says police mistook drywall for cocaine. What he wants to do now #Tv27at10 #Wftvat11
— Ty Russell (@TRussellWFTV) June 27, 2017
“This is what I want to stop,” he said. “I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”
Sadly, if history is any indicator, this will happen — again, and again, and again.
As The Free Thought Project has reported on several occasions, there is a dire need for the federal government to end the drug war, which is only still continuing because locking people up is big business for cities across the country who balance their police departments’ budgets by citation writing, jail fees, court costs, and plea deals.
READ MORE: LAPD to Be Equipped with Lapel Cameras by the Summer
The steady stream of inmates going into the corrections system feeds the prison industrial complex with fresh meat. But when individuals like Small are arrested, while not being guilty of any crimes, the costs to cities and boroughs from lawsuits and settlements is quite astounding.
Cases like this are nothing new, in fact, we report on them on a regular basis.
Earlier this year, Ross LeBeau, of Houston, was cleared of drug charges after he was arrested for possession of Methamphetamine. It turns out that LeBeau was actually in possession of kitty litter, not meth. However, this made no difference to the cops who kidnapped and caged him for it.
On May 8 of last year, Gale Griffin and her husband Wendall Harvey, who’ve been driving trucks together for the last seven years were wrongfully charged with possession of cocaine. They were targeted by incompetent cops who used criminally ineffective drug test kits on a white powdery substance found inside the couple’s truck. The kit identified the substance as cocaine. But it was not cocaine. It was baking soda Griffin used for stomach problems. However, they were caged for months while the reckless cops ignored their pleas of innocence.
Also this year, Alexander Bernstein of Brooklyn was jailed and had his life ruined after cops mistook soap for cocaine.
Wenonah resident John Cokos recently settled a lawsuit against the Gloucester County police department for $35,000. The lawsuit comes after an arrest for drug possession because the officer claimed that his crackers were crack rocks.
In October, college student John Harrington was thrown in prison after police, with one of these field drug test kits, tested sugar, and came up with a false positive for cocaine.
READ MORE: "Mommy am I Going to Die?" Mom Calls 9-1-1 for Paramedics, Cop Shows Up, Shoots 4-yo Daughter
“Really, I’m really in jail right now for powdered sugar, ” John Harrington thought after it happened.
We’ve also seen the case in which police mistook Jolly Ranchers for meth and jailed an innocent man. Love Olatunijojo, 25, and an unidentified friend purchased Jolly Ranchers at the It’Sugar candy emporium in Coney Island in June of 2013. Several blocks away, cops stopped and searched the friends and mistook the candies for crystal meth. Olatunijojo was then thrown in jail.
In August, we reported on the story of a man who was held in prison for over four months because police falsely identified salt as crystal meth.
And the list goes on….
The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction release data every year showing the levels of certain illicit drugs found in the wastewater of select European cities. Looking at cocaine, London is way in front of all other major cities analysed...
You will find more statistics at Statista
As Statista"s Martin Armstrong points out, on an average day, the UK capital"s drains flow with almost 900mg of the drug per one thousand people.
TUCSON (CN) – A former U.S. Border Patrol agent who previously pleaded guilty to drug charges was sentenced on Friday to more than 12 years in prison for smuggling what he believed to be 110 pounds of cocaine.
Juan Pimentel has been behind bars since November 2015, when state troopers pulled over his rental Ford Explorer on Interstate 10 and found 50 bundles of what turned out to be a white powder stuffed in four suitcases, court records show.
Testifying at his sentencing hearing, Pimentel said the suitcases were already inside the SUV when an acquaintance – later identified as an undercover agent — provided it to him. Pimentel was to be paid $50,000 for delivering the bundles to Chicago.
Mark Williams, Pimentel’s lawyer, said his client succumbed to repeated pressure from the undercover agent but had admitted to making a grave mistake and deserved leniency for cooperating with authorities.
“He’s very embarrassed, ashamed, remorseful,” Williams told U.S. District Judge Raner Collins.
From the witness stand, Pimentel looked toward his family and a group of Border Patrol agents sitting in the courtroom, and said he was “sorry to put them through a hard time.”
Whereas his lawyer portrayed Pimentel as simply a follower who previously had nothing to do with cocaine, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Davenport called him a “dirty Border Patrol agent” and brought up a couple of incidents of marijuana smuggling involving the former agent in the mid-2000s. In response to Davenport’s questioning, Pimentel admitted that he “helped out” some men who were involved in the marijuana trade.
READ MORE: Facebook Slaps Down DEA for Using Woman"s Pictures to Make Fake Profile
“This is someone who’s had zero respect for the badge,” Davenport told the judge.
Collins sided with Davenport after the lawyers carried on a lengthy discussion about whether a firearm found inside the SUV was relevant to the planned drug transaction. Pimentel said he always carried a gun out of habit.
Judge Collins weighed in with his belief that Pimentel had the gun for his protection in Chicago. Reciting the former agent’s involvement with other illegal activity, he declared him “predisposed” to get involved with cocaine.
“You had plenty of time to say no, cocaine is not my thing, but instead chose to drive 1,700 miles from Tucson to Chicago with the cocaine,” the judge told Pimentel.
The former agent was sentenced to 150 months in prison for a charge he pleaded guilty to in July — attempted possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. He received an additional 10 months for receiving a bribe as a public official. The second charge stems from a February 2015 incident in which he was paid cash in exchange for providing license plate information from a law enforcement database, court records show.
Pimentel’s case gained notoriety when former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske announced his arrest in Phoenix during a news conference where he addressed corruption within the ranks. He promised Pimentel’s badge would be destroyed after a conviction or guilty plea. On Friday, the agents were in court to observe what happens when one of their own becomes corrupt, Davenport said.
Outside the courtroom, Natalie Pimentel said her husband’s situation has been hard on the family.
READ MORE: Program to Help Addicts Instead of Jail Them So Effective, 200 Police Depts Across US Have Adopted It
“The devil tempted him and he went for it,” she said of her husband, adding that she didn’t know about any illicit activities until after his arrest.
“He’s cried, he knows his mistakes,” she said. “It’s sad; it’s sad for my kids.”
The judge said he would recommend that Pimentel serve his time in New York state, where his family now lives.
San Juan, Puerto Rico – In a case highlighting the infiltration of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) by transnational criminal organizations, twelve current and former TSA officers and airport staff were indicted for allegedly trafficking over 20 tons of cocaine — worth over $100 million — into the U.S. over an 18-years timeframe.
Last Wednesday, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against the twelve defendants, who are charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine.
From 1988 to 2016 the conspirators allegedly smuggled about 40,000 pounds, or twenty tons, of cocaine through Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and into the United States, according to the DOJ.
The DOJ press release detailed how the massive trafficking operation allegedly worked:
During the course of the conspiracy, the defendants smuggled suitcases, each containing at least 8 to 15 kilograms of cocaine, through the TSA security system at the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (LMMIA). Sometimes as many as five mules were used on each flight, with each mule checking-in up to two suitcases. From 1998 through 2016, the defendants helped smuggle approximately 20 tons of cocaine through LMMIA.
Six current and former TSA employees, José Cruz-López, Luis Vázquez-Acevedo, Keila Carrasquillo, Carlos Rafael Adorno-Hiraldo, Antonio Vargas-Saavedra, and Daniel Cruz-Echevarría allegedly smuggled multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine while employed as TSA Officers at the San Juan airport. Their full time responsibilities were to provide security and baggage screening for checked and carry-on luggage that was to be placed on outbound flights from the LMMIA. During the duration of the conspiracy, these TSA employees smuggled multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine through the TSA X-Ray machines within LMMIA and onto airplanes without detection.
“These individuals were involved in a conspiracy to traffic massive quantities of illegal narcotics to the continental United States,” said Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico. “These arrests demonstrate the success of the AirTAT initiative, which has successfully allocated a dedicated group of state and federal law enforcement officers, whose mission is to ensure that our airports are not used in the drug traffickers’ illicit businesses.”
Defendants Edwin Francisco Castro, Luis Vázquez-Acevedo and Ferdinand López are alleged to have operated as facilitators between drug trafficking organizations and the TSA employees who smuggled the cocaine into the airplanes. Defendant Miguel Ángel Pérez-Rodríguez, an airport security company employee, was a source of supply of cocaine to the drug trafficking organization, according to the superseding indictment.
READ MORE: VIDEO: Bigot Cop Blows Fuse, Threatens Black Man, Tells Him "I Don"t Care About Your People"
The DOJ press release notes the strategic nature of the operation:
Defendant Javier Ortiz began assisting drug trafficking organizations as an employee of Airport Aviation Services (AAS) as a baggage handler/ramp employee. During the time of the conspiracy Ortiz used to pick up suitcases he knew contained cocaine from the mules at the airline check-in counter. Ortiz would then place the suitcases into the X-Ray machines being monitored by the TSA drug trafficking organization members, who cleared the suitcases. After the suitcases had been cleared by TSA members, Ortiz took the suitcases to their designated flight, making sure no narcotic K-9 unit or law enforcement personnel were present when the suitcase went from the checkpoint to the airplane. Once the suitcases were loaded into the airplane, defendant Ortiz would make a phone call to a drug trafficking organization member indicating the all clear and the mules would then board the airplane. Ortiz also paid the TSA employees for clearing the suitcases through TSA security.
Defendant Tomas Dominguez-Rohena assisted the drug trafficking organization by taking the suitcases he knew contained cocaine after they had been cleared by TSA members or smuggled passed security to their designated flight. Defendant José Gabriel López-Mercado was a mule for the criminal organization.
“This investigation was initiated by TSA as part of its efforts to address employee misconduct and specific insider threat vulnerabilities. TSA has zero tolerance for employees engaged in criminal activity to facilitate contraband smuggling,” said José Baquero, federal security director for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, in the Monday press release.
READ MORE: A Half Dozen Cops Beat This Homeless Man to a Pulp Then Attempt to Steal Witness Phones
The indictment was a result of an internal TSA investigation by the Airport Investigations and Tactical Team (AirTAT), a 2-year-old multi-agency initiative.
If convicted, the defendants face prison terms of between 10-years to life in prison.
Not surprisingly, this is the second such bust of TSA officials in only 2 years for transporting massive amounts of cocaine.
In November 2015, three former TSA agents were indicted on charges of defrauding the government and smuggling cocaine.
According to the indictment, 35-year old Joseph Scott, 32-year-old Michael Castaneda, and 27-year-old Jessica Scott, all former TSA agents at San Francisco International Airport, were involved in an ongoing operation to help transport drugs through airport security.
Still feel safe with the TSA protecting the nation’s airports?
Listen up border fags: because of your wanton proclivity for doing drugs, snorting cocaine through straws and/or inhaling crack smoke through glass pipes, you don"t get to have a country. Your borders are meaningless and you should permit any Mexican or Central American pavement slob into your country -- because of your sins and because your government conducts wars abroad.
This is, essentially, what Enrique Morones, head of Border Angels, said to Tucker Carlson tonight -- exposing his 2nd grade IQ level and childish penchant to say stupid things.
There is no argument that could assuage the American people into believing it should not control its borders. Only high level retard "thinkers" on the left, communist shills, and anti-American anarchists believe unfettered immigration into cash-strapped border towns is a good idea. Ergo, anyone who suggests otherwise is instantly reduced to looking like Barney Rubble "motoring" his vehicle over rugged terrain.
In short, quit doing coke and bombing brown people, then you can enjoy a national border.
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com
The third time behind bars for Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman may be the unlucky one: on Thursday, Mexico"s most notorious cartel kingpin who twice brazenly escape from prison and spent years on the run as the country"s most wanted man, was extradited to the U.S. on Thursday to face drug trafficking and other charges.
In a major victory for the US DEA, Mexico"s Foreign Relations Department announced Guzman was handed over to U.S. authorities for transportation to the U.S. on Thursday, the last full day of President Barack Obama"s administration and a day before Donald Trump is to be inaugurated.
The U.S. Justice Department issued a statement confirming that Guzman was en route to the United States and expressed gratitude to Mexico for its cooperation.
As reported by the AP, a senior U.S. official said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration took custody of Guzman in Ciudad Juarez, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas, and a plane carrying him departed for New York at 5:31 p.m. EST. The convicted Sinaloa cartel boss has been held most recently in a prison near Ciudad Juarez.
El Chapo was recaptured a year ago after escaping from a second maximum-security prison through a tunnel dug to his cell. He had fought extradition since then.
Upon return to the US, Guzman faces the possibility of life in a U.S. prison under multiple indictments in six jurisdictions around the United States, including New York, San Diego, Chicago and Miami.
A federal indictment in the Eastern District of New York, where Guzman is expected to be prosecuted, accuses him of overseeing a trafficking cartel with thousands of members and billions of dollars in profits laundered back to Mexico. It says Guzman and other members of the Sinaloa cartel employed hit men who carried out murders, kidnappings and acts of torture.
He was first indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury in July 2009. A superseding indictment was issued in May charging him and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada with a variety of drug, gun and money laundering charges as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise.
A Mexican Foreign Relations Department statement said a court had ruled against Guzman"s appeal and found that his extradition would be constitutional. Obama"s White House, which was down to a skeleton staff hours before Trump takes office, said it had no immediate comment.
Forth Chaffe, AR — On May 8 of this year, Gale Griffin and her husband Wendall Harvey, who’ve been driving trucks together for the last seven years, were targeted by public servants whose job it is to seek out arbitrary substances deemed illegal by the state. While it is certainly bad enough that the state kidnaps, cages, and kills people for ingesting a substance that makes them happy — they are often dead wrong — and innocent people suffer at the hands of police incompetence. After being falsely accused of possessing cocaine, Griffin and Harvey are living proof that the war on drugs lays waste to any and all lives, not just those who use drugs.
In May, Griffin and Harvey were on a delivery. The couple has a security clearance and has been delivering explosive ingredients since 2009. However, they were targeted by incompetent cops who used criminally ineffective drug test kits on a white powdery substance found inside the couple’s truck. The kit identified the substance as cocaine. But it was not cocaine. It was baking soda Griffin used for stomach problems.
“I use baking soda for everything,” said Griffin.
“When you start talking about a schedule one controlled substance, your talking about a major case,” Fort Chaffee Police Chief Chuck Bowen said of the case in May, apparently ecstatic that his officers had found a couple with some cocaine.
The police at Fort Chaffee thought they had caught themselves two dangerous cocaine traffickers with 13 ounces of fine white powder.
“I saw the guy hand out a bag of baking soda outside the driver’s door, and I told him that’s just baking soda, and I think that’s when it started,” said Harvey.
The Barling Police Department’s narcotic unit, who specializes in depriving people of their freedom for possessing substances, was called to the scene.
“We tested it three different times out of two different kits to make sure that we weren’t having any issue, and each time we got a positive for controlled substance,” said Chief Bowen.
“They thought we had like 13.22 ounces of cocaine, and the guy said I had over $300,000 in cocaine,” said Griffin.
Harvey, who is a former cop from Indiana was shocked to learn that he’d been traveling with cocaine. Since he was a former LEO, he never doubted that the police could have possibly been wrong.
“How did cocaine get into the baking soda?” Harvey recalled. “You don’t even doubt the tests because I guess I’m stupid, I’m just a citizen and it never occurred to me that the tests were invalid,” said Harvey.
“They’re not infallible. They are subject to misreadings,” explained Greg Parrish, Director of the Public Defender Commission. “There’s a lot of these instances where they get false positives.”
Yet, he and his band of government drug enforcers continue to use them!
For being in possession of 13 ounces of baking soda, the couple was kidnapped and thrown in a cage.
“The door opened, and there’s a woman in the top bunk and a woman in the bottom bunk and a woman on the floor, and I had to sleep on the floor on the other side right next to the toilet,” recalled Griffin. “I thought that I’d died and gone to hell. Really.”
They couple would be held in a cell for 10 days before they even got to speak to a public defender. Since their cellphones were confiscated and they did not know their family members’ phone numbers by heart, four weeks went by before they were able to communicate to Harvey’s son that they’d been thrown in jail.
“I felt like I was somewhere that didn’t feel like America. I can’t call anybody, nobody knows where I’m at,” said Harvey.
But he was in America, and it’s in America where people get treated like this over substances deemed illegal by the state.
After continuous negligence and dereliction, it would be four more weeks before the police would finally figure out that the substance in the bags was not cocaine.
After spending two months in jail for a crime entirely fabricated by those sworn to protect them, they were released. However, the damage was already done and their lives had been ruined.
After their employer found out they were in jail, the couple was fired and their security clearances revoked. Also, they couldn’t go back to work even if they hadn’t lost their jobs as it took two additional months for the couple to get their trucks out of impound.
When asked how an innocent couple could be kidnapped and locked in a cage for carrying around baking soda, Chief Bowen callously responded, “We’re not chemists and we don’t roll with a chemistry set in the back of police cars.”
Well chief Bowen, these are people’s lives. If you are going to be depriving people of their freedom for completely legal substances, maybe it’s high time you do start to ‘roll with a chemistry set in the back of police cars.’
“Two law-abiding working people, and there’s no telling how many mistakes they’ve made. It’s a mistake, but these mistakes happen quite often I think,” said Harvey — and he’s right. Thousands of innocent people have been deprived of their freedom as a result of these faulty tests.
According to the national litigation and public policy organization, the Innocence Project, at any given time there are an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 innocent people currently locked in cages in U.S. prisons.
Couple this staggering number with the number of people locked up for non-violent drug possession and the United States looks more like the Gulag of the 1930’s than the Land of the Free.
But how can so many innocent people be locked up, how does the state present evidence, that it doesn’t have, to get a conviction? Well, the folks at the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the U.S., Marijuana Policy Project, made a short video that explains just how easy it is for police to turn an entirely innocent person into a criminal.
During the short video below, the researchers demonstrate how easy it is for police to generate a false positive during a field test for drugs.
The group tests over the counter Tylenol PM in a police test kit for cocaine — the test kit says the Tylenol is cocaine.
The group also tests the most popular chocolate in the world, Hershey’s chocolate, for marijuana, it also tests positive.
Perhaps the most disturbing test was when the group put absolutely nothing into the field test kit, and they received a positive result.
The implications associated with wrongfully accusing and then claiming to have evidence of an individual in possession of an illegal substance are formidable — to say the least. Most people are simply unaware of the fact that police test kits are a crapshoot.
According to Forensic Resources:
The director of a lab recognized by the International Association of Chiefs of Police for forensic science excellence has called field drug testing kits “totally useless” due to the possibility of false positives. In laboratory experiments, at least two brands of field testing kits have been shown to produce false positives in tests of Mucinex, chocolate, aspirin, chocolate, and oregano.
In spite of these recommendations and multiple examples of innocent people being incarcerated for their error, police departments across the country continue to employ the use of these “totally useless” kits.
In October, college student John Harrington was thrown in prison after police, with one of these field drug test kits, tested sugar, and came up with a false positive for cocaine.
“Really, I’m really in jail right now for powdered sugar, ” John Harrington thought after it happened.
We’ve also seen the case in which police mistook Jolly Ranchers for meth and jailed an innocent man. Love Olatunijojo, 25, and an unidentified friend purchased Jolly Ranchers at the It’Sugar candy emporium in Coney Island in June of 2013. Several blocks away, cops stopped and searched the friends and mistook the candies for crystal meth. Olatunijojo was then thrown in jail.
In August, we reported on the story of a man who was held in prison for over four months because police falsely identified salt as crystal meth.
And the list goes on…
What does it say about police departments across the country who knowingly use test kits that will implicate innocent people in a crime that they did not commit that will land them in jail?
It is bad enough that the state will kidnap, cage and kill people when they possess a substance deemed illegal by the state. But, when they kidnap, cage and kill people because of their own negligence involved in testing someone’s personal items — they stoop to an entirely new low.
