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Undercover Work

DEA's "Project Deliverance" Will Undoubtedly Fail to Deliver

DEA acting chief Michele Leonhart, and her boss, US Attorney General Eric Holder, are bragging about a major, DEA-led operation that has netted 2,200+ arrests, with pounds of drugs and millions of dollars seized. "Project Deliverance" involved more than 300 law enforcement agencies, more than 3,000 DEA agents, and took 22 months. According to DEA's press release, they captured 1,262 pounds of methamphetamine, 2.5 tons of cocaine, 1,410 pounds of heroin, and 69 tons of marijuana, plus $154 million.
Michele Leonhart announcing ''Project Deliverance''
Operationally, Deliverance was certainly a big project -- it's easy to see why they're excited. And for the thousands of people throughout the US who were arrested in it, it's a life-changing event, though for the worse. But will Project Deliverance make any real difference in drug use and the drug trade? Is the operation really a big deal, when examined next to the reality of drug use and the drug trade in the United States today? I hate to be a wet blanket, but if history is a guide, Project Deliverance will have no long-term impact on the drug trade. Though notable in its scale, the operation is only one of many carried out by the US and allied governments over decades. During that time, the measure of drug availability -- price, an increase implies a product is less available, relative to its demand* -- has gone in the opposite of the intended direction, and dramatically. For example, the average US street price of cocaine is less than a fifth in real terms than it was in 1980. Previous drug sweeps have seen their temporary gains erased in just one or two weeks. The reason is that the big sounding numbers touted by Leonhart, while large for the agency and our government, are small compared with the drug trade. Deliverance's 2.5 tons of cocaine constitutes less than one percent of the 300 metric tons of cocaine the government estimates are consumed annually in the US. So does the 69 tons of marijuana. They did get a few percent of the heroin, if numbers don't deceive, but even that's still small. And the 2,200 alleged dealers and traffickers arrested in Project Deliverance make up a similarly tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people employed in the US by the illegal drug trade. Some drug businesses will doubtless be extinguished by Project Deliverance, but others will have little difficulty replacing the lost supply or filling the open positions. And how much powder or weed did the investigators let go by during the 22 months it took to complete the operation? How much will they have to let slip by during the months or years it takes to mount the next one? In an uncharacteristically "big picture" review published a few weeks ago, the Associated Press declared the 40-year drug war a failure by every measure. Will media follow that lead and go beyond the surface in their reporting on Project Deliverance? I have a few suggestions for those intrepid reporters who would like to:
  • Ask DEA or DOJ spokespersons if they expect the substances targeted in the sweep to be less available to US consumers of them, and if so for how long.
  • Ask them if previous operations, individually or collectively, have had that effect. If they say yes, ask them to be specific as to what their evidence is, and compare it with numbers like the aforementioned cocaine prices.
  • Do some follow-up, say two or three weeks from now. Ask government officials, cops who walk the drug beat, and drug users, what if any difference they saw in the supply of the targeted drugs, and if so if they see still any. Follow up again in one or two months. See if DEA will give you early access to the price data.
Be forewarned, though, DEA reps will probably be less excited to address those questions than they were for the press conference. * Nitpickers and drug war defenders may point out that demand for cocaine has also dropped since 1980, and that the price drop could be explained that way. No dice -- frequent, "hardcore" cocaine and other drug use remained roughly constant despite a drop in the number of "casual" users, and it's the frequent users who account for the vast majority of the consumption.

Undercover Cop Arrested for Selling Drugs to an Undercover Cop

In yet another perfect illustration of the colossal stupidity of modern drug enforcement, here's the story of a drug transaction in which both parties turned out to be police:

An undercover Iredell County Sheriff's Office deputy recently purchased drugs from undercover Statesville police officers, raising questions about communications between the two agencies.

Statesville Police Chief Tom Anderson said undercover officers from his department were working a week-long case when they met with someone interested in selling a small amount of marijuana.
…
After the arrest, investigators from the sheriff's office arrived and confirmed the seller was an undercover deputy and he was released, Anderson said. [Statesville Record & Landmark]

Pete Guither gets it right:

Good thing they were able to stop that small amount of marijuana they were selling from reaching the streets.

Seriously, this is what happens when you have police posing as perps at every level of the drug business. Drug enforcement is all about creating crimes that would never otherwise have occurred, and there are about a million ways that it can go wrong. As funny as this story is, the harsh reality is that frequently when police sell drugs, it's not part of a planned operation. It's because they are actually just straight-up selling drugs.

Q: How Dangerous is Drug Law Enforcement for Police? A: Apparently Not Very

Law enforcement likes to argue that it needs to resort to heavy-handed tactics such as SWAT-style raids and no-knock warrants because drug law enforcement is just so darned dangerous. You know the spiel: "We're outgunned and up against crazed drug dealers, so we need to come on like gangbusters for our own safety." But I'm in the process of reviewing police deaths in the drug war since the beginning of 2008 for a Chronicle article that will appear Friday, and so far, I've only found two officers who were killed in drug raids during this time. I'm using the Officer Down Memorial Page and the National Law Enforcement Memorial data bases and I still have to dig a little deeper into the numbers and the discrepancies between the two, but so far, it doesn't appear that enforcing the nation's drug laws is that dangerous for police. For civilians, it is perhaps a different story. Nobody's keeping a data base of citizens killed by the police, let alone those killed by police enforcing the drug laws, although I have a few ideas on where to come up with some figures, or at least some especially horrendous cases. I'll be looking into that, as well. I'll be talking to as many cops, criminologists, and other interested parties as I can, but at this point, it seems that it is going to be hard to justify the overwhelming use of force typical of police drug raids. As much as they would like to think they are, cops are not US military Special Forces units, and drug law violators are not terrorist fugitives. Look for the story on Friday.

Drug Cop Admits His Career Was Built Around Lies and Wrongful Convictions

Even if you support arresting people for drugs, do you trust the people who are paid to fight the drug war? Via DrugWarRant, here is but one example of what can happen when police are given too much authority and not enough oversight:

"They called it Doomsday work and instructed me to take this dreadful secret to the grave," O'Brien wrote.

"In every case I lied to the courts and I lied to the juries to obtain convictions against my targets.

"Telling lies was easy - 'policemen don't tell lies' - and my targets never stood a chance." [New Zealand Herald]

This happened in New Zealand in the 1970’s, and we only found out about it now and only because the officer could no longer contain his guilt. Imagine how many people sit in prison around the world at this very moment because of this kind of viciously dishonest drug war policing. And if you think police aren’t taking advantage of the innocent right here, right now, just scroll down an inch or two.

You Know the Drug War's Gone Too Far When It Shows You Its Penis

Allegations of weird and inappropriate behavior by narcotics officers have become so commonplace that one struggles to feign shock or surprise upon learning of them.
A drug informant's allegations that a Marin narcotics agent offered her leniency in exchange for three-way sex - and then sent a photo of his penis to her cell phone - have left a legal mess at the Hall of Justice that could take months to clean up. [Marin Independent Journal]
This poor woman agreed to cooperate after being arrested for selling an ounce of marijuana, and the next thing she knows, there's a penis in her phone. Prosecutors subsequently dropped the charges against her, so the penis was ultimately the only punishment she received. Not a bad deal by drug war standards, but it does make you wonder…

Will investigators be contacting other female informants this detective worked with? My understanding is that people who like to show other people their penis tend to do so habitually. For all we know, this cop could have been going around for years targeting women for arrest and then texting them pictures of his penis.

The bottom line is that the entire process of turning arrestees into informants is inherently coercive and morally dubious to begin with. When you have undercover cops making shady deals with drug defendants, it's just a matter of time before someone sees a penis.

Six Months Since Police Shot an Innocent 80-Year-Old Man, and Still No Explanation

80-year-old Isaac Singletary had a habit of chasing drug dealers off his property. Then, one fateful day, he emerged with a pistol to threaten two dealers that were creeping around his yard. They turned out to be undercover cops, and Singletary was promptly shot and killed.

That was six months ago, and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office is almost ready to explain what the hell happened:
While a Jacksonville Sheriff's Office review of the shooting is scheduled for next week, State Attorney Harry Shorstein said in April that while he was very concerned with how undercover operations like this one were conducted, he would not file criminal charges against the officers. [News4Jax.com]
That's how this works, folks. The determination that police weren't at fault tends to emerge quickly, while actual reports explaining what happened take several months. How they figure out that the police were innocent without yet completing the report is a trade secret, I guess.

Perhaps they're right that the police didn’t do anything illegal, but that's a huge part of the problem. It should be illegal for police to dress up as drug dealers and trespass on private property. And it should be even more illegal for police to shoot innocent people who don’t know they're the police.

If police act so much like criminals that well-intentioned citizens can’t tell the difference, those officers should not be permitted to defend themselves with deadly force. So, once again, if these officers' actions turn out to be legal, it's time to change the law.

Snitching For The DEA Isn't As Fun As It Sounds

Juan Medina has an IQ of 77. Suffice to say he ain't no rocket scientist. Medina's limited mental capacity precludes many potential employment opportunities, but it was good enough for the DEA, which made him a secret agent. It didn't work out very well.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Medina, who had no previous criminal record, said he became involved with the D.E.A. in the fall of 2004, a few months after his father was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on drug conspiracy charges. He said he was told that if he helped the agency, his father might win an early release.
...
Mr. Medina said he signed a contract even though he told agents he knew little about his father’s criminal associates.

Despite his limitations and the "unremarkable life" he'd led, Medina managed to infiltrate a gang of drug dealers in Brooklyn. Things took a turn for the worse when Medina's criminal associates took him along on a robbery. He claims to have notified DEA of their plans and even waited around for police after the heist went down. To his surprise, no one at DEA would corroborate his story.

The D.E.A. has acknowledged that Mr. Medina, 24, was under contract as an informant. But the agency has not come to his aid, and is, in fact, helping prosecute him on charges of burglary, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon stemming from the robbery at a Bronx apartment. If convicted, he could be sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Whether or not the DEA knew about the robbery, as Medina claims, they bear full responsibility for his actions. They took a man with a limited mental capacity, exploited his love for his father, and sent him on dangerous missions. Their assistance in his prosecution is a rather transparent attempt to cover up their mistake.

This is a perfect example of the reckless abandon with which the DEA operates. Their insatiable greed compels them to create crime and confiscate the proceeds. Sadly, innocent people like Juan Medina are the easiest prey.