The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is infamous for stacking charges on defendants and arresting individuals for seemingly minor possessions. However, when it comes to its own agents, there appears to be an endless level of leniency. In 2012, DEA carried out a raid on a home and arrested a group of young people who were smoking marijuana. One was Daniel Chong. Despite the minor violation, Chong was arrested and interrogated. He was told that he would be released but DEA agents simply forgot about him and left him in a cell for five days without food or water. At one point, as the 23-year-old cried and begged for help, someone with the DEA came in and turned off the light in his cell to leave him in the dark. He was given no food or water. Someone was charged, right? Someone was fired, right? No, the DEA has decided that a few reprimands and short suspensions is fine for starving and almost killing Chong.
I earlier wrote a column on how the U.S. government seems to be gradually adopting the legal standards of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. This case seem to fit that storyline all too neatly.
Even the Justice Department has questioned “the DEA’s failure to impose significant discipline on these employees.”
Chong was never charged with a crime and ultimately received a $4.1-million settlement.
The three DEA agents and supervisor responsible will continue to work for the government even though they almost killed Chong who was hospitalized for days after his ordeal. Four reprimands were issued and the supervisor was given a seven-day suspension. Case closed.
Source: LA Times
Paul wrote:
“End the “War on Drugs” NOW.”
Absolutely correct.
Oh sheesh with all the darned dope fiends, and the supposed paradise that will occur when drugs are de-criminalized. . .
Oh What A Wonderful World!!!
A Short Poem by Squeeky Fromm
Oh what a wonderful world there will be
When the whole damned country gets high!
Train engineers and the drivers of trucks,
The surgeons, and pilots who fly!
Oh what a wonderful world will then dawn
When gangsters all lay down their guns!
And gather together to sing Kumbaya,
Get married, and raise up their sons!
Oh what a wonderful world we will see
When everyone sits around stoned!
And schools overflow to the very brim
With pupils dilated and zoned!
Oh what a wonderful world there will be!
Yeah. For sure. Not!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
It’s good to see Professor Turley keeping us apprised of the daily abuses by law enforcement no matter what agency they work through. It a real problem and Americans should not “return to it’s previous sleepy existence”. Thank you Professor Turley for your efforts.
I remember this incident. This is not a law enforcement problem. This is a macro too big a govt. and no accountability problem. Govt. needs to be cut in half. We need to adjust to that for 2-3 years, then it needs to be cut in half again. That’s a good start.
And, JT is saying “You’re not the boss of me.” At least one bad cop post a day, keeps the good cops away.
JT
It’s not the US government that’s at fault. It’s the fractured system of government in the US that the ‘people’ seem to want. Every agency, probably five times as many as are necessary, is virtually independent and autonomous. The President is hamstrung as by interfering with any agency will bring cries of overstepping of authority. The Senate and Congress is a dysfunctional boondoggle of puppets.
Americans want local government with local authorities. You get what you want, even if it comes with some perversions.
I realize this is treasonous talk to some but more centralized governments and more socialized peoples seem to have less of these problems. Call me a socialist, progressive, liberal. Thank you.
So the DEA investigated the DEA and found no significant wrongdoing by anyone in the DEA.
How predictable is that?
Huh. Look at this article. The man who shot and killed Officer Brian Moore had nine prior convictions, even though he was only 25 years old. And at least one of his priors was for assaulting a police officer.
Clearly, he was not treated gently enough.
Here’s the article, should you be interested.
Otherwise, enjoy spending another day bitching about law enforcement.
Michael Hax, interesting story. I wonder where the rioters are when a black man clearly kills a cop unjustly?
End the “War on Drugs” NOW.
How can anyone support this hideous war? What are you trying to accomplish by criminalizing smoking pot? Do you think by making it a criminal offense people will stop? That kids won’t be able to get pot? Wake up, pot is more easily available to kids than adults because pot is illegal, not inspire of.
Wake up, end the “War on Drugs” NOW.
DEA Can’t Tell Senate How Detained Student Was Left to Drink Own Urine to Live
By Sam Sacks
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/05/dea-still-cant-tell-senate-left-innocent-student-survive/
http://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-presses-more-answers-dea%E2%80%99s-2012-mistreatment-college-student
Disgusting story.
In a Cop Culture, the Bill of Rights Doesn’t Amount to Much
By John W. Whitehead
May 05, 2015
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/in_a_cop_culture_the_bill_of_rights_doesnt_amount_to_much
An excerpt:
““In a democratic society,” observed Oakland police chief Sean Whent, “people have a say in how they are policed.”
Unfortunately, if you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police officer, and that officer is never held accountable for violating your rights and his oath of office to serve and protect, never forced to make amends, never told that what he did was wrong, and never made to change his modus operandi, then you don’t live in a constitutional republic.
You live in a police state.
It doesn’t even matter that “crime is at historic lows and most cities are safer than they have been in generations, for residents and officers alike,” as the New York Times reports.
What matters is whether you’re going to make it through a police confrontation alive and with your health and freedoms intact. For a growing number of Americans, those confrontations do not end well.
As David O. Brown, the Dallas chief of police, noted: “Sometimes it seems like our young officers want to get into an athletic event with people they want to arrest. They have a ‘don’t retreat’ mentality. They feel like they’re warriors and they can’t back down when someone is running from them, no matter how minor the underlying crime is.”
Making matters worse, in the cop culture that is America today, the Bill of Rights doesn’t amount to much. Unless, that is, it’s the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBoR), which protects police officers from being subjected to the kinds of debilitating indignities heaped upon the average citizen.
Most Americans, oblivious about their own rights, aren’t even aware that police officers have their own Bill of Rights. Yet at the same time that our own protections against government abuses have been reduced to little more than historic window dressing, 14 states have already adopted LEOBoRs—written by police unions and being considered by many more states and Congress—which provides police officers accused of a crime with special due process rights and privileges not afforded to the average citizen.
In other words, the LEOBoR protects police officers from being treated as we are treated during criminal investigations: questioned unmercifully for hours on end, harassed, harangued, browbeaten, denied food, water and bathroom breaks, subjected to hostile interrogations, and left in the dark about our accusers and any charges and evidence against us.
Not only are officers given a 10-day “cooling-off period” during which they cannot be forced to make any statements about the incident, but when they are questioned, it must be “for a reasonable length of time, at a reasonable hour, by only one or two investigators (who must be fellow policemen), and with plenty of breaks for food and water.”
According to investigative journalist Eli Hager, the most common rights afforded police officers accused of wrongdoing are as follows:
If a department decides to pursue a complaint against an officer, the department must notify the officer and his union.
The officer must be informed of the complainants, and their testimony against him, before he is questioned.
During questioning, investigators may not harass, threaten, or promise rewards to the officer, as interrogators not infrequently do to civilian suspects.
Bathroom breaks are assured during questioning.
In Maryland, the officer may appeal his case to a “hearing board,” whose decision is binding, before a final decision has been made by his superiors about his discipline. The hearing board consists of three of the suspected offender’s fellow officers.
In some jurisdictions, the officer may not be disciplined if more than a certain number of days (often 100) have passed since his alleged misconduct, which limits the time for investigation.
Even if the officer is suspended, the department must continue to pay salary and benefits, as well as the cost of the officer’s attorney.
It’s a pretty sweet deal if you can get it, I suppose: protection from the courts, immunity from wrongdoing, paid leave while you’re under investigation, and the assurance that you won’t have to spend a dime of your own money in your defense. And yet these LEOBoR epitomize everything that is wrong with America today.”
You’re kidding, right?
http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/cheech.gif
After getting away with killing the truck driver with no liability I am surprised he received any settlement at all from the DEA. No wonder schemes like Fast and Furious get cooked up in a Federal system where Agentsand Agencies can do anything free from any real liability or personal responsibility. Kill, maim, torture, it’s all good…
After all it’s in furtherance of these ill defined wars the Feds love to declare. Wars on their own citizens that are simple grabs for expanded Executive wartime powers.
Trouble is these wars, by design, never end.
If the US Army did this with a detainee, it would be a war crime.
The DEA gets a pass. And then get mad when people say they aren’t the good guys.
“Of course, none of our politicians is nearly as open and honest as Squealer. There will be no sign proclaiming the different treatment of the governing and governed classes. They prefer the barnyard to return to its previously sleepy existence once the offender has been put away.”- Jonathan Turley
Who is Chong’s supplier?
Mexico declares all-out war after rising drug cartel downs military helicopter with RPG.
Mexico has declared an all-out offensive against the relatively new drug cartel which shot down an army helicopter during a weekend of coordinated attacks across
the western state of Jalisco which prompted fresh concerns over the latest escalation of the country’s drug wars.
At least 15 other people were killed and 19 injured in a coordinated show of strength by the cartel which included several shootouts with soldiers and police,
and involved hundreds of low-level operatives who set up roadblocks with burning cars, buses and trucks in Jalisco and three neighbouring states. Eleven banks and five petrol stations were also set ablaze.
The DEA needs to cease to exist right along with the ATF and any number of the “alphabet soup” agencies that all perform redundant work and could all be easily folded (back) into the FBI
Where does the UN Human Rights Council come down on this? We sound like some third world nation.
I agree that this is outrageous and more evidence that many government agents know that they can get away with almost killing someone and the worst they will face is a seven-day-suspension, if they are a supervisor that is.
Outrageous. Our leadership is inept. Our government is too big with too much money.