According to the latest FBI data, way too many Americans are getting arrested for weed. In 2010, police busted over 850,000 people on pot-related offenses. As NORML notes, that accounts for “more than one-half (52 percent) of all drug arrests in the Untied States,” of those, 46 percent were for possession. It’s no wonder law enforcement doesn’t want to legalize the herb. It’s their bread and butter. (Photo: Sp▲ce C▲det/flickr) Read more »
Showing restraint is not what the NYPD is typically known for. Time after time, poorly trained officers needlessly escalate situations that could otherwise be resolved without physical force. Read more »
The NYPD continues to play by its own rules and recently, detained a videographer for refusing to show his identification to an officer who observed him shooting footage of an arrest in Times Square. Read more »
Last year, Congress voted to reduce the federal sentencing guidelines for crack-related offenses and bring them a little bit more inline with the penalties for powdered cocaine. But how about all those inmates currently in prison? Thankfully, a governmental body known as the U.S. Sentencing Commission moved to apply the law retroactively. Read more »
Late last week, Buju Banton was sentenced to ten years in federal prison for conspiracy charges related to a cocaine deal the DEA says he set up. If credited with good behavior, his defense attorney, David Oscar Marus, thinks the dancehall superstar will end up serving a little more than half that time and that’s exactly what he plans on doing. Banton has already taken up classes and plans on pursuing a master’s degree. Read more »
On Wednesday, dozens of activists gathered in front of Mayor Bloomberg’s posh townhouse on the Upper East Side—a neighborhood which only accounted for 34 of 50,383 low level pot arrests—to draw attention to the NYPD’s War on Weed and its many casualties. Read more »
Thank goodness for the ACLU. The defenders of the Constitution are calling attention to the Michigan State Police for using a gadget that can download personal data from the cell phones of persons they pull over… even if they haven’t been charged with a crime. Called “extraction devices,” the gizmos are capable of capturing “text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data” reports CNET. Ironically, the company that makes the rights-trampling machine refuses to release any info on it.
The NYPD’s prolonged battle with bikes is starting to take its toll on officers as they continue to lose their mental bearings when it comes to any incident involving a cyclist, even if circumstantially related. Read more »
Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton was recently granted bail with some of the most oppressive conditions ever and yet, two weeks later, he’s still in custody. How’s that possible? The short answer: the government is going out of its way to screw him over. In addition to Bob Marley’s son Stephen putting up his $300k home, Buju also agreed to wear a tracking device, hire guards to keep watch over him 24 hours a day while under house arrest, and even install a home security system that he doesn’t even have access to. Despite these outrageous measures, the prosecution still isn’t satisfied and is appealing the bail ruling, which basically means that he won’t be getting out anytime soon for his December retrial.
During the Republican National Convention in 2004, the NYPD arrested almost 2000 demonstrators and detained them in a dirty bus depot for more than 24 hours. They say they were justified, in part, based on surveillance their officers had gathered, from around the world. Although most of the cases were dismissed, the NYCLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of many of the detainees, demanding access to the 1,800 pages of documents surrounding the arrests. Read more »
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