Bloomberg Supports Cuomo's Call To Revise New York Marijuana Possession Laws

Arrests for marijuana possession are among the top crimes caught under the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy. That policy has been under attack for its disproportionate focus on minorities throughout the city.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has now floated a proposal to reduce the penalty for possession of a joint to a violation, essentially decriminalizing the possession of amounts under 25 grams.

Mr. Bloomberg, whose administration had previously defended low-level marijuana arrests as a way to deter more serious crime, said in a statement that the governor’s proposal “strikes the right balance” in part because it would still allow the police to arrest people who were smoking marijuana in public.

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, plans to hold a news conference at the Capitol on Monday to announce his plans to seek the change in state law. Administration officials said the governor would seek to downgrade the possession of 25 grams or less of marijuana in public view from a misdemeanor to a violation, with a maximum fine of $100 for first-time offenders.

Mr. Bloomberg said his police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, would attend the governor’s news conference “to show our support for his proposal.”

“We look forward to working with legislative leaders to help pass a bill before the end of session,” the mayor said, referring to this year’s legislative session in Albany, which is scheduled to conclude in three weeks.

In his statement, the mayor noted that last September, Mr. Kelly issued a memorandum to officers clarifying that they were not to arrest people who take small amounts of marijuana out of their pockets after being stopped by the police.

Mr. Bloomberg said that the governor’s proposal was “consistent with the commissioner’s directive.”

Bloomberg's changed stance increases the chances that the proposal may gain traction in the state. Reducing the penalties would also reduce the number of people who would be brought into the criminal justice system and reduce costs over the long haul - though that has the potential to be offset by an increase in crime. Expect Republicans to focus on the potential for higher crime, though they may also see the reduced costs for incarceration and processing of low-level drug crimes. Even Gov. Chris Christie in New Jersey has called for revision of drug crime penalties to reflect the fact that the state can't afford to incarcerate low-level drug offenders.

Hizbullah's Money Laundering Operations Include Beirut Bank, Drug Trade

The Islamic terror group Hizbullah, which gets support from Syria and Iran and operates with impunity through much of Lebanon has the means to sustain itself with the drug trade and money laundering courtesy of a Beirut bank.

Now, in the wake of the bank’s exposure and arranged sale, its ledgers have been opened to reveal deeper secrets: a glimpse at the clandestine methods that Hezbollah — a terrorist organization in American eyes that has evolved into Lebanon’s pre-eminent military and political power — uses to finance its operations. The books offer evidence of an intricate global money-laundering apparatus that, with the bank as its hub, appeared to let Hezbollah move huge sums of money into the legitimate financial system, despite sanctions aimed at cutting off its economic lifeblood.

At the same time, the investigation that led the United States to the bank, the Lebanese Canadian Bank, provides new insights into the murky sources of Hezbollah’s money. While law enforcement agencies around the world have long believed that Hezbollah is a passive beneficiary of contributions from loyalists abroad involved in drug trafficking and a grab bag of other criminal enterprises, intelligence from several countries points to the direct involvement of high-level Hezbollah officials in the South American cocaine trade.

One agent involved in the investigation compared Hezbollah to the Mafia, saying, “They operate like the Gambinos on steroids.”

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in Virginia announced the indictment of the man at the center of the Lebanese Canadian Bank case, charging that he had trafficked drugs and laundered money not only for Colombian cartels, but also for the murderous Mexican gang Los Zetas.

The revelations about Hezbollah and the Lebanese Canadian Bank reflect the changing political and military dynamics of Lebanon and the Middle East. American intelligence analysts believe that for years Hezbollah received as much as $200 million annually from its primary patron, Iran, along with additional aid from Syria. But that support has diminished, the analysts say, as Iran’s economy buckles under international sanctions over its nuclear program and Syria’s government battles rising popular unrest.

Yet, if anything, Hezbollah’s financial needs have grown alongside its increasing legitimacy here, as it seeks to rebuild after its 2006 war with Israel and expand its portfolio of political and social service activities. The result, analysts believe, has been a deeper reliance on criminal enterprises — especially the South American cocaine trade — and on a mechanism to move its ill-gotten cash around the world.

“The ability of terror groups like Hezbollah to tap into the worldwide criminal funding streams is the new post-9/11 challenge,” said Derek Maltz, the Drug Enforcement Administration official who oversaw the agency’s investigation into the Lebanese Canadian Bank.

In that inquiry, American Treasury officials said senior bank managers had assisted a handful of account holders in running a scheme to wash drug money by mixing it with the proceeds of used cars bought in the United States and sold in Africa. A cut of the profits, officials said, went to Hezbollah, a link the organization disputes.

Despite efforts to crack down and track such money laundering and trafficking operations, Hizbullah has thrived and expanded its drug and money laundering business. It is less dependent on Iran than in previous years, and that makes the group even more dangerous. While it still relies on Syria and Iran for arms shipments, the ability to raise money through its own channels allows it to expand its tentacles into other areas of Lebanese politics and it remains an existential threat to Israel.

The money laundering allows Hizbullah to make significant land purchases in Lebanon that it would not be otherwise capable of doing. Much of those land purchases are in militarily strategic areas and can fortify Hizbullah's position within the fragmented Lebanese society. That further destabilizes the Lebanese political situation, which remains in flux.

Hizbullah operates with impunity in Southern Lebanon, despite UN SCR 1701 that calls for all militia groups to be disarmed. Neither UNIFIL nor the Lebanese military has the ability to disarm the terror group, and Hizbullah forced itself into the Lebanese government and has therefore thwarted further efforts to stop the group's ongoing militarization in Southern Lebanon.

Mexican Drug Smugglers' New Export Method - Catapults

Behold - the marijuana catapult.

Mexican soldiers on Wednesday seized a large drug catapult that smugglers were using to launch packages of pot into a remote area of Arizona.

U.S. National Guard troops at the Naco Border Patrol station about 80 miles southeast of Tucson tipped off the Mexican Army after a surveillance camera spotted several traffickers hurling bundles of weed over the border last Friday night.

The soldiers found the launcher about 20 yards from the border on a flatbed platform towed by an SUV, according to The Associated Press.

Sounds like the drug smugglers have been paying attention to the Punkin' Chunkin' contests in Delaware.

Mexican Corruption Complicates Drug War

While Mexican authorities would love to pin the violent drug war on an eager and large base of American drug users, those same Mexican authorities need to take a fast and hard look at the rampant corruption within Mexican institutions including the prison system.

After all, it wasn't American guns or American drug users that led prison guards to release and arm drug thugs to go on a murderous rampage that left 17 people dead.

Those drug thugs were already incarcerated until the prison guards and officials released them and armed them.

Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and allowed them to use official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week, prosecutors said Sunday.

After carrying out the killings the inmates would return to their cells, the Attorney General's Office said in a revelation that was shocking even for a country wearied by years of drug violence and corruption.

"According to witnesses, the inmates were allowed to leave with authorization of the prison director ... to carry out instructions for revenge attacks using official vehicles and using guards' weapons for executions," office spokesman Ricardo Najera said at a news conference.

The director of the prison in Gomez Palacio in Durango state and three other officials were placed under a form of house arrest pending further investigation. No charges have yet been filed.

Prosecutors said the prison-based hit squad is suspected in three mass shootings, including the July 18 attack on a party in the city of Torreon, which is near Gomez Palacio. In that incident, gunmen fired indiscriminately into a crowd of mainly young people in a rented hall, killing 17 people, including women.

Police found more than 120 bullet casings at the scene, and Najera said tests matched those casings to four assault rifles assigned to guards at the prison.

Mexico incarcerates less than 2% of the criminals it arrests, and even then this news is troublesome in that the revolving door justice is not only working, but there are elements in the prison system that are actively aiding and abetting further criminal activities.

Car Bomb Signals Deadly Intensification of Mexican Drug War

The long simmering drug war in Mexico along the Mexico-US border intensified yesterday as a car bomb detonated in a trap for Mexican police.

A drug cartel has used a car bomb for the first time in Mexico's decades-long fight against traffickers, setting a deadly trap against federal police in a city across the border from Texas, the mayor of Ciudad Juarez said Friday.

Mayor Jose Reyes said federal police have confirmed to him that a car bomb was used in the attack that killed three people Thursday.

It was the first time a drug cartel has used a bomb to attack Mexican security forces, marking an escalation in a raging drug war that already is extremely deadly: On Friday alone, a dozen people were killed and 21 wounded in a series of gun battles between soldiers and cartel gunmen in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, the federal Interior Department said.

Mexico is in the throes of an actual war where the drug cartels are outgunning and outmanning the federal authorities. With the use of the car bomb, it's yet another tactic that the Mexican authorities have to worry about and defend against.

Mexico's War Against Drug Cartels Deadly Toll

The death toll from Mexico's ongoing war against drug cartels and corruption continues rising, and the deaths are becoming higher profile figures, including police chiefs and other leading officials.

So, how does the New York Times cover this? They think that the war shouldn't be fought. The title gives it away: Mexico’s War Against Drugs Kills Its Police.

Top security officials who were once thought untouchable have been gunned down in Mexico City, four in the last month alone. Drug dealers killed another seven federal agents this year in retaliation for drug busts in border towns. Others have died in shootouts.

Drug traffickers have killed at least 170 local police officers as well, among them at least a score of municipal police commanders, since Mr. Calderón took office. Some were believed to have been corrupt officers who had sold out to drug gangs and were killed by rival gangsters, investigators say. Others were killed for doing their jobs.

The president has vowed to stay the course, portraying the violence among gangs and attacks on the police as a sign of success rather than failure. The government has smashed the cartels, he says, forcing a war among the splinter groups. The killing of Commissioner Millán, he has said, was “a desperate act to weaken the federal police.”

“What it signifies is a strategy of some criminal organizations who seek to terrorize society and paralyze the government,” he said last week. “The question is, should we persevere and go forward or simply hide in our offices and duck our heads. No way is the Mexican government going to back down in such a fight.”

The violence between drug cartels that Mr. Calderón has sought to end has only worsened over the past year and a half. The death toll has jumped 47 percent to 1,378 this year, prosecutors say. All told, 4,125 people have been killed in drug violence since Mr. Calderón took office.

But the steady drumbeat of police killings has caused more shock here. On Wednesday, for instance, the second in command of the police in Morelos State and his driver were found dead in the trunk of a car. A placard on the bodies warned against joining the Sinaloa Cartel.

Several terrified local police chiefs have resigned, the most recent being Guillermo Prieto, the chief in Ciudad Juárez, who stepped down last week after his second in command was killed a few days earlier.

“It is not just happening in Ciudad Juárez,” Mayor José Reyes Ferriz, said at the funeral for the deputy commander, Juan Antonio Roman García. “It’s happening in Nuevo Laredo, in Tijuana, in this entire region. They are attacking top commanders to destabilize the police.”

One reason for the surge in violence is that Mr. Calderón and his public security minister, Genaro García Luna, have upset longstanding arrangements between the police and drug traffickers at every level of government, several experts on crime in Mexico said.

The official government of Mexico is trying to take down the drug cartels, and the Times instead thinks that the Mexican government is killing its police? The Calderon government wants accountability and wants to eliminate graft and corruption, which have been holding back development in Mexico for generations, and yet the idea of going after the drug cartels is an anathema to the Times, despite the carnage wrought on society worldwide as a result of drug trafficking.

This is yet another symptom of the warped worldview pervasive at the Times.

Lined Up

How should I feel about new Governor David Paterson's admission that he did pot and coke when he was in his 20s?

I'm mildly surprised, both by his candor and his admission that he revealed his criminality. With many other politicians admitting to drug use, including former Governor Spitzer and President Bill Clinton, drug use isn't the taboo as it was once seen. Yet, drug use is still illegal under state law.

How does this inform his policy stance on drug crime policy and sentencing? That's the real question here, even as one has to wonder what other skeletons are lurking in his closet (and do we really want to know them?).

Paterson was, and remains, a supporter of reforming the Rockefeller drug laws. As per the Drug Policy Alliance:

Before being elected as Lt. Governor in 2006 on the Spitzer ticket, Mr. Paterson served as Minority Leader in the State Senate. A twenty-year veteran of the Senate, Mr. Paterson was a key champion of Rockefeller Drug Law reform. In 2004, he released a report which outlined proposals that are, even now, more progressive than anything previously considered.

The Drug Policy Alliance and our allies have worked closely with Mr. Paterson over the years. I’ve met personally with him on numerous occasions to discuss the Rockefeller Drug Laws, and in every instance, without fail, he expressed his commitment to this cause. He always promised to do what he could to win real reform, and he always kept his word to us in our dealings with him. For further background on Mr. Paterson, you can read a NY Times article here.

Like us, he shares the view that drug use and abuse should be viewed as a public health issue, rather than a criminal justice issue. Given the extensive alternative-to-incarceration infrastructure in New York State that can divert people convicted of low-level drug law offenses each year, we are confident that a public health approach to drug policy in New York is within sight.

UPDATE:
This definitely gives us more insight into how and why Paterson believes that the Rockefeller laws should be reformed. He probably realizes that he very easily could have ended up in prison for his coke and pot usage.

Border Agent Murdered By Drug Smuggler Entering US Illegally

Luis Aguilar, 32, who was assigned to the Yuma, Arizona, border patrol station, died Saturday, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner W. Ralph Basham said in a statement.

"Agent Aguilar's death serves as another stark reminder of the risks our front-line agents and officers face each day," Basham said.

Aguilar was trying to place spike strips in the path of two vehicles believed to have illegally entered the country from Mexico when one of the vehicles hit him, agent Michael Bernacke, a spokesman for the agency's Yuma sector, told The Associated Press.

Both vehicles drove back across the border into Mexico, the AP said.

The fatal incident occurred in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area near Andrade, California, Basham said. Andrade is just over the California state line from Arizona.

The area is popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts but also is frequently used by smugglers carrying people or drugs, the AP said.

Once again, lawlessness and mayhem is caused by criminals who cross the border into the US. Agent Aguilar was murdered by drug smugglers who treat the US border as nothing more than a line in the sand that can be crossed with impunity.

Will the US government take further action to secure its borders, or will it simply pay lip service to the family of Agent Aguilar, who will be left to grieve the lost of their husband, brother, and father. Given past performance, I would count on more lip service. I wish I'd be wrong on that count.

Coast Guard Makes Biggest Bust In U.S. History

The price of coke just got VERY expensive.

March 21, 2007 — - At nearly 20 tons, it's the largest maritime cocaine bust in U.S. history. The U.S. Coast Guard announced today that it seized 42,845 pounds of the drug from the Gatun, a Panamanian ship. Two of the Coast Guard's cutters approached the ship Sunday after a patrol plane spotted the vessel about 20 miles southwest of the Panamanian coast.

Drug Enforcement Administration administrator Karen Tandy pointed out that usually drug traffickers store their caches in secret compartments or conceal them with other legitimate cargo, but this shipment wasn't exactly hidden.

"They simply loaded these bales of cocaine into cargo containers on the top of the deck of this freighter. They were hiding in plain sight on the main deck."

Charley Diaz captains of one of the Coast Guard ships that closed in on the Gatun. He said the Gatun's crew did not resist but appeared nervous as the Coast Guard approached the crew's vessel. Diaz acknowledged the Panamanian ship was carrying some legal cargo, but that the "bales [of cocaine] were just piled high" in containers on the ship's deck, "almost up to the ceiling," Diaz described. "To think that any one of those containers, any two containers, can hold this much drugs is eye-opening."

Hitting Drug Traffickers 'Where It Hurts'

Tandy estimated the haul of cocaine could have sold on the street for about $600 million. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said, "Through collaboration, we've been able to strengthen our counternarcotics efforts, and to send a strong message to drug traffickers where it hurts -- in their pocket."

Cash, Drugs and Cartels

This bust blows past the old record of 30,109 pounds, seized from a ship in September 2004.

And the Coast Guard raid comes on the heels of a record-breaking cash seizure by the DEA last week. In cooperation with Mexican officials, that agency confiscated $205 million from chemical brokers who had provided Mexican cartels with the supplies to make methamphetamine.

In January, the DEA announced the extradition of 15 suspects tied to four Mexican drug cartels.

"That makes three big strikes in less than two months against the once untouchable and feared Mexican drug cartels that are responsible for so much of the drug supply in the United States," said Tandy.

Well congrats to the Coast Guard and the DEA. It boggles my mind, although it shouldn't, that there is that much demand for 20 tons of cocaine. 20 tons of something that is sold in grams. I am assuming that is 20 tons uncut. The amount is just mind blowing (literally.)