DEA Agent: We Were Told Not to Enforce Drug Laws in Rich White Areas

[kpete]

Fogg makes explicit comparisons between the so-called “War on Drugs” and literal military wars. He also draws attention to the overt racist and classist nature of the decades-long internal “war” (emphases mine):

We’re talking about Gotham city. … We were jumping on guys in the middle of the night, all of that, swooping down on folks all across the country, using these sort of attack tactics that we went out on, that you would use in Vietnam, or some kind of war-torn zone. All of the stuff that we were doing, just calling it the war on drugs.

And there wasn’t very many black guys in my position. So when I would go into the war room, where we were setting up all of our drug and gun and addiction task force determining what cities we were going to hit, I would notice that most of the time it always appeared to be urban areas.

That’s when I asked the question, well, don’t they sell drugs out in Potomac and Springfield, and places like that? Maybe you all think they don’t, but statistics show they use more drugs out in those areas (rich and white) than anywhere.

The special agent in charge, he says “You know, if we go out there and start messing with those folks, they know judges, they know lawyers, they know politicians. You start locking their kids up, somebody’s going to jerk our chain.” He said they’re going to call us on it, and before you know it, they’re going to shut us down, and there goes your overtime.

What I began to see is that the drug war is totally about race. If we were locking up everybody, white and black, for doing the same drugs, they would have done the same thing they did with prohibition. They would have outlawed it. They would have said, “Let’s stop this craziness. You’re not putting my son in jail. My daughter isn’t going to jail.” If it was an equal enforcement opportunity operation, we wouldn’t be sitting here anyway.

It’s all about fairness, man. And understanding “How would I want to be treated?” Whether I’m on the one end, or the other end. How would I be treated if everything was done equally?


http://bennorton.com/dea-agent-we-were-told-not-to-enforce-drug-laws-in-rich-white-areas/

[hifiguy]

1. Everyone who is surprised by this stand on your head...

[KansDem]

4. I'm not standing on my head, but it's important to have confirmation.

A solid account from someone "on the inside."

The special agent in charge, he says “You know, if we go out there and start messing with those folks, they know judges, they know lawyers, they know politicians. You start locking their kids up, somebody’s going to jerk our chain.” He said they’re going to call us on it, and before you know it, they’re going to shut us down, and there goes your overtime.

Probably why "stop and frisk" is not practiced on the wearers of three-piece suits.

[hobbit709]

6. All you would have to do is open your eyes and look around.

[NoJusticeNoPeace]

2. America's drug laws exist to imprison minorities so they cant vote

[valerief]

8. Bingo! Or can't revolt. Plus, they're used as slave labor in for-profit prisons.

Who said slavery's dead? It's alive and well in the USA.

[brush]

10. Also so there is less competition in the job market

You get blacks and browns a record and you never have to worry about them competing with yourself or your wife or kids or brothers or sisters etc. for jobs and other opportunities.

[JonLP24]

25. I recently saw a story that some privatize business came out with a new GED

which was a significant leap when it came to difficulty but the questions were really presented in a way meant to be as confusing as possible.

Since those without GED predominantly make up the chronically homeless population more people unable to get a GED leads to the same thing you mention.

[brush]

29. Wow! I hadn't heard about that

All of thus BS is so cruel and insidious. God! It takes more effort coming up with this crap than just being fair to everyone.

It's sickening.

[CrispyQ]

13. And so some corporation can make $40k a year off of them.

Paid by with taxpayer money, of course.

It's a fucking racket.

[malaise]

14. Slave labor as well

This is the new Jim Crow

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

26. One of many racist motivations. It's shameful and sickening. We are better than this.

[Chakab]

3. This should be obvious to anybody who isn't naive or willfully blind, but it's always nice to hear

a person who was on the inside say it out loud.

[Warpy]

5. I remember upscale parties with lines of coke in the bathrooms

along with pills transferred by handshake with the host. Damned right, the rich do drugs and if they don't, they provide them for guests who do.

The local cops might just be our allies in the big cities. Most of them realize what a waste of money the drug war is, how it contributes to the difficulty of their jobs, and how impossible it will be to "win." If they start busting rich folks along with poor folks, we might just start to see a change.

People who go down the drug rabbit hole end up destroying their lives unless they can find a way to get clean. We know this. However, the destruction created by Prohibition II is far worse, lives destroyed with no way to leave the past behind since felony convictions and long prison sentences stay with them for the rest of their lives.

If we want to get serious about lowering street crime and property crime, crushing the violent gangs, increasing tax revenue, and lowering our shamefully high prison population, we need to get serious about ending their cause: drug prohibition.

[Major Nikon]

7. White people were getting busted. That's why prohibition ended.

[cstanleytech]

16. White people in my area are getting thrown into jail in my area to though its only the poor ones.

If your rich though its an entirely different story.
For example the wife of one guy in my area about 8 or 9 years ago was let go after she tried to get a forged prescription for morphine and she then went and did it over in the next county and got caught they let her go again because shes rich and could afford a good lawyer where as if I had tried that shit they would have thrown my ass in jail for a few years the first time I tried it because I'm not rich, far from it in fact *sigh*

[brewens]

9. Not just the war on drugs. In my town once the real crackdown on drunk driving started, you saw

a real difference in who was targeted. We didn't have many minorities, it was a class thing. While most busy bars were staked out with cops looking to bust anyone they could, in the wealthy area, forget about it. It would be safe to say, no one ever got popped leaving their Elks Club or golf course lounge out there. It's probably still that way.

I bet if you live out there and do your drinking at the Elks, you have a zero chance of getting a DUI driving a few blocks home.

[JonLP24]

27. What was interesting that you mentioned that which reminded me out of all the nightclubs I went to

the one I went a little bit north of Tacoma a little before Federal Way, I think. I never seen so many instant DUIs in one night. Someone simply turning the car on & driving it out of their parking space was pulled over. It was crazy, I never seen anything like it before.

[Rex]

11. Again, more examples of our current plutocracy.

Which is destroying this country one working class family at a time.

[hunter]

12. DEA needs to be shut down.

They are nothing more than a price support system for the top-of-the-heap, protected-by-government-agencies, gangster drug lords and pharmaceutical corporations.

[Baitball Blogger]

15. Point, Set and Match.

[OldRedneck]

17. Don't enforce the laws in wealthy white areas??

Well, am I ever shocked and surprised.

[cantbeserious]

18. No Surprise Here

eom

[moondust]

19. Liberty and justice for all!

Ain't it great!

[Enthusiast]

20. K&R! This post deserves hundreds of recommendations!

[niyad]

21. in other news, water is wet, sun comes up in east.

[Orsino]

22. The Melanin Tax. n/t

[Octafish]

23. Anybody noticing a pattern here?

[JonLP24]

24. Generally the higher up the pyramid the less policing there is

There were some notable international drug traffickers who sold more dope than anyone that were friends of the DEA. I hard about this years ago wasn't hard to find


DEA informants Feds Confirm Mumbai Plotter Trained With Terrorists While Working for DEA

The revelations came after a report Friday by ProPublica and the Washington Post that the FBI had been warned about Headley’s terrorist ties three years before the Mumbai attacks. Headley wasn’t arrested until 11 months after the attack.

After Headley was arrested in a 2005 domestic dispute in New York City, his wife told federal investigators about his long involvement with the terrorist group Lashkar-i-Taiba and his extensive training in its Pakistani camps. She also told them he had bragged about being a paid U.S. informant while undergoing terrorist training.

Despite a federal inquiry into the tip, Headley spent the next four years doing terrorist reconnaissance around the world. Between 2006 and 2008, he did five spying missions in Mumbai scouting targets for the attack by Lashkar that killed 166 people, including six Americans.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that another of Headley’s wives – he apparently was married to three women at the same time – had also warned U.S. officials about his terrorism involvement. In December 2007, the Moroccan woman met with officials at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan and told them about Headley’s friendship with Lashkar members, his hatred of India and her trips with him to the Taj Mahal Hotel, a prime target of the Mumbai attacks, the Times reported.

http://www.propublica.org/article/feds-confirm-mumbai-plotter-trained-with-terrorists-while-working-for-dea

Every time I see Pakistan come across it is also a middle man to all this shit.

I do like the truth told here

“You know, if we go out there and start messing with those folks, they know judges, they know lawyers, they know politicians. You start locking their kids up, somebody’s going to jerk our chain.” He said they’re going to call us on it, and before you know it, they’re going to shut us down, and there goes your overtime.

Really out of the Wire which was probably the most real fact or fiction show I ever seen. Really told the truth, you can get a warrant signed if you agree to help him move some furniture.

[Newest Reality]

28. When the duct tape

gets old and the muffled voices speak, we hear the sound of the class/race war erupt in spasms.

Then, the media spreads magic dust and blows trumpets of sparkle sound from its bulbous, multiple heads drowning out the facts until silence on the issue covers that sky. Yet, a distant rumbling can be heard as the campaign thrust forward and the collateral damage is swept under the Trump-like toupee of history--often mistaken for a mutated rodent of some sort.

We gotta' send that truth back to prison and solitary confinement or it will blow the dream-weaving game and something could happen.

And now back to the cotton candy news with living rainbow simulations and highly ambitious unicorn logic.

[Alkene]

30. (nice imagery) n/t

[One_Life_To_Give]

31. Safeguarding one's own Job becomes Job #1

Unfortunately this is too common in Businesses both Public and Private. Keep the job going, do enough to make people happy, don't run out of work, Make-up work if necessary. And whatever you do don't piss off the people in power.

If they went after crime evenhandedly wherever it is found. We might have actually changed some things and like, fixed the problem. Either made it legal or reduced demand. But that would mean these people were working to put themselves out of a job. The integrity to do the right thing despite it's personal consequences is sadly lacking.