As the head of Philadelphia's division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office sees it, the region has little to fear from the epidemic of ephedrine-based methamphetamine that has plagued the Midwest for several years. That's the good news. The bad news, said the DEA's Lawrence P. McElynn, is the reason: Philadelphia is in no danger of losing its 25-year crown as the East Coast's leading producer of the more traditional form of methamphetamine created from the solvent P2P, or phenyl-2-propanone. [continues 339 words]
Another member of Camden's largest drug ring pleaded guilty to conspiracy yesterday and admitted his role in an organization that authorities say brought millions of dollars worth of cocaine into the city during the last decade. Eduardo "Quattro" Vargas, 31, of Queens, N.Y., pleaded guilty during an afternoon hearing before U.S. District Judge Joseph Rodriguez to one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin T. Smith said Vargas admitted in court to participating in the distribution of more than 150 kilograms of cocaine in Camden. Smith said that Vargas sold the drug to codefendants Saul Febo and Luis "Tun Tun" Figueroa, assisted by other associates Noel Ruiz, Eduardo Negroni and Alba Restrepo. [continues 245 words]
Plaintiffs Seeking To Legalize The Drug For Medical Use Will Get Their Day In Court A federal judge yesterday refused to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to legalize the medical use of marijuana, ruling that the plaintiffs deserved the chance to prove the government had no reason to deny the drug to seriously ill people. "The answer must come from facts, not the abstractions and dogma presently in the record," wrote U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz in a 25-page opinion and order. [continues 325 words]
Plaintiffs seeking to legalize the drug for medicinal use will get their day in federal court. A federal judge yesterday refused to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to legalize the medical use of marijuana, ruling that the plaintiffs deserved the chance to prove the government had no reason to deny the drug to seriously ill people. "The answer must come from facts, not the abstractions and dogma presently in the record," wrote U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz in a 25-page opinion and order. [continues 381 words]
CAMDEN -- Federal drug enforcement agents have charged two New York men with attempting to smuggle $500,000 worth of heroin to three drug rings operating in Camden. The suspects, Paul Rivera, 39, of the 1500 block of Fulton Avenue in the Bronx, and Jorge L. Agudelo, 36, of Elmhurst, were arrested late last week on drug distribution charges. Rivera posted $500,000 bail and was released yesterday after a brief hearing in U.S. District Court in Camden. Agudelo was denied bail. The arrests capped a five-week investigation of the two men, Detective Fred Davis of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said yesterday. [continues 209 words]
Sadly and quite disturbingly, Whitman has said that she is "not arguing with what he was saying." What he was saying was that minorities are more likely to be involved in the illegal drug trade. This is a grievous error of fact as well as an outrageous affront to all minorities. In reality, illegal drug use cuts across all racial and ethnic lines fairly evenly. However, while only about 11 percent of illegal drug users are African American, this group accounts for 37 percent of those arrested for drug violations, 42 percent of those in federal prisons for drug violations and almost 60 percent of those in state prisons for drug felonies. [continues 118 words]
Poor Col. Carl Williams. He was born too soon to understand how to navigate the nuances of political correctness. In his ambush interview with the Newark Star-Ledger, he made some factual comments about drug trafficking that ended his 35-year career (Inquirer, March 1). Williams naively discussed the association of certain types of illegal drug traffic with ethnic groups. Before the ink was dry on the article, Gov. Whitman hung the colonel out to dry. But nobody has challenged the accuracy of his remarks. Even the governor declined to discuss whether his comments were true when she said, "I'm not arguing with what he was saying, I'm arguing with how he said it, and when he said it, and the way he said it." [continues 362 words]
Waging a war on drug traffickers, the state police have lost sight of public safety, some troopers and others say. The seizure of 99 kilograms of cocaine was Trooper Raymond Lasso's route to stardom. For Trooper Darryl Albonico, it was arresting 40 people and seizing 358 pounds of marijuana and 622 pounds of cocaine -- a haul estimated at more than $30 million. For a rising star in the New Jersey State Police, the surest way to become "trooper of the year" has been to make more drug arrests and seize more contraband than anyone else. In 31 years, the award has gone 19 times to troopers who have chalked up huge numbers of drug seizures or arrests. [continues 1727 words]
In the space of a few days last week, Gov. Whitman's grand opportunity to put another Republican loyalist on the Supreme Court turned into a big opportunity for her political foes to make hay at her expense. The turn of events sprang from a long controversy in New Jersey and nationally over "racial profiling," the alleged police practice of targeting minority drivers on the road. State police superintendent Col. Carl A. Williams, a 34-year lawman who has long denied that profiling is practiced, inflamed the debate last Sunday by linking certain minorities with trade in certain drugs, such as Jamaicans with heroin. [continues 246 words]
The mix of an herbal aid and a cat tranquilizer can cause a comalike state. ATLANTIC CITY -- The music is a bass-filled techno style, booming and intense, with laser light shows. The all-night clubs are packed. The parties can last for days. And in the midst of this, reports an Atlantic City police detective, are "a staggering amount of grown people sucking on lollipops." Lollipops? That is a signal, apparently, that the person has ingested a trendy narcotic concocted from cat tranquilizers and a so-far-legal herbal nutritional supplement that converts in the bloodstream to an illegal substance. [continues 646 words]
ATLANTIC CITY -- The music is a bass-filled techno style, booming and intense, with laser light shows. The all-night clubs are packed. The parties can last for days. And in the midst of this, reports an Atlantic City police detective, are "a staggering amount of grown people sucking on lollipops." Lollipops? That is a signal, apparently, that the person has ingested a trendy narcotic concocted from cat tranquilizers and a so-far-legal herbal nutritional supplement that converts in the bloodstream to an illegal substance. [continues 521 words]
A Neighbor Of Critters In L. Merion Complained. Police Hauled Away The Goods - And The Owner. LOWER MERION -- Leslie Joblin's tie-dye-decorated boutique here stocked water pipes, smoking pipes, rolling papers and other paraphernalia often associated with illegal drug use. That is, until last week. On Friday, Lower Merion and Montgomery County police, prompted by a neighboring store owner's complaint, raided Joblin's shop, carted away two van-loads of merchandise, and arrested the 47-year-old shop owner with the long, gray ponytail.Joblin, who has operated Critters Unlimited Boutique for 24 years in two Lower Merion locations, was charged on Friday with possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of drug paraphernalia with intent to deliver it. He was released later that day after posting 10 percent of $35,000 bail. The only hint of illegal drug use that police left behind was a poster of the Mona Lisa smoking a hand-rolled marijuana cigarette. [continues 533 words]
TRENTON -- A day after Gov. Whitman ousted Col. Carl A. Williams as the head of the New Jersey State Police for saying that the drug trade is handled mostly by minorities, a top black leader and Democratic legislators demanded that she delay the nomination of her attorney general to the state Supreme Court until his office completes a review of the force. She refused to take that step but continued to fault Williams' comments as being insensitive. In an interview, she declined to discuss whether his remarks were factually correct, but said they damaged the credibility of the state police. "I'm not arguing with what he was saying. I'm arguing with how he said it, and when he said it, and the way he said it," Whitman said in an interview in her office. [continues 1188 words]
MOUNT HOLLY -- He wasn't their father, but he admitted that he had taken care of his girlfriend's two children during the year he lived with them in Southampton Township. So, because police said he went with his girlfriend to Camden to get high on heroin and left the children home alone for two days last summer, he also faced a criminal charge of child abuse. Yesterday, Kevin Hines, 35, a part-time painter who still lives in Southampton, pleaded guilty to the fourth-degree charge for abandoning the children, ages 8 and 11, from early July 18 to about 10:30 p.m. the next day. The charge carries a term of up to 18 months in prison, but under a plea agreement, the recommended sentence will be probation. [continues 145 words]
One of five Penncrest High School girls killed in a car crash last month bought a can of the aerosol spray Duster II shortly before the accident, investigators said yesterday. Delaware County Medical Examiner Dimitri L. Contostavlos said the announcement added weight to his finding that substance abuse was the main cause of the Jan. 29 one-car accident on Route 1. Contostavlos reported on Monday that the driver of the car, Loren Wells, 16, had a significant level of difluoroethane in her blood when she died. The chemical is found in Duster II, used to clean computer keyboards. [continues 217 words]
A federal investigation of the state attorney general's drug task force in Philadelphia -- prompted by allegations that agents gave false testimony about drug seizures and arrests -- has ended with a decision not to prosecute any agents. U.S. Attorney Michael R. Stiles said yesterday that the two-year probe of the Bureau of Narcotics Investigation (BNI) "did not result in the filing of criminal charges." The city and federal court systems were rocked three years ago by disclosures that cast doubt on the credibility of some agents from the bureau's Philadelphia office, established in 1989. [continues 428 words]
A former Philadelphia police officer who prosecutors said used his police credit-union account to help launder the gains of his extended family's illegal marijuana dealings was convicted in federal court yesterday. The jury deliberated about six hours over two days before returning guilty verdicts against Peter Henry, 35, on one count of conspiracy to launder money and two counts of money laundering. Henry was acquitted of the more serious charge of conspiracy to distribute drugs and of three additional money-laundering charges involving a marijuana ring that prosecutors said was headed by his cousin's husband, Corbin Thomas, a Jamaican emigre. [continues 399 words]
ATLANTIC CITY -- Law enforcement officials say they have broken up a cocaine ring that had been operating in this resort for more than five years with the arrest yesterday of 13 people -- including one of their own. In the morning sweep, which took place in a dozen locations from Manahawkin to Somers Point, teams of officers from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the Atlantic City Police Department, the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office and 19 other federal, state, county and local agencies capped a two-year investigation called Operation Smile. [continues 420 words]
Authorities say the Northeast gets up to 150 tons of cocaine a year. The 1,804 pounds of cocaine confiscated Sunday in Chester County is just a fraction of the amount of the drug brought into the Philadelphia region, police say. "What we're seeing is a glut of cocaine that is for sale on the market," state police Maj. Tyree Blocker said. "The drug of choice in Pennsylvania is cocaine, and it has been on the increase." On Sunday, Trooper Thomas Martinez pulled over a tractor-trailer on the Pennsylvania Turnpike after the driver changed lanes erratically in Honey Brook Township near the Morgantown Exit. After the driver gave written permission to search the trailer, authorities found 820 kilos of cocaine hidden under a load of cilantro. [continues 618 words]
Answering critics on all sides, Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said yesterday that she would rearrest a former police officer in the shooting death of a North Philadelphia man last fall. Officer Christopher DiPasquale, 32, was originally arrested Nov. 20, and charged with voluntary and involuntary manslaughter in the Oct. 1 shooting of Donta Dawson, 19, becoming the first city officer in six years to be criminally prosecuted in a homicide while on duty. On Jan. 6, Municipal Court Judge Felice R. Stack ruled, after a two-day preliminary hearing, that DiPasquale was justified in firing twice at Dawson, who sat in his car during a confrontation with police. Dawson was unarmed. [continues 983 words]
