The Back Alley Archives

Why surprising? It's a travesty.

Plus, I don't really believe that the war on terror is a huge threat to us as a nation. Yes, it must be fought, but they will never win using terrorist strategies, IMO, so I don't worry. The economy, I have faith in the american people to come out of it one way or another, plus the macro side of it is really over my head so I can't worry about it. Iraq, I really could not care less because I think it's entirely too unpredictable to expect a Prez to follow through on his word anyway. I don't think we should have troops in 130 countries around the world but they will never be brought home en masse, IMO.

Not sure what else I should put up there...seriously trying to think here...I think the gov should be about the size of my thumbnail.

Imagine you're home alone.

It's 8 p.m. You work an early shift and need to be out the door before sunrise, so you're already in bed. Your nerves are a bit frazzled, because earlier in the week someone broke into your home. Oddly, they didn't take anything; they just rifled through your belongings.

But the violation weighs on your mind. At about the time you drift off, you're awakened by fierce barking from your two large dogs. You hear someone crashing into your front door, as if he's trying to separate it from its hinges. You grab the gun you keep for home defense and leave your room to investigate.

This past January that scenario played out at the Chesapeake, Va., home of 28-year-old Ryan Frederick, a slight man of little more than 100 pounds. According to interviews since the incident, Frederick says when he looked toward his front door, he saw an intruder trying to enter through one of the lower door panels. So Frederick fired his gun.

The intruders were from the Chesapeake Police Department. They had come to serve a drug warrant. Frederick's bullet struck Detective Jarrod Shivers in the side, killing him. Frederick was arrested and has spent the last six weeks in a Chesapeake jail.

He has been charged with first degree murder. Paul Ebert, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, has indicated he may elevate the charge to capital murder, which would enable the state to seek the death penalty.

At the time of the raid, Ryan Frederick worked for a soft drink merchandiser. Current and former employers and co-workers speak highly of him. He also recently had gotten engaged, a welcome lift for a guy who'd had a run of tough luck.

He lost both parents early in life, and friends say the death of his mother hit particularly hard — Frederick discovered her in bed after she had overdosed on prescription medication.

Friends and neighbors describe Frederick as shy, self-effacing, non-confrontational and hard-working. He had no prior criminal record. Frederick and his friends have conceded he smoked marijuana recreationally. But all — including his neighbors — insist there's no evidence he was growing or distributing the drug.

According to the search warrant, the police raided Frederick's home after a confidential informant told them he saw evidence of marijuana growing in a garage behind the home. The warrant says the informant saw several marijuana plants, plus lights, irrigation equipment and other gardening supplies.

After the raid, the police found the gardening supplies, but no plants. They also found a small amount of marijuana, but not much — only enough to charge Frederick with misdemeanor drug possession.

Frederick told a local television station that he was an avid gardener. A neighbor I spoke with backs him up, explaining that Frederick had an elaborate koi pond behind his home and raised a variety of tropical plants. He'd even given his neighbors gardening tips on occasion.

One of the plants Frederick told the local television station he raised was the Japanese maple, a plant that, when green, has leaves that look quite a bit like marijuana leaves.

So far, Chesapeake police have given no indication that they did any investigation to corroborate the tip from their informant. There's no mention in the search warrant of an undercover drug buy from Frederick or of any extensive surveillance of Frederick's home.

More disturbingly, the search warrant says the confidential informant was inside Frederick's house three days before the raid — about the same time Frederick says someone broke into his home. Frederick's supporters have told me that Frederick and his attorney now know the identity of the informant, and that it was the police informant who broke into Frederick's home.

Chesapeake's police department isn't commenting. But if true, all of this raises some very troubling questions about the raid, and about Frederick's continued incarceration.

Chesapeake's lawyer, Paul Ebert, said at a recent bond hearing for Frederick that Shivers, the detective who was killed, was in Frederick's yard when he was shot, and that Frederick fired through his door, knowing he was firing at police.

Frederick's attorney disputes this. Ebert also said Frederick should have known the intruders were police because there were a dozen or more officers at the scene. But some of Frederick's neighbors dispute this, too. One neighbor told me she saw only two officers immediately after the raid; she said the others showed up only after Shivers went down.

What's clear, though, is that Chesepeake police conducted a raid on a man with no prior criminal record. Even if their informant had been correct, Frederick was at worst suspected of growing marijuana plants in his garage. There was no indication he was a violent man — that it was necessary to take down his door after nightfall.

The raid in Chesapeake bears a striking resemblance to another that ended in a fatality. Last week, New Hanover County, N.C., agreed to pay $4.25 million to the parents of college student Peyton Stickland, who was killed when a deputy participating in a raid mistook the sound of a SWAT battering ram for a gunshot and fired through the door as Strickland came to answer it.

So in the raid where a citizen mistakenly shot a police officer, the citizen is facing a murder charge; in the raid where a police officer shot a citizen, prosecutors declined to press charges.

Over the last quarter century, we've seen an astonishing rise in paramilitary police tactics by police departments across America. Peter Kraksa, professor of criminology at the University of Eastern Kentucky, ran a 20-year survey of SWAT team deployments and determined that they have increased 1,500 percent since the early 1980s — mostly to serve nonviolent drug warrants.

This is dangerous, senseless overkill. The margin of error is too thin, and the potential for tragedy too high to use these tactics unless they are in response to an already violent situation (think bank robberies, school shootings or hostage-takings). Breaking down doors to bust drug offenders creates violent situations; it doesn't defuse them.

Shivers' death is only the most recent example. And Ryan Frederick is merely the latest citizen to be put in the impossible position of being awakened from sleep, then having to determine in a matter of seconds if the men breaking into his home are police or criminal intruders.

How many people can honestly say they'd have handled it any differently than he did?

My point is this, I realize that blacks are more apt to use crack. However, unless whites that are using crack are being treated different than blacks using crack than you will not make me believe it is racism.

My point is this, I realize that blacks are more apt to use crack. However, unless whites that are using crack are being treated different than blacks using crack than you will not make me believe it is racism.

I don't think anyone is saying that black crack users are being given harsher sentences than white crack users, so it's not racist in that sense.

But let's say that the drug of choice for poor black people is crack, while the drug of choice for poor white people is crystal meth. If the sentence for simple possession of crystal meth is 1 year and the sentence for simple possession of crack is 10 years, doesn't it follow that the end result is keeping black people in jail for much longer than white people, for very similar crimes? Sounds like the system is (unintentionally) racist.

Why surprising? It's a travesty.

Plus, I don't really believe that the war on terror is a huge threat to us as a nation. Yes, it must be fought, but they will never win using terrorist strategies, IMO, so I don't worry. The economy, I have faith in the american people to come out of it one way or another, plus the macro side of it is really over my head so I can't worry about it. Iraq, I really could not care less because I think it's entirely too unpredictable to expect a Prez to follow through on his word anyway. I don't think we should have troops in 130 countries around the world but they will never be brought home en masse, IMO.

Not sure what else I should put up there...seriously trying to think here...I think the gov should be about the size of my thumbnail.

Starving children is a travesty. Drug laws not being equal for crack vs. cocaine users is inconsequential. While I agree that marijuana should be legal(and I am not even a partaker), there is enough scientific evidence that it is beneficial in some cases and has no worse effects than alcohol.

However, treatment has been proven to just as ineffective as jail in terms of discouraging future use of "hard drugs". Until someone can prove otherwise, what do you think should be done?

Now, to address the racism item. I realize that more blacks are using crack as compared to cocaine. But unless you are telling me that a white crack user gets on average a lesser sentance than a black user than I don't see the racism claim.

A white male on average will make more money over the course of his life than a black male. That means, the average white male will pay more in taxes than the average black male. Is our tax system racist against whites?

My point is this, I realize that blacks are more apt to use crack. However, unless whites that are using crack are being treated different than blacks using crack than you will not make me believe it is racism.

To quote a recent ACLU report (pdf file), “distribution of just 5 grams of crack carries a minimum 5-year federal prison sentence, while for powder cocaine, distribution of 500 grams – 100 times the amount of crack cocaine – carries the same sentence.”

The law, in practice, is racist and does incredible damage to the Black community. From the ACLU report (emphasis added):

The racial disparity in the application of mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine is particularly disturbing. African Americans comprise the vast majority of those convicted of crack cocaine offenses, while the majority of those convicted for powder cocaine offenses are white. This is true, despite the fact that whites and Hispanics form the majority of crack users. For example, in 2003, whites constituted 7.8% and African Americans constituted more than 80% of the defendants sentenced under the harsh federal crack cocaine laws, despite the fact that more than 66% of crack cocaine users in the United States are white or Hispanic. Due in large part to the sentencing disparity based on the form of the drug, African Americans serve substantially more time in prison for drug offenses than do whites. The average sentence for a crack cocaine offense in 2003, which was 123 months, was 3.5 years longer than the average sentence of 81 months for an offense involving the powder form of the drug. Also due in large part to mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, from 1994 to 2003, the difference between the average time African American offenders served in prison increased by 77%, compared to an increase of 28% for white drug offenders. African Americans now serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense at 58.7 months, as whites do for a violent offense at 61.7 months. The fact that African American defendants received the mandatory sentences more often than white defendants who were eligible for a mandatory minimum sentence, further supports the racially discriminatory impact of mandatory minimum penalties.

Mandatory minimums limits a judge’s discretion to make allowances for mitigating circumstances. This has particularly nasty consequences for people who are financially dependant on crack dealers, or who suffer from domestic violence - which means, most of the time, women getting screwed over. From the ACLU report:

Mandatory sentencing laws prohibit judges from considering the many reasons women are involved in or remain silent about a partner or family member’s drug activity such as domestic violence and financial dependency. Sentencing policies, particularly the mandatory minimum for low-level crack offenses, subject women who are low-level participants to the same or harsher sentences as the major dealers in a drug organization.

The primary difference between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, as far as engagement with our legal system goes, is that most people convicted for possession of crack are Black, whereas most people convicted for possession of powder cocaine are white. That is systematic racism at work, throwing Blacks in prison and ripping apart Black families. It says something horrible about our society that we find this state of affairs acceptable.

You could argue that this sentencing mismatch wasn’t intended to be racial when it was first passed - but the racial effects of these laws have been known for well over a decade. Despite knowing that the effect of the sentencing guidelines to put Blacks into prison for years more than whites, for the same or often lesser crimes, Congress has three times refused to reform the law. (Protecting the 100/1 ratio is the only time Congress has ever refused to follow the unanimous recommendation of the committee that advices Congress on sentencing).

I believe the difference in sentencing to be important because it belies the latent racism that I believe has been built into the system as a way to control minorities while still allowing politicians to pay lip service to equality and hope. I believe today's racism to be more subtle than you recognize. Most racism has been institutionalized, IMO. One of the government's favorite ways to institutionalize racism, historically, is through drug laws.

Chinese immigrants in CA who smoked opium while they built the railroads took jobs from good white men, so smoking opium was outlawed while the liquid form of opium remained legal for years more. Jazz musicians in LA and Mexican immigrants in the southwest were exploited racially when marijuana was first outlawed.

My point is that our government has proven time and again that it has no qualms using the smokescreen of health/safety/welfare to motivate people to put minorities in jail or deport dangerous immigrants. It's always been accomplished through ridiculous propaganda campaigns, but somehow the American public refuses to question the government WE created.

I can tell you, I've witnessed the effects of coke and crack and IMO there's no difference in the harm they cause to society and their users. Both are insanely potent, induce gripping addictions in a great number of their users and break down the ties that bond the user to society. I've had several users tell me that they actually think cocaine is more addictive, but that's obviously anecdotal evidence.

So, if I believe that the 2 drugs are basically equal in their harm, and crack is punished at a higher rate and with more force, I think it becomes more clear where my belief comes from that the system is racist. Otherwise, why would crack be punished so severely? Maybe I'm wrong and there is incontrovertible evidence out there that crack is 100x worse than coke in its effects on the user and society, but I just can't imagine that's true.

As far as treatment vs. prison, I don't think it's the government's job to treat drug users or to put them in prison. Not any drug user. Unless that drug user commits a crime against property or a person, then punish them. I don't believe there's anything inherently wrong with using drugs, because that's simply not part of my morality. I don't believe I have the right to control someone else's physical being, unless they are doing damage to me or my property. I don't believe the government has the right to tell me what to put into my body because I am sovereign over my body, IMO.

The argument that drug users raise the cost of health care for everyone else is bogus as well for me, because poor people raise the cost of health care for everyone if they can't pay, but nobody talks about that. Maybe it should be a crime to be poor. Also, I don't think it's the government's job to provide health care. I think it's the job of doctors to provide health care, and if someone doesn't have the money to pay for it and they NEED treatment, then it's the responsibility of the community--not the government--to make sure they get it. This goes for everyone, not just drug users.

I think this can all be solved at the community level, but first we have to rebuild the community by removing the social crutches we've come to rely on in the last century or so since government ballooned. It would be tough going for years, maybe decades, but I truly believe we can get the gov out of our lives and handle most things within the community rather than politically.

I would like to revise my choice of issues. My number one issue is now the wardrobe choices of celebs appearing in Dunkin Donuts commercials and whether their clothing is sufficiently politically correct.

I'm a serious thinker like that.

I would like to revise my choice of issues. My number one issue is now the wardrobe choices of celebs appearing in Dunkin Donuts commercials and whether their clothing is sufficiently politically correct.

I'm a serious thinker like that.

Good for Dunkin donuts

Seriously? I didn't know you were so vehemently anti-scarf.


If you think Rachel Ray was bad, you must be up in arms over Frosty's newest venture:
[img]http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b101/ ... frosty.jpg[/img]

It's completely natural to be skeptical, fox, since we've never seen a community like that in our lifetime. The only thing we've known is "the government will take care of it". I'm simply more skeptical of a centralized power than I am of the human spirit.

Some would call me naive, but I think it's just as naive the way some trust the government to solve our problems.

^^^LOL...I was just reading about that...how friggin' dumb!

AA...I can understand why you would have more faith in the human spirit. I just think of when there are big "campaigns" for lack of a better word to raise money for worthy causes...they are often successful. Also, there are ways that community involvment can be beneficial to the giver as well. For instance think of the MDA (Jerry's kids) telethons. I used to work for MDA and we used to give community business "air time" when they did a fundraising event and raised a certain amount of money...while many businesses may not have been doing for purely "giving" reasons, it still works.

I would imagine if more thought was put into getting the community involved, it could work...maybe? I dunno...interesting point though!

Government waste is an issue that will never die, IMO. It's in the nature of bureauracracy to fight for its own survival. And even when a government program or department fails to accomplish its goal, what is the answer proposed? More money! Of course! We weren't funded properly. Businesses that fail should go bankrupt and the same rule applies to the government, IMO.

GOP senator's wife donates to Obama

Do y'all think Congress gets most of its broad power from the "general welfare" clause in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution?

I'm not exactly sure what to make of the use of that phrase, because big government folks say the clause basically gives Congress power to do almost anything. It seems to me that because that clause is followed by a list of very specific powers, those are the intended powers of Congress.

Don't overlook the Commerce Clause.

COMMERCE POWER
No enumerated power has justified more exercises of congressional power than the Article I, Section 8 power to "regulate commerce among the several states." The first major challenge to the exercise of congressional power under the Commerce Clause came in the 1824 case of Gibbons vs Ogden, when two steamship operators with exclusive licenses granted by New York to ferry passengers from New York City to Elizabethtown, New Jersey sued to block Gibbons, a new steamship operator granted a license to ferry passengers on the same route by Congress, from competing against them. Chief Justice Marshall found that the Commece Clause granted Congress ample power to issue the license to Gibbons. Commerce, wrote Marshall, is more than just the buying and selling of objects--it includes all branches of commercial intercourse between states, including navigation.

The next series of cases illustrate two divergent approaches to analyzing whether an activity is reachable under the commerce power. In U. S. vs E. C. Knight the Court concluded that the Congress lacked the power to reach a monopoly in the "manufacture" of refined sugar, but could reach a "monopoly of commerce" involving sugar. The Knight case illustrates the formal (or "categorical") approach to analyzing the reach of the commerce power. The formal approach focuses on such questions as whether the regulated activitity is "in" or "outside" the stream of commerce, whether the activity is "local" or "interstate," or whether the effects of the activity on interstate commerce are "direct" or "indirect." The contrasting empirical approach, illustrated by Houston E. & W. Ry. Co. vs U. S., looks to the magnitude of the effect that the regulated activity has on interstate commerce, without special regard to how the activity is categorized. In Houston, the Court upheld a federal agency's regulation of freight rates on travel wholly within Texas because the freight transporation within Texas was found to be substantially affecting interstate commerce.

Hammer vs Dagenhart (1918) considered the constitutionality of the Child Labor Act, which banned items produced by child labor from interstate commerce. Adopting the formal approach, the Court saw the Act as unconstitutional attempt to regulate a purely local matter, workplace conditions. The harm of child labor, the Court concluded, had nothing to do with interstate commerce and thus fell outside the reach of congressional power.

N.L.R. B. vs Jones (1937) represented an important turning point in the Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence. The year before, in a case called Carter vs Carter Coal Co., the Court had invalidated a New Deal program that attempted to regulate the wage and hour practices of coal companies on the ground that such practices were "local" and had only an "indirect" effect on interstate commerce. Enraged by the Court's decision in Carter and other cases, President Roosevelt proposed "packing the Court" with sympathetic justices by increasing its size from nine to fifteen. In N.L.R. B. vs Jones, Chief Justice Hughes and Justice Roberts side with the government in voting to uphold an N.L.R.B. action ordering the reinstatement of union organizing employees protected by federal law at a Pennsylvania steel plant--the "switch in time that saved nine." Over the objections of four dissenting justices who called the interstate effects of the regulated activity "too indirect," the Court concluded that the steel industry is an interstate web of activities stretching from the iron mines of Minnesota to the steel plants of Pennsylvania and thus the manufacturing of steel is properly reachable under the Commerce Clause.

U. S. vs Darby (1941), in unanimously overruling Hammer vs Dagenhart, demonstrated how much the Court had changed its approach to Commerce Clause in a generation. Using a "substantial effects" test, the Court upheld the Fair Labor Standards Act--an important piece of legislation that effectively set national minimum wage and maximum hour laws by prohibiting the interstate shipment of goods manufactured in violation of the federal standards.

Once having established that congressional exercises of power were valid if shown to regulate activities "substantially affecting" interstate commerce, the Court proceeded to open up more opportunities for exercise of the commerce power by holding that an activity only trivially affecting interstate commerce might nonetheless by regulated if all of the regulated activities of various individuals--taken cumulatively--had substantial interstate effects. In Wickard vs Filburn (1942), for example, the Court upheld a $117 penalty imposed on a Ohio farmer for growing wheat on 12 more acres than he was permitted to under the Agricultural Adjustment Act. The cumulative effects test also convinced the Court to uphold provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that required the 216-room Heart of Atlanta Motel to rent its rooms to persons regardless of race (Heart of Atlanta vs U. S.) and outlawed racial discrimination at small restaurants such as Ollie's Bar-B-Q in Birmingham (Katzenbach vs McClung). In 1971, legislation making loansharking a federal crime was upheld on a similar basis (Perez vs U. S.) . The Heart of Atlanta, McClung, and Perez cases led to speculation that perhaps any activity might be regulated under a loose application of the cumulative effects test.

In 1995, however, the Supreme Court--for the first time in more than half a century--invalidated a federal law on the ground that it was outside the scope of the commerce power. In U. S. vs Lopez the Court, by a 5 to 4 vote, found unconstitutional a provision of the Gun-Free School Zone Act that made it a federal crime to possess a gun (even one that never traveled across state lines) within a thousand feet of a school ground. It was unclear whether the government lost because the Congress failed to make adequate factual findings about the impact of school gun violence on interstate commerce or whether the Court was convinced that the interstate impact of possessing guns near schools had only an insignificant effect on interstate commerce. The four dissenters argued that it was sufficient for the Congress to show it had a rational basis for finding a significant effect on interstate commerce.

In U. S. vs Morrison (2000) the Court considered a suit brought by a former student of Virginia Poytechnic Institute who alleged she was raped by two university football players. The defendant players and university argued that the Violence Against Women Act, which allowed victims of gender- motivated violence to bring federal civil suits for damages, was outside of the scope of the commerce power. The Court agreed with the defendants, even though in this case Congress had made specific findings that gender-motivated violence deterred interstate travel, diminished national productivity, and increased medical costs. The Court concluded that upholding the Violence Against Women Act would open the door to a federalization of virtually all serious crime--as well as family law and other areas of traditional state regulation. The Court said that Congress must distinguish between "what is truly national and what is truly local"--and that its power under the Commerce Clause reaches only the former. In a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas went even further, urging abandonment of "the substantial effects" test.