Big guns called in for pot probe

[kentuck]

<snip>
A $7 million surveillance plane equipped to detect air, land and sea threats was flown from the Canadian border to Colorado Springs in April to assist in an investigation of marijuana-growing operations that apparently resulted in charges against six people.

The Department of Homeland Security plane, a Swiss-built Pilatus PC-12 Spectre, was requested on April 9 as the Metro Vice, Narcotics and Intelligence task force prepared to launch a series of searches of buildings where investigators suspected marijuana was being grown illegally.

No one was arrested during the searches, which the medical marijuana industry characterized as raids on legal businesses.

“Please don’t forget to update us on arrest, search seizure statistics for this flying we have done and will do for you all. It helps us justify our expense,” an unnamed Homeland Security official wrote in an e-mail to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, which is part of VNI and requested the plane.


Read more: http://www.gazette.com/articles/marijuana-105263-plane-april.html#ixzz10ZuiaoQ5

[Mz Pip]

1. What a waste of money

The government is drowning in debt but they still manage to waste money on hunting down pot.

[glitch]

8. Ain't it something?

Fucking retreads.

[Rex]

2. And THAT is the real reason pot will NEVER be legalized.

So much easier to make billions in revenue against a fucking weed, then say to actually go out and catch real criminals like Ken Lay (oooops) or George W Bush. No money to be made there, so no crime. Easy. Tom Ridge really summed up the whole 'idea' of Homeland Security in the POS he was and still is.

[glitch]

9. b i n g o nt

[Uncle Joe]

3. The insane, tragic, pathos of this paragraph.

“Please don’t forget to update us on arrest, search seizure statistics for this flying we have done and will do for you all. It helps us justify our expense,” an unnamed Homeland Security official wrote in an e-mail to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, which is part of VNI and requested the plane.

It makes no difference whether they find pot, arrest and seize or not, none of that can possibly justify the economic, social and government/citizen estrangement expense.

Thanks for the thread, kentuck.

[notesdev]

4. Getting hard to tell

... the difference between the "War on Terror" and the "War on Drugs"... same equipment, same tactics, same personnel, same completely unaccountable massive waste of money by a government that is technically insolvent...

[old mark]

5. Great - and they have all that extra-legal power thanks to the "patriot act"...and

the administration seems to love it.

Police state? Yes!


mark

[lib2DaBone]

6. Most people on food stamps than anytime in the history of the country....

.. yet they always have money for a war on a weed that grows up in a crack between the sidewalk...

sick SOB's......

[ixion]

7. Land of the Free, eh?

Yeah, right. :eyes:

[uncle ray]

10. from the article:

"The flight also apparently served another purpose, according to an April 19 e-mail from the unnamed federal official: “I need to get the aircraft down to Colorado next week for a show and tell.”

it's worth noting too, the so-called illegal grow ops were not clandestine, they were openly operating businesses under colorados amendment 20. the police could have just as well knocked on the door and asked to look around and the tenants would have complied. i had actually read about and saw many pictures posted online of some of the grow ops that were busted, the owners were open and would give almost anybody who was curious a tour.

great investigative skills there CSPD and HS.