Slashdot Mirror
DEA Program "More Troubling" Than NSA
Rambo Tribble writes "Reuters is reporting on a secret effort by the Drug Enforcement Agency to collect data from wiretaps, informants, and other sources. Considered most troubling is a systematic campaign to hide this program from the courts, denying defendants their right to know how evidence against them was obtained. This agenda targets U.S. citizens directly, as it is mainly focused on drug trafficking. From the article: 'Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.'"
A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said. After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."
Country without a consitution says what?
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Has the money made by the prohibition industry exceeded that made by drug king pins yet? This is the kind of unchecked power that the cartels would love to have.
Can we use the word police state yet?
This "recreating the investigative trail" sounds like a fancy way to describe perjury.
RTFA, it says the DEA submits requests for money for the program in budget documents and its a well known program for coordinating inter-state and international investigations
Maybe they're so keen to keep the source hidden because it's the NSA and all of their programs?
Speaking of the NSA, anyone else notice a number of stories over the past few days ( here and elsewhere ) that seem designed to throw attention anywhere but the NSA's crap?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
"That's outrageous," said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. "It strikes me as indefensible."
"You can't game the system," said former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. "You can't create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw it?"
I suspected (or knew) most of what Snodden leaked. I did not knew the DEA was lying at trials and withholding evidence from pretrial discovery. That's different from taps, which everyone knows they can do with a warrant.
nothing to see here... only criminals are affected, you are not a criminal, Citizen, are you?
If they'd legalize drugs the bottom would fall out of the market and all the drug-funded gangs and their wars would fade away. (Or look for something else illegal to sell.)
Tax dope as high as you can without creating a black market, and use the revenue for prevention and rehab programs. And use all the money that's currently going to the DEA and prison-industrial complex for something useful.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Recreating the investigative trail sounds a LOT like fabrication.
We have DEA agents who swear to "tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth" knowingly omitting an important part of the truth.
Is Hockeimer Jr implying that he's OK with gaming the system if it's a national security case?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
[not dealing with the morality or politics of this, but simply as it relates to hiding information that you use]
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon has some good examples of how anyone can conceal information they've discovered. When the Allies in WW II wanted to protect the secret that they could decrypt the German's Enigma traffic, they had to take steps beyond simply not using the information (e.g.: not telling anyone that Coventry was going to be bombed). If you want to use information, without letting anyone know for sure that you've got the information, you've got to show other possible means for having that info.
I guess they're getting a little fancier than "spy on them illegally then call in an 'anonymous' tip."
Government: We're not fucking you. We just put the tip in.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Even after this exposure, there will be a solid core of epically stupid citizens that will be fine with this; sheep that mindlessly graze on network TV and football whilst repeating the mantra 'If you've done nothing wrong...'
It's a good thing we have Obama in the white house, because this sort of thing would NEVER happen with a Democrat in power /sarcasm
(1) plant drugs on enemy (2) use parallel construction to bust him (3) trail back to you is practically erased
And the banks own the capitol. Check-out HSBC deferred prosecution.
Like we didn't already know this was going on...
Sure we did.
But we now know that the DEA probably gets its info from the NSA, and hands it down further to your local sheriff.
Worst case, is the sheriff gets cornered on the witness stand and fesses up that the defendant's name came up in
a DEA investigation.
That leaves a dead end, because nobody is going to get very far demanding discovery against the DEA, and no one will be any the wiser about the fact that your name came up from an email harvest by the NSA.
In other words, if you think you are only two layers deep (DEA--->Sheriff) you have to be kidding yourself.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Smell that? It isn't reefer. That's American Justice.
Oh that sweet pungent smell of gunpowder and American Justice. How I miss you. NOT.
Is Hockeimer Jr implying that he's OK with gaming the system if it's a national security case?
We might overlook that transgression, but claiming he didn't know this was going on on a massive scale suggests utter incompetence or willful ignorance.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'm sure, all of the quoted gentlemen were Shocked. Shocked to discover "parallel reconstruction" was used here.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's called plausable deniability. As long as you don't have proof, you can claim you didn't know.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
But we now know that the DEA probably gets its info from the NSA, and hands it down further to your local sheriff.
Not probably; definitely. From TFA:
The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
What people don't seem to understand is that police lie. ALL. THE. TIME. They lie selfishly, indiscriminately and callously. They lie overly and omittingly. They lie to suspects, witnesses, passers-by, judges, and juries. They lie in public and under oath. They lie to deceive, coerce and intimidate.
And they get away with it. ALL. THE. TIME.
Go watch the ubiquitous Don't Talk to the Police video. I know you've already watched it. Watch it again. Especially the part where the police officer explicitly states that he and all police officers are "professional liars."
I admit, IANAL, but doesn't this give grounds for any convicted drug felon to try for a retroactive mistrial?
They'll just leverage the interstate commerce clause as they did to justify the individual health care mandate.
As the parent writes, we have many government employees who regularly perjure themselves. This ranges from cops and FBI agents all the way to agency heads testifying in front of Congress.
Of course, we will never see a government employee prosecuted for perjury. The common citizen, on the other hand, is presumed to be lying if their testimony contradicts what the government says - and will be prosecuted accordingly. The classic are the FBI interviews, where the only allowed record are the FBI agent's notes. What you actually said is irrelevant: it's what's in the notes that counts, and no you may not make any other record of the conversation.
You can no longer trust the US government. Real unemployment at 23% and rising. Hopelessly corrupt two-party system. Hopelessly corrupt Congress. No realistic hope for change. Sorry, it's time to bail: there are other countries with better governments - take your pick based on your ideology. I left and handed in my passport, and I expect many, many more will do the same in the coming years.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
then it's up to the jury to rule the constitutional way
The jury has no idea that anything unconstitutional has happened. Not even the defendent, prosecutor, nor the judge are told that law enforcement was given a tip by the SOD. It's a complete coverup.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Your husband is arrested, but at the trial it is revealed that there were cameras in your house which reveals that not only were you cheating on your husband multiple times with multiple men, but one of those other men also beat you up, and that your husband is innocent.
It's perfectly legal to put cameras in your own home. They have, for example, been used to catch nannies who were abusing the children, and the courts have ruled that those cameras are perfectly legal and admissible evidence.
What if there were cameras pointed at Zimmerman when he attacked and murdered Trayvon in cold blood.
Then that could have been used as evidence. I'm not even opposed to things like cameras in convenience stores, whose video can be used to find and prosecute criminals. All I object to is large networks of cameras, which can be used (especially with emerging software technologies) to track anybody and everybody. Having a non-networked camera in the local 7-11 is fine. If a crime is committed then yank the video and use it.
I have proof of the gov't trying to get me charged with extortion. Now I have proof from the headers to show my case.
Quit believing them, because you're gonna get fucked by them. You need to fight them back and my own case is a matter of supposed 'national security'
Thankfully I don't follow half of their unconstitutional instructions.
You trust the gov't, you're next in line to fall.
Get your logic circuits set right, slashdotters.
Want to see my proof? I'll hand it out, even thought the gov't says not to because it endangers national security.
So do you want it? It's embarassingly simple shit to - just a forged email header.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Lets look at law enforcement from a money-making standpoint. In order for law enforcement to make money, there has to be work to be done. Officers, prosecutors, investigators, DNA lab workers, prison guards, judges, the people doing the wiretapping, new-prison construction workers, and everyone involved makes pay from the part they make in the system. Without "bad guys" to bust, there is no need for what they do, and that leads to nobody making a paycheck. These are people who have families of their own who need to be clothed and fed and taken care of, all of which requires money. So if it comes down to respecting an individual's rights versus maintaining own their ability to continue to put food on the table, they're gonna do everything they can get away with doing and more. Whatever it takes to make sure that paycheck keeps coming in. So to create artificial demand, everybody is now a major criminal. Everybody is a major threat to the nation, everybody gets wiretaps, everybody is major league, and everybody gets maximum sentencing. All criminals, great and small, are biw effectively the "fuel" that is consumed so that their services remain in demand. And the popular attitude among law enforcement is that these people deserve to have their lives ruined anyhow, so its no big deal really; they're boosting their paychecks and bettering society both at the same time. High fives all around.
You do realize he's being satirical, no?
I figured the second paragraph was a dead giveaway.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The U.S. government is EXTREMELY CORRUPT. This is no time for joking.
In some ways the U.S. government is the most violent that has ever existed. The U.S. government has invaded more countries than any other country in the history of the world. The U.S. government has more than 760 military bases worldwide. Taxpayers pay, but aren't allowed to know where there money goes.
Read the story about the US government's purchases of over one billion rounds of anti-personnel ammunition. Quote: "The ammunition is to be use domestically, not by the military."
Do you think it won't get worse?
Maybe next President.
They'll just leverage the interstate commerce clause as they did to justify the individual health care mandate.
That was the original argument, but it failed. It's currently justified as a tax.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
What I find most troubling from the article is this:
"You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.
(Bold emphasis mine.) The casual way that a law enforcement agent advocated violating laws relating to probable cause is astonishing. Subconciously I know that they do this but to actually come out in print and admit it is really sad.
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
Is that Merkins nowadays don't think that all humans are created equal. There's Merkinland and then there's the cesspool of corruption that's the rest of us.
Rather like the Ayatollahs of Iran where they belive too that they are the only place where REAL humans live.
Therefore a spy program that may be targeting more of those Other Nonhumans (i.e. non Merkins) is not as troubling as one that targets mostly them.
Unjustified personal attacks on the American people aside, you've got it all wrong - our Constitution doesn't govern nor protect other sovereign nations. So, according to our system of governance, there's nothing wrong with spying on foreign nationals in foreign lands, whereas it's very, very much wrong to do the same to the American people.
If you would rather be under the protection of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, your nation and her people are welcome to come together and petition for statehood... not that I would necessarily recommend it nor do I think it would do you any good, given the current situation.
We now return you to your regularly-scheduled anti-American rant.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Your average jury member is shockingly ignorant of the law or constitution, anyone who does evidence knowledge is drummed out of the jury pool, the possibility of jury nullification is kept strictly out of permitted court conversation, and some prosecutors have tried to bring intimidatory criminal cases against people who even tried speaking on the issue in the street to passerby.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Good.
Maybe now you'll be as upset as we foreigners are about the NSA surveilling us.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"Now were every bit as bad."
Sorry, gomer, but the Commies killed hundreds of millions of their own citizens.
While things are certainly "bad", stupid comparisons to Stalin and Mao and their lesser friends are deeply fucktarded and so easily seen through that the effect of making them is the reverse of their intent.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
You mean there STILL is. This isn't new.
The jury thinks the police arrested someone at random, so any possibility of setup is impossible. A bad actor could plant the drugs but could not arrange for the police random stop to catch the person. Thus this eliminates that branch of thinking.
It's not just 'fruits of the poison tree' here, its 'conspiracy to pervert the course of justice', 'falsification of evidence'. It means the jury cannot weigh up the possibility of drugs planted on the victim.
This is a crime, its a real crime they've been party to.
I wonder how many people they've planted drugs on and arranged one of these fake random stops to find the evidence they just planted.
Police and private citizens have different rules. So if the police break in your house, without a warrant, and find evidence of a crime, well sorry that evidence, and anything resulting from it, can't be used. They didn't follow the law. Likewise if the police pay (or force, or ask, or whatever) someone to break in to your house and that person finds evidence of a crime, it again can't be used. While the person wasn't a cop, he acted as their agent.
However, if someone breaks in to their house all on their own and finds evidence of a crime and turns it over to the police, that they can use. The person still broke the law and can and should go to jail for breaking in to your house, but because they were acting of their own accord, it doesn't taint the evidence for use in a case against you.
It isn't particularly surprising, though. They've built a huge surveillance system to keep close tabs on what people are doing. You'd be utterly naïve to believe that such a system could exist and not get massively abused on a near-daily basis. I mean, maybe for the first week, but....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Exposing this sort of behavior to the general public will help immensely in trials: Jurors will be less likely to take law enforcement officials' word seriously when given as evidence. Now, they'll be just as big a bunch of lying sacks of shit as the drug dealers they are trying to bust.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ironclad rule: Jury decides the facts of the case, judge decides the law of the case.
Anything that disturbs that is strictly forbidden.
This is by design. Even if you're of the opinion that it's broken. It's broken by design.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The fact that ANY of these "letter agencies" are doing it in the first place is more than "troubling".
After that, it's just a matter of death by degrees.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Skipping over the ridiculousness of victimless drug related crime.
It should be clear to some that there are so many more 'political prisoners' in our jails then any others.
It's time to release all non-violent offenders, and start a large scale removal of judges, prosecutors, etc. Once a decent legal system overhaul is in place, retrials will be required for violent offenders at the least, most likely a good percentage may be released on review of details and interviews.
Time to start thinking of what we are going to do with all these new people back into society.. Parallel this with solar installation and related training, complete with a serious rebuilding our manufacturing cities with a focus on businesses related to improving the state of human existence and justice.
Do I have a witness!
It's interesting that the constitution has become a puzzle piece that the judicial branch try's to find the most logical argument around the literal meaning of what was intended ignoring the intent of what the constitution says. If this is not stopped I think there will be a time when what the literal meaning of the constitution will become irrelevant with the judicial branch able to give an argument justifying any and all actions.
Drug prohibition itself violates the 9th and 10th amendments.
Once could easily make the same argument for eating BBQ human corpses or building a house out of ivory tusks...
Prior to ACA, it was Gonzales v. Raich and Raich lost on commerce clause grounds.
Wrong point of view imo: what if 50,000 innocent civilians or small offenders are trialed and jailed based on incomplete or by DEA made up evidence? And generally speaking if there is no justice to a criminal there will be no justice for the innocent.
The US government hasn't had proper statistics or data collection forever. We the people haven't done our jobs as we've allows self-serving politicians distort the data and stats we use to judge them. Canada based their unemployment using taxes - the best source possible. We've never done it correctly and continually tweaked it to raise the stats.
You can't get real unemployment numbers without IRS data. Even then the number is overly simplistic. Underemployment hardly gets mentioned - if we need a single number it should combine both... But then underemployment isn't fairly calculated either; along with minimum wage and many other things.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Prior to ACA, it was Gonzales v. Raich and Raich lost on commerce clause grounds.
Yes, I get that outrageously off-topic federal laws are often justified under the Commerce Clause, but the OP specifically mentioned the individual health care mandate, which failed on Commerce Clause grounds. NFIB v. Sebelius actually put some serious limits on the use of Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause (finally).
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Guys, if you're not dealing drugs, you have nothing to worry about.
Neither of which should be (are?) federal crimes. The 9th and 10th amendments leave it up to the states to make laws against stuff like that. For instance, murder is almost exclusively prosecuted by the states, not the federal government.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
If you read the article, they're pressing the NSA to let them rifle through the NSA database and avail themselves of NSA technical resources. They're using reasoning like "this drug money could be supporting terrorists ! " Well, just anything could be supporting terrorists; terrorists get their cash from legit enterprises (bin Laden) and unwitting customers to other legal enterprises (Hawala etc. ) .
The problem is, the wider the access to that kind of deeply personal information, the greater the likelihood it will be abused.
Take for example the jaw-dropping abuse present within the asset forfeiture programme- reader alert- if you're inclined to high blood pressure when totally and finally morally outraged , you actually may not want to follow this link:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_stillman
Americans WILL turn on the love affair they have with law enforcement if law enforcement oversteps its bounds. If I were a seasoned DEA vet heading a department, I'd run like hell away from my agents being able to access NSA style information about common Americans. My reasoning would be, given the potential applications of this information and my lack of real detailed control over the individual actions by each member of army of people under my charge, it's going to blow up in my our face and the backlash will be crippling.
Have we not learned that even heavily vetted people can't be trusted ? Think of the applications readily available information about your searches could yield.
Realistic example: Harkening back to the article I linked to, what if citizens' became so angry, some of them formed a nascent movement to repeal civil forfeiture laws. From the POV of some law enforcement, that is literally am mortal threat to their existence. People who mortally threaten my police department with financial extinction , whether they mean to be or not, are a threat to public safety. Therefore, I am interested to know exactly who those citizens are. I will then instruct my officers to pretext them (think up a false excuse to pull them over) when they're driving and take things from there.Perhaps they'll make it easy on us and prove to have an attitude. Perhaps their internet activity can be construed to be suspicious. Perhaps I know their employer...
Someone (can't remember who) has pointed out that anonymity begets respect between people who are otherwise strangers because you instinctively aren't sure what sort of resources or connections the stranger has available to them. If that is removed because of unilateral, intimate and omniscient knowledge, then all respect and constraint is lost and people are effectively deprived of their humanity. They become objects instead of equals, observed, known, measured, their foibles exposed for the observers amusement, ridicule and ultimately unbridled contempt. See- NSA analysts passing around audio recordings of overseas military personnel having phone sex with their spouses:
http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/trevor-paglen-turnkey-tyranny-surveillance-and-the-terror-state/
This is where this goes. This is a psychological fact about humans. This kind of invasion, like the abuse of civil forfeiture laws, has the power, that is it carries sufficient emotional charge, to tear this nation apart. The government can't kid themselves that this is just a technical issue looking for a technical solution, or that the most abusive and corrosive applications of this kind of power won't materialize and be fully realized.
No WMD is soon going threaten Western civilization unless it also unleashes a real widespread loss of faith government and government's motivations. Unleashing NSA -style surveillance on the average citizen is the fast track, the force multiplier to any WMD attack that al Queda wants.
One day, it may c
No, we dont want to let them go. But it's the least bad option.
A little history, when our country first started, there were no rules about excluding evidence. Illegally obtained evidence should be evidence in two cases - the case against the person that committed the original crime, and a case against the state agent that broke the law to obtain it as well.
Trouble is, the state agents never get prosecuted. Imagine that? The other state agents wont investigate them, wont charge them, wont take it to court. This threatened to make the fourth amendment simply a pleasant fiction, a dead letter, unenforceable.
So the courts thought and thought and the only way they could come up with to enforce the fourth amendment was to exclude evidence. A judge cannot convict a state agent for violating your rights without someone else willing to investigate, charge, and prosecute him. But a judge CAN throw out the evidence that was obtained illegally, and thus attempt to remove the motivation to commit this crime in the first place.
It's a horribly imperfect solution but no one yet has found a better one.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Bullshit! Power is the purpose, money is an extension of power. Information / knowledge is also power, and you have no idea who's pulling the strings do you? There are numerous types of power, all denied to "The People" and used to control them. It's absurd to believe that it's only for the "money". At no point in history was that ever true, and there is no magic that would make it true now.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
No, not by original design. "It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision... you [jury members] have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy." -- John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_v._Brailsford_%281794%29
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Arresting them, forcing them to sign over their assets to be released. Cavity searching women on the streets in front of everyone.
The spying. The seizures. The threats of a 1000 yrs in prison if you dont plead guilty.
The mere idea that drugs are a problem is ludicrous compared to our society dissolving in front of us.
However the conversation was about drugs and this thread is what grounds the federal government claims authority to regulate them. I pointed to an actual case that demonstrates their position.
I always thought SOD stood for 'Stormtroopers of Death'. An old metal band I used to go see live a lot.
But I guess it would fit these guys as well :)
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/how-police-all-over-the-us-steal-cash-cars-even-homes-from-the-innocent.html
Read down to about the middle of the article. Texas confiscatory laws mean that even if you weren't charged with a crime, the authorities can confiscate your property and use it to pay their own salary and bonuses.
When I was a kid, we used to refer to such people as "The Mafia." Now, drug laws have evolved to the point where we refer to those people as "The Police." Mexico has nothing on Texas when it comes to policing as an entrepreneurial activity.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I'm pretty sure in other countries they allow the evidence, but (are supposed to) prosecute the officer who broke the law. I don't recall though exactly how it works - our "fruit of the poisonous tree" idea means anything gathered afterwords gets thrown out, it is possible some countries just allow this additional evidence.
If I trusted our justice system to prosecute law enforcement for breaking the law, I would favor admitting some/all of the evidence, as it is hard to see a guilty criminal walk free due to an incompetant investigator, but so long as law enforcement tends to be above the law I like our "throw it all out" method more.
My webcomic
I think it's just the least evil option, practically.
Sucks to let people go because of investigative malfeasance (as long as they committed a real crime at least.) But sucks even more to become a police state where people are subject to search without probable cause.
And getting the police to police themselves seems to be just as difficult in practice as it is in impossible in theory. The instinct to form a gang and protect it seems to be built into humans. Cops will form a 'blue wall' around bad cops, prosecutors need the police too much to antagonize them. A separate, independent police force can act as a check on a corrupted force, but who checks the second force? It becomes an infinite regress until we are all either behind bars or wearing a uniform, and there is no one left to grow food.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Yeah, I'd have to agree. All things lead to power.
However, I've always secretly felt that pride was the reason for obtaining power, but that's just my take.
Had one mod point left and wanted to spend it on this article but deciding to respond to your question instead - YES they should be let go, not only because of the unconstitutional legal tactics of the DEA, but because drug prohibition itself is the true miscarriage of justice here! Deaths and social harm? I think you're a bit confused if you think anything other than prohibition is responsible for most of that.