Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
The following link was sent to me by Otteray Scribe, who is among the most erudite and respected people among those who frequently comment on this blog. He is an extremely well educated man, with masterful writing ability and a creatively active mind. The title of his E mail to me and the other guest bloggers was WTF? and this is what he wrote:
“This is beyond strange. Horace Boothroyd III is disabled and apparently has nothing to do but sit at his computer. He monitors everything going on regarding OWS and police misconduct. I won’t try to describe this, but it is more than passing strange. Might be worth following up.”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/03/1088516/-Occupy-Minnesota-WTF-Cops-picking-up-sober-Occupiers-and-Drugging-them-for-Training-
When someone who I like and respect as much as I do Otteray Scribe, is at a loss for words to describe something, I take notice. When I clicked the link and read this story from Daily Kos, my own reaction mirrored his: WTF? It took me more than twelve hours to respond to his E mail because I needed to let it gestate in my own mind and figure out just what to write about.
Rather than me regurgitating the story I think it is an important one for the readers to view for themselves and present their own take on the why, wherefore and implications inherent in the story.
While allowing you make your own judgments, let me give my bottom line opinion on all of the issues and questions the story raises and let’s see what you the reader makes of it on your own. I believe that the actions detailed in this story are indicative of our beloved America fast moving towards becoming a police state, in the same manner that the USSR, its successor Russia and China are police states. That is that all protest against the status quo is to be repressed. The police/security/intelligence/military forces are not only to act as agents of this repression, in many instances on their own volition without sanction, but also are taking part in the use of counter-insurgency techniques towards those elements within the society deemed dangerous to the status quo. In the minds of those in power openly and behind the scenes the question of what is threatening to the country is in most instances a self-serving rationale for what is politically/economically threatening to them. We must ask ourselves are we to be mere observers meekly silent for fear of our own security, or will we act openly to oppose the destruction of the Constitution of the United States and with it our rights and freedoms?
I am with Blouise. It is time to rein in the misuse and overuse of police power. We either have the right to assemble and protest or we might as well tear up the First Amendment.
Blouise,
I think the covered their a… to some extent by asking if the kids were at least 18, but maybe some of the kids lied, and then taking the kids to the airport. Anything in the statutes about taking them from a park to give them drugs?
Otteray,
Can’t imagine the kids and the mom being so blase about a shootout in their neighborhood. Must be an everyday event. I do understand them filming the action. If it provided evidence for a neighbor, it will undoubtedly get “lost”.
Perhaps the powers that be in the U.S.eh? should consider Japan, a nation that listened to the 99% and shut down its last nuclear reactor.
Guess what … it caused demonstrations:
(HuffPost). Dear Gummit of the U.S.eh? if you want praise from the 99% stop plundering and oppressing them on behalf of the 1% … um K?
If we do not bring the major players to trail, then why should we do so with the minor ones? And if our standards of behavior are no higher than those of the “alleged” criminals we assassinate without trial, then by what standard can we claim that the behavior of these hoodlums in uniform is deviant?
Prosecute for possession and distribution keeping in mind the mandatory prison time for distribution to a person under 18 years of age and solicitation of anyone on school or park zone as Minnesota law allows a judge to increase the severity of the sentence … a sentence for a drug crime may be increased if the drug (marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug) offense took place in a school zone or a park zone. Stack the charges based on incidents of testing and numbers involved.
Police are targeting the young and vulnerable. Time to turn the tables on them.
The CIA flooded our inner cities with crack in the ’70’s and 80’s. Law ‘enforcement’ are the biggest drug dealers on the planet.
Thats why we will never be able to end the ‘War on Drugs’ ™ and change to a medical model. Some people in law enforcement agencies make too much money while drugs are illegal.
someone should investigate, ha
Add it to the other reports of egregious “establishment” behavior to set up OWS, discredit, undermine, destroy, marginalize, delegitimize, subvert, etc.
Who’s surprised there would be plausible deniability?
How about the doublethink, doublespeak involved in the Feds aggression against medical marijuana? The government is not our friend.
“By the early ’90s, the government was paying informants or snitches more than $100 million a year.” (Frontline, “Snitch”)
If it was “more than $100 million a year” in the early ’90s, imagine what it is now.
What’s going on in MN is just the tip of the iceberg.
“Snitch”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/etc/script.html
NARRATOR: By the early ’90s, the government was paying informants or snitches more than $100 million a year. They paid thousands of others by reducing their sentences. Over the last five years, nearly a third of the people sentenced in drug-trafficking cases in the federal system had their sentences reduced because they informed on other people. Ronald Rankins is one of the informants. He now wants the world to know why.
RONALD RANKINS: I wrote Janet Reno. I wrote President Clinton. I wrote Oprah Winfrey. I wrote “60 Minutes.” I wrote “Hard Copy.” I wrote “New York Times.” I wrote “Mobile Press Register.” And the list just goes on and on and on.
NARRATOR: He wrote claiming that his testimony was coerced. He was arrested in 1992 and was charged with conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and money laundering. He faced life in prison.
RONALD RANKINS: I was a drug user, you know? And I sold drugs more or less to support my habit, you know? And I wasn’t nothing near what they would call a kingpin or what the judicial system would refer to as a kingpin.
NARRATOR: His co-defendant was his friend, Algernon Lundy, called “Lonnie.”
RONALD RANKINS: The prosecutor, Donna Barrows, she said, “One of you is going to receive a life sentence, Mr. Rankins.” She said, “Now, it don’t matter to me which one of you receives a life sentence.” She say, “I can assure you the federal government have a 98.6 conviction rate, and if I tell you you’re going to receive a life sentence, you can call your family and tell them to break your plate because you won’t be coming home again.” Those was her words, verbatim.
NARRATOR: He finally took the stand and was the star witness against his friend, Lonnie Lundy. In exchange, he received a reduced sentence of 15 years in federal prison. Now he regrets it.
RONALD RANKINS: And as God is my witness, it hurt me to my heart to take the stand again, like, and sit there and tell all them lies.
INTERVIEWER: But you finally did.
RONALD RANKINS: Let me ask you a question, if I may. If you was faced with a life sentence right now, and they tell you, “Well, Miss Ofra, if you don’t testify on this guy, your next-door neighbor, that you seen him selling drugs, we’re going to give you a life sentence, we’re going to make you part of this conspiracy and give you a life sentence,” what’re you going to do? You going to take that life sentence?
INTERVIEWER: Probably not.
Wait! I could have free drugs just for hanging around downtown!?! See you guys later I gotta go now and ah . . . see a guy . . . ah . . . about . . . something
From “MK Occupy Minnesota: Drugs & the DRE Program at Peavey Plaza ” (Daily Kos, YouTube video):
“and others say they’ve been rewarded for offering to snitch on the movement. ”
“After receiving drugs, some subjects were asked to snitch on the Occupy movement or asked about various people and activities of Occupy, they said.”
—————–
This is a piece of it, IMO:
Book TV: Alexandra Natapoff, “Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice”
One comment on the DK site says it well:
This is another form of “planting evidence”, an old trick.
It became epidemic in Los Angeles, so a federal court ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to assume control of the LAPD and clean it up.
Horace has another WTF story this morning. Two teenagers were making a video of police activity from the balcony of their home. Police burst in, arrested the teens and after taking them to jail, confiscated their SIM card. I saw the original story last night on a Jackson, MS news web site.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/05/1088994/-Teens-Arrested-on-Own-Balcony-for-Filming-Police
This is from the Raw Story news site:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/04/mississippi-twins-arrested-for-videoing-police-from-their-balcony/#.T6UzKQDWnQM.twitter
Moral of the story is to change your SIM card immediately and conceal the original. Or subscribe to an upload service so you can send your stuff to the Cloud in real time.
Doping up the teens is totally unacceptable. The below is what was done here instead.
We needed obviously many years ago (before internet video etc) a way of training officers to how to recognize drug influence. Alcohol was easy, you just brought in some of the off duty reserves or other deputies and had them drink a few bottles of booze and then perform Field Sobriety tests on them. Drugs were another problem
What one agency in a metro area did was sponsor a DRE program where word was spread in the drug culture of the area the agency was training officers to recognize drug use and invited a “No Worries” guarantee of immunity from prosecution. In exchange for their participation they would receive a few hundred dollars cash. Each time a few people would come in and volunteer to be tested. They were asked what kind of drug they had been using and they were very candid about it. This was to establish a baseline. The people were then put in for officers to test them. A few control people came by who were not under the influence.
While not the best issue for PR, it gave us what we needed tor training. Nobody was given drugs, it was just based up what they already had in their system. One could argue there were those who might have shot up just to get the money, but all of these people were known drug users and were relatively benign. Certainly better than drugging up run of the mill teenagers.
Minneapolis Police Got Occupy Activists High, For Research
By LIZ COLVILLE
May 3, 2012
http://wonkette.com/471679/minneapolis-police-got-occupy-activists-high-for-research
Excerpt:
Minnesota State Patrol had a great idea, seeing as they are bored and hate everyone, particularly Occupy protesters? The Occupy protesters are just hanging around the central location of Peavey Plaza, causing problems, wasting cardboard, not getting jobs, so in lieu of beating them with a stick, the police department decided it would work better to “recruit” these useless individuals, feed them marijuana and possibly other drugs, then observe their behavior as part of a police “training” program that teaches state patrol officers what different kinds of intoxication look like. Others were apparently given weed if they would simply rat on fellow protesters. It was very exciting for some Occupiers, because their title was suddenly High Police Informant. “I smoked with a cop,” said a man who identified himself as Panda, and it was “some of the best shit I’ve had in a while.”
For most victims of this experiment it was described as just creepy and weird, and so these people were happy to be part of a documentary put together by Communities United Against Police Brutality and other groups.
One guy told the filmmakers that he was given a bowl of weed to smoke, and then was basically let loose in downtown Minneapolis, “visibly intoxicated.”
It got my attention when I read about it the other day. They need an investigation.
From the Alyona Show:
Patrol denies claim that cops gave people drugs
by Laura Yuen, Minnesota Publi
May 3, 2012
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota State Patrol is denying allegations that officers were supplying young people in downtown Minneapolis with illegal drugs.
A video released this week by the activist group Occupy Minnesota interviewed so-called test subjects who said sheriff’s deputies from around the state were giving them marijauana as part of a program run by the State Patrol. The program trains officers to identify impaired drivers.
But Lt. Eric Roeske says the program’s supervisors looked into the claims and are confident the officers did not offer drugs to the volunteers who agreed to be evaluated.
Roeske says there’s no need for further investigation.
“We have nothing to hide,” said Roeske. “This program has been conducted for over 20 years in Minnesota, so we don’t see any need or reason to change what’s going on unless there is some information or evidence that would substantiate the allegations.”
The video did not show anyone actually taking drugs.
Minneapolis police say they weren’t involved with the operation but are looking into the claims.
This story has been picked up by several sources. Whatever is going on, the authorities are not very forthcoming. But then they were not forthcoming about the syphilis studies on black people decades ago either. This is a black ops if I ever saw one. They seem to be trying to create a false flag. I am also more than suspicious about the Black Bloc ninja types who vandalize property in the name of OWS.
Title got my attention. WTF!!!! Will watch the rest later. Second reaction: Seems there are some cops that should spend a lot of time in jail for possession and distribution. Solicitation?
The ride will be over when the ride is over…….does this really surprise you, knowing that you have no rights and that even if you are silent that that can be used against you…