Mimsy Were the Borogoves
Another victim of prohibition
Jerry Stratton
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The problem with the “99% of cops are good” line is that the 1% go out of their way to make up the average. From Radley Balko, more collateral damage in the war on drugs:
Earlier this year, police in Tallahassee, Florida raided the home of college student Rachel Hoffman, who friends say was a bit of a hippie-ish free spirit, and concede that she shared and sold small amounts of marijuana and MDMA within her social circle. Hoffman was at the time undergoing state-forced drug treatment after police found 20+ grams of marijuana in her car during a traffic stop. The raid turned up another five ounces of marijuana, plus six ecstasy pills and assorted pot-related paraphernalia.
From this, Tallahassee police apparently threatened Hoffman with prison time, then agreed to let her off easy if she’d become a police informant, and set up a deal with her supplier. They never informed Hoffman’s attorney or the state prosecutor of the arrangement. They wired Hoffman, and asked her to arrange to purchase 1,500 ecstasy pills, cocaine, and a gun—a deal that would have run well over ten thousand dollars. Hoffman’s friends and family have told me that all three purchases would also have been drastically out of character for her. Which means the dealers she was buying from were almost surely on to her.
Tallahassee police found Hoffman’s body last week.
The reason the police put a gun in the list of things to buy is that it increases the sentence after trial. A 23-year-old “hippie chick” probably wouldn’t realize that adding a firearm to a drug purchase when you don’t need to marks you as a police informant. The police who set up the buy had to know. I can understand the feelings of the commenter who said:
I would much rather live in a world populated by non-violent hippie chicks, elderly black ladies, and doting fathers than gun toting cowards… any day.
News (RSS) Feeds
For more information:
- Rachel Hoffman: More Collateral Damage
- “Tallahassee police apparently threatened Hoffman with prison time, then agreed to let her off easy if she’d become a police informant. They never informed Hoffman’s attorney or the state prosecutor. They wired Hoffman, and asked her to arrange to purchase 1,500 ecstasy pills, cocaine, and a gun—a deal that would have run well over ten thousand dollars. Hoffman’s friends and family have told me that all three purchases would also have been drastically out of character for her. Which means the dealers she was buying from were almost surely on to her. Tallahassee police found Hoffman’s body last week.”
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126475.html - Tracy Ingle: Another Drug War Outrage
- “Police found no illegal drugs in Ingle’s home. They did find a scale, which Ingle’s sister used in her jewelry-making hobby. They also found a bunch of small plastic bags. Again, Ingle’s sister says these were part of her business. ‘I was leaving the country for a while, and I stored a lot of my stuff at his house. The scale and bags were mine, and are both common things to have for anyone who makes jewelry.’ Police also found the broken gun and a broken police scanner. From those items, the police charged Ingle with running a drug enterprise.”
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/126284.html - The Worst in Atlanta
- “We now know that Kathryn Johnston fired only a single bullet, through the door as police were trying to break in. They responded with a storm of bullets, which apparently both wounded Johnston and the officers themselves. When they realized their fatal error, they planted cocaine and marijuana in the woman’s home. They then pressured an uninvolved informant to testify to having made controlled buys at Johnston’s home to cover their tracks.”
http://www.theagitator.com/2007/04/27/the-worst-in-atlanta/ - The Case of Cory Maye
- “The most obvious argument in Maye’s defense involves the simplest interpretation of events. A man with no criminal record is awakened by the sounds of someone breaking into his home. While he is lying in the dark with his daughter, the door to the bedroom flies open and someone jumps inside. Fearing for his life, the man fires in self-defense and kills the intruder.”
http://www.reason.com/news/show/36869.html - Back to Chesapeake
- “Looks like the informant mistook Frederick’s gardening hobby for an elaborate marijuana growing operation, and Japanese maple trees for marijuana plants.”
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/124709.html
Related prohibition articles:
- Drug cops on tape (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=228)
- Drug cops were caught on tape torturing a man for hours, beating a fake confession out of him. How many times does this happen and not get caught on tape?
- Put safety first: end prohibition (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=628)
- Prohibition increases crime and it reduces the ability of law enforcement to fight those crimes.
- Medical marijuana returns to Congress (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=577)
- Congress is considering a states’ rights amendment to the Science-State-Justice appropriations bill forbidding the federal government from overriding state laws allowing patients to use marijuana on a doctor’s orders.
- Prisoner of the war on drugs (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=524)
- A blog by someone between conviction and sentencing, describing how they (hope to) reduce their sentence by re-entering the black market underworld.
- Project Safe Neighborhoods (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=495)
- A typical drug war euphemism kills Kathryn Johnston, 92.
- Georgia drug war unfairly targets Indian immigrants (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=341)
- Federal law enforcement in Georgia has decided to crack-down on Indian-owned convenience stores.
- Cops Say Legalize Drugs: Ask Me Why (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=310)
- Why do you oppose the drug war? Tell me in fifteen seconds or less!
- Drug war undermining Afghan, Iraqi peace (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=250)
- Prohibition continues to fund terrorist organizations, and we continue to pour money into maintaining prohibition. Prohibition is, as it has always been, one of the best and easiest means for criminal organizations to grow.
- Fuck everything except marijuana (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=233)
- That marijuana does not lend itself to the black market forces that make coca, beer, and poppies dangerous should not blind us to the fact that it is their illegality that makes the latter dangerous, not something inherent in the plants they come from.
- Silencing opposition in the war on drugs (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=234)
- Congressman James Sensenbrenner introduced fast-track legislation to make witnessing or learning of certain drug offenses, without reporting them within 24 hours, a federal crime, punishable by two to twenty years in jail.
- Support the Dope (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=7)
- Some narcotics officers group is cold-calling for fundraising, and they’re actually prepared for marijuana supporters.
- Bush: We should live by our principles (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=23)
- President Bush compares Al Qaeda to the mafia, without apparently realizing that, as during alcohol prohibition, it is our prohibition laws that fund criminals.
- The Price of Prohibition (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=22)
- If we wish to maintain prohibition, we have to understand that we are funding and nurturing terrorism.
- Throwing Gas on the Fire (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=29)
- If any incident hilights the violence of prohibition and the futility of gun control, the six-year-old killing in Mt. Morris Township, Michigan, is it.
- Will prohibition destroy the Iraq turnaround? (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=630)
- World prohibition threatens to turn the Iraq turnaround back towards violence and gang warfare.
- Bad laws cause crime (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=573)
- “Honestly, the level of apathy I’m dealing with is maddening.” Bad laws make it easy to get away with breaking them.
- Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=347)
- The federal government has the power to keep effective doses of pain reduction medication from patients, but not lethal doses of medication.
- Supreme Court rules against patients and states (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=198)
- During the early years of the Internet, I heard someone say that the drug war is the root key to the bill of rights. That seems to be all the more true this week as the Supreme Court chose to ignore the federalist arguments in Gonzales v. Raich in order to acquiesce to the drug war.
- Raising Peter McWilliams (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=3)
- The United States government killed an author over a book. Buy that book now.
- Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=140)
- Peter McWilliams died in defense of freedom: this book, an incredibly well-written and well-researched book about “the absurdity of consensual crimes in a free society” was probably his death warrant.
- Tianamen Square and the Drug War (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=4)
- Peter McWilliams, outspoken critic of the war on drugs, became a casualty in that war on June 14, 2000.
- Misplaced compassion: more deaths, less dignity (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=155)
- I fear that a successful “death with dignity” movement will only exacerbate the bad laws and choices that result in excessive pain, and will result in a slippery slope towards more and more assisted suicides.
- The Great Gatsby (http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?ART=331)
- A Lost Generation novel set in the twenties in posh New York, peopled by several Lost Generation characters, the Great Gatsby tells a story of trust, class, and desire on Long Island.
http://www.hoboes.com/Mimsy/?
Copyright 2008 Jerry Stratton.
“Mimsy Were the Borogoves” is a trademark of Jerry Stratton.
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Jerry Stratton is the author of It Isn’t Murder If They’re Yankees. “Give a man a fish, and you’ve fed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you’ve depleted the lake.”
“When you go after honey with a balloon, the great thing is not to let the bees know you’re coming. Now, if you have a green balloon, they might think you were only part of the tree, and not notice you, and if you have a blue balloon, they might think you were only part of the sky, and not notice you, and the question is: Which is most likely?”“Wouldn’t they notice you underneath the balloon?” you asked.
“They might or they might not,” said Winnie-the-Pooh. “You never can tell with bees.”
--A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh)