A Tucson police officer who was fired after allowing a boy to flush a "leafy substance" down the toilet has won has job back, his attorney said Monday. Officer Douglas Dreher was fired March 31 after an internal-affairs investigation concluded that he was being untruthful during his reporting of the incident, according to attorney Mike Storie. Storie gave the following account: On Dec. 15, Dreher took a boy into custody and took him up to his apartment, where Dreher found a plastic bag with a "leafy substance," Storie said. [continues 288 words]
The adult daughter of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was booked into the Pima County jail Wednesday on drug charges. Mary Louise Alvarez Dupnik, 40, was arrested on suspicion of unlawful possession of marijuana, unlawful possession of a dangerous drug, unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia and an unrelated failure to appear on a charge of having a suspended license, according to the jail. She was booked into the jail the same day a search warrant was served at a Midtown hotel room where methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, a scale, syringes, pipes and counterfeit money were seized, according to court documents filed Friday. [continues 150 words]
The Pima County Sheriff's Department is taking a new approach to keeping kids out of trouble, and the first step is getting rid of the nationally known DARE program. Getting rid of the decades-old Drug Abuse Resistance Education program does not mean that law enforcement will stop talking to kids about the dangers of drugs, officials said Monday. They will simply take a new approach through the STAR program, or Student Training and Response. [continues 257 words]
WASHINGTON- Methamphetamine use is rare in most of the United States, not the raging epidemic described by politicians and the news media, says a study by an advocacy group. Meth is a dangerous drug but is among the least commonly used, Ryan King, policy analyst for The Sentencing Project, wrote in a report issued Wednesday. Rates of use have been stable since 1999, and among teenagers meth use has dropped, King said. "The portrayal of methamphetamine in the United States as an epidemic spreading across the country has been grossly overstated," King said. The Sentencing Project is a not-for-profit group that supports alternatives to prison terms for convicted drug users and other criminals. [continues 77 words]
Wanted In Sonora In 1987 Deaths Of 3 One of Tucson's most notorious drug lords, who spent 16 years in a federal prison, was released last week only to possibly face more time for the 1987 slayings of three men in Mexico. Jaime Javier Figueroa-Soto, 59, was worth more than $150 million from the marijuana trafficking and business in Sonora when he was arrested at his Scottsdale home in 1988. He was released last Thursday from a maximum security federal detention facility in Florence, Colo., according to a news release from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He was transferred to an ICE detention facility in Aurora, Colo., to await deportation. During the deportation process, ICE officers learned he was wanted on murder charges by Mexican authorities, the news release stated. He was flown Tuesday from Denver to El Paso via the Justice Prisoner Alien Transportation System, operated by the U.S. Marshals Service, the release said. He was then escorted by federal officers to the middle of an international bridge in El Paso and turned over to officials from the Mexican Immigration Service, the release stated. [continues 214 words]
Tucson Region U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have seized more than $1 million worth of illegal drugs at the Nogales ports of entry during separate incidents since Monday, an official said. "The days leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday have been productive for U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers," CBP spokesman Brian D. Levin wrote in a news release. "Officers intercepted more than 92 pounds of cocaine and more than 350 pounds of marijuana." The seizures resulted in three men being arrested, two of whom are from Mexico and one who is from California, the news release said. [continues 194 words]
