Sunday, February 19, 2012

Shocking Case of Student Entrapment

Loathsome in fact.

Update: HuffPo have picked up on the story. Linky

Sick: Young, Undercover Cops Flirted With Students to Trick Them Into Selling Pot

By Tony Newman
February 15, 2012

Working at the Drug Policy Alliance for the last twelve years I have read and heard countless stories of people having their lives ruined because of our country's cruel war on drugs. Last weekend, the nationally syndicated show This American Life highlighted a story that is so insane, you don't know whether to laugh or puke.

Last year in three high schools in Florida, several undercover police officers posed as students. The undercover cops went to classes, became Facebook friends and flirted with the other students. One 18-year-old honor student named Justin fell in love with an attractive 25-year-old undercover cop after spending weeks sharing stories about their lives, texting and flirting with each other.

One day she asked Justin if he smoked pot. Even though he didn't smoke marijuana, the love-struck teen promised to help find some for her. Every couple of days she would text him asking if he had the marijuana. Finally, Justin was able to get it to her. She tried to give him $25 for the marijuana and he said he didn't want the money -- he got it for her as a present.

A short while later, the police did a big sweep and arrest 31 students -- including Justin. Almost all were charged with selling a small amount of marijuana to the undercover cops. Now Justin has a felony hanging over his head.

This story is not unique to Florida and it reminds me of an 18-year-old Mitchell Lawrence, a young man from Great Barrington, Mass., who served two years in jail for selling a joint to an undercover cop. The officer befriended Lawrence and his friends and would hang out with them. One day the cop asked if Lawrence had any weed. Lawrence gave the cop a joint. The cop handed him $20. Lawrence hesitated, but the cop insisted on giving him the money. "Selling" the joint, because they were hanging out less than a 1000 feet from a school, and thus was considered a "drug free school zone," carried a mandatory minimum two-year sentence.

The drug war is sick. How much money was wasted by our law enforcement to get these few bags of marijuana "off the streets"? How do these cops look themselves in the mirror? Seducing 18-year-olds to fall in love or pretending to be friends and then tricking them into procuring small amounts of marijuana so they can charge them with felonies is beyond slimy and diametrically opposed to the officers' charge to "serve and protect."

We often hear that we need to fight the drug war to protect the kids. As these despicable examples show, more often the drug war is ruining young people's lives and doing more harm than good. Alternet

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=WHuQPAa1uRA

Anonymous said...

"Last year in three high schools in Florida, several undercover police officers posed as students. The undercover cops went to classes, became Facebook friends and flirted with the other students. One 18-year-old honor student named Justin fell in love with an attractive 25-year-old undercover cop after spending weeks sharing stories about their lives, texting and flirting with each other."

"Facebook friends"? I don't do Facebook, but I assume it shows photo('s), in this case an attractive young woman. A photo of an undercover cop?

Well, I don't know the first thing about Facebook. Just a thought, do these types of women ever realize that maybe one day they themselves have a son who could be entrapped by an attractive young "undercover cop"?

Himself said...

do these types of women ever realize that maybe one day they themselves have a son who could be entrapped by an attractive young "undercover cop"?

They probably don't have the intellectual or moral capacity to think that far outside the box. They aspired to be part of, and did join the police force afterall.

A far from noble profession in profession in America today.

But my heart goes out to the kid in question. Not only is his life ruined, (Google drug conviction student) Not only is his life ruined, but what about his heart?

In a case of probably 'first love,' and nothing burns brighter and harder than first love, then to have that love shattered by such treachery, must have broken his poor heart. To say nothing of how it would colour the kid for life, regarding his attitude towards women.

The US is truly a disgusting society. For a man to be caught taking a piss down an alley, his life too is over, well, as a productive member of society it is; destined to spend his life living under a bridge as a convicted sex offender.

Just as there are a myriad of other charges that would get you jail time in America, many, so insignificant that they would never even be considered as offences here in Europe.

And they all keep giving it the ''Christian Nation'' bullshit; as a country, it's about as far from Christian, whatever that is supposed to mean, as any place could be.

Anonymous said...

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?
note id=136053739749990

Anonymous said...

Comment orthobobsuruncle

"Not to mention what this is going to do to gender relations, which appear to be at an all time low already. This kids and his pals are never going to trust cops OR women again!"

http://huff.to/ABWkjS

Himself said...

Thanks Maren, I've updated the post with the link.

I received an abject apology from BT today. The overcharging doesn't go back as far as I thought, but I'm still looking at a £700 refund.

Such is life!

Anonymous said...

Stop Sending Undercover Cops into Our Schools to Entrap Our Kids on Drug Charges

As these despicable examples show, more often than not the drug war is ruining young people's lives and doing much more harm than good.

By Tony Newman, director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance

http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/stop-sending-undercover-cops-our-schools-entrap-our-kids-drug-charges

Himself said...

Legal Weed, One Year Later: Thousands Not Arrested for Marijuana, Millions of Dollars Saved

http://bit.ly/19sZ2SL