Of course that is my main statement that the illegal and unconstitutional "war on drugs" is the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem.

But this article is more about how cops who don't support the government's illegal and unconstitutional "war on drugs" are fired for their political beliefs.

"We all know the drug war is a bad joke, but we also know that you’ll never get promoted if you’re seen as soft on drugs" - Texas police officer who refused to give his name

Now there is an alleged Libertarian named Mike Renzulli who seems to be spreading lies that I love cops and love the war on drugs. Fuck Mike Renzulli, he is an idiot, a liar and a slander who doesn't know what he is talking about.

Police Officers Find That Dissent on Drug Laws May Come With a Price

United States Customs and Border Protection agents waiting to inspect cars at Nogales, Ariz., an area where marijuana smuggling has been active.

PHOENIX — Border Patrol agents pursue smugglers one moment and sit around in boredom the next. It was during one of the lulls that Bryan Gonzalez, a young agent, made some comments to a colleague that cost him his career.

Looking for signs of smugglers near Nogales, Ariz., alongside the fence that now marks part of the nation's border with Mexico.

Stationed in Deming, N.M., Mr. Gonzalez was in his green-and-white Border Patrol vehicle just a few feet from the international boundary when he pulled up next to a fellow agent to chat about the frustrations of the job. If marijuana were legalized, Mr. Gonzalez acknowledges saying, the drug-related violence across the border in Mexico would cease. He then brought up an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition that favors ending the war on drugs.

Those remarks, along with others expressing sympathy for illegal immigrants from Mexico, were passed along to the Border Patrol headquarters in Washington. After an investigation, a termination letter arrived that said Mr. Gonzalez held “personal views that were contrary to core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication and esprit de corps.”

After his dismissal, Mr. Gonzalez joined a group even more exclusive than the Border Patrol: law enforcement officials who have lost their jobs for questioning the war on drugs and are fighting back in the courts.

In Arizona, Joe Miller, a probation officer in Mohave County, near the California border, filed suit last month in Federal District Court after he was dismissed for adding his name to a letter by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which is based in Medford, Mass., and known as LEAP, expressing support for the decriminalization of marijuana.

“More and more members of the law enforcement community are speaking out against failed drug policies, and they don’t give up their right to share their insight and engage in this important debate simply because they receive government paychecks,” said Daniel Pochoda, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which is handling the Miller case.

Mr. Miller was one of 32 members of LEAP who signed the letter, which expressed support for a California ballot measure that failed last year that would have permitted recreational marijuana use. Most of the signers were retired members of law enforcement agencies, who can speak their minds without fear of action by their bosses. But Mr. Miller and a handful of others who were still on the job — including the district attorney for Humboldt County in California and the Oakland city attorney — signed, too.

LEAP has seen its membership increase significantly from the time it was founded in 2002 by five disillusioned officers. It now has an e-mail list of 48,000, and its members include 145 judges, prosecutors, police officers, prison guards and other law enforcement officials, most of them retired, who speak on the group’s behalf.

“No one wants to be fired and have to fight for their job in court,” said Neill Franklin, a retired police officer who is LEAP’s executive director. “So most officers are reluctant to sign on board. But we do have some brave souls.”

Mr. Miller was accused of not making clear that he was speaking for himself and not the probation department while advocating the decriminalization of cannabis. His lawsuit, though, points out that the letter he signed said at the bottom, “All agency affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.”

He was also accused of dishonesty for denying that he had given approval for his name to appear on the LEAP letter. In the lawsuit, Mr. Miller said that his wife had given approval without his knowledge, using his e-mail address, but that he had later supported her.

Kip Anderson, the court administrator for the Superior Court in Mohave County, said there was no desire to limit Mr. Miller’s political views.

“This isn’t about legalization,” Mr. Anderson said. “We’re not taking a stand on that. We just didn’t want people to think he was speaking on behalf of the probation department.”

Mr. Miller, who is also a retired police officer and Marine, lost an appeal of his dismissal before a hearing officer. But when his application for unemployment benefits was turned down, he appealed that and won. An administrative law judge found that Mr. Miller had not been dishonest with his bosses and that the disclaimer on the letter was sufficient.

In the case of Mr. Gonzalez, the fired Border Patrol agent, he had not joined LEAP but had expressed sympathy with the group’s cause. “It didn’t make sense to me why marijuana is illegal,” he said. “To see that thousands of people are dying, some of whom I know, makes you want to look for a change.”

Since his firing, Mr. Gonzalez, who filed suit in federal court in Texas in January, has worked as a construction worker, a bouncer and a yard worker. He has also gone back to school, where he is considering a law degree.

“I don’t want to work at a place that says I can’t think,” said Mr. Gonzalez, who grew up in El Paso, just across the border from Ciudad Juárez, which has experienced some of the worst bloodshed in Mexico.

The Justice Department, which is defending the Border Patrol, has sought to have the case thrown out. Mr. Gonzalez lost a discrimination complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which sided with his supervisors’ view that they had lost trust that he would uphold the law.

Those challenging their dismissals are buoyed by the case of Jonathan Wender, who was fired as a police sergeant in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., in 2005, partly as a result of his support for the decriminalization of marijuana. Mr. Wender won a settlement of $815,000 as well as his old job back. But he retired from the department and took up teaching at the University of Washington, where one of his courses is “Drugs and Society.”

Among those not yet ready to publicly urge the legalization of drugs is a veteran Texas police officer who quietly supports LEAP and spoke on the condition that he not be identified. “We all know the drug war is a bad joke,” he said in a telephone interview. “But we also know that you’ll never get promoted if you’re seen as soft on drugs.”

Mr. Franklin, the LEAP official, said it was natural that those on the front lines of enforcing drug laws would have strong views on them, either way. It was the death of a colleague at the hands of a drug dealer in 2000 that prompted Mr. Franklin, a veteran officer, to begin questioning the nation’s drug policies. Some of his colleagues, though, hit the streets even more aggressively, he said.

Mr. Franklin said he got calls all the time from colleagues skeptical about the drug laws as they are written but unwilling to speak out — yet.

“I was speaking to a guy with the Maryland State Police this past Saturday, and he’s about to retire in January and he’s still reluctant to join us until he leaves,” Mr. Franklin said. “He wants to have a good last couple of months, without any hassle.

Los Angeles is home to more medical marijuana shops than any other city. That much is certain. And more are still opening. But how many there are is usually a guessing game.

Now, however, the city has a new number: 372. That’s how many filed forms with the city’s office of finance by the Oct. 31 deadline in preparation for paying the new pot tax.

But that’s probably not the total number of marijuana businesses in the city. That’s just the number that want to been seen as playing by the city’s rules.

Asha Greenberg, the assistant city attorney who has overseen attempts to shut down illegal stores, said she believes there are at least 500. “I do hear of new ones opening up every day, either from the police department or from irate neighbors,” she said.

In 2005, when the city first tried to figure out how many pot shops it had, the police department found four. A year later, police found 98. And a year after that, when the city required dispensaries to register to stay open during a moratorium, 186 did. About two years ago, city officials believe the number may have peaked at around 850.

In March, L.A. voters approved Measure M, which requires dispensaries to pay a 5% business tax on gross receipts, 10 times more than the next-highest business rate. Janice Hahn, who was then on the City Council, proposed the tax and estimated it would raise at least $10 million. Cannabis businesses will have to pay the tax for this year at the end of February.

The City Council, however, is expected to debate a ban on all dispensaries as soon as January. A recent appeals court decision raised doubts about whether the city has the power to impose significant public safety regulations, such as restrictions on locations. And the ruling also thwarted the city’s plans to cap the number of dispensaries at 100 through a lottery.

But a ban wouldn’t stop the city from collecting the tax from dispensaries that choose to ignore it. “There is considerable precedent around the country and at the state level for collecting taxes even on illegal businesses,” said Jane Usher, a special assistant city attorney.

Six E.V. residents arrested in Tempe, Nevada marijuana investigation

Six East Valley residents were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of the illegal sale of marijuana after Tempe and Nevada police officers raided an herbal shop in Tempe and Mesa after a five-month investigation.

About 11 a.m. Wednesday, detectives from the Tempe Police Department's Special Investigations Unit coordinated with the Southern Nevada Cannabis Operation Regional Enforcement Task Force and the Las Vegas Police Department to serve warrants at Yoki A Ma (Your Herbal Solutions) at 1920 E. University Drive, Tempe, and at 4639 E. Virginia, Mesa, as well as the shop of the same name in Las Vegas, according to Tempe police.

The six arrested in connection to the investigation were: Craig Allen Scherf, 45; Nicole Dawn Scherf, 27; and Rodger Murray, 26, all of Chandler; Richard Ray Hagerman, 55, and Mark Siegezwki, 46, of Mesa; and Renee Bruggeman, 41, of Tempe.

During the execution of the search warrants, officers confiscated one pound of marijuana, four handguns, one rifle, one shotgun and $2,000 cash.

The investigation began in July when the Tempe Police Department received information from the City of Tempe Community Development Department that Yoki A Ma was operating without a license. Undercover Tempe detectives visited the business on a number of occasions and during the investigation discovered that the suspects were illegally selling/dispensing marijuana to medical marijuana card holders as a "gift" after receiving $65 to visit the business, according to police.

Craig Scherf submitted an application to the City of Tempe to operate as a medical marijuana dispensary. The permit was denied due to the business' proximity to a residential neighborhood.

TV: ‘Weed Wars’ and ‘DUI’ — all the way up, then all the way down

Medical marijuana has been legit for 15 long years in California, and even though it has become a thriving industry, its very existence is somehow still greeted as news of the weird. Legal pot sales, which contribute a tidy sum to state and local tax coffers, are now thought to rival illegal sales there; several other states and the District of Columbia have since legalized medical marijuana or are in some stage of trying to.

You know what else about medical marijuana? It turns something that’s supposed to be illicit fun into something kind of boring. Potheads have never needed any help being uninteresting, but, as we learn Thursday night on Discovery’s new reality series “Weed Wars,” this business is just about as exciting as the gourmet cupcake trade.

The clients are certainly much the same — addicts who like to stand in long lines and make light of how delicious and irresistible they find the product. And the staff behind the counter at a medical marijuana emporium spend just as much time doing what in the cupcake business would be the equivalent of licking the frosting spoon.

Set in Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, which bills itself as the nation’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, “Weed Wars” does a fairly good job of explaining how such a business works. It works greeaaat, man.

Harborside is open every day of the year; customers line up each morning and sales continue apace till nightly close. Some customers still gamely perform the charade of describing for the camera and the sales staff the ailments that qualified them for a doctor’s cannabis prescription: insomnia, lower-back aches, stress . . . “We have some patients that come in here who, uhhh, have less clear medical issues,” observes Terryn, a salesman who works the counter and gives expert advice to customers about the effects, taste and other weed intangibles.

Steve DeAngelo, an aging boomer (and Silver Spring native and Montgomery Blair High School grad) who sports Sitting Bull braids and a sartorial panache, runs the place with the help of his brother and a determined cadre of employees, including an accountant named Luigi and a pants-averse co-owner whose legal name is Dave Weddingdress (he prefers wearing skirts).

“Weed Wars” often verges into infomercial territory as Harborside’s employees extol marijuana’s limitless benefits and make perfectly logical-sounding, Prohibition-era arguments for its legality. That said, “Weed Wars” is not particularly enamored with the finer points of the debate, the costliness of the drug war, or society’s thoughts on pot. It just wants to show some days (and daze) in the life of a business. Another of the show’s threads follows a determined marijuana grower — one of many who supply the store — as he tries to coax his latest bud harvest from the soil.

Harshly, the city passes a law that requires pot stores to pay a year’s worth of sales taxes in advance (a $1 million tab for Harborside), which introduces the only aspect of a “war” in “Weed Wars,” as DeAngelo and the gang suit up, scarf down a cannabis-packed energy bar or two (or three) and head off to fight city hall.

But perhaps the most interesting moment in “Weed Wars” comes when the cameras follow Terryn home. Though he excels at being a marijuana sales clerk, he would like to put his English and philosophy degree to some higher purpose, maybe write books, but never gets around to starting. He tries his hand at marijuana-growing, but his initial efforts fall prey to fungus. Terryn is the first to admit that his ambitions may be curtailed by the big doobie he fires up each night; his mother certainly thinks so, as she prods him to move past a life of weed. In these few simple scenes, “Weed Wars” undoes the case it was cogently attempting to make.

Whatever triumphant feeling it initially evokes, “Weed Wars” drags as the lackadaisical attitudes of both the suppliers and the customers begin to grate on a viewer’s nerves. Ever been in a room where everyone’s high but you? That’s this show.

‘DUI’

Oddly enough, one of the first people pulled over on the Oklahoma byways in TLC’s new “DUI” (also premiering Thursday) is a grandmother whose passengers have been smoking weed. She’s hauled in and given a drug test and made to wait until her family, who live in Arkansas, can scrape together enough money to pay the bail bondsman.

“DUI” is irresistible, picking up where “Cops,” “Jail” and other guilty-pleasure law-enforcement reality series usually don’t go. It is primarily interested in what happens to motorists after they fail a sobriety test. It follows them days and weeks into court appearances and the punitive phase of their charges.

What’s emphasized here are the disastrous financial and personal losses that come for everyday working folks arrested for DUI. Granted, they should never have been behind the wheel, but “DUI” is surprisingly uninterested in MADD-style scolding and more focused on legal process. It’s also refreshingly empathetic to everyone involved and therefore some of the best Christmastime TV you could watch — an excellent holiday reminder to anyone with a driver’s license.

Weed Wars

(one hour) premieres Thursday at 10 p.m. on Discovery.

DUI

(two 30-minute episodes) premieres Thursday at 9 p.m. on TLC.

The governors of Washington and Rhode Island petitioned the federal government on Wednesday to reclassify marijuana as a drug with accepted medical uses, saying the change is needed so states like theirs, which have decriminalized marijuana for medical purposes, can regulate the safe distribution of the drug without risking federal prosecution.

The move by the governors — Christine Gregoire of Washington, a Democrat, and Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island, an independent who used to be a Republican — injected new political muscle into the debate on the status of marijuana, which has been raging for decades. Their states are among the 16 that now allow medical marijuana, but which have seen efforts to grow and distribute the drug targeted by federal prosecutors.

“The divergence in state and federal law creates a situation where there is no regulated and safe system to supply legitimate patients who may need medical cannabis,” the governors wrote Wednesday to Michele M. Leonhart, the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Marijuana is currently classified by the federal government as a Schedule I controlled substance, the same category as heroin and L.S.D. Drugs with that classification, the government says, have a high potential for abuse and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”

The governors want marijuana reclassified as a Schedule II controlled substance, which would put it in the same category as drugs like cocaine, opium and morphine. The federal government says that those drugs have a strong potential for abuse and addiction, but that they also have “some accepted medical use and may be prescribed, administered, or dispensed for medical use.”

Such a classification would allow pharmacies to dispense marijuana, in addition to the marijuana dispensaries that currently operate in a murky legal zone in many states.

“What we have out here on the ground is chaos,” Governor Gregoire said in a telephone interview. “And in the midst of all the chaos we have patients who really either feel like they’re criminals or may be engaged in some criminal activity, and really are legitimate patients who want medicinal marijuana.

“If our people really want medicinal marijuana, then we need to do it right, we need to do it with safety, we need to do it with health in mind, and that’s best done in a process that we know works in this country — and that’s through a pharmacist.”

The state of Washington approved medical marijuana in 1998, with a ballot question that won 60 percent of the vote. But like many states, Washington soon found itself in a legal gray area. The Legislature tried to clarify things last spring, when it passed a law that would have explicitly legalized, regulated and licensed marijuana dispensaries and growers.

But the Justice Department warned the governor that growing and distributing marijuana was still against federal law, and said that “state employees who conducted activities mandated by the Washington legislative proposals would not be immune from liability.” Ms. Gregoire, while sympathetic to the goals of the bill, wound up vetoing much of it.

It was similar on the other side of the country, where Rhode Island had passed a law authorizing state-regulated marijuana dispensaries. This fall Governor Chafee announced that he could not go ahead with the plan because federal prosecutors had warned him that the dispensaries could be the targets of prosecution.

On Wednesday Mr. Chafee said that reclassifying the drug could help many people. “Patients across Rhode Island and across the United States, many of whom are in tremendous pain, stand to experience some relief,” he said in a statement.

Other groups have sought reclassification of marijuana in the past, and as recently as this past June the Drug Enforcement Administration denied a petition to do so, based on a review conducted several years earlier. But Ms. Gregoire and Mr. Chafee said the attitude of the medical community had changed since the federal government last reviewed the issue.

In 2009 the American Medical Association changed its position and called for reviewing the classification of marijuana, saying that the current classification was limiting clinical research.

Ms. Gregoire noted that many doctors believe it makes no sense to place marijuana in a more restricted category than opium and morphine. “People die from overdose of opiates,” she said. “Has anybody died from marijuana?”

The insane war on drugs gets a little bit insaner??? What we really need is a fungus or bacteria that will selectively kill nut job politicians that pass unconstitutional drug war laws.

Killer mold too risky in U.S. war on drugs: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Using fungi to kill coca and other illegal drug crops would be a risky tactic, as there is not enough data about how to control these killer molds and what effect they could have on people and the environment, according to a U.S. government study released on Wednesday.

The U.S. Congress asked scientists to look into whether some types of fungi, called mycoherbicides, could stem the flow of illicit drugs into the United States by killing the plants used to make cocaine, marijuana and opium.

But scientists from the National Research Council, one of the national academies of science that advises U.S. policymakers, said evidence about the fungi was sketchy and incomplete.

"There are too many unresolved questions regarding efficacy -- whether they'll really perform in real-time conditions, and whether they'll be safe to non-target plants," said Raghavan Charudattan, chair of the committee that prepared the report and professor emeritus in the University of Florida's department of plant pathology.

"We did not see any data where a high level of control could be achieved," he said.

Mycoherbicides are toxic fungi that have been used as an environmentally friendly alternative to chemical weedkillers. They can also be targeted to specific plants, and can reproduce themselves, staying in the soil for many years.

But using them on a large scale against illicit drugs has never been tested, Charudattan said. A fungus could kill anywhere from 10 percent to 60 percent of an infected drug crop. It could also fail completely because of too much rain or a drought.

PRACTICAL CHALLENGES

Available evidence also does not address the practical challenges of trying to infect drug crops abroad.

Farmers could easily sabotage any herbicide campaign by using fungicides to protect their crops or cultivate plants resistant to the fungi. Growers could also attack any low-flying aircraft used to spray their crops.

And it is unknown whether the fungi could morph into chemical compounds known as mycotoxins, which are harmful to people, Charudattan said.

Mycoherbicides could also only be used with the permission of a country's government, which has proven a challenge in the past.

Colombia, the world's largest producer of cocaine, refused to approve such fungi to kill its coca plants when the United States proposed it in 2000.

The U.S. government has pushed experimentation with fungal pesticides in Colombia and other parts of Latin America and Asia as a way to combat drug crops.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted research into the mycoherbicides as a replacement for the chemical fungicides that are sprayed from crop dusters on coca and heroin-poppy crops.

In the past, natural fungal epidemics have killed off poppy crops in Afghanistan and coca crops in Peru.

Congress required government scientists to further study mycoherbicides against illicit drugs as part of a funding bill for the White House drug czar's office in 2006.

(Reporting by Anna Yukhananov; editing by Eric Beech)

Isn't the "war on drugs" insane in a sort of Alice in Wonderland way? Cops from the DEA are now laundering money for Mexican drug cartels?

And no I didn't make up the title of

"D.E.A. Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels"

that is exactly how it was written on the NY Times web page.

Of course that is why I always include the URL of these articles so you can verify them.

I was doing that long before I discovered that alleged Libertarian Mike Renzulli was spreading lies about me saying that I love pigs and love the drug war. Fuck Mike Renzulli!

D.E.A. Launders Mexican Profits of Drug Cartels

WASHINGTON — Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders, those officials said, to identify how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

They said agents had deposited the drug proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.

Agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations. But Michael S. Vigil, a former senior agency official, said, “We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren’t laundering money for the sake of laundering money.”

Another former agency official, who asked not to be identified speaking publicly about delicate operations, said, “My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results. Otherwise, the D.E.A. could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.”

Those are precisely the kinds of concerns members of Congress have raised about a gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious, in which agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed people suspected of being low-level smugglers to buy and transport guns across the border in the hope that they would lead to higher-level operatives working for Mexican cartels. After the agency lost track of hundreds of weapons, some later turned up in Mexico; two were found on the United States side of the border where an American Border Patrol agent had been shot to death.

Former D.E.A. officials rejected comparisons between letting guns and money walk away. Money, they said, poses far less of a threat to public safety. And unlike guns, it can lead more directly to the top ranks of criminal organizations.

“These are not the people whose faces are known on the street,” said Robert Mazur, a former D.E.A. agent and the author of a book about his years as an undercover agent inside the Medellín cartel in Colombia. “They are super-insulated. And the only way to get to them is to follow their money.”

Another former drug agency official offered this explanation for the laundering operations: “Building up the evidence to connect the cash to drugs, and connect the first cash pickup to a cartel’s command and control, is a very time consuming process. These people aren’t running a drugstore in downtown L.A. that we can go and lock the doors and place a seizure sticker on the window. These are sophisticated, international operations that practice very tight security. And as far as the Mexican cartels go, they operate in a corrupt country, from cities that the cops can’t even go into.”

The laundering operations that the United States conducts elsewhere — about 50 so-called Attorney General Exempt Operations are under way around the world — had been forbidden in Mexico after American customs agents conducted a cross-border sting without notifying Mexican authorities in 1998, which was how most American undercover work was conducted there up to that point.

But that changed in recent years after President Felipe Calderón declared war against the country’s drug cartels and enlisted the United States to play a leading role in fighting them because of concerns that his security forces had little experience and long histories of corruption.

Today, in operations supervised by the Justice Department and orchestrated to get around sovereignty restrictions, the United States is running numerous undercover laundering investigations against Mexico’s most powerful cartels. One D.E.A. official said it was not unusual for American agents to pick up two or three loads of Mexican drug money each week. A second official said that as Mexican cartels extended their operations from Latin America to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the reach of the operations had grown as well. When asked how much money had been laundered as a part of the operations, the official would only say, “A lot.”

“If you’re going to get into the business of laundering money,” the official added, “then you have to be able to launder money.”

Former counternarcotics officials, who also would speak only on the condition of anonymity about clandestine operations, offered a clearer glimpse of their scale and how they worked. In some cases, the officials said, Mexican agents, posing as smugglers and accompanied by American authorities, pick up traffickers’ cash in Mexico. American agents transport the cash on government flights to the United States, where it is deposited into traffickers’ accounts, and then wired to companies that provide goods and services to the cartel.

In other cases, D.E.A. agents, posing as launderers, pick up drug proceeds in the United States, deposit them in banks in this country and then wire them to the traffickers in Mexico.

The former officials said that the drug agency tried to seize as much money as it laundered — partly in the fees the operatives charged traffickers for their services and another part in carefully choreographed arrests at pickup points identified by their undercover operatives.

And the former officials said that federal law enforcement agencies had to seek Justice Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation. But they said that the cap was treated more as a guideline than a rule, and that it had been waived on many occasions to attract the interest of high-value criminal targets.

“They tell you they’re bringing you $250,000, and they bring you a million,” one former agent said of the traffickers. “What’s the agent supposed to do then, tell them no, he can’t do it? They’ll kill him.”

It is not clear whether such operations are worth the risks. So far there are few signs that following the money has disrupted the cartels’ operations, and little evidence that Mexican drug traffickers are feeling any serious financial pain. Last year, the D.E.A. seized about $1 billion in cash and drug assets, while Mexico seized an estimated $26 million in money laundering investigations, a tiny fraction of the estimated $18 billion to $39 billion in drug money that flows between the countries each year.

Mexico has tightened restrictions on large cash purchases and on bank deposits in dollars in the past five years. But a proposed overhaul of the Mexican attorney general’s office has stalled, its architects said, as have proposed laws that would crack down on money laundered through big corporations and retail chains.

“Mexico still thinks the best way to seize dirty money is to arrest a trafficker, then turn him upside down to see how much change falls out of his pockets,” said Sergio Ferragut, a professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico and the author of a book on money laundering, which he said was “still a sensitive subject for Mexican authorities.”

Mr. Calderón boasts that his government’s efforts — deploying the military across the country — have fractured many of the country’s powerful cartels and led to the arrests of about two dozen high-level and midlevel traffickers.

But there has been no significant dip in the volume of drugs moving across the country. Reports of human rights violations by police officers and soldiers have soared. And drug-related violence has left more than 40,000 people dead since Mr. Calderón took office in December 2006.

The death toll is greater than in any period since Mexico’s revolution a century ago, and the current policy of close cooperation with Washington may not survive election-year politics in Mexico.

“We need to concentrate all our efforts on combating violence and crime that affects people, instead of concentrating on the drug issue,” said a former foreign minister, Jorge G. Castañeda, at a conference hosted last month by the Cato Institute in Washington. “It makes absolutely no sense for us to put up 50,000 body bags to stop drugs from entering the United States.”

The Chicago City Council today passed a ban on the sale of products that mimic the effects of marijuana.

Ald. JoAnn Thompson, 16th, started pushing for synthetic marijuana to be outlawed after she found some being sold in a gas station in her South Side ward. Children can easily purchase the products, she said.

"Just about every station you go in has some form," Thompson said, holding up a packet of synthetic cannabis she said she purchased across the street from her office. "This is already rolled for you, so you don't have to buy rolling papers. Just pull it out, two for a dollar. Two for a dollar, and just start smoking."

"People wonder what's happening to our children. I'll tell you what's happening. This is what's happening," Thompson said.

The ordinance, which takes effect next month, does not make it illegal for people to possess the products. But stores selling them could be fined up to $1,000 or have their licenses revoked.

Synthetic marijuana already was outlawed by the state legislature, but Ald. Edward Burke, 14th, said new products being produced now skirt that ban by replacing illegal chemicals with legal ones. So the city ordinance outlaws any product that contains chemicals that mimic marijuana.

Quayle: Gov. Brewer was right in removing chairwoman

U.S. Rep. Ben Quayle says he stands behind Gov. Jan Brewer's decision to remove the chairwoman of the Independent Redistricting Commission, the panel in charge of creating Arizona's congressional maps.

Quayle spoke Tuesday night before a group of about 200 at a town-hall meeting at Horizon High School in northeast Phoenix.

"The governor made the decision that the chairwoman engaged in gross misconduct, and it was the right decision," Quayle said. "That was the check that was put in the Constitution by the people."

Brewer removed Chairwoman Colleen Mathis last week, saying the Tucson independent was guilty of a "failure to apply the Arizona Constitution's provisions in an honest, independent and impartial fashion."

Attorneys for the commission have filed suit alleging that the governor and state Senate went beyond their authority to remove Mathis.

Quayle, a Republican, was elected in 2010 to represent Arizona's 3rd Congressional District, which includes Phoenix, Scottsdale and Paradise Valley.

He addressed a rumor that his mother, Marilyn Quayle, wife of former Vice President Dan Quayle, called Brewer and suggested that she oust Mathis.

"That is a lie," he said.

A proposed map would place Quayle on the edge of a competitive congressional district that stretches from north-central Phoenix through Tempe. He has hinted that he may move into a neighboring GOP-dominated district whose boundary is four blocks from his home.

Quayle fielded questions for about an hour after a PowerPoint presentation where he highlighted some federal bills, including one that would give more power to small-business owners and another that would allow states to opt out of the federal Affordable Care Act.

Phoenix resident Valarie Klein told Quayle the story of her son, who had a brain tumor removed two years ago. KidsCare, Arizona's version of Medicaid, paid all the bills. Before the tumor, her son was healthy, Klein said.

"How is it that you can allow 125,000 children not be allowed to have KidsCare?" she asked. "To continue to have a freeze on KidsCare when you never know when your child is going to have something happen to them?"

To remain on KidsCare, Klein said she cannot make more than $6,700 per year because her son's child-support payments are counted as income.

"I went from upper middle class to zero because the expenses to maintain my son are through the roof," she said. "Could you please tell me, sir, how would you live on $6,700 a year? Because I'm having a difficult time doing that."

Quayle explained that the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System is a state program, not federal.

"I'm sorry for all that you've been dealing with," Quayle said. "Obviously, AHCCCS and KidsCare is on the state side. . . . I do think we need to have proper health-care reform so that folks who do have pre-existing conditions and high-risk conditions can be part of a high-risk pool."

Klein urged him to have a conversation with the decision makers at the state level.

Proponents of medical marijuana also were in the audience. One person asked Quayle his thoughts on a bill that would reschedule medical pot as having medicinal benefit for sick people.

Quayle didn't think rescheduling marijuana was a good idea.

"What we have right now is a cartel system in Mexico that derives an enormous amount of their revenue from marijuana sales in the United States," he said. "If you reschedule marijuana, that will increase the demand for that product coming over. It will bring in more product."

Despite Quayle's request at the beginning of the meeting that audience members remain civil, many booed him and one man yelled out, "Do the research, moron!" after hearing Quayle's answer.

The congressman replied, "You can agree or disagree, but I hope we can continue doing this in a nice, neighborly manner."

I don't know about ALL of these drugs, but I suspect medical marijuana is much safer and much cheaper then most of them for calming down people. Of course Uncle Sam has his head in the sand when it comes to the medical value of marijuana.

Report: 1 in 5 of U.S. adults on behavioral meds

NEW YORK (AP) – More than 20 percent of American adults took at least one drug for conditions like anxiety and depression in 2010, according to an analysis of prescription data, including more than one in four women.

The report, released Wednesday by pharmacy benefits manager Medco Health Solutions Inc., found that use of drugs for psychiatric and behavioral disorders rose 22 percent from 2001. The medications are most often prescribed to women aged 45 and older, but their use among men and in younger adults climbed sharply. In adults 20 to 44, use of antipsychotic drugs and treatments for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder more than tripled, and use of anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax, Valium and Ativan rose 30 percent from a decade ago.

The statistics were taken from Medco's database of prescriptions and is based on 2.5 million patients with 24 months of continuous prescription drug insurance and eligibility.

The company said women are twice as likely as men to use anxiety treatments, as 11 percent of women 45 to 65 are on an anxiety medication. Women are also more likely than men to take antipsychotic drugs like Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Abilify, which treat disorders like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. However, among men 20 to 64, use of the drugs has quadrupled over the last decade.

"There has been a significant uptick in the use of medications to treat a variety of mental health problems; what is not as clear is if more people — especially women, are actually developing psychological disorders that require treatment, or if they are more willing to seek out help and clinicians are better at diagnosing these conditions than they once were," said Dr. David Muzina, a psychiatrist and national practice leader of Medco's Neuroscience Therapeutic Resource Center.

Pharmaceutical companies have also sought and received approvals to market their drugs to larger groups of people.

Drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are prescribed to boys more often than girls, but adult women now take the drugs more often than men. ADHD prescriptions to adult women grew 2.5 times from 2001. However ADHD prescriptions for children have been declining since 2005.

That reflects a decline in prescriptions for psychiatric and behavioral drugs for children. Medco found that prescriptions of those drugs for children have dropped since 2004, when the FDA warned they were linked to suicidal thoughts when used in people under 19. The company said less than 1 percent of children use antipsychotics drugs, although the figure has doubled since 2001.

In the "diabetes belt" states of Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama, about 23 percent of people are on at least one psychiatric or behavioral disorder drug. Diabetes is particularly widespread in those states and the condition is associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety disorders. The lowest rate of prescriptions was found in Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan, where less than 15 percent of people are using those medications.

You can't rely on the piggies to help you!

Of course alleged Libertarian Mike Renzulli says PIGs stands for Pride, Integrity, and Guts, while the rest of use know most pigs are assholes!

Critics: 'Tough' sheriff botched sex-crime cases

EL MIRAGE, Ariz. — The 13-year-old girl opened the door of her home in this small city on the edge of Phoenix to encounter a man who said that his car had broken down and he needed to use the phone. Once inside, the man pummeled the teen from behind, knocking her unconscious and sexually assaulting her.

Seven months before, in an apartment two miles away, another 13-year-old girl was fondled in the middle of the night by her mother's live-in boyfriend. She woke up in her room at least twice a week to find him standing over her, claiming to be looking for her mother's cell phone.

Both cases were among more than 400 sex-crimes reported to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's office during a three-year period ending in 2007 -- including dozens of alleged child molestations -- that were inadequately investigated and in some instances were not worked at all, according to current and former police officers familiar with the cases.

In El Mirage alone, where Arpaio's office was providing contract police services, officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations -- with victims as young as 2 years old -- where the sheriff's office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases.

Many of the victims, said a retired El Mirage police official who reviewed the files, were children of illegal immigrants.

The botched sex-crimes investigations have served as an embarrassment to a department whose sheriff is the self-described "America's Toughest Sheriff" and a national hero to conservatives on the immigration issue.

Arpaio's office refused several requests over a period of months to answer questions about the investigations and declined a public records request for an internal affairs report, citing potential disciplinary actions.

Brian Sands, a top sheriff's official who is in charge of the potential discipline of any responsible employees, was later made available to talk about the cases. He declined to say why they weren't investigated. "There are policy violations that have occurred here," Sands said. "It's obvious, but I can't comment on who or what."

Sands said officers had subsequently moved to clear up inadequately investigated sex-crimes in El Mirage and elsewhere in the county. He said leads were worked if they existed and cases were closed if there was no further evidence to pursue.

Arpaio's office was under contract to provide police services in El Mirage as the city struggled with its then dysfunctional department. After the contract ended and El Mirage was re-establishing its own police operation, the city spent a year sifting through layers of disturbingly incomplete casework.

El Mirage Detective Jerry Laird, who reviewed some the investigations, learned from a sheriff's summary of 50 to 75 cases files he picked up from Arpaio's office that an overwhelming majority of them hadn't been worked.

That meant there were no follow-up reports, no collection of additional forensic evidence and zero effort made after the initial report of the crime was taken.

"I think that at some point prior to the contract (for police services) running out, they put their feet on the desk, and that was that," Laird said.

Arpaio acknowledged his office had completed an internal probe into the inadequate investigations, but said, "I don't think it's right to get into it until we get to the bottom of this and see if there's disciplinary action against any employees."

A small number of cases from El Mirage were handed over to prosecutors, but the El Mirage Police Department said most were no longer viable -- evidence dating as far back as 2006 had grown cold or wasn't collected in the first place, victims had either moved away or otherwise moved on.

Bill Louis, then-assistant El Mirage police chief who reviewed the files after the sheriff's contract ended, believes the decision to ignore the cases was made deliberately by supervisors in Arpaio's office -- and not by individual investigators.

"I know the investigators. I just cannot believe they would wholesale discount these cases. No way," Louis said. "The direction had to come (from) up the food chain."

Louis said he believes whoever made the decision knew that illegal immigrants -- who are often transient and fear the police -- were unlikely to complain about the quality of investigations. He said some cases also involved families here legally.

El Mirage paid the sheriff's office $2.7 million for a wide range of police protection from 2005 through mid-October 2007, after the city's police department had been criticized in an audit as poorly organized, loosely supervised and mismanaged.

Although a small number of El Mirage officers continued working there during the period, Arpaio brought in patrol officers and detectives and managers who ran the department.

El Mirage police files obtained by The Associated Press through public records requests establish a pattern of sex-crimes not actually being investigated after the crimes were reported to Arpaio's office.

In April 2007, a 3-year-old girl was reported molested by her father, an illegal immigrant who cared for the child while her mother was at work. When the mother confronted her husband about the abuse, he cried and swore he'd never do it again.

Yet a few days later, the mother noticed more signs of sexual abuse on her daughter and called for help. After the initial report, that help didn't come.

The string of unresolved cases left Elizabeth Ditlevson, deputy director for the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence, shaking her head. "My impressions were anger at the system and concern for the people whose cases weren't addressed," she said.

According to both Sands and Scott Freeman, a sheriff's official who heard complaints from then-El Mirage Police Chief Mike Frazier about the quality of the sex-crimes investigations, more than 400 cases countywide had to be reopened. Freeman told outside investigators examining alleged managerial misconduct at Arpaio's office that a number of arrests were made in the reopened cases.

The April 2011 report on alleged managerial misconduct said the sheriff's internal effort to determine what had gone wrong with the sex-crimes investigations was twice derailed.

One delay occurred when the male sheriff's official leading the inquiry was accused of sexual harassment -- this by a female supervisor whose portfolio included some of the mishandled cases, according to the report.

Another internal affairs investigation, launched in May 2008, was stopped after the investigator was pulled away at the direction of David Hendershott, then the top aide to Arpaio, to help with another matter. The internal probe was reopened in December 2010 while Hendershott was on medical leave, according to the 2011 summary.

Hendershott's account conflicted with others.

Hendershott, who has since resigned amid separate misconduct allegations and declined a request by the AP to comment, told investigators the internal affairs inquiry was still in progress when he went on medical leave in 2010.

Still, Hendershott told investigators that the El Mirage Police Department had good reason to be upset about the sex-crimes handled by the sheriff's office.

The report of the 13-year-old who had been inappropriately touched by her mother's live-in boyfriend had been faxed to one of Arpaio's investigators. El Mirage police, who were given back the case about 11 months later, learned that it hadn't been worked.

When El Mirage police finally tracked down the mother, she said her boyfriend had moved out and that she no longer had contact with him. She and her daughter were in counseling and didn't want to bring the case to court.

In their follow-up on the case of the 13-year-old attacked by the man claiming to have a broken car, El Mirage police discovered Arpaio's office hadn't interviewed the victim.

An El Mirage detective went to the girl's home just off the city's main drag. The girl's uncle said she and her mother weren't around and took the investigator's card with a promise to ask them to call.

The mother never called back. She and her daughter's whereabouts are unknown.

The case of the molested 3-year-old was returned to El Mirage police unworked five months after the initial report. The family's beige tract home was deserted, the phone disconnected.

Alleged Libertarian Mike Renzulli says PIGS stands for Pride, Integerity, and Guts. Of course most of us disagree with that and think that pigs are just thugs that terrorize us for their government masters.

D.A. in the dark on jail probes

Even as a sergeant shouted, "Stop hitting him! Stop hitting him!," Deputy Marcos Stout continued punching an inmate in the head. Then, with the inmate on the concrete floor, Stout landed his knee on the man's skull.

Lawyers for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department described the deputy's actions as "callous and brutal behavior toward a helpless and unresisting person."

Though Stout's excessive force was egregious enough to get him fired, prosecutors did not charge him with a crime — but not because they concluded that the violence wasn't criminal, according to interviews. They never knew about it.

In several cases in recent years, deputies who were disciplined or even fired for abusing inmates escaped criminal scrutiny because Sheriff's Department officials chose not to give the evidence to the district attorney's office, opting to handle the cases internally.

Law enforcement experts interviewed by the Los Angeles Times said the department should routinely conduct criminal investigations of brutality claims and forward the results to prosecutors to determine whether criminal charges should be filed.

"Just because you're part of the Sheriff's Department doesn't mean you can commit battery with impunity," said Dennis Kenney, a former Florida police officer and current professor studying police use of force at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

The Sheriff's Department's watchdog recommended in October that excessive force complaints from the jails be investigated for criminal wrongdoing and presented to the district attorney. Michael Gennaco, who heads the county's Office of Independent Review, told The Times that the department should send to prosecutors all investigations of excessive force in which an inmate suffered significant injuries or the force was prolonged.

At the request of The Times, Gennaco identified cases in which the department fired or suspended deputies for using excessive force but did not formally present the evidence to prosecutors.

Among the cases:

— A deputy was fired for putting his hand around the throat of an inmate who had smirked at deputies, pushing him into a glass window and throwing him to the ground. The deputy then claimed the inmate had fallen accidentally and asked another deputy who had witnessed the incident to corroborate his story.

— Deputies reported that one of their colleagues used unreasonable force on an inmate who had assaulted him. They said he delivered multiple elbow strikes while the inmate appeared to be unconscious and bleeding profusely from his head. The inmate suffered serious injuries, including brain swelling, and required surgery. The deputy was fired.

— A security camera recorded a deputy throwing an object at an inmate then rushing toward him and pushing him against the wall, with the deputy placing his forearm into the back of the inmate's head. The deputy never reported the force and neither did eight other deputies who witnessed the incident. The inmate's injuries were minor, Gennaco said. Nevertheless, the deputy was suspended; Gennaco's report does not say for how long.

Public scrutiny of the jails intensified after The Times reported in September that the FBI is investigating allegations of inmate abuse and other jailer misconduct. The U.S. attorney's office has demanded a large number of documents on deputies and others working in the jails, including reports of force used on inmates, since 2009. Confidential documents reviewed by The Times show that jail managers were raising alarms about excessive force and shoddy internal investigations two years ago.

Sheriff's Department Cmdr. James Hellmold, part of a task force recently assembled to implement jail reforms, said custody supervisors weigh whether force by deputies was unnecessary and excessive before deciding whether to refer the matter to internal criminal investigators.

Cases in which force was appropriate but a deputy used too much or used force for too long are generally reviewed for discipline, not criminal charges, he said. The department also reviews whether the violence was provoked by the inmate before deciding whether to conduct a criminal probe.

"Most of our uses of force, even when they're inappropriate, are provoked by the inmate," Hellmold said. "That's the reality of the job."

Sheriff Lee Baca said conducting criminal investigations of excessive force can delay imposing workplace discipline. But he acknowledged that the department should forward evidence to prosecutors when deputies are fired or suspended for using too much force. He said it was "a mistake" not to have done so in the past.

"If we think we're going to fire somebody and believed they used excessive force, it should also be sent to the D.A.'s office," he said. "Let the D.A. make the determination."

The department does send the district attorney's office some allegations of excessive force against jail deputies. Prosecutors have rejected most of those cases, often noting that the claims rely on inmates with long criminal records or mental illnesses that make them unconvincing witnesses.

Nevertheless, three deputies were convicted of assault last year. In that case, prosecutors built a case around another deputy who told investigators he saw the three deputies punch and kick an inmate who had been disrespectful to a guard. The inmate suffered a fractured cheekbone and injuries to his left ear, rib cage and face.

Discipline of deputies and other law enforcement officers is confidential under state law. But details about the Sheriff's Department's findings in Stout's case are laid out in a lawsuit, with which the former deputy filed seeking to win back his job, and in a report by Gennaco.

According to the records, the violence took place in July 2006 as Stout kept watch over inmate Derrick Gathrite, who was ordered to sit on the floor of a jail hallway and face the wall. Court and prison records show that Gathrite is a convicted child molester who days earlier had been sentenced to prison for failing to register as a sex offender.

As Deputy Theresa Serna searched the inmate's belongings, Gathrite turned around and reached toward Serna. Stout squirted the inmate with pepper spray and began punching him.

Matthew Vander Horck, then a sergeant, ran toward the disturbance, shouting at Stout to stop. The inmate, he later said, lay in a fetal position, trying to ward off blows from the deputy.

Once Gathrite was handcuffed, the sergeant ordered Stout to stand the inmate up. The deputy began to raise Gathrite to his feet but let him go, allowing the inmate to fall back and strike his head against the concrete floor.

Vander Horck reported that Stout had punched the inmate eight times, elbowed him twice and kneed him once. The inmate was crying, saying he was sorry and asking the deputy to stop hitting him.

"It looked like it was unprovoked and definitely unnecessary to me," Vander Horck told an internal affairs investigator.

Gathrite suffered a cut lip, bruises and swelling to his face and head.

Stout, then a deputy for three years, argued that the force was reasonable. He said that Gathrite was crawling toward Serna and that he feared the inmate was attempting to assault her.

Stout said he did not hear Vander Horck order him to stop, and he disputed the sergeant's account, saying he struck the inmate three to four times and never dropped a knee onto the inmate's head. Vander Horck, he argued, had not seen the entire incident and had been up to 75 feet away.

Sheriff's Department executives fired Stout, concluding that he used excessive force, failed to fully report force to his supervisor and made false statements to internal affairs investigators. Stout appealed to the county's civil service commission, which found that his account lacked credibility and upheld his firing.

In a lawsuit aimed at winning Stout's job back, his lawyers argued that the department had not fired other deputies accused of similar conduct. In one 2005 case they cited, a deputy was suspended for 30 days after he failed to report his use of force and tried to cover up his actions. In 2006, the department gave another deputy a 30-day suspension after he intentionally beat two inmates without excuse, failed to immediately notify his supervisor and then gave false information to department investigators.

A judge rejected Stout's arguments and upheld his firing.

FAA reviews LAPD's use of airport funds

Authorities are looking into whether the Los Angeles Police Department misappropriated millions of dollars it was paid for providing law enforcement services at Los Angeles International Airport.

Federal Aviation Administration officials say they have begun reviewing a recent complaint alleging that the LAPD overcharged the airport and used the money to bolster city coffers and pay for police expenses unrelated to security at LAX, which has been described as a top potential target for terrorists.

According to federal regulations, revenue earned by an airport from landing fees, terminal rents, concessions and other charges must be used only for airport purposes. Should violations be found, the city could be required to pay money back to the airport.

If so, it will not be the first time Los Angeles has had to do so in a diversion case involving LAX.

In 2009, the city agreed to repay $21.2 million to the city's airport agency, Los Angeles World Airports, including $18.1 million that was given to L.A. Inc., the city's visitors and convention bureau. In 1996, the FAA ordered the city to return $31 million in LAX funds that had been earmarked to balance the city budget.

Citing a sample of financial records, the complaint asserts that LAPD imposes exorbitant fees for assigning anywhere from 50 to 150 full- and part-time officers a year to LAX, where they share law enforcement duties with the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department, a separate agency.

Documents show, for example, that the LAPD charged the airport agency about $384,000 in the 2008-09 fiscal year for the services of a police captain, who earned a salary of about $148,000.

The department charged about $196,000 apiece to supply 20 full-time patrol officers, even though they earn about $80,000 annually. It cost the airport more than $250,000 apiece for seven sergeants, who earned $102,000 a year.

In those and other cases, the airport agency reimbursed the LAPD at a rate that was more than double the officer's salary.

The complaint was filed by the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Assn., which represents more than 400 officers from the airport department and has long sought to maintain the independence of the airport's only police service. It notes that in 2008 the airport agency paid as much as $19.5 million for 80 to 90 LAPD officers, including a dozen or so who had part-time duties at the airport.

Records show that the agency also has paid the LAPD tens of millions of dollars a year in overtime for officers, including those who staffed security checkpoints in the terminals. In fiscal year 2009-10, that amounted to between $61 million and $68 million, the complaint states.

In contrast, the airport Police Department has 1,105 sworn and civilian personnel and a $107.4-million annual budget, which includes money for overtime. About 970 department employees, including 450 sworn officers, are assigned to LAX. The rest are stationed at LA/Ontario International Airport and Van Nuys Airport, both of which the city operates.

The complaint further alleges that LAPD officers have been routinely pulled off airport duty to handle other assignments without reimbursement to LAX.

The airport police association alleges that the diversion of funds has prevented improvements to the airport police station, the replacement of aging patrol cars, the hiring of additional officers and the purchase of needed equipment.

"We are committed to the safety of the traveling public," said Marshall McClain, the association's president. "We want to ensure that our officers have all the resources necessary so they can do their job. The diversion issue detracts from our primary mission."

Airport officials declined to comment, except to say they have received a letter of inquiry from the FAA. "We are fully cooperating and are preparing our responses," said Mary Grady, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles World Airports.

Los Angeles police officials defended the billings, saying they were directly related to work the department performs at LAX. The fees, they said, are needed to pay for officer salaries, benefits, training, insurance, equipment, administration and oversight, including command responsibilities in case of disasters.

"The LAPD has been audited many times in the past, and we believe this and future audits will show the LAPD is providing a completely fair service for what is being charged," Cmdr. Andy Smith said.

The complaint underscores a long-standing controversy over whether the LAPD should absorb the airport Police Department and assume all local law enforcement duties at LAX, the nation's third busiest airport.

City voters rejected a merger in 2005, when then-LAPD Chief William J. Bratton pressed for consolidation. This year, a panel of experts appointed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to evaluate airport security revisited the idea, saying a merger could improve operations and resolve many problems.

Panelists said there have been tensions between the two law enforcement agencies that have been aggravated by the peace officers association. They also concluded that LAPD is needed at LAX because of its specialized units, such as the bomb squad, and its ability to deal with domestic terrorist threats.

The complaint was lodged in June with three California congressmen — Reps. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) and Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita). Association leaders say they also have contacted Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).

The FAA is now evaluating the matter to determine if there is enough evidence of diversion to request further action by the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said Ian Gregor, an FAA spokesman in Los Angeles.

Except for LAX and Long Beach, other airports in the region, such as Bob Hope in Burbank, John Wayne in Orange County and San Diego International, do not rely on two local law enforcement agencies for security. They either have their own force or contract with a single agency.

John Wayne pays the Orange County Sheriff's Department $15.6 million a year for about 100 officers, said Jenny Wedge, an airport spokeswoman. The amount includes deputy salaries, benefits, overtime and a $798,848 administrative fee. Long Beach police charge their airport an hourly rate plus a 30% administrative fee.

dan.weikel@latimes.com

Times staff writer Andrew Blankstein contributed to this report.

San Mateo piggies pepper spray dangerous 7 year old child. (I'm just joking, but the piggies probably really thought this 7 year old was endangering their lives)

Last but not least any school teacher that can't control a misbehaving 7 year old child without calling the cops probably shouldn't be in charge of teaching children anything. But what do you expect about the government schools. They are more concerned about the teachers, then with educating the kids.

Alleged Libertarian Mike Renzulli probably disagrees with me on this, after all he says PIGS stands for Pride, Integrity and Guts. But I call the police for what they are which is jack booted thugs.

San Mateo pays family of boy pepper-sprayed by cop

Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, December 8, 2011

When an agitated 7-year-old special education student clambered onto a bookshelf at his San Mateo school, aides called the police. Officer George "Randy" Heald told the boy it wasn't safe on the unsteady furniture and that he had to get down.

The boy refused, and the officer blasted him with pepper spray, touching off a debate over whether the chemical agent should ever be used on children.

San Mateo agreed last week to pay $55,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by the boy's family, claiming he had been treated like a "common criminal." Earlier, the San Mateo County Board of Education, the county's Behavioral Health and Recovery Services agency and the Belmont-Redwood Shores School District paid an undisclosed sum to settle claims against them in the same lawsuit.

"Unfortunately, police think that pepper spray is not really a weapon, that it doesn't do any permanent harm," said the boy's attorney, Michael Sorgen. "It turns out it's not necessarily true."

But San Mateo police say they have no restrictions on the use of pepper spray against children, and a top department official defended its use on a boy who was "out of control."

"The end result was that the child was taken under control," said Deputy Chief Mike Callagy. Bolted from school

The boy, identified in the lawsuit under the pseudonym Adam G., was enrolled in a special-education class at George Hall Elementary School in San Mateo. He has learning difficulties, dyslexia, anxiety disorder and social-skill problems.

On June 10, 2010, the boy refused to do a classroom assignment, left the campus and was forcibly returned to school by classroom aides. Agitated, he threw chairs in a classroom and climbed on top of a bookshelf and a cabinet, refusing to come down, said the suit the family filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

A therapist and teacher decided to call the police. Heald, a veteran officer just months from retirement, told the boy that "if he did not come down by the count of five, he would be pepper-sprayed," the complaint said.

Adam did not know what pepper spray was, the suit said. Heald explained to the boy that pepper spray "was like hot pepper and that it would make (him) cry and maybe throw up," attorneys for the officer and the city wrote in court papers.

Heald counted backward from five and then "blasted pepper spray in Adam's face," prompting the 51-pound boy to cry in pain, rub his face and come down from the cabinet, the suit said. The boy was then committed for a psychiatric evaluation.

The incident left Adam "more deeply anxious and fearful," the suit said. His parents transferred him to a Menlo Park learning center, where teachers "engage Adam in positive learning and do not resort to physical restraints or calling the police to address his emotional behaviors," the suit said.

In court papers, attorneys for Heald and the city said the boy had responded to the officer's warnings with "growling noises" and "clawing-type" hand gestures.

Safest strategy

After Heald counted down to one, the boy suddenly scooted from a bookshelf to a less stable cabinet that supported a television set, they wrote. There was a piano below the cabinet, and Heald concluded the boy "needed to be immediately removed" for his own safety, the attorneys said.

The officer believed the pepper spray was the "safest and least intrusive way" to gain control of the boy, they wrote.

Callagy, the deputy police chief, said Heald "used the tools that he had to the best of his ability. It is unfortunate that the child was out of control in that situation. But we support the officer's actions and what he did under those circumstances."

Heald, 50, retired in March after 27 years on the force and could not be reached for comment.

Kamran Loghman, a chemical-exposure expert who helped develop policies on the use of pepper spray for the FBI and the state Department of Justice, blasted the decision to spray the chemical on the boy.

"I think it's an absolute absence of wisdom and intelligence," Loghman said. "You don't use a weapon on a child unless he had something that is extremely dangerous in his hand, that may cause death to himself or others, like a gun." Act like adults

He added, "Many of us have children who almost on a daily basis don't listen to their parents. What do we do? Throw vinegar on them? Pepper-spray them? As adults, we have to remain adult-centered, try to be calm and take situations under control."

Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist who studies police use of force, said he had never heard of an officer pepper-spraying a child.

"There's so many ways to deal with people, and unless you're being a threat, I don't understand why pepper spray or any other type of that kind of uncomfortable force would be used on a child," Alpert said.

But Alpert said there are instances in which exceptions can be made when it comes to police tactics and children.

In Miami, police used a Taser shock weapon on a 6-year-old boy in 2004. "Everyone went ballistic, but what happened was that he had a shard of glass and was about to cut his wrist," Alpert said. Under the circumstances, he said, using the shock weapon was a reasonable decision.

The lawsuit settlement with Adam G.'s family calls for police, school and county officials to draft policies that dictate "what are the appropriate situations for the police to be called in for assistance based on student misconduct," said Sorgen, the boy's lawyer.

I am 100 percent for the legalization of ALL drugs, not just marijuana.

Sadly because of 90+ years of the "drug war" in American a large number of Americans have illogical, scientifically incorrect and irrational views on how drugs effect people. Most of these views were created by government lies used to demonize drug users and justify the governments evil, unconstitutional war on drugs. A good example is in high school I was shown the move "Reefer Madness" to teach me the effects of marijuana.

Because of that I can understand why the creators of Prop 302 made it illegal to fire people for the use of medical marijuana. And personally I think that for many jobs a person can do just as good job when they are using medical marijuana as when they are straight.

On the other hand from the Libertarian perspective I think that employees should have the right to hire and fire anybody they want to for any reason they want to. Even if the reason is irrational. It's their money and they should be able to spend it as they chose.

Of course allege Libertarian Mike Renzulli will probably be telling people that I am making this all up and that I love the police state, love the police and love the drug war. Fuck Mike Renzulli! He is one sick puppy, and he certainly isn't a Libertarian.

The claim of a former nurse at a Cottonwood hospice could become the first case to test the limits on employers under the state's year-old medical marijuana law.

Attorneys for Esther Shapiro contend she was fired from Verde Valley Community Hospice because she is a medical marijuana user. They want Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael McVey to award her damages.

Repeated calls to the facility seeking comment were not returned.

Arizona is one of several states where voters have approved laws allowing those with a doctor's recommendation to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes.

But the Arizona law contains something not in statutes elsewhere: an anti-discrimination provision. It says that an employer may not make decisions on hiring, firing or discipline based on the person's status as a registered marijuana user. The law even says that a positive drug test for marijuana from someone who is a registered user cannot be used against that employee unless the person either used, possessed or was impaired at the worksite.

Initiative backers say that was on purpose.

In one high-profile case, a Michigan man had a medical marijuana card under that state's laws to deal with the pain from sinus cancer and a brain tumor.

He was required to take a drug test after he sprained his ankle, as is company policy involving on-the-job injuries. Once the test came back positive for marijuana, he was fired.

That state does not have the same anti-discrimination provisions that are in the Arizona law.

The lawsuit claims that Shapiro was hired in July as a part-time nurse at its facility. A month later it became a full-time position.

During the orientation, Shapiro said she was informed by her supervisor that she would be required to submit to a pre-employment drug test. Shapiro, in turn, says she informed the supervisor as a registered medical marijuana card holder but did submit to the test.

The following day, according to Shapiro, the supervisor told her that the hospice's insurance carrier considered her to be too much of a liability because of her status as a medical marijuana card holder, firing her that day.

Her attorneys said they tried in September to explain that the firing violated the state's medical marijuana law. That, they said, went nowhere.

But 10 days later - and a full month after her firing, William Hayes, one of the facility's owners, submitted a complaint to the Arizona State Board of Nursing that an unspecified staffer had smelled marijuana on Shapiro, and that was the reason for the drug test. Her lawyers deny she was ever under the influence of the drug while on hospice premises or during working hours.

David Weissman, one of Shapiro's attorneys, acknowledged in the lawsuit that the medical marijuana law does allow a company to fire a medical marijuana user if "failure to do so would cause an employer to lose monetary or licensing related benefit under federal law or regulations." But Weissman said the hospice had no such evidence when they fired Shapiro.

Separately, Shapiro is suing Hayes for defamation for "intentionally and knowingly making false statements" about her to the nursing board and possibly to others.

Prosecutors tell us they would rather have 100 guilty people get off, then have one innocent person spend time in prison. But that is 100 percent BULLSHIT!!!!

Innocent people are routinely railroaded by crooked cops and unethical prosecutors, and DNA testing is responsible for proving most of them to be innocent people that were railroaded by corrupt cops and prosecutors!

And I suspect that alleged Libertarian Mike Renzulli will tell you that I am making this up and really love pigs. F*ck Mike Renzulli!

Conviction in 20-year-old murder wiped from books

5:30 a.m. CST, December 13, 2011

A man who served 10 years in prison after confessing to the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Dixmoor girl, a crime in which four other teens also were implicated despite contrary DNA evidence, was exonerated Monday.

Robert Veal's murder conviction was vacated by Cook County Circuit Judge Michele Simmons, said Veal's attorney, Stuart Chanen. Prosecutors say they will not seek a retrial.

"He's very happy to be exonerated, and he's glad to have the murder conviction off his record," Chanen said. "It enables him to do things that he couldn't do before. He's going to start looking for a job."

Veal and four others who were teens at the time were convicted of the rape and murder of Cateresa Matthews, who disappeared after leaving her grandmother's home in Dixmoor in November 1991. Roughly three weeks later, she was found dead from a gunshot wound in a field near Interstate Highway 57.

Veal and Shainne Sharp confessed to the murder during police questioning and agreed to take the stand against Robert Taylor, James Harden and Jonathan Barr. Lawyers sought to overturn the convictions after DNA testing tied a convicted rapist who lived by Matthews to the murder. The convicted rapist has not been charged with Matthews' murder or rape.

In November, Taylor, Harden and Barr, who were all serving longer sentences than Veal, were exonerated and released from prison. Despite having already served his time, Veal, too, sought exoneration, but a decision was delayed in part because Veal had pleaded guilty to the crimes. An attorney for Sharp, who is in an Indiana prison on drug charges, could not be reached for comment.

"I still feel like I always felt — (police) didn't want to hear what we were saying," said Taylor, who, along with Barr and Harden, always maintained his innocence.

Taylor said he doesn't harbor a grudge against Veal, who was also not available for comment.

"He got railroaded. He was doing the best thing he could," Taylor said.

Attorneys working on behalf of the so-called Dixmoor Five note similarities between the case and the separate convictions of four teenagers now serving sentences of at least 30 years for a 1994 sexual assault and murder in Chicago's Englewood neighborhood. Like the Dixmoor case, DNA testing linked the Englewood killing to someone else — in this instance, a deceased man who was a suspect in two other murders, said Josh Tepfer of the Center on Wrongful Conviction of Youth, who represented Taylor. A judge vacated those convictions as well, though prosecutors have not said yet if they will seek a retrial.

"These (convictions) tell us a story of policemen … who are using the process of purported confessions as a way to close cases. It's scary and horrific," Chanen said.

After being behind bars since he was a teen, Taylor, who was freed last month, said finding a job has been "rough."

"Humbling yourself in a job setting … you got to dress the part. It takes some getting used to," Taylor said. "Just take it one day at a time and deal with that. You go day by day by day."

bslodysko@tribune.com