XPost: alt.drugs.pot, alt.hemp.politics, rec.drugs.cannabis
From: bliss@mouse-potato.com

Drug War Chronicle, Issue #1039 -- 10/15/18
Phillip S. Smith, Editor, psmith@drcnet.org https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/1039

A Publication of StoptheDrugWar.org
David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org
"Raising Awareness of the Consequences of Drug Prohibition"

Table of Contents:

1. ACLU FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST SAN FRANCISCO COPS FOR TARGETING AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN DRUG BUSTS [FEATURE]
The city by the bay has been a hotbed of illegal race-based policing.
This is just the latest example. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2018/oct/11/aclu_files_lawsuit_against_san

2. HERE ARE THE TEN MOST POPULAR WAYS TO CONSUME MARIJUANA
Smoking and vaping dominate the market. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2018/oct/08/here_are_ten_most_popular_ways

3. THIS WEEK'S CORRUPT COPS STORIES
A Florida cop gets nailed peddling pain pills from his patrol car, a
Texas cop goes down for trying to peddle stolen cocaine, and jail guards
go wild (again). https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2018/oct/10/weeks_corrupt_cops_stories

4. CHRONICLE AM: NEW PEW POT POLL, UK MEDMJ, MEXICO OPIUM TALK, MORE... (10/8/18)
A new Pew poll shows continuing majority support for marijuana
legalization, Mexico's president-elect talks legalizing opium production
for medicine, Texas's governor gets behind reducing pot penalties, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2018/oct/08/chronicle_am_new_pew_pot_poll_uk

5. CHRONICLE AM: TRUMP CALLS FOR "STOP AND FRISK" IN CHICAGO,
BANGLADESH'S BAD NEW DRUG LAW, MORE... (10/9/18)
Efforts to establish safe injection sites in Philadelphia and San
Francisco hit some bumps in the road, President Trump calls for "stop
and frisk" policing in Chicago, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2018/oct/09/chronicle_am_trump_calls_stop

6. CHRONICLE AM: FDA SEEKS PUBLIC COMMENT ON MARIJUANA CLASSIFICATION WA
BANS GUMMIES AND CANDIES, MORE... (10/10/18)
The FDA is seeking public comment on marijuana classification,
Mississippi cops continue to seize cash and other goods despite a change
in state law that should have stopped them, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2018/oct/10/chronicle_am_fda_seeks_public

7. CHRONICLE AM: US CLARIFIES CANADA POT WORKER ENTRY, RENDELL DEFENDS
SAFE INJECTION SITES, MORE... (10/11/18)
The US has clarified that Canadiana marijuana workers and investors can
enter the US but not for that business, New Jersey's governor says a
vote on legalization will happen before month's end, Pennsylvania's
former governor sticks up for safe injection sites, and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2018/oct/11/chronicle_am_us_clarifies_canada

8. CHRONICLE AM: TRUMP MARIJUANA PLANS, MORE CASES THROWN OUT IN MA DRUG
LAB SCANDAL, MORE... (10/12/18)
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) says the president will move on marijuana
policy after the election, the Supreme Court will hear an important
asset forfeiture case later this year, thousands more drug defendants
will see drug charges dismissed in the Massachusetts drug lab scandal,
and more. https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2018/oct/12/chronicle_am_trump_marijuana

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================

1. ACLU FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST SAN FRANCISCO COPS FOR TARGETING AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN DRUG BUSTS [FEATURE] https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2018/oct/11/aclu_files_lawsuit_against_san

San Francisco's Tenderloin is a heavily populated, racially mixed
neighborhood in the heart of one of America's iconic progressive cities.
Yet when the San Francisco Police Department and the DEA targeted the neighborhood to crack down on drug dealing between 2013 and 2015 as part
of "Operation Safe Schools," the only people they managed to roll up
were black.

When 37 black defendants -- and no defendants of any other race -- got
hauled away, nobody noticed. That is until the defendants started
showing up looking for federal public defenders. The federal public
defenders noticed, and they began making noise about racial disparities
and selective enforcement of the drug laws.

Their charges only grew louder with the posting in 2015 of undercover
police surveillance video to YouTube revealing a police officer
muttering "fucking BMs," police code for black males, as he monitored a
group of young men on the street. The video also apparently showed an undercover informant turning down drugs being offered by an Asian woman
to instead buy drugs from a black woman.

In January 2017, 12 of those charged in the operation won a discovery
motion from a judge who found there was "substantial evidence suggestive
of racially selective enforcement" in their arrests. Instead of allowing
the proceedings to continue so a full accounting of police conduct could
occur, prosecutors instead dropped the charges.

At the time, the presiding judge, US District Court Judge Edward Chen,
made clear that while he was granting the dismissals because they were
in the best interest of the defendants, he was concerned that doing so
would prevent the allegations of police bias from being aired.

"These are serious issues, serious allegations regarding claims of discriminatory enforcement patterns," Chen said. "I think the defendants
in this case have raised a very substantial prima facie case that, at
the very least, raises some serious questions that would warrant a
response and a full airing of the issues."

Now, a year and a half later, the ACLU of Northern California on
Thursday filed a federal civil lawsuit (https://www.aclu.org/cases/cross-v-sfpd) on behalf of six of those
rolled up in the busts. The lawsuit alleges the plaintiffs were targeted because of their race and cites a survey of Tenderloin drug users to
bolster its case. That survey found racial diversity among Tenderloin
drug sellers. About half were black, but 20 percent were Latino and 17
percent were white.

The lawsuit is "an opportunity to hold the actors in the San Francisco
Police Department and the city itself accountable for the police
department's longstanding practices of engaging in racially
discriminatory law enforcement," said ACLU attorney Novella Coleman (http://www.sfexaminer.com/lawsuit-sfpd-alleges-drug-arrests-racially-motivated/),
who is representing the plaintiffs.

It's also about financial relief for the plaintiffs, Coleman allowed.
"The court will determine how to monetize that," she said.

Not an Anomaly

Racially biased policing is nothing new in San Francisco. In fact, as
Ezekiel Edwards, director of the national ACLU's Criminal Law Reform
Project, pointed out in a post announcing the lawsuit (https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police-practices/san-francisco-hotbed-illegal-race-based-policing),
the city has the dubious honor of setting precedent for the idea that
law enforcement targeting people based on their race is
unconstitutional. In an 1886 case, Yick Wo v. Hopkins (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/356/), the city
attempted to deny laundry permits to Chinese people while granting them
to non-Chinese. Such an action could only be explained by the city's
"hostility to the race and nationality" of the applicants, a violation
of the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and the evidence that the city's
penchant for targeting non-whites for harsher treatment remains intact
just keeps piling up. Numerous studies in the past few years have
documented racially biased policing practices, including a 2002 ACLU
report (https://www.aclunc.org/publications/department-denial-san-francisco-police-departments-failure-address-racial-profiling)
on SFPD racial profiling and a city-commissioned study (https://sanfranciscopolice.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/14851-Fair_and_Iimpartial_Policing_Report.pdf)
by a national expert on biased policing.

Those studies uncovered a range of bias-related problems and made
concrete recommendations for reform. Those were ignored. As the rotten
policing practices festered, more reports detailing racial and ethnic disparities across the criminal justice system came out in 2013 (http://www.burnsinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/JRI_SF-RED-Analysis-SUMMARY-of-FINDINGS.pdf)
and 2015 (http://www.burnsinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/SF_JRI_Full_Report_FINAL_7-21.pdf).

Then, in 2015, as "Operation Safe Schools" was winding down, SFPD was
hit by a new scandal when officers were caught exchanging racist text
messages. Some used the N-word, others referenced cross burnings.
Officers were caught calling black residents "savages," "wild animals,"
and "barbarians," and one officer told his sergeant "All n[ -- ] must
fucking hang." Another officer sent a text with an image of a white man spraying a black child with a hose above the caption "Go be a n --
somewhere else."

That finally got the attention of city fathers -- as well as the
Obama-era Justice Department. The city district attorney convened a Blue
Ribbon Panel on Transparency, Accountability, and Fairness in Law
Enforcement that documented (http://sfdistrictattorney.org/sites/default/files/Document/BRP_report.pdf) SFPD's history of racially disparate enforcement and concluded that it
was "in urgent need of important reforms." In 2016, the Justice
Department weighed in with its own report (https://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-w0817-pub.pdf) finding that
the department still engaged in racially biased policing, especially
around traffic stops and police use of deadly force.

It's Not Just San Francisco

The ACLU's Edwards concisely makes the case that San Francisco is no
exception when it comes to racially biased policing:

"Unequal treatment by race is commonplace among police departments large
and small in cities across a range of ideological leanings. This is the
reason for the racial profiling lawsuits filed in New York City (https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/floyd-et-al-v-city-new-york-et-al),
Chicago (http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/macarthur/projects/police/documents/Campbell%20v%20City%20of%20Chicago%20Class%20Action%20Complaint%20FINAL.pdf),
Philadelphia (https://www.aclupa.org/our-work/legal/legaldocket/baileyetalvcityofphiladelp), and Maricopa County (https://www.aclu.org/cases/ortega-melendres-et-al-v-arpaio-et-al),
Arizona. This is the motivation, prior to Attorney General Jeff
Sessions, for Justice Department consent decrees seeking to end racially discriminatory police practices in Seattle, Los Angeles County, New
Orleans, Baltimore, Newark, East Haven CT and Ferguson MO. This is why
the ACLU has found racial disparities (https://www.aclu.org/report/report-war-marijuana-black-and-white) in
marijuana possession arrests across the country, in drug possession
arrests (https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/10/12/every-25-seconds/human-toll-criminalizing-drug-use-united-states)
more broadly, in stops (https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/boston-police-have-racially-biased-policing-problem-and-golden)
and frisks in Boston, in seatbelt (https://www.aclu.org/report/racial-disparities-florida-safety-belt-law-enforcement)
enforcement in Florida, and in arrests for low-level (https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/picking-pieces)
offenses in Minneapolis."

When will things ever change?

This article was produced by Drug Reporter (https://independentmediainstitute.org/drug-reporter/), a project of the Independent Media Institute.

================  ...

___________________

It's time to correct the mistake: Truth:the Anti-drugwar
<http://www.briancbennett.com>
Cops say legalize drugs--find out why:
<http://www.leap.cc>
Stoners are people too:
<http://www.cannabisconsumers.org>
___________________

bliss -- Cacao Powered... (-SF4ever at DSLExtreme dot com)

--
bobbie sellers - a retired nurse in San Francisco

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cacao that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)