On Jan. 11, 1964, Dr. Luther Terry, Surgeon General of the United States, took bold action and identified cigarette smoking as a public health hazard. Following this action, a broadbased anti-smoking public education program was initiated. But the big tobacco industry was not easily intimidated; they fought back with their own misleading advertising and even committed perjury in testimony before Congress. However, over a period of time, the facts and truth prevailed. In 1965, 42 percent of Americans smoked, but thanks to the Surgeon General the number has been reduced to 17%. He is responsible for saving thousands of lives. [continues 294 words]
Issuing tax certificates gives a false sense of legitimacy, city lawmakers say. Los Angeles lawmakers want to stop letting new marijuana shops sign up to pay city taxes because they say there is no way the businesses could be legal under restrictions approved by voters more than two years ago. "We shouldn't be making money off of illegal businesses," City Councilwoman Nury Martinez said. The council voted Wednesday to request that City Atty. Mike Feuer ask the finance office to stop issuing business tax registration certificates to newly established pot shops, one of several proposals meant to prevent illegal businesses from using city documents to convince customers they are operating with city approval. [continues 392 words]
Council Examines Charges That Outlets Are Registering to Claim Legitimacy. Even as Los Angeles tries to crack down on marijuana businesses, one arm of city government - its tax registration office - has continued to register pot shops that may not be allowed to operate under voter-approved regulations. Rick Loomis Los Angeles Times COUNCILWOMAN Nury Martinez wants officials to verify that shops comply with city rules before issuing certificates, but they say that's not doable. The practice has alarmed some city lawmakers, who complain that marijuana shops not complying with the rules have used business tax registration documents to convince customers and landlords that they are operating legally. [continues 504 words]
Lessons from the recent acquittal of a doctor and nurse-practitioner accused of overprescribing drugs. Federal drug-enforcement officials have made it a serious felony for doctors to overprescribe painkillers or, as the applicable law states, to prescribe controlled substances "other than for a legitimate medical purpose and in the usual course of professional practice." But the line between legitimate and illegitimate prescription - as drawn by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Justice Department - is far from clear. This puts physicians in great legal jeopardy, and too often leaves their patients to suffer needless agony. [continues 759 words]
'Testilying' A Threat to Justice System, State's Attorney Says Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez announced perjury charges Monday against four veteran police officers - three of them narcotics cops from Chicago - for allegedly lying under oath at a routine drug hearing last year. Such conduct, Alvarez said, is a threat to a justice system that depends on truthful testimony. "We expect it from our witnesses, and we demand it from our police officers," she said in a statement. The officers are accused of a practice that some defense attorneys consider so widespread in Cook County that they have a word for it - "testilying," a reference to perjury by police, particularly in drug cases. [continues 670 words]
Det. Const. Craig Ruthowsky Has Been Under Police Suspension Since 2012 A veteran Hamilton gang and gun officer, suspended for the last three years, remains in a Toronto jail after being swept up in a series of raids by police targeting gang activity in the Greater Toronto Area. Officers forced their way into the Hamilton home of 41-year-old Det. Const. Craig Ruthowsky at about 5 a.m. Thursday, as similar raids were being carried out at 50 locations from St. Catharines to Durham region. [continues 752 words]
After nearly a decade of U. S. scrutiny, they reveled in what they saw as full vindication. Six members of an elite Philadelphia narcotics squad were acquitted Thursday of federal corruption charges - a verdict the men described as "vindication" after nearly a decade of federal scrutiny surrounding their conduct. A jury of six men and six women took 5 1/2 days to reject prosecutors' arguments that former Officers Thomas Liciardello, Brian Reynolds, Michael Spicer, Perry Betts, Linwood Norman, and John Speiser routinely beat and robbed drug suspects during their time as members of the Narcotics Field Unit. [continues 1023 words]
Charges have been dropped against the Markham marijuana grow operator whose house was raided after a Peel police officer used misleading information to obtain a search warrant and lied about his investigation. Last month, Superior Court Judge Gordon Lemon ruled that Peel police Const. Aamer Merchant "misled" a justice of the peace to obtain the warrant, then "lied" about his investigation on the stand. On Monday, the federal Crown dropped charges of producing and possessing cannabis for the purpose of trafficking because there was no reasonable prospect of conviction without the evidence collected. [continues 117 words]
Five former Toronto police drug squad officers - including one who has started a new life in the Windsor area - have had their appeal dismissed by the province's highest court. Ned Maodus and former fellow officers John Schertzer, Steven Correia, Joseph Miched and Raymond Pollard were convicted in 2012 of attempting to obstruct justice. Maodus, who moved back to Essex County, Correia and Pollard were additionally convicted of perjury. The five appealed their convictions. The Ontario Court of Appeal this week dismissed their case. The case involved an illegal search of a drug dealer's apartment back in 1998. A jury found the officers falsified their notes and lied on the witness stand to hide the fact they had gone into the apartment without a search warrant. [continues 220 words]
CHASING THE SCREAM: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, Johann Hari, Bloomsbury Circus $27 Johann Hari's new book is a clear-eyed look at the war on drugs, writes David Herkt. MOST OF us know the war against drugs has been a comprehensive failure. Many of the negative effects of drug use are due to its criminalisation. In Portugal, Switzerland, and Uruguay, which have removed some of the legal consequences of drug use, we see countries that haven't collapsed into chaos, but have, in fact, a decreasing social problem. [continues 372 words]
In the past year, to my great satisfaction, the NJ family court has taken a beating in both the federal and state appeals courts. In Malhan vs Malhan, five parents filed a class action lawsuit in federal court alleging that the NJ family court system fails to provide adequate "due process" rights to parents in child custody proceedings. Surender Malhan, the father, lost his custody rights on a mere two hours' notice based on a bogus accusation from the mother without him having an opportunity to refute his estranged wife's allegations. [continues 1074 words]
Two Women Wrongfully Arrested in Drug Operation Say Cops Deliberately Used an Unreliable Informant. Trinidad police arrested 40 people in a 2013 "drug sting" after two detectives botched their investigation and intentionally used wrong or misleading information from an unreliable confidential informant, according to a lawsuit the ACLU of Colorado filed Thursday. None of the 40 people arrested were convicted of drug-related offenses, and the informant later was convicted of perjury. Now, two of the people who were falsely arrested- and ultimately fired because of false allegations they were selling drugs - are suing and seeking damages from the city of Trinidad, less than 15 miles from the New Mexico state line, and the detectives who handled the case. The scathing, 41- page complaint, filed in U. S. District Court in Denver, names Detectives Phil Martin and Arsenio Vigil. [continues 748 words]
False Witness Ronnie Coogle said he didn't mind snitching for the Tampa Police Department, even when it meant lying and faking drug deals. But his life changed forever when one of his targets wound up dead. The scene beaming from the bedroom television wasn't special, another drug bust in a decaying north Tampa neighborhood. Ronnie 'Bodie' Coogle squinted at the screen. He recognized that street, lit by ghostly pulses of red and blue. 'Bodie,' his wife said, lying beside him. 'You see this?' Coogle turned up the volume as the 11 o'clock news cut to cops in black ballistic vests, standing amid the inky silhouettes of sabal palms. After a minute he sat up and grabbed his cellphone. [continues 4657 words]
The next time you smoke a joint and pass it to your buddy on the couch, contemplate this: Criminal actions and thefts occur daily all over New Jersey, right in municipal courthouses. And the thieves and hooligans aren't the ones being put in handcuffs or fined. They're the ones in the black robes who have allied themselves in a criminal conspiracy with their cohorts in thievery the municipal court jester (prosecutor) and public pretenders (defenders) to bypass state law and usurp state funds for themselves. Using perjured testimony. [continues 965 words]
Attytood Unfortunately, the people who have the power to change things still don't get it. Last week, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey lashed out in anger . . . not at corrupt cops as much as at the Daily News. To Ramsey, it was a "slap in the face" that this newspaper on Thursday ran a front-page illustration of police headquarters wrapped in yellow crime-scene tape. I don't know: With 146 police officers fired for misconduct during the time of Ramsey and his boss Mayor Nutter, including 88 who were arrested and 48 convicted of crimes including murder, rape and extortion, it seems like the crime-scene picture reeked . . . of understatement. [continues 401 words]
MOBILE, ALA. - "That situation didn't define who I was," Clarence Aaron, 45, told a group gathered for a weekend celebration at the Mobile high school he attended more than two decades ago. When at age 24 he found himself in federal prison in 1993 - after he was convicted and sentenced to life without parole for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense - he felt what he called the "stigma." But the former LeFlore High varsity football star refused to give in to the bitterness of receiving a life sentence while career drug dealers received decades' less time. He had a plan: Follow the rules. Work hard. Even in maximum security, "be the best person I can be." [continues 1012 words]
Two Are Accused of Planting Guns at a Medical Marijuana Dispensary to Falsely Arrest Two Men. Two former Los Angeles County sheriff 's deputies have been charged with planting guns at a medical marijuana dispensary to arrest two men, one of whom prosecutors said was sentenced to a year in jail before the bad evidence was discovered. Julio Cesar Martinez, 39, and Anthony Manuel Paez, 32, face two felony counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice and altering evidence, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office announced Wednesday. Martinez was charged with two additional felony counts of perjury and one count of filing a false report. [continues 413 words]
A Philadelphia officer was charged Friday by the District Attorney's Office with lying under oath in two drug cases. Steven Lupo, who has been with the department for six years, will be suspended with intent to dismiss by Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, a police spokesman said. The investigation of Lupo, 36, began after his testimony in a drug case in 2011 led a judge to dismiss drug charges against an East Germantown man. Lupo testified that he had not opened the trunk of a car before obtaining a search warrant. Video surveillance introduced by the defendant's attorney showed Lupo and a supervisor opened the trunk and looked inside before the search warrant was secured. [continues 165 words]
The Police Department was "shaken" Thursday by indictments unveiled against five current officers and one former officer for a host of federal charges, including constitutional-rights violations, extortion, lying in court and on police reports, and dealing drugs. "Our department is shaken," said a visibly upset Police Chief Greg Suhr. "I don't know that it gets worse than this, other than an officer-involved serious injury or death, when the public trust is betrayed by sitting San Francisco police officers." [continues 1218 words]
MISSISSAUGA - Charges of perjury and obstructing justice laid against a veteran Peel Regional Police officer in connection with his testimony as a key Crown witness at the drug-trial of a fellow officer, have been dismissed. Superior court records show that the charges against Det. Warren Williams, who has been on the force 24 years, were dismissed last year by Justice Giselle Miller. Both Williams and Det. Marty Rykhoff, who testified in the trial of Const. Sheldon Cook, were disciplined under the Police Services Act. [continues 423 words]
