A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as “flaking,” on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

“Tavarez was…worried about getting sent back [to patrol] and, you know, the supervisors getting on his case,” he recounted at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.

Anderson worked in the Queens and Brooklyn South narcotics squads and was called to the stand at Arbeeny’s bench trial to show the illegal conduct wasn’t limited to a single squad.

The city paid $300,000 to settle a false arrest suit by Jose Colon and his brother Maximo, who were falsely arrested by Anderson and Tavarez. A surveillance tape inside the bar showed they had been framed.

A federal judge presiding over the suit said the NYPD is plagued by “widespread falsification” by arresting officers.

Photo: O'Dea (CC)

Justin Elliott writes in Salon:

Back in July, I interviewed a drug policy expert about an apparent change in Justice Department policy that suggested a crackdown on medical marijuana — which is legal in many states but illegal under federal law — might be coming.

Now, with the announcement last week by California’s four U.S. attorneys that pot dispensaries will be targeted with harsh criminal sanctions, the shift feared by drug policy reform advocates appears to have come to pass. The rhetoric from candidate Barack Obama about not prioritizing medical marijuana cases now seems a distant memory.

To learn more about what’s happening in California, I spoke to Bob Egelko, a veteran reporter who covers courts for the San Francisco Chronicle and has been following the story.

Jail or Jesus. These are the options that one Alabama town is giving its non-violent offenders.

The program is called Operation Restore Our Community, WKRG reports. Bay Minette citizens charged with a misdemeanor can choose spending a year’s worth of Sundays in a local church rather than paying a fine and sitting in the clink.

Town police chief Mike Rowland…told the Alabama Press-Register: “It was agreed by all the pastors that at the core of the crime problem was the erosion of family values and morals. We have children raising children and parents not instilling values in young people.”

The stark choice has civil libertarians asking whether the initiative could be seen as government-coerced religion, which is forbidden under American law. The American Civil Liberties Union called the program “blatantly unconstitutional.”

One of the 56 participating pastors, Robert Gates, put that feeling into more biblical terms, telling WKRG, “You show me somebody who falls in love with Jesus, and I’ll show you a person who won’t be a problem to society.”

No mosques or synagogues are participating in the program because they do not exist in the area, according to the Press-Register.

Georgia executed Troy Davis on Wednesday night for the murder of an off-duty police officer, a crime he denied committing right to the end as supporters around the world mourned and declared that an innocent man was put to death.

Defiant to the end, he told relatives of Mark MacPhail that his 1989 slaying was not his fault. “I did not have a gun,” he insisted. “For those about to take my life,” he told prison officials, “may God have mercy on your souls. May God bless your souls.”

Davis was declared dead at 11:08 ET. The lethal injection began about 15 minutes earlier, after the Supreme Court rejected an 11th-hour request for a stay. The court did not comment on its order, which came about four hours after it received the request and more than three hours after the planned execution time.

Though Davis’ attorneys said seven of nine key witnesses against him disputed all or parts of their testimony, state and federal judges repeatedly ruled against granting him a new trial. As the court losses piled up Wednesday, his offer to take a polygraph test was rejected and the pardons board refused to give him one more hearing.

More on the AP via CBS News

Photo: Ehsan Iran (CC)

“If the inmate is not powerful enough or guards would not take care of him, he will be certainly raped. Prison guards ignore those who are seen with condoms simply because they were given out to them by the guards at first place” … Saeed Kamali Dehghan reports in the Guardian:

Prison guards in Iran are giving condoms to criminals and encouraging them to systematically rape young opposition activists locked up with them, according to accounts from inside the country’s jail system.

A series of dramatic letters written by prisoners and families of imprisoned activists allege that authorities are intentionally facilitating mass rape and using it as a form of punishment.

Mehdi Mahmoudian, an outspoken member of Iran’s Participation Front, a reformist political party, is among those prisoners who have succeeded in smuggling out letters revealing the extent of rape inside some of the most notorious prisons.

Mahmoudian was arrested in the aftermath of Iran’s 2009 disputed presidential election for speaking to the press about the regime’s suppression of the movement and is currently in Rajaeeshahr prison in Karaj, a city 12 miles (20km) to the west of the capital, Tehran.

“In various cells inside the prison, rape has become a common act and acceptable,” he wrote in a letter published on Kaleme.com, the official website of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

According to Mahmoudian and letters published on various opposition websites, political prisoners are locked up with some of the most dangerous criminals – murderers and ex-members of armed gangs.

Meanwhile, 26 prominent political activists who have been in jail since the 2009 election have written to an official prison monitoring body accusing the government’s intelligence ministry and the revolutionary guards of harassing inmates with unlawful tactics that included sexual assaults.

Mohsen Aminzadeh, a senior deputy foreign minister, Mohsen Mirdamadi, a leader of a reformist party and Behzad Nabavi, a veteran activist are among those who put their signatures on the letter.

Speaking to Jaras, a website run by opposition activists, families of political prisoners have alleged that prison guards are failing to protect them from rape or sexual assault.

“During exercise periods, the strong ask for sex without any consideration. Criminals are repeatedly seen with condoms in hand, hunting for their victims,” an unnamed family member told Jaras.

“If the inmate is not powerful enough or guards would not take care of him, he will be certainly raped. Prison guards ignore those who are seen with condoms simply because they were given out to them by the guards at first place,” the family member said.

I guess that’s why Ahmadinejad claims there are no homosexuals in Iran.  (Meanwhile, in the USA, prison rape is generally considered fertile ground for comedy.)  Read more here.

Between 50 and 100 inmates in solitary confinement at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison have pledged to refuse to eat until officials agree to better conditions.

Isaac Ontiveros of the anti-prison group Critical Resistance explained the prisoners’ demands to DemocracyNow.

“End the use of group punishment and administrative abuse; abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria; comply with the commission on safety and abuse in America’s prisons 2006 recommendations regarding an end to long-term solitary confinement; provide adequate and nutritious food; and expand and provide constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU status inmates.”

Read More on The Raw Story

Flogging someone with a cane causes intense pain and permanent bodily damage. An Australian who was flogged for drug trafficking in Malaysia in the 1970s recalled that the cane “chewed hungrily through layers of” his “skin and soft tissue” and “left furrows” on him that were “bloody pulp.”

It’s tough stuff and generally considered a barbaric punishment that the 21st century Western world would and should never consider. That makes it a bit startling to find a new book by a serious U.S. academic arguing that the U.S. should start flogging criminals. Peter Moskos’ In Defense of Flogging might seem like a satire — akin to Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” an essay advocating the eating of children — but it is as serious as a wooden stick lashing into a blood-splattered back.

Despite what you may think, Moskos is not pushing flogging as part of a “get tougher on criminals” campaign. In fact Moskos, who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, begins not by arguing that the justice system is too soft on criminals, but the opposite. So before you accuse him of advocating a cruel and unusual form of punishment, he offers this reminder: in the U.S., there are 2.3 million inmates incarcerated in barbaric conditions. American prisons are bleak and violent, and sexual assault is rampant.

And, Moskos points out, imprisonment is not just cruel — it is ineffective. The original idea for the penitentiary was that criminals would become penitent and turn away from their lives of crime. Today, prisons are criminogenic — they help train inmates in how to commit crimes on release …

Story continues at TIME.

Villanova researchers studied more than 12,000 cases of African-American women imprisoned in North Carolina and found that women with lighter skin tones received more-lenient sentences and served less time than women with darker skin tones.

The researchers found that light-skinned women were sentenced to approximately 12 percent less time behind bars than their darker-skinned counterparts. Women with light skin also served 11 percent less time than darker women.

The study took into account the type of crimes the women committed and each woman’s criminal history to generate apples-to-apples comparisons. The work builds on previous studies by Stanford University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and other institutions, which have examined how “black-looking” features and skin tone can impact black men in the criminal-justice arena.

Researchers say this is the first study to look at how colorism affects black women and how long they may spend in jail. Part of the reason may simply come down to how pretty jurors consider a defendant to be, and that being light-skinned and thin (also a factor studied in the research) are seen as more attractive, says Lance Hannon, co-author of the Villanova study.

In an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

Read More from Jimmy Carter in the New York Times

After a lengthy debate, the state House of Representatives gave final legislative approval to a bill that decriminalizes the possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The vote was 90 to 57 in favor and came after a spirited discussion that stretched on for nearly five hours.

The bill now goes to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who immediately hailed its passage and pledged to sign it when it reaches his desk.

“Final approval of this legislation accepts the reality that the current law does more harm than good — both in the impact it has on people’s lives and the burden it places on police, prosecutors and probation officers of the criminal justice system,” Malloy said in a statement emailed to reporters moments after the vote was tallied.

“Let me make it clear — we are not legalizing the use of marijuana. In modifying this law, we are recognizing that the punishment should fit the crime, and acknowledging the effects of its application. There is no question that the state’s criminal justice resources could be more effectively utilized for convicting, incarcerating and supervising violent and more serious offenders,” Malloy said.

Read More in the Hartford Courant

Bikini-clad female visitors frolic under the Caribbean sun in an outdoor pool. Marijuana smoke flavors the air. Reggaetón booms from a club filled with grinding couples.

Prisoners barbecue meat while sipping whisky poolside. In some cells, equipped with air-conditioning and DirecTV satellite dishes, inmates relax with wives or girlfriends. (Venezuela, like other Latin American countries, allows conjugal visits.) The children of some inmates swim in one of the prison’s four pools.

Luis Gutiérrez, the warden at San Antonio prison, refused to discuss the prison he nominally oversees. Renowned on Margarita Island as a relatively tranquil place where even visitors can go for sinful weekend partying, is in a class of its own. On weekends, the ambience inside, bursting with spouses, romantic partners and some who simply show up looking for diversion, almost resembles the island’s beach resorts.

Prisoners boast that they built these perks themselves, with their own money. They say escapes are rare (inmates, if they try, still face the threat of being shot by soldiers outside). And while San Antonio can hardly be considered safe — a grenade attack in the infirmary killed several men last year — inmates argue that compared with other jails, peace often prevails. “Our prison is a model institution,” said Iván Peñalver, 33, a convicted murderer who preaches at the prison’s evangelical Christian church.

“I find it hard to explain what life is like in here,” said Nadezhda Klinaeva, 32, a Russian serving a drug trafficking sentence in the women’s annex. “This is the strangest place I’ve ever been.”

A Durango man was sentenced Friday to 60 days in jail for spitting his own feces on a police officer.

Paul Kausalik, 62, stood still and showed no emotion as 6th Judicial District Judge David Dickinson handed down the punishment.

Kausalik apologized to his wife, the officer and the community. His wife was in the courtroom; the officer was not.

“The occurrences of that evening are totally indefensible,” he said.

Through his attorney, Kausalik declined to comment outside the courtroom.

Kausalik’s work as a retail associate at the Durango Post Office, 222 W. Eighth St., made his a well-known face around town. He worked for the service for about 30 years and retired April 29, said Al DeSarro, a spokesman in Denver.

Kausalik was facing anything from probation to two years in jail after spitting feces at Durango police Officer Chad Langley while detained at the Durango police station.

For more information, see original article.

Cornell Hood II got off with probation after three marijuana convictions in New Orleans.

He didn’t fare too well after moving to St. Tammany Parish, however. A single such conviction on the north shore landed the 35-year-old in prison for the rest of his life.

State Judge Raymond S. Childress punished Hood under Louisiana’s repeat-offender law in his courtroom in Covington on Thursday. A jury on Feb. 15 found the defendant guilty of attempting to possess and distribute marijuana at his Slidell home, court records show.

Hood moved from eastern New Orleans to the Slidell area after he admitted to separate charges of distribution of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute marijuana on Dec. 18, 2009, in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. He received a suspended five-year prison sentence and five years’ of probation for each — which was precisely the same penalty he got in that court after pleading guilty to possessing and intending to distribute marijuana on Feb. 22, 2005.

Read More: Times-Picayune

America is on the cusp of majority support for marijuana legalization, but legalization is not inevitable and it’s up to activists and the multi-billion-dollar marijuana industry to start throwing their weight around to make it happen, US Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) told an overflow crowd during the keynote address at NORML’s 40th annual conference…

“I am optimistic that we will reach a day when America has the smart, sensible marijuana policy that we deserve,” Polis told an attentive audience. “But it could go either way. We could return to the dark ages of repression, or we could be on the eve of a new era of marijuana legalization. Your efforts will help determine which route this country takes and the legacy of this generation of activists on what marijuana policy looks like. Together we can accomplish this,” he told the crowd.

Polis said that he would file a marijuana legalization bill this session in Congress. The language was still being developed, he added. He is also working on a bill that would address problems the medical marijuana industry is having with banks, he said.

“Marijuana policy is really coming of age,” the businessman turned politician said. “Our Colorado model is very exciting,” he added, touting the vibrant local medical marijuana industry on display for conference attendees from across the country. “In my last two elections, even my Republican opponents were for legalization. It’s become a very mainstream value here.”

For more information, see original article.

After crashing her car Sunday, police said a Scranton woman suspected of burglarizing the Dunmore Inn was found to have a sizeable stash of drugs and money hidden in an unlikely location. According to a criminal complaint:

Dunmore police Officer Anthony Cali asked Scranton police Officer Nancy Baumann to detain Karin Mackaliunas, 27, 1609 Mulberry St., at the scene of a crash at the North Seventh Avenue off-ramp Sunday evening…

After searching her for weapons, Officer Baumann found three bags of heroin in Ms. Mackaliunas’ jacket. But as the officer drove her to Scranton police headquarters to charge her for drug possession, Officer Baumann noticed Ms. Mackaliunas fidgeting in the backseat of the cruiser…

A search of Ms. Mackaliunas by a doctor at Community Medical Center turned up 54 bags of heroin, 31 empty bags used to package heroin, 8.5 prescription pills and $51.22.

Read more: Times-Tribune

Thank you for coming. Thank you for showing your support. Thank you all for making The American Party happen. If this is your first time learning of us then an introduction is in order.

We’re responsible for creating the petition to free Patricia Marilyn Spottedcrow. A mother of four sent to ten years in prison for selling $31 of marijuana. On April 20th, 2011  we’re going to march on Washington D.C. and petition President Obama to pardon her of all criminal charges and penalties.

But I got to let you in on a little secret. This isn’t entirely about Patricia or getting her out of prison. This is bigger than that. This movement is about the fact that everything in this country is fucked up on every level: top to bottom, large to small. Patricia was just the straw that broke the camels back. And the Camel was America. The sound of that judge’s gavel sealing Patricia’s fate was the sound of America cracking. “The center does not hold,” as the American Indians used to say. Yes. That was the sound that signaled the collapse of western civilization. When someone was sent to ten years in prison for selling a plant.* Let me tell you something — I believe in God — I believe in a higher power. And I does believe it works in mysterious ways. Because to me that sound was all those things and more. To me it was a wake-up call.

*It’s just a plant. It just grows that way. And if you should happen to set it on fire there are some effects. That’s not the same as drugs. With drugs you got to do shit to it chemically. [ins rest of Kat Williams rant.]

The one thing we always hear from the establishment is how unhealthy marijuana is. And I’m thinking these people are unaware of how unhealthy everything else is for us. Just a few things come to mind: air pollution, acid rain, mercury in the water supply, high tension power lines, radioactive waste dumped in our backyards, conservatives — I swear, if they could devote that same reverence of life for a person after they leave the womb … I think … we would be in a much better place … after all these are the same people who said it was our patriotic duty to spend trillions of dollars killing brown people … then five years later they tell us universal health care is Un-American. You know, I wonder how many pregnant Iraqi women we killed … while we were “saving” those people from themselves. Could you imagine …. if the antiwar protesters had posted pictures of real bloody corpses from Iraq around the Pentagon? ah, But now I’m getting off track. Where was I? Unhealthy things, uh … guns …. I’m just saying. What else? Every single fast-food restaurant chain, every single product that has ‘high fructose corn syrup’ as an ingredient; which is a big-ass list on it’s own, and last but not the least relevant: prescription drugs, tobacco and alcohol.

And so I ask you … what do they think they’re protecting you from? Getting high!? The cynic says getting high is just an escape from reality – but can you blame us??? Between all the stuff we KNOW will kill us and the stuff we’re only afraid will kill us and the knowledge that we will die someday are rich assholes obsessed with making abortion illegal, just so they can send your kids off to war and tell you universal health care is immoral!

… And I refuse to believe the dubious ‘alternative’ presented by liberals are our only options. No. Not anymore. It’s the age-old battle between good and evil. But in the 21st century, this line has become significantly distorted. If you consider multinational corporate monoliths poisoning the planet for the benefit of the very few, or Al Gore to be representative of the good, then we must the most evil thing to come along since the 10 commandments.

So what does The American Party believe in?

• Marijuana reform: Legalize it.

• Education reform: We seek to create a school system that incorporates speed reading and memorization techniques directly into the curriculum. We also seek a curriculum that develops the ARTISTIC LEFT HEMISPHERE of the brain alongside the rational right. A popular misconception about the American ED-SYS is that it is ‘broken.’ When in fact, it is quite good at what it was designed for; creating dependable laborers for Industry. Thanks to the schooling system, youth are trained very early in how they are expected to be useful in the “REAL WORLD.” The real purpose of public education consists of three courses: one in punctuality, one in obedience, and one in rote, repetitive work. Industry demands workers who show up on time, workers who will take orders from a management hierarchy without question and it demands men and women to slave away at machines or in offices. Rather than lament or ignore these facts we should look at this system as a necessary evil that has allowed us to develop ourselves to this present state of technological sophistication; in fact, paving the way for what comes next. Since the type of jobs that need this ‘training’ are increasingly being outsourced to foreigners and fully automated mechanical laborers – a new economy and a new school system to support it are desperately needed.

• Economic reform: Now ideas for reform are all well and good, but we need CA$H to make it happen – fortunately our idea for economic reform covers that ground as well. The creative-based economy. (Web 3.0 (or whatever) The key is a government subsidized social networking website linked to a bank account. The consumer will pay you a fee (fee to be determined by you, the producer) to view your page, and a separate fee to “BUY” your content. Additionally, all content submitted to the website will be licensed as “creative commons” (or whatever) and by “BUYING” another producer’s content, you now have permission to sample their wares for your personal projects. And it’s collaboration, collaboration, collaboration all the way down. In order to help you make the most informed purchases the website will also give you suggestions on what profiles you will like based on your: past purchases, a rating system and those stupid little personality tests everyone loves.

The beauty of this thing is the website won’t cost the government a fraction of what they will eventually make from it. First, let Google handle all tech stuff. Second, by allowing the government to bankroll this thing – they in turn can tax all the purchases directly (a sales tax) and use that money to reform the prison and education system.

Of course, the skeptics will say people won’t want to buy tomorrow what they can get for free today. But if you – YES! YOU! — can also make money from your: rants, articles, political musings, drawings, poems, music, videos etc., then why not pay other people for what they’ve created? Remember, you’ll be allowed to sample content from the producers you’ve bought from. That’s the key. “The right to share.”

Getting Started: Every American with a social security number will automatically be given an account to begin buying and selling content. You know, we got these ‘nationalized banks,’ let’s use them. Give card-carrying Americans a $100 starting balance to be used exclusively for the site. Now obviously we wouldn’t want to restrict users to just America — the entire WORLD will use this site, yet it will be the American government alone collecting taxes on every purchase … reduced debt, anyone?

The website has to allow porn. That’s the only way we can keep interest alive in this thing  long enough for the educational system to produce its ARTISTS (the ones who are really going to do this site justice.) We’ll create a ’seperate’ site, a ‘blue’ version, strictly for adult content. Since the entire foundation of this website is based on people buying access to content, there will have to be some kind of ID verification put in place. This would prevent underage viewers from even being able to log on to the ‘blue’ site.

• Prison reform: They say America doesn’t produce anything anymore — but I call bullshit on that. America is the no.1 producer of trash. On a related note, we also have a problem with prison overcrowding. The current prison paradigm says the best way to ‘rehabilitate’ criminals is lock them away with other criminals in a dehumanizing environment. Fair enough. Let’s expand on that concept. Instead of letting prisoners use their ‘free-time’ to become better criminals – I say we put them to work. The prison system is in reality, a vast, untapped labor source. Filled with people who need to learn some more punctuality & obedience. And what better punishment than being forced to perform rote, repetitive work? By modifying the prison facility we can use prisoners to: sort through and recycle the literal tons of trash we produce, convert organic trash to methane for fuel. And here’s a novel idea, how about making prisoners grow government weed? I mean, who here would have a problem with buying your pot from the government? You know, as long as they promise not to lace it with ‘mind altering chemicals.’ yuk yuk yuk. Makes sense considering all the people who are already in prison for growing marijuana.

“But wouldn’t all those ‘growers’ be set free when marijuana is legalized?”

Well, let’s examine that. As absurd as it may seem to you or I, for some people, prison is a lifestyle choice. They want to be in prison. It’s the only place in society where they feel comfortable. And why not? Going to prison may be the logical response to a society that tries to make all your decisions for you. WHO KNOWS? Maybe for Patricia Marilyn Spottedcrow prison was the perfect escape! Put yourself in her shoes; trying to support four kids selling weed. Fuck. Nonetheless, some people definitely like being in prison. To those people I say, FINE! Stay there. We’ll give you a cushy job and state-of-the-art reeducation.

This is the blueprint to The American Party. You may not agree with every aspect of what we believe. But compared to the ‘business-as-usual’ antics on Capital Hill – this movement will be like a nuclear bomb going off behind the eyes of Uncle Sam. America is just a word. Ok? It’s not the government, it’s just a construct. You are the real thing. You are what makes things happen. And what we’re making right now is going to be puzzled over, and studied and followed, forever …

So let’s bring it all back home. Echoing the sentiment of that great American Ronald Reagan when he told the Germans to “tear down that wall”; on 4/20 let’s tell Obama to LET THAT WOMAN GO! And then show him our vision for the future.

So for your own sake … make sure this thing goes off without a hitch. And that’s real.

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

“Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail,” he said. “That’s your whole story right there. Hell, you don’t even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.”

I put down my notebook. “Just that?”

“That’s right,” he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. “Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there.”

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

Read Matt Taibbi’s article in Rolling Stone

Prison guards could soon stop fights with a harmless tool that shoots a laser-like beam, video game-style, down into a room where trouble is brewing. The Assault Intervention Device (AID), funded by the National Institute of Justice, is still large and unrefined but will soon be installed for trial in at least one prison, the Pitchess Detention Center in Los Angeles County.

The AID directs an energy beam, which is in the invisible millimeter wavelength, that penetrates just deep enough beneath the skin to make the target’s pain receptors shout. The sensation is a burn like touching a hot stove or an iron. It only lasts up to 3 seconds — the AID controls automatically shut the beam off to prevent shooting for longer without resetting the trigger finger. The beam can hit a target about 100 feet away, and is about as wide as a CD.

According to Raytheon, the device’s manufacturers, it causes no actual damage to nerves or skin. This video shows the sharp reflex caused by an AID hit, and the unscathed hit receivers.

For more information, see original article.

More people were arrested last year in New York City on charges of marijuana possession than during the entire 19-year period from 1978 to 1996, according to an analysis released this morning by the Drug Policy Alliance.

Last year, the sixth year in a row that marijuana possession arrests increased, 50,383 people were arrested, according to a report recently released by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services and obtained by the policy alliance, which advocates for reform of drug laws.

The figure adds up to 140 arrests a day, making marijuana possession the leading reason for arrest in the city, and represents an 8 percent increase over 2009 and a 69 percent increase since 2005, the alliance reported in a statement issued Thursday.

From 1978 to 1996, there were 49,326 marijuana possession arrests, according to an analysis for the alliance done by Harry Levine, a sociology professor at Queens College and an expert on marijuana enforcement.

The increased enforcement, the policy alliance says,  is due not to increasing consumption, but to harsher enforcement.

Read More: NY Times’ City Room

This should change, as I have argued frequently over the past year (listen to part of a speech I did on this here). Of the countless reasons why this revival of this Prohibition that looks so quaint in Boardwalk Empire should be erased with all deliberate speed, one is that with no War on Drugs there would be, within one generation, no “black problem” in the United States. Poverty in general, yes. An education problem in general — probably. But the idea that black America had a particular crisis would rapidly become history, requiring explanation to young people. The end of the War on Drugs is, in fact, what all people genuinely concerned with black uplift should be focused on, which is why I am devoting my last TNR post of 2010 to the issue. The black malaise in the U.S. is currently like a card house; the Drug War is a single card which, if pulled out, would collapse the whole thing.

That is neither an exaggeration nor an oversimplification. It comes down to this: If there were no way to sell drugs on the street at a markup, then young black men who drift into this route would instead have to get legal work. They would. Those insisting that they would not have about as much faith in human persistence and ingenuity as those who thought women past their five-year welfare cap would wind up freezing on sidewalk grates.

There would be a new black community in which all able-bodied men had legal work even in less well-off communities — i.e. what even poor black America was like before the ’70s; this is no fantasy. Those who say that this could only happen with low-skill factory jobs available a bus ride away from all black neighborhoods would be, again, wrong. That explanation for black poverty is full of holes. Too many people of all colors of modest education manage to get by without taking a time machine to the 1940s, and after the War on Drugs black men would be no exception.

Read More in the New Republic

The Rev. Dr. Pat Robertson, a longtime central influencer in conservative Christian Republican politics, came out recently on television to say that the direction many politicians have taken regarding marijuana has turned out to be wrong.

Robertson claims that mandatory minimum sentencing for Americans caught with relatively small amounts of pot is costing the nation too much money and is not rehabilitating them.

“I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing, it’s just — it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people,” the televangelist said on his long-running show, “The 700 Club,” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.”

Read More on LA Times blog

Over the Christmas-New Year’s holiday in 2003, Khaled El-Masri traveled by bus to Skopje, Macedonia. There he was apprehended by border guards who noted the similarity of his name to that of Khalid al-Masri, an Al Qaeda agent linked to the Hamburg cell where the 9/11 attacks were plotted. Despite El-Masri’s protests that he was not al-Masri, he was beaten, stripped naked, shot full of drugs, given an enema and a diaper, and flown first to Baghdad and then to the notorious “salt pit,” the CIA’s secret interrogation facility in Afghanistan.

At the salt pit, he was repeatedly beaten, drugged, and subjected to a strange food regime that he supposed was part of an experiment that his captors were performing on him. Throughout this time, El-Masri insisted that he had been falsely imprisoned, and the CIA slowly established that he was who he claimed to be. Over many further weeks of bickering over what to do, a number of CIA figures apparently argued that, though innocent, the best course was to continue to hold him incommunicado because he “knew too much.”

Dana Priest furnished the core of this account in an excellent 2005 Washington Post story. Other aspects have been slowly confirmed by German criminal investigators. By studying El-Masri’s hair and skin samples, for instance, they were able to confirm allegations that he was drugged and subjected to a bizarre starvation regimen. Throughout this process, El-Masri’s account of what transpired, part of which he wrote up as an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, has consistently been vindicated.

Read more here.

In Spain, the WikiLeaks disclosures have dominated the news for three days now. The reporting has been led by the level-headed El País, with its nationwide competitor, Público, lagging only a bit behind. Attention has focused on three separate matters, each pending in the Spanish national security court, the Audiencia Nacional: the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank; an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003.

These cables reveal a large-scale, closely coordinated effort by the State Department to obstruct these criminal investigations. High-ranking U.S. visitors such as former Republican Party Chair Mel Martinez, Senator Judd Gregg, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were corralled into this effort, warning Spanish political leaders that the criminal investigations would “be misunderstood” and would harm bilateral relations. The U.S. diplomats also sought out and communicated directly with judges and prosecutors, attempting to steer the cases into the hands of judges of their choosing. The cables also reflect an absolutely extraordinary rapport between the Madrid embassy and Spanish prosecutors, who repeatedly appear to be doing the embassy’s bidding.

Read more here.

Nicholas Pell writes in the Examiner.com

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Friday morning that decriminalizes possession of marijuana in the state.

Those caught with less than an ounce of marijuana will still receive a maximum penalty of $100. However, Senate Bill 1449 reduces the legal categorization of marijuana possession from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction. This means that those caught will not have to appear in court, pay court fees or receive a criminal record.

Schwarzenegger opposes Proposition 19, a pending referendum that will provide a legal framework for the sale, cultivation and taxation of marijuana. However, despite this opposition, Schwarzenegger signed the bill into law. In a letter to the California Senate, Schwarzenegger stated that “less than an ounce of marijuana is an infraction in everything but name. The only difference is that because it is a misdemeanor, a criminal defendant is entitled to a jury trial and a defense attorney.” He further stated that “In this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket.”

California director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Dale Gieringer lauded the governor’s decision…

[continues at the Examiner.com]

Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It’s not the Netherlands.)

Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled “coffee shops,” Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don’t enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal’s drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal’s new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to “drug tourists” and exacerbate Portugal’s drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

Read more in TIME

I’ve been watching the Death Wish movies all week on AMC. Quake loves them dearly for the wet explosions and hand cannons. I am amazed that these films ever saw the light of day.

The story goes as follows: Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) is forced into violence by so many thugs and cretins, who run roughshod over New York city like a band of vikings. Kersey never really wants to spill blood, it’s just that the aforementioned thugs will not stop killing and raping his loved ones. The cops are no help either. They are either woefully incompetent or believe Kersey to be just as bad as those he hunts. Paul Kersey has to be the unluckiest man in the history of film.

These are laughably bad films and in no way do they represent reality. But something about them struck me as being fairly accurate, and that something was the sheer panic that some people exhibit right now. These people seem to feel that gangs of colored folks and sexual deviants are perched right outside their door waiting to strike. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you to the official film series of the Tea Party movement.

Read More: First Church of Mutterhals

Google Earth aerial view of downtown Los Angeles.

Benign, or Big Brother? Report from AP/Yahoo News:

On New York’s Long Island, it’s used to prevent drownings. In Greece, it’s a tool to help solve a financial crisis. Municipalities update property assessment rolls and other government data with it. Some in law enforcement use it to supplement reconnaissance of crime suspects.

High-tech eyes in the sky — from satellite imagery to sophisticated aerial photography that maps entire communities — are being employed in creative new ways by government officials, a trend that civil libertarians and others fear are eroding privacy rights.

“As technology advances, we have to revisit questions about what is and what is not private information,” said Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology.

Online services like Google and Bing give users very detailed images of practically any location on the planet. Though some images are months old, they make it possible for someone sitting in a living room in Brooklyn to look in on folks in Dublin or Prague, or even down the street in Flatbush.

Sean Walter, an attorney and first-term town supervisor in Riverhead, N.Y., insists he is a staunch defender of privacy rights and the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

But Walter supported using Google Earth images to help identify about 250 Riverhead homes where residents failed to get building permits certifying their swimming pools complied with safety regulations. All but about 10 eventually came to town hall…

[continues at AP/Yahoo News]

In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.”

The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site as well.

WikiLeaks, on Sunday, posted several files containing the 77,000 Afghan war documents in a single “dump” file and in several other files containing versions of the documents in various searchable formats.

Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the file may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization’s founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it.

It’s not known what the file contains but it could include the balance of data that U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning claimed to have leaked to Assange before he was arrested in May.

Read More: WIRED’s Threat Level

COLUMBIA, TN (NBC) — In a town where they’ve engraved “justice” and “honor” on the public square, a new word, a new name is the talk of Columbia.

Bike shop owner A.C. Howell said, “The Viper, I believe. Isn’t he the Masked Viper?”

Yes, the Viper. He’s a man police found patrolling the public square with an arsenal of equipment, including plastic sticks and ninja throwing stars. His goal? Find crime and report it to police. Officers spotted him outside the wheel last week.

The bike shop’s owner couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I don’t know. He needs something to do. Probably needs a job. I hope he’s looking out for my benefit. I hope he’s guarding my store,” said Howell.