BlogWood: MT Archives

Pinellas deputies extort seized property

One of the many big problems with our nation’s war on drugs is the backward policy of rewarding police departments with seized “drug assets.” The system is rife with abuse, with the cops often acting aggressively to seize property first and worry about justifying the seizures later in the rare instances when they are actually called on their actions.

A woman says deputies made a her a deal after finding a pound of marijuana in her car: If she turned over the car, she wouldn't be charged with a felony.

Pinellas sheriff's officials deny that they offered Tomeca L. Demps that choice, but her signature appears on an agreement to hand over her 1968 Buick Skylark to deputies.

Demps, 31, said she stores the car away from her home and didn't notice it missing when it was seized in a Feb. 13 drug investigation.

Four days later, deputies arrived at her home with the agreement ready for her signature, Demps said.

"They told me the best thing I could do was just sign the paper, and I wouldn't get charged with anything," she said. "What could I do? I signed."

After questions from the St. Petersburg Times Monday, the Sheriff's Office gave the car back to Demps, saying no links had been found between her and the marijuana. The car would have been given back even without the paper's questions, sheriff's spokeswoman Marianne Pasha said.

"Our legal staff did not feel this was an appropriate use of this process when it is apparent there was no action going forward against Mrs. Demps," Pasha said.

Deputies Mark Douglas and Kris Lutz made a mistake by writing in the agreement that Demps would not be charged since there were no plans to arrest her, Pasha said

"It wasn't an either or thing," Pasha said. "She would not have been arrested."

Pasha also denied that Demps signed over ownership of the car to the Sheriff's Office, though the agreement indicates she did.

Demps hired attorneys Craig Epifanio and John Trevena, who questioned whether deputies had acted properly.

"This is like a mob shakedown," said Trevena. "The document's language is clear. It appears to be extortion and official misconduct."

Robyn Blumner wrote about the drug war in yesterday’s SP Times:

The beauty of Jefferson's marketplace of ideas is that it opens our society to all voices and all arguments, presuming the most persuasive will rise to the top.

But those who promote the War on Drugs find this a dangerous concept. Drug reform makes too much sense and in recent years has been too compelling to voters. Already, seven states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana through voter initiatives (and two more states through legislation) and a recent Gallup poll shows that 74 percent of Americans are on that side of the issue.

To combat this outbreak of common sense, the drug warriors have fought back with antidemocratic and repressive methods.
......

What is really going on here? Nadelmann theorizes that for people like Istook, Attorney General John Ashcroft and drug czar John Walters, the war on drugs is less about crack and heroin than it is about marijuana. "It's about the culture clash," Nadelmann says, "It's about continuing ways to wage war against the '60s and '70s."

As Ashcroft continues to send DEA agents into California to raid legal medical marijuana dispensaries and Walters uses the public weal to campaign against drug reform initiatives on state and local ballots, it is clear that Nadelmann is right. This is not about upholding the law, but fighting a movement. The drug warriors are fiercely antagonistic toward the shift in public opinion on medical marijuana and other drug reforms; and their authoritarian impulse is to shut down the free marketplace of ideas.

Apparently, the competition is getting to be a bit too stiff.