Ohio Sheriff Tells People To Write Down Addresses Of People With Kamala Harris Signs In Their Yard

Legal Issues

from the whole-bunch-of-dudes-running-their-own-Nottinghams dept

Forget “defund the police.” Let’s just get rid of the sheriffs. Or, at the very least, change how the job is handled.

Sheriffs are elected, which means a lot of sheriffs are less interested in providing good law enforcement than ensuring they’ve catered to their voting bases enough that they’ll be re-elected. And since it’s an elected position, it’s almost impossible to get rid of a sheriff, no matter how awful they are.

To be sure, they’re routinely awful. The most severe abuses of power are carried out by these elected officials. They preside over some of the worst law enforcement agencies in the United States. When they’re not directly enriching themselves with public funds, they’re involved in corruption and giving their subordinates free rein to terrorize, torture, and kill the people they’re supposed to be serving.

Because their power is almost absolute (in terms of immunity), they’re absolutely corrupted. Even if they’re not, let’s say, starving inmates to increase their personal bank accounts, they’re doing stuff that shows how little they care about actual law enforcement in hopes of rousing the rabble that will return them to power during the next election.

That brings us to this Ohio sheriff, who used his personal Facebook page to encourage his supporters to engage in voter intimidation. That post has since been deleted, but here’s a screenshot, followed by a transcription of Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski’s missive.

When people ask me…What’s gonna happen if the Flip – Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say…write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo…when the Illegal human “Locust” (which she supports!) Need places to live…We’ll already have the addresses of the their New families…who supported their arrival!

Note the weird punctuation. Note the random capitalization. Not the over-reliance on ellipses. But above all else, note what Sheriff Zuchowski is telling people to do and how he phrases it. That’s some MAGA shit™ right there.

He’s asking the followers of his government-related page to engage in something that sure looks a whole lot like voter intimidation. The implicit request is that these addresses be shared with the sheriff. On top of that, there’s the use of the word “locusts” to describe immigrants, suggesting they’re an elemental force that only seeks to destroy and, more importantly, incapable of doing anything other than acting instinctively.

On top of that, note that Zuchowski doubled down on this by posting it to his regular sheriff account as well as his personal account, making it impossible to claim (as he’s attempting to do now) that this speech can be completely separated from his public office position. That may come back to haunt him.

But everything should come back to haunt him. The sheriff cannot be trusted to be an elected official that has the power to detain, arrest, seize property, deploy force (deadly or otherwise), or oversee other law enforcement officers.

Case in point: more than 60 voter intimidation complaints have been filed against the Sheriff’s office since the sheriff sent out these posts. Further case in point: the sheriff has been allegedly forcing local inmates to, in essence, campaign for him.

As reported by Cleveland 19 News, a former inmate named Christopher McCullough said he and other inmates were made to put up campaign signs throughout the county. They also set up and served at Sheriff Zuchowski’s campaign fundraiser steak dinner. They even constructed a building where Zuchowski sold campaign materials.

To be exceedingly fair, the inmates were paid $3/week (plus all the cigarettes they could smoke!) for doing Zuchowski’s campaign work for him. Of course, the fact that this was illegal doesn’t seem to have bothered the sheriff at all.

Ohio law prohibits using public employees for partisan political activities, but since when are MAGA sheriffs expected to obey the law?

More fun stuff about this asshat: he probably wouldn’t have taken his post down if it weren’t for a legal threat from the ACLU. The complaints about voter intimidation (most of which originated from inside his county) appear to have made no difference.

Then there’s this, which shows the sheriff still doesn’t care whether he intimidates Harris voters, subjugates immigrants by referring to them as pestilence, or is now bathing in the national spotlight as an example of everything that’s broken in the United States’ sheriff system.

His new post, which is still live on Facebook, offers up an “apology” that simply says everyone else is wrong, other than him and his supporters.

Here it is verbatim (with all weird spelling, capitalization, and punctuation marks intact):

As the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of Portage County, I have sworn to protect ALL citizens of my County. Recently, I placed a post on my personal facebook page that may have been a little misinterpreted??

I…as the elected sheriff, do have a first amendment right as do all citizens. If the citizens of Portage County want to elect an individual who has supported open borders (which I’ve personally visited Twice!) and neglected to enforce the laws of our Country…then that is their prerogative. With elections, there are consequences. That being said…I believe that those who vote for individuals with liberal policies have to accept responsibility for their actions! I am a Law Man…Not a Politician!

I would also like to Thank…The Overwhelming Support I am receiving from many people in Portage County who are afraid or are Not allowed to agree with me publicly!

Stay Strong and God Bless!!

First off, it’s weird/stupid that you would capitalize “Chief Law Enforcement Officer” (which isn’t a real position) but not “facebook.” Second, you want a comma after “I” in the second paragraph, rather than an ellipsis. Preaching to the electorate choir is the exact opposite of being “a Law Man…Not a Politician.”

Finally, “Thank[ing]” the “Overwhelming Support” you have received from Portage County residents suggests they are neither “afraid” or “Not allowed to agree” with you “publicly.” If anything, this non-apology makes you look stupider. You’re trying to play the victim while still being the bigoted bully who engaged in arguable voter suppression. Pretending your calls to write down addresses of supporters of your political opponents have somehow been “misinterpreted” means nothing more than you didn’t expect your churlish asshattery would make national headlines, nor subject you to comments and complaints for people who don’t actually support you or your irrational hatred.

The only upside here is that you and your department won’t be allowed to directly intimidate voters this November.

The Portage County Board of Elections voted to prohibit Sheriff Bruce D. Zuchowski or his deputies from serving as security at its office to ensure that November is “free of any concerns of intimidation with this security in place,” according to a Facebook post shared Friday by board member Randi Clites.

“As Board Members we are charged with preventing violence and disorder at the polls, and to conduct a safe and secure election process. It is clear by public comments in the past week there is perceived intimidation by our Sheriff against certain voters,” Clites’ Facebook post reads.

Good. Security will apparently be handled by private contractors or officers from the Ravenna Police Department. But even this statement contains hedging from board member that suggests the sheriff will still get to call most of the shots as long as he remains in office.

While it is not my responsibility to weigh in on the Sheriffs comments directly, I feel strongly it is in my responsibility to make sure I do what is in my authority to make sure every voter in Portage County feels safe casting their ballot for any candidate they choose.

My dude, it is literally your responsibility to weigh in on these comments. If you choose not to, you’re just signalling to the sheriff’s voting bloc that sheriff can say whatever stupid or illegal thing that slides across that massive wet spot the sheriff calls a “brain” without being directly criticized for his bigotry or implicit threats to disrupt the democratic process. Don’t be a coward. Do some direct commenting. And get to work figuring out how you can keep this dipshit from continuing to act as a force of political partisanship, rather than the law enforcement official he’s supposed to be.

Filed Under: abuse of power, bruce zuchowski, ohio, police misconduct, portgage county, sheriffs, voter intimidation

It’s The 21st Century And County Sheriffs Are Still A Law Unto Themselves

Legal Issues

from the just-daring-the-public-to-stop-them dept

The Wild West we all imagine contains two forms of law: the brave people who’ve decided to be sheriffs. And the vigilantes who perform frontier justice when not cashing in bounties while ignoring the enshrined civil rights (the Constitution came out ahead of the Wild West, non-American folks) of the people they beat, tortured, threatened, and (if my movie recollections are accurate) tied to the back of their horses and drug to the nearest town.

A couple hundred years later and nothing’s changed but the entities performing the majority of rights violations. Bounty hunters still exist but rarely make headlines. Sheriffs, however, are still treated as kings among men, capable of doing all sorts of evil while rarely being subjected to even the very low bar of accountability we apply to regular cops.

In most locales, sheriffs are elected. That means they can’t be fired, only voted out. And if voters either don’t care how awful they are or just like placing a checkmark next to a name they recognize, they’re able to hold power for years, if not decades.

They don’t get better with time. Most people who hold jobs for years tend to get at least a little bit more competent. The zero accountability system sheriffs are (um) subjected to tends to result in increased corruption and misconduct on a year-over-year basis. When the only threat to your job is the occasional opponent every few years (and lots of sheriffs run unopposed), there’s almost nothing preventing a sheriff from becoming the worst version of themselves.

This is only a small sampling of abuses performed by sheriffs and their employees we’ve covered over the past several years at Techdirt:

• Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio became famous for forcing inmates to wear pink clothes, routinely violated rights of anyone not immediately appearing to be white, and facing multiple criminal charges ranging from contempt of court to obstruction of justice. Even after he was voted out of office, Arizona taxpayers were still paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements on his behalf.
• Alabama sheriff Todd Entrekin was caught buying a house with funds meant to be used to feed inmates. He responded by having the tipster who provided this information to journalists arrested.
• And he wasn’t even the only sheriff in Alabama to do this. Sheriff Greg Bartlett spent years making himself richer by taking control of unused prison food funds. While in court for basically starving the inmates he was overseeing, the sheriff paid the grandson of one his biggest critics to install a keylogger on her computer.
• The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department — the biggest in the United States — has spent years employing self-avowed “gang members:” deputies who pride themselves on breaking laws and violating rights. It has been overseen by a succession of supposed “reformer” sheriffs who have yet to affect any meaningful reforms, which means “voting the bastards out” just means voting a different bastard in.
• Sheriff Thomas Dart made a name for himself by pretending to be a force multiplier in the war against sex trafficking. On a far more granular, far less glamorous level, he was violating rights en masse by refusing to release people who had actually made bail.
• Georgia Sheriff Jeff Hobby cost his constituents $3 million by performing illegal searches of 850 high school students.

As I said, that’s just a sampling. There’s plenty more abuse and horror to be observed here at Techdirt. But we’re going to move on to this report from CBS News, which details even more abuse and horror while tacitly questioning why we, the people, continue to accept this sort of thing as an acceptable byproduct of both the legal and electoral system.

The headline makes the biggest point before it delves into the details. What’s the ultimate rights violation? The unjustified killing of a person. According to the data gathered by CBS News, sheriffs offices have pulled far ahead of other law enforcement agencies when it comes to ending people’s lives.

CBS News gathered and analyzed federal law enforcement data that showed while more people died overall in encounters with city police, deaths in encounters with county sheriffs occurred at a significantly higher rate. For every 100,000 people arrested, more than 27 people died in the custody of sheriffs, while that number was fewer than 10 for police officers in 2022, the most recent year of available data. 

To be fair (a phrase I’m pretty sure I’m misusing here), sheriffs offices have far more opportunities to kill people. Unlike other US law enforcement agencies, sheriffs offices also tend to run the local jails. So, perhaps it’s not surprising county sheriffs are killing more people than regular cops. Not that this makes it OK. But it would explain some of the distance between the steady killing performed by beat cops and the comparatively exorbitant death rate racked up by sheriffs offices.

On the other hand, people being held, detained, or imprisoned are just as deserving of staying alive as random people out in the free world. However, this nation has also accepted the steady abuse of inmates as part of the cost of doing criminal justice business, so these deaths tend to be overlooked unless they’re especially horrific and/or result in large monetary settlements.

As the CBS report points out, sheriffs offices (and officers) are twice as deadly as they were a decade ago. Perhaps the only thing that explains this jump in deadliness (compared to regular cops killings which have remained pretty much flat over the same time period) is the realization of certain law enforcement officers that the employment option with the least accountability is working for the county, rather than the city or the state.

The other thing contributing to this jump is the fact that sheriffs offices are handling even more of the law enforcement workload in recent years. As smaller communities cut staff and/or disband police departments, sheriffs offices are patrolling bigger areas with greater frequency.

But it’s unlikely the workload of sheriffs offices has doubled over the past decade. So, the real answer is probably the other thing: an area of law enforcement that has been allowed to be a law unto itself pretty much since its formation and one that is in no hurry to give up the power and discretion that comes with that leverage. As even the former head of the nation’s largest sheriffs union admits, sheriffs who are convicted of crimes cannot be forced to leave office and will often continue to do so until voters actually vote them out.

Given this dearth of accountability, it’s unsurprising sheriffs offices and officers are responsible for most of the killings by law enforcement officers in America.

It’s also unsurprising that it has led to horrors like the ones detailed by CBS News:

In recent convictions: A South Carolina sheriff and deputies arrested a man under false pretenses, stole from the county then falsified records to cover it up. A Georgia sheriff abused pretrial detainees. A “Goon Squad” of white Mississippi sheriff deputies tortured Black men. A Nebraska sheriff deputy ran a multimillion dollar fraud scheme. A Northern California sheriff accepted bribes to grant gun permits to political donors. There are also ongoing cases that involve charges ranging from excessive force to unlawful restraint and sexual assault, gang activity, kidnapping, obstruction of justice, and harrassing a racial minority in order to drive them out of the county. The list goes on with countless other allegations, like in McCurtain County, that have not been charged.

Here’s what happened in McCurtain County:

In McCurtain County, Oklahoma, Sheriff Kevin Clardy was caught on audiotape in March of 2023 talking with other county leaders about how they might kill and discreetly bury the bodies of two local journalists who had written stories about alleged corruption inside his office, among others.

So, what’s the solution? Well, the most immediate fix would be to convert the position of sheriff into one that’s answerable to the city or county employing them. Sheriffs would be hired, rather than elected. Admittedly, this would only place them on the same playing field as other law enforcement officials, which means accountability would still hover near zero, but at least would provide options to remove someone from their position that would not require waiting for the next election cycle and hoping for the best.

But that’s something that would be hard to put into place given the long legislative history that created and pretty much enshrined the elected position of sheriff. But it can be done. Two states have already eliminated this elected position. And they did it for exactly the sort of misconduct detailed in this investigation:

Only Alaska and Connecticut don’t have any sheriffs; the latter abolished the position two decades ago due to high-profile corruption scandals.

The other option for reform and accountability is the Department of Justice. But it has gone after local law enforcement agencies for years with limited results. Settlements have been made and agreements put in place to reform misbehaving police departments, but there’s always another one out there just begging for the same sort of consent decrees. While reform may eventually happen under years of federal oversight, the deterrent effect — if there is any — is completely undetectable.

The best bet is to rewrite the laws to make sheriffs accountable not just to voters, but to the other people voters have elected, like city officials. Otherwise, we’re just asking allowing sheriffs to pretend it’s still the Wild West, where they’re free to kill people at an alarming rate and violate their rights on the regular without experiencing anything even remotely approaching a repercussion.

Filed Under: county sheriffs, law and order, law enforcement, sheriffs

Alabama Voters Say At Least One Sheriff Won't Be Enriching Himself With Federal Inmate Food Funds

Legal Issues

from the fixing-the-law-one-county-at-a-time dept

Things will get a little less crooked in part of Alabama in the near future. Sheriffs will no longer be able be able to personally benefit from federal funds meant to feed the state’s prisoners.

More than one sheriff in the state had been caught starving prisoners while picking up nice things for themselves with the leftover money. Weirdly, this is all legal under state law, which allows personal use of unused food funds by sheriffs running the state’s jails.

Three consecutive sheriffs in Morgan County found themselves in legal trouble for taking advantage of state law. One was hit with a consent decree forbidding county sheriffs from taking home food funds. The next two sheriffs decided to ignore this legal agreement, with one of them earning the nickname “Sheriff Corndog” from his underfed prisoners. The third in line — continuing a 16-year tradition of ignoring the 2001 consent decree — raised the bar on county sheriff legal troubles by giving $160,000 in federal food funds to a corrupt car dealership run by a former felon.

A sheriff in Etowah County also brought down the heat on himself by taking home $250,000 a year in federal food funds that were supposed to be used to feed inmates. The $750,000 that managed to be accounted for is likely only a small part of the sheriff’s total take. According to public records, Sheriff Todd Entrekin managed to acquire $1.7 million in property while officially taking home a $93,000 salary.

In Cullman County, this loopholicious law has been closed. As Zuri Davis of Reason reports, voters have decided one local sheriff won’t be making himself richer at the expense of the inmates he oversees. Strangely enough, this amendment — which passed with 88% of the vote — had the support of the local sheriff.

Sheriff Matt Gentry decried the practice as ruining the reputation of Alabama sheriffs. He instead touted support for the Sheriff’s Food Bill, or Local Amendment 1. The amendment sought to add a constitutional protection to make the use of the funds more transparent. Under the amendment, the money would be placed in a public account and all excess funds would go toward law enforcement operations like deputy equipment. The account would also be subject to an audit by the state every two years.

It’s good to see someone recognize a problem and do something to fix it, rather than view the problem as an opportunity to be taken advantage of. This doesn’t change anything anywhere else in the state. Certainly the Alabama legislature is aware of the negative press but it still seems reluctant to amend the law that allows local law enforcement officials to behave in a manner befitting crooked cops. Until it does, sheriffs will continue to make themselves look bad and legislators look complicit.

Filed Under: alabama, amendment, food, matt gentry, sheriffs

Sheriffs Are Raking In Millions In Prison Phone Fees And Some Really Don't Want To Talk About It

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the cashing-in-on-people-with-nowhere-else-to-go dept

MuckRock is currently conducting a public records survey of prison telephone contracts. What it has secured so far will shock you, but only if you haven’t been paying attention. There’s nothing like a captive audience, and prisoners are the most captive of all. There’s one way out via telephone and its routed through mercenary companies and the law enforcement agencies that love them.

Why so much law enforcement love for telcos specializing in prison phones? Because money buys a lot of love.

A recently-released contract for prison phone services in Bartow County, Georgia shows that the County receives a commission of 77% from its current provider of inmate communications, ICSolutions.

And it’s not 77% of some small amount. In this agreement, phones calls are $0.16/minute and billing for calls involves fees of $3-6 for payment processing. The contract is so profitable for both ICS and the sheriff’s department that ICS installs the system for free and provides the county with $225,000 in grants in exchange for an auto-renewing contract that helps lock out competitors. In addition, the county collects 50% of video visitation and “inmate tablet usage” fees.

This may be at the low end of prison phone contracts, as far as commissions go. Other records obtained by MuckRock show government agencies angling for higher percentages and larger payouts. The Bristol County Sheriff’s Office sent out a handful of proposals with demands for anywhere from 58-72% of call revenue. Depending on contractor, the department would make $2-4 per call, along with a cut of other communications services provided by contractors. The end result is more than $2 million a year flowing directly from prisoners (and their families) into county coffers. Unsurprisingly, this sheriff’s department is being sued for its high-cost prison phone system.

Also unsurprising is the fact those profiting from these agreements are reluctant to talk about them. Beryl Lipton reports one sheriff’s department is seeking to withhold documents by deploying a dubious public records exemption.

According to the Laramie County Sheriff’s Department in Wyoming, a request for its contract with inmate phone service provider Inmate Calling Solutions (ICSolutions) cannot be made public because the agreement itself is consider a “trade secret.”

The letter from the county attorney’s office claims the agreement between the sheriff and ICS prevents the documents from being released. Supposedly, the wording says the entire agreement is “confidential” or a “trade secret” (the attorney’s letter doesn’t specify which). Even if true, private companies can’t do business with government entities and expect all of their documentation to remain out of the public eye. If the wording is similar in other ICS contracts, it hasn’t stopped multiple government agencies from turning over copies of their contracts with the company to records requesters. This appears to be a case of someone at the county level finding a loophole to keep requesters from finding out just how much the local sheriff is making on prison phone calls.

Filed Under: fees, prison phones, sheriffs

Alabama Sheriff In Court For Starving Inmates, Paying Critic's Grandson To Install Keylogger On Her Computer

Legal Issues

from the just-make-it-out-to-'cash'-and-save-everyone-the-hassle dept

A number of statutes and practices have created perverse incentives for law enforcement, but none are nearly so blatant as this Alabama state law governing the feeding of inmates. The law, passed over 100 years ago, says law enforcement personnel — mainly sheriffs — can keep whatever’s left over from state and federal inmate food stipends. This doesn’t mean the leftover money is routed to a general fund or used to defray law enforcement/jail-related expenses. No, this means the money flows from taxpayers, (mostly) bypasses prisoners, and ends up in sheriffs’ personal checking accounts. (via Radley Balko)

This legalized skimming has resulted in the obvious: underfed inmates and sheriffs with overfed bank accounts. The law first received national attention in 2008, when Morgan County sheriff Greg Bartlett found himself in federal court, defending himself against a lawsuit brought by his prisoners. Inmates were dropping weight and going hungry while Bartlett increased his personal income by $212,000 over three years, taking home a great deal of the $1.75 per prisoner per day state funds. (Federal prisoners housed in state jails are allowed $3 per day, which can also be rerouted to sheriffs’ checking accounts.)

This resulted in Bartlett spending one night in his own jail. Even then, Sheriff Bartlett was violating an earlier consent decree with the federal government, which ordered his office to use *all* food funds for feeding inmates. The agreement Bartlett reached with the court (after a night in jail) promised his office would do the same thing: spend all the funds on food, rather than diverting them for personal use.

Even with two consent decrees in place and a previous sheriff being hauled into court for personally profiting from inmates’ hunger, another Morgan County sheriff (Ana Franklin) has repeated her predecessor’s misdeeds.

At that hearing, the sheriff’s attorneys are expected to argue that a years-old consent decree in a lawsuit against the county does not apply to Franklin and she shouldn’t be held in contempt. The decree says the Morgan County Sheriff must spend all food funds on inmate meals. The decree was issued in 2009 after Franklin’s predecessor was jailed for contempt. Former Sheriff Greg Bartlett was dubbed “Sheriff Corndog” because he profited more than $200,000 while inmates ate corndogs twice a day for weeks. The consent decree stemmed from a 2001 lawsuit against the county and then-Sheriff Steve Crabbe by inmates decrying conditions inside the jail.

A court hearing was scheduled last month when the Center filed a motion saying Franklin should show cause for why she shouldn’t be held in contempt of the decree. The center argued that Franklin should have been held in contempt after removing $160,000 from the inmate food account. The sheriff loaned $150,000 of the money to a now-bankrupt, corrupt used car dealership, Priceville Partners, LLC, that was co-owned by Greg Steenson, a convicted felon.

Franklin is trying to convince the court she should be allowed to continue starving inmates and financing criminal business ventures. While Sheriff Franklin was helping prop up localbusiness corruption, inmates were dealing with this reality:

The [Southern Center for Human Rights] is arguing Franklin should not be allowed to keep any of the food funds and has included in court documents statements from inmates who describe inadequate food portions and unappetizing or hazardous servings. Inmates reported finding rocks, a nail and mold in food served at the jail.

“Many grievances note that entire cell blocks were fed reduced or watered-down portions — a tiny amount of soup, a spoonful of grits, five or six green beans or carrot slices as a vegetable serving, a sandwich with half of a slice of cheese on it, and the like — because the kitchen lacked enough food to serve everyone the portions listed on the menu,” according to court records filed by the Center.

Starving prisoners to fund personal business ventures isn’t the only thing Sheriff Franklin’s accused of doing, though. A longtime critic of Franklin — blogger/business owner Glenda Lockhart — has also filed a lawsuit against the sheriff, alleging a number of constitutional violations.

The lawsuit accuses Franklin of illegally obtaining information to convince a judge to issue a search warrant for Lockhart’s home and business. Franklin has said her office seized computers and various other devices during an investigation into fired jail warden Leon Bradley, who has been accused of leaking documents to Lockhart for publication on the blog.

Lockhart’s blog was where Sheriff Franklin’s payments to the corrupt car dealership first appeared. In apparent retaliation, the sheriff allegedly engaged in some incredibly underhanded — and illegal — tactics in her attempt to obtain the blogger’s personal communications.

Lockhart claims Franklin illegally gathered information for a search warrant by paying an informant to break-in, hack and steal data from her home and business offices. Lockhart owns Straightline Drywall and Acoustical, LLC in Falkville.

The informant, Lockhart’s grandson Daniel, said in a sworn statement that he was paid to install keylogger software on his grandmother’s computer. The software, he said, was provided by the sheriff’s office, according to a transcript from a November 2016 deposition.

Daniel Lockhart’s statement also said the sheriff told him she was only interested in going after the former warden who was leaking documents and that Daniel’s grandmother wouldn’t be targeted. His statement also points out he was paid directly by the sheriff and one of her deputies a total of $500 to perform this “investigative” work for them.

There appears to be corruption all over the place in Morgan County, Alabama. But it all starts with a bad law state lawmakers are in no hurry to take off the books. Despite multiple federal lawsuits stemming from sheriffs’ starve-and-skim tactics, the incredibly perverse incentive remains intact. There are probably plenty of taxpayers who don’t like the idea of their money being used to food and house convicted criminals, but I doubt any of those taxpayers are happier knowing they’re padding sheriffs’ bank accounts and investing in shady businesses.

Filed Under: alabama, ana franklin, food, glenda lockhart, prisoners, sheriffs

Sheriffs' Association Urges 'Investigation' Of Assistant Attorney General Nominee For Her Pro-Drug Legalization Comments

Say That Again

from the WE-HAVE-SO-MANY-MOUTHS-TO-FEED dept

When it comes to the business of law enforcement, there’s one golden rule: thou shalt not derail the money train. Drug enforcement is a multi-billion dollar industry — not just here in the US, but all over the world. “Industry” is the correct term. Drug busts push people into private prisons. The pursuit of drug dealers and users gives local law enforcement agencies access to federal funding and cheap (or free) military gear. Millions more are spent on “educational” programs like D.A.R.E., which teaches children subtleties like “all drugs are bad” and “so are all drug users.” Just Say No, anyone?

These billions are wasted. Four decades into the drug war Nixon formally kicked off by deputizing multiple-substance abuser Elvis Presley as a “Federal Agent at Large” for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and we have nothing to show for it. Drugs are as widely-available as ever, often featuring both higher quality and lower prices.

If law enforcement agencies were honest, they’d admit they want this war to go on forever. It’s profitable, plays well with much of the voting demographic, provides them with new toys and it gives them the excuse to claim property that isn’t theirs.

That explains this bit of noxious stupidity from the National Sheriffs’ Association (the other NSA) [via The Drug WarRant]:

On behalf of the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) and the 3080 elected sheriffs nationwide, Sheriff John Aubrey, NSA President and Sheriff of Jefferson County, Kentucky wrote today to The Honorable Chuck Grassley to advise him of our strong concerns over the potential nomination of Vanita Gupta as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. NSA believes that Ms. Gupta’s previous statements on a range of issues make her ill-suited for this important post.

If Ms. Gupta is formally nominated, NSA urges Grassley to investigate her previous statements on the legalization of drugs. As recently as 2012, she wrote in the Huffington Post that “states should decriminalize simple possession of all drugs, particularly marijuana, and for small amounts of other drugs.” Decriminalization of all drugs—including heroin, LSD, cocaine, and more—would have disastrous effects on our communities and our citizens. Communities have been crippled by drug abuse and addiction, stifling economic productivity and destroying families. Ms. Gupta’s short-sighted statements on legalization and her apparent beliefs would put her at odds with the goal of public safety day in and day out. As the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, it is imperative that any nominee understand the challenges faced by law enforcement in protecting our communities.

The NSA “urges” Sen. Grassley to “investigate” statements publicly made by Ms. Gupta. In what reality does that sentence make sense? How do you “investigate” opinions that were offered freely and publicly? What this association wants isn’t an “investigation.” It just wants to throw some mud and hope it’s enough to head off a nominee that might tamper with the money train’s tracks.

Look at the wording it uses to describe what’s happening because of “drug use and addiction.” As if tossing tons of people in prison for violating outdated drug laws doesn’t “stifle economic productivity” or “destroy families.”

The NSA also completely ignores the fact that four US states have fully legalized marijuana for recreational use and many more are working towards decriminalizing possession. If there’s a drug problem in America, at least half the blame lies with the enforcement of drug laws. The US locks up more people per capita than any other country in the world, and has led to an expansion of law enforcement power at the expense of Americans’ civil liberties. No-knock raids — almost all of which are propelled by drug charges — have placed both citizens and police officers in the line of fire. A cottage industry of law enforcement-focused surveillance technology has sprung up over the past decade, thanks to this constant and narrow focus on one section of criminal law.

These sheriffs want an assistant AG that works for them, rather than for the public. That’s the most disgusting message this letter sends. Hopefully, Sen. Grassley will file this in the recycling bin shortly after reading it. Without a doubt, Gupta will be questioned about her views on legalization, but let’s hope that’s just because there’s still too many reactionary, tough-on-crime types circulating Capitol Hill, rather than this self-serving agency being capable of wielding any significant amount of influence.

Filed Under: assistant attorney general, doj, drug legalization, drug war, legalization, sheriffs, vanita gupta