Humboldt Drug Task Farce mimics Operation FALCON

Peace be with you.

On Tuesday, December 4, 2007, the Times Standard printed a three inch story under “Briefly” which proclaimed the EPD, the CHP and the Humboldt County Drug Task Force did a “sweep,” arrested 21 people, and scored a record 2 grams of heroin and a quarter of an lb of pot.

Wednesday’s Eureka Reporter broke down the arrests as follows:

Only two of the arrestees could have any charges relating to the heroin. Suspect one accused of “heroin sales” and suspect four accused of “possession of controlled substance.”

Only suspect seven is accused of smoking herb and he was accused with the non-jailable possession of less than an oz of herb. They took a 52 year old man to jail for his head stash. Not one of the suspects was charged with slinging nugs, let alone to grade-schoolers.

We all know a QT is four ounces, so if suspect seven, the only "marijuana charge" had somewhere from a hit off a bowl to almost an OZ, then where did the other three plus ounces come from? Perhaps the three plus ounces was the reason two were arrested for parole violations. Smoking herb seems like a bullshit reason to send someone to prison.

Suspect 20 was drunk in public. Though I refuse to see “just drunk” as anything more than an elitist attack on poor people’s leisure time activities, I think a drug task force/edp/chp sweep is a bit of overkill and abuse of power for such a minor offense.

Suspect 17 was arrested for an open container municipal code violation – ARRESTED! ARRESTED BY THE DRUG TASK FORCE NO LESS!

13 suspects were arrested on undisclosed “warrants.” They made special effort to list one of the warrants as a felony, and knowing how the love to parade the exception that proves their rule around, I feel comfortable in predicting that is the only felony warrant arrest. We do however know poor suspect seven was arrested for an infraction warrant – a ticket!

The one suspect missing from the Reporter article, which I’ll call suspect twenty-one, is just that – missing. Maybe false arrest, or even something more sinister – who knows?

Some of the same questions raised after Eureka and Arcata participated in homeland security’s FALCON operations, must be raised here. If the EPD/CHP/Drug Task Force knew where these dangerous criminals lived, why did they wait until last Friday between 8 am and 6:30 pm to arrest them? Did they wish to put the community at risk inorder to stage a publicity stunt?

More likely than not this was a homeless sweep. I’ve personally seen these “Drug Task Force cops” targeting pot smokers on the Arcata plaza twice now. Large groups of sunglass wearing under-cover cops were begging hippies to sell them nickel nugs out of their stashes for highly inflated prices.

We spend millions of dollars in this county on “drug enforcers,” yet marijuana, the least harmful of any illegal and most legal drugs, is the target of the vast majority of this money. Tuesday, December 4, 2007, the Humboldt County board of Supervisors approved an 89,179 dollar “Marijuana Suppression Program” grant, a 130,000 dollar “Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression” grant, along with a 7,000 USDA Forest service grant.

You will be hard pressed to convince someone that a ten and a half hour, multi-departmental, “drug” sweep that nets two junkies and a 52 year old pot smoker is a good use of our public safety dollars. What really bothers me though, is the fact that the tweak use in Humboldt County went up as the pot smokers went down.

love eternal
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