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Stop the Drug War (DRCNet) - Corruption

Latin America: Mexicans Bummed Out By Prohibition-Related Violence -- 44% Say...

As Mexican President Felipe Calderón's war on drug trafficking organizations nears the two-year mark and the violence shows no sign of letting up, a new BBC World Service poll shows that Mexicans are increasingly concerned and preoccupied by the toll the drug trade and the drug war is having on their daily lives. Nearly 6,000 people, including hundreds of police officers and soldiers, have been killed since Calderón enlisted the military in the drug war in 2006, and the numbers are higher this year than last.

Mexican anti-drug patrol Given the upsurge in violence in what is only the latest chapter of the quarter-century struggle against drug trafficking organizations enriched by the flow of Colombian cocaine beginning in the early 1980s -- an unintended consequence of the Reagan administration's crackdown on Caribbean drug trafficking routes -- a healthy number of Mexicans now say they favor legalizing drugs. Some 44% said legalize them, while 46% said no.

But in a sign that wishful thinking about drug policy is not limited to north of the border, 58% said they thought the war on drugs could be won. An even higher number -- 68% -- approved of Calderón's use of the military to fight drug traffickers. Still, 80% said the government should consider alternative policies.

Support for the drug war is driven by fear and public safety concerns. Nearly half (42%) of poll respondents said they felt less safe than last year, while only 10% said they felt safer. More than one-third (37%) of respondents said the influence of the drug cartels had made them think about emigrating. Drug trafficking ranked above worries about the economy, general crime, education and social inequality, with 20% of respondents listing it as their main concern. Only concern about corruption, listed by 28% as their primary worry, came in higher, and corruption and the black market drug trade are inextricably intertwined.

With some 3,000 drug war deaths reported so far this year, or an average of more than 300 a month, the prohibition-related violence in Mexico is reaching levels generally associated with war zones. By way of comparison, Iraq Body Count, a nonprofit organization monitoring violence in Iraq, put the civilian death toll there in July at 460. Human Rights Watch put the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan during the first eight months of this year at 540.

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Brazilian police are responsible for a large number of the 48,000 murders committed in that country each year, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions said in a report issued late last month. Not only do police routinely resort to deadly violence in the course of their work, they also moonlight as death squad killers for a variety of entities, including drug gangs, said Special Rapporteur Philip Alston.

"In Rio de Janeiro, the police kill three people every day," Alston reported. "They are responsible for one out of five killings," he added in a Monday press statement.

Alston's report came after a fact-finding trip to Brazil last year. While there, Alston met with government officials, including police commanders and senior ministers, as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and over 40 witnesses to human rights abuses.

Brazil's murder rate is among the world's highest, and police vigilantism has played a role for years. Police regularly engage in massive sweeps of poor slum neighborhoods, where drug gangs -- the notorious "commandos" -- often have strong influence or even outright control. Alston was particularly critical of the sweeps, or "mega-operations," which have grown increasingly frequent in Rio de Janeiro.

The report examined one such sweep, a June 2007 operation in Complexo do Alemăo. In that sweep, more than 1,450 police attacked the slum, killing 19 people, with independent experts concluding that many of the dead had been executed. But for all the violence, police seized only two machine guns, six pistols, one sub-machine gun, and 300 kilos of drugs.

"Local officials claim that these impressive sounding mega-operations are protecting residents from drug gangs, but the operations have hurt ordinary people far more than they have hurt the drug gangs," Alston said.

The report said there has been little or no outcry over police violence in Brazil because people are skeptical that traditional law enforcement measures are working against the drug gangs. But police death squads have also been implicated in the killings of criminal suspects, the homeless, and even street children, with little outcry.

Police criminality in Brazil extends beyond the job, said Alson. "A remarkable number of police lead double lives. While on duty, they fight the drug gangs, but on their days off, they work as foot soldiers of organized crime," he said. "Clearly, the institutions for holding police accountable are broke, but they are not beyond repair. My hope is that the detailed recommendations in my report will provide a starting point for undertaking the necessary reforms."

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Terrorism blogger Douglas Farah doesn?t understand why South American nations aren?t more excited about cooperating with the U.S. war on drugs:
So, after 30 years, on a political level there is no consensus that combatting drug trafficking is in the interest of most nations. Given the level of corruption, violence and social disintegration the criminal activities inevitably bring, such a conclusion by national leaders (backed, it seems, by the large majority of the population) is not easily understood.

Really? I know a lot of people have trouble with this, but it?s not that complicated. Widespread "corruption, violence and social disintegration" are caused by the war on drugs. Nothing could be more obvious to those living on the front lines of the drug war battlefield. There was no problem until we showed up. They probably assume there will be no problem once we leave. I don?t blame them.

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The tense relations between the Bush administration and Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez grew even more strained this week as Washington and Caracas traded charges and counter-charges over Venezuela's fight against cocaine trafficking. While it seems indisputable that cocaine trafficking through Venezuela has increased in recent years, the two governments are trading barbs over the extent of official Venezuelan complicity in the trade, whether Venezuela is doing enough to combat trafficking, and whether it needs to comply with US demands in order to effectively fight the drug trade.

Venezuela (from the CIA World Factbook) Venezuela does not grow coca or process cocaine, but like other countries in Latin America, it has been used as a conduit, especially by traffickers from neighboring Colombia, the region's largest coca and cocaine producer. The rise of the European cocaine market in recent years has undoubtedly made the country an attractive way station for cocaine headed east.

"The flow of cocaine through Venezuela -- both north particularly through the Dominican Republic and Haiti but also into Europe through Africa and other places -- has increased dramatically," US drug czar John Walters told the Associated Press in a recent interview. He said smuggling through Venezuela had quadrupled since 2004, to about 250 metric tons last year, or about one-quarter of total regional (and thus global) cocaine production.

The remarks come as the US is pressing Venezuela to renew cooperation with it on drug trafficking, and are probably laying the groundwork for a looming decertification of Venezuela's compliance with US drug war goals. Relations between the US DEA and the Venezuelan government have been almost nonexistent since Chávez expelled the DEA in 2005, charging that it was spying on his country. Only two DEA agents are currently stationed in Venezuela, and their activities are very circumscribed.

But Venezuela last weekend brusquely rejected renewed calls from Washington to accept a visit from Walters and resume cooperation on the drug front, saying it had made progress by itself and working with other countries. "The anti-drug fight in Venezuela has shown significant progress during recent years, especially since the government ended official cooperation programs with the DEA," Venezuela's foreign ministry said in a statement. Renewing talks on drugs would be "useless and inopportune," the statement said.

Walters had tried to "impose his visit as an obligation," the foreign ministry complained. "The government considers this kind of visit useless and ill-timed and feels that this official would better use his time to control the flourishing drug trafficking and abuse in his own country," the statement said. "Venezuela has become today a country free of drug farms, neither producing nor processing illicit drugs, and which has smashed records one year after another for seizing substances from neighboring countries," it added.
That statement came one day after US Ambassador to Venezuela Patrick Duddy ruffled feathers in Caracas by saying that Venezuela's failure to cooperate with the US was leaving an opening for traffickers. "The drug traffickers are taking advantage of the gap that exists between the two governments," Duddy told reporters, citing the estimated fourfold rise in trafficking.

President Chávez responded to those remarks Sunday by calling them "stupid" and warning that Duddy would soon be "packing his bags" if he is not careful. Chávez also suggested that the US concentrate on its own drug use and marijuana production.

On Monday, Venezuelan Vice-President Ramón Carrizales echoed his chief, telling reporters in Caracas that Venezuela was cooperating internationally, just not on US terms. "The DEA asks for freedom to fly over our territory indiscriminately," Carrizales said. "Well, they aren't going to have that freedom. We are a sovereign country."

Venezuela has seized tons of cocaine in recent years and has some 4,000 people behind bars on trafficking charges, he added. Most US-bound cocaine moves north by sea, he said, largely along Colombia's Pacific Coast.

But the Bush administration wasn't backing down. On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormick said: "Our officials, including Ambassador Duddy, are going to continue to speak out on the state of US-Venezuelan relations... (and) what we see happening inside Venezuela. That does not foreclose the possibility of a better relationship... and certainly we're prepared to have a better relationship," he added, saying Washington first needed to see some unspecified actions by the Venezuelan government.

Good luck with that, said a trio of analysts consulted by the Chronicle. "There is little chance of increased cooperation," said Ian Vasquez, director of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, who cited corruption within the Venezuelan government.

Prospects for a rapprochement on drug policy are low, said Adam Isaacson of the Washington-based Center for International Policy. "There is so much distrust between the two governments," he said. "Chávez's threat scenario is a US invasion, and a US military, security, or even police presence would be seen as probing for weaknesses. On the other hand, the US thinks Venezuela is on a campaign to bring Iran and Russia into the region, and Walters is an ideologue who thinks Venezuela is doing this to destabilize the region, you know, the idea of a leftist leader making common cause with drug traffickers. There is no trust, and there's not going to be any trust. The drug war stuff is really only one aspect of that larger context," he said.

"The Venezuelans have repeatedly stated they want to cooperate with the US on drugs, but Chávez deeply distrusts the US government," said Larry Birns, head of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. "He has had a terrible time with activist US ambassadors and he feels they have intervened repeatedly in Venezuela's sovereign affairs, but this could be a propitious moment. The Bush administration will get nowhere with any new anti-Chávez initiatives, so they just might be interested in taking some steps toward normalizing relations with Venezuela simply to show that the US is capable of using diplomacy."

Still, said Birns, don't look for any dramatic breakthroughs. "There won't be any effective agreement on drug trafficking unless it's part of a larger mix of confidence-building measures," he said. "Hugo Chávez has a confrontational, combative personality, but he's relatively clean when it comes to human rights violations or other derelictions, and that's very frustrating for Washington. There will not be any comprehensive agreement on this issue, just some de facto improvements on a graduated basis because the necessary confidence between the two governments just doesn't exist."

All three agreed that cocaine trafficking through Venezuela is increasing, but none thought it was a matter of official policy. "It's true there is now a lot of cocaine going through Venezuela," said Isaacson. "While I don't think that Chávez is actively trying to turn the country into a narco playground, I haven't seen any major effort to root out drug-related corruption. Chávez also has problems controlling his national territory; there are security and public security problems, common crime is a serious problem, and organized crime is growing."

"Venezuela has an income of $100 billion a year from oil revenues, why would they be interested in drug revenues?" Birns asked. "I'm sure there are some rogue elements in the government, but this is not a matter of state policy," he said. "You can't deny there is drug trafficking in Venezuela, but I can't imagine that Chávez has anything to do with or gain from it. After all, he's giving away hundreds of millions of dollars a year around the world, including the US, in oil and heating oil, so this just doesn't seem like an income opportunity he would be interested in."

The war on drugs is just a waste of time and resources, said Vasquez. "Asking countries to enforce US drug prohibition is asking them to do the impossible," said Vasquez. "It hasn't succeeded in Colombia, Mexico, or anywhere in the Andes. You see some ephemeral victories -- you might kill a drug lord or shut down a cartel, but this is a multi-billion dollar multinational industry that can easily adapt to whatever is thrown at it."

Asking for more enforcement is only asking for trouble, said Vasquez. "The more prohibition, the more law enforcement, the more violent it becomes," he said. "There is no light at the end of the tunnel. To the extent that the drug war is more aggressively pursued, we can expect more violence and corruption."

Still, there are things Venezuela could do to ease tensions, said Isaacson. "Venezuela could be more cooperative in monitoring its airspace, sharing radar information, even allowing occasional US verification flights like the other Latin American countries do," he said. "And as Fidel Castro has done, they need to take a hard line against drug corruption in the state -- it can eat a state from the inside out."

But if Chávez can be accused of playing politics with the drug issue, so can the US, said Isaacson. "US anti-drug goals look even more politicized. I'm sure Venezuela will be decertified, and people will fairly say they're singling out Venezuela because they're leftists and say bad things about the US. Meanwhile, Colombia, with the world's largest coca crop, and Mexico, which has a huge drug trafficking industry, will get a pass because they're pro-US."

"The US certification process on drugs is very tarnished," agreed Birns. "All of these annual mandates from Congress on drugs and terrorism and the like have been carried out in an archly political manner. The US minimizes the sins of its friends and maximizes those of its enemies."

Washington's problems with Venezuela are just part of an overall decline in US influence in the region, said Birns. "With countries like Peru having high growth rates because of the increased valuation of natural resources across the board and new resource discoveries, with Brazil on the verge of becoming a superpower, with various new organizations of which the US is not a part, like the Rio Group and the South American security zone, our leverage over Latin America is waning. The only way to achieve real results on any of these issues is earnest negotiation where real concessions are made."

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In December 2006, newly elected Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced a bold escalation in that country's decades-long struggle with wealthy, powerful, and violent drug trafficking organizations, calling in the army to join the struggle. Now, nearly 30,000 troops have joined thousands of state, federal, and local police in the fight, but the death toll continues to escalate, and Mexicans are getting fed up.

Felipe Calderón (agenciabrasil.gov.br) Last weekend, after yet another brutal month of prohibition-related violence, including the decapitation of 12 people in the Yucatán and the raking of a Chihuahua dance hall with gunfire that left 13 dead, including an infant, Mexicans took to the streets by the tens of thousands in cities across the land to say "Enough already!" They were protesting not only the violent drug trafficking wars, but also the more common crime -- robbery and kidnapping--that has become increasingly commonplace.

Most crimes go unsolved, and police corruption is endemic. While prohibition-related violence is often disturbingly brutal and sensational, it is only part of a larger wave of criminality plaguing the country. Marchers in Mexico City, for instance, were stirred by the August kidnapping and murder of a businessman's son by a group that included a police officer.

In Mexico City, tens of thousands of marchers filled the Zócalo, demanding action. "Security," they chanted. "If you can't do it, resign!"

"We can no longer live, we can't be safe anywhere," Enrique Contreras, 42, salesman and the victim of numerous robberies, told the Associated Press. "I hope those in government do their jobs. Otherwise, they should resign."

Calderón is attempting to respond to rising public disaffection with his crime and security policies. He met Sunday with protest leaders, pledging to set up citizen panels to monitor government progress, arm police with better weapons, and recruit better officers. But if he is not successful in reducing the violence, his war on the drug trafficking organizations could backfire on him.

"Calderón, who was on shaky ground after the closeness of the 2006 election, increased his public opinion approval by militarizing the fight against drug-trafficking violence in Mexico," Bruce Bagley, a Latin America expert at the University of Miami, told the Christian Science Monitor. "Many people were won over to him... I think Calderón has begun to lose the confidence of the Mexican people."

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With the West's occupation of Afghanistan now nearing the seven-year mark and plagued by an increasingly powerful and deadly insurgency revitalized by massive profits from the opium trade, Western officials gained some small solace this week when the United Nations announced that opium production there had declined slightly from last year's record level. But the small decline comes as the Taliban and related insurgents are strengthening their grip on precisely those areas where opium cultivation is highest, and the light at the end of the tunnel is, at best, only a distant glimmer.

2008 Afghan opium cultivation chart from the UN report According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008, released Tuesday, total Afghan opium production this year will be 7,500 metric tons, down 6% from last year's all-time record of 8,200 tons. Also, according to the survey, the amount of land devoted to opium production declined 19%. The UN said the total crop had decreased by a smaller number than the amount of land because farmers in key opium-producing provinces were producing bumper crops.

The UN attributed the decline in production to drought conditions and the efforts of a small number of Afghan governors and tribal and religious leaders to persuade farmers to give up the illicit crop. It also crowed that the number of opium-free provinces in the country had risen from 13 to 18, although it failed to mention that farmers in those provinces had, in many cases, merely switched from growing poppies to growing cannabis.

This year, almost all opium cultivation -- about 98% -- is now concentrated in seven provinces in south-west Afghanistan that house permanent Taliban settlements and are home to related trafficking groups that pay taxes to various Taliban factions on their opium transactions. The Taliban is making between $200 and $400 million a year off taxing poppy farmers and traders, Costa said earlier this year. In the report, Costa referred to Helmand province, one of the most Taliban-dominated in the country. "The most glaring example is Helmand province, where 103,000 hectares of opium were cultivated this year -- two thirds of all opium in Afghanistan," Costa wrote. "If Helmand were a country, it would once again be the world's biggest producer of illicit drugs."

The UN said that manual eradication played almost no role in the decline, affecting only about 3% of the crop. What manual eradication did accomplish was the deaths of some 77 anti-drug workers and police at the hands of insurgents and angry farmers. On Wednesday, Costa told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that he should abandon manual eradication as useless and even counter-productive.

While Afghan poppy production is down slightly, it still surpasses global demand for its illicit end products. And after several years of crops greater than global demand, it is likely that Afghan traders are sitting on huge stockpiles of opium, so even if production were to be slashed substantially, it would cause no significant disruption in the global markets for opium and heroin.

Still, with the war news from Afghanistan seemingly growing worse by the day, UN and Western officials were eager to jump on any good news they could find. "The opium flood waters in Afghanistan have started to recede," Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the Vienna-based UNODC, wrote in the report. "This year, the historic high-water mark of 193,000 hectares of opium cultivated in 2007 has dropped by 19 percent to 157,000 hectares."

Chronicle editor Phil Smith interviewed former opium-growing Afghan farmers outside Jalalabad in fall 2005 The Bush administration welcomed the report, saying it provided vindication for its much-criticized anti-drug policies in the country. But a State Department spokesman told the Washington Post, "the drug threat in Afghanistan remains unacceptably high. We are particularly concerned by the deterioration in security conditions in the south, where the insurgency dominates."

The US Agency for International Development (USAID), in charge of efforts to provide alternative development for farmers as part of the broader US counter-drug and counter-insurgency strategy, also looked for the silver lining in the storm clouds over Afghanistan. Its efforts are "paying off for Afghanistan in the war against poppy production," it said in a press release Tuesday.

The British foreign office also joined the chorus, with FCO Minister Lord Malloch-Brown releasing a statement welcoming the report's findings. "This shows that the Afghan government's Drug Control Strategy is starting to pay dividends," he said.

Still, Malloch-Brown warned there is a long way to go. "However, there is no room for complacency," he said. "Afghanistan is still the world's biggest supplier of heroin. High cultivation levels are concentrated in the unstable south, where we are working with the government of Afghanistan, local governors, and international partners to build security and governance."

Other, non-governmental observers were much less sanguine about what the slight decline in opium production signified. "I don't think there has been any real progress made at all," said Raheem Yaseer, assistant director of the University of Nebraska-Omaha Center for Afghanistan Studies. "But there has been so much money and pressure invested that they feel they have to justify their efforts. It's true that cultivation has ended in some provinces, but other areas are compensating for that."

A large part of the problem is that too many important players are involved and profiting from the trade, said Yaseer. "There are lots of strong, powerful people involved -- influential people in the Afghan government, governors, parliamentarians, provincial police commanders -- and unless they are suppressed, nothing will change. There is lots of concern expressed, but the business is hot and everyone is making money," he said.

Yaseer also pointed to the increasing ability of insurgents to wreak havoc. "Security is horrible, it's getting worse and worse precisely in those growing areas, and where the security gets worse, there are more opportunities for the drug business," he said. "Everyone takes advantage of the lack of security and the chaos."

The UNODC reports provides only "false hope," said the Senlis Council, the Paris-based drugs and security nonprofit that has long proposed buying up illicit poppy crops and diverting them into the licit medicinal market as a means of getting a handle on illicit production and the support for political violence it provides.

"Opium is the cancer destroying the south of Afghanistan," said Emmanuel Reinert, the group's executive director in a Wednesday statement. "Current counter-narcotics policies are failing to address the loss of the southern provinces to the dual scourges of poppy production and terrorism."

The decrease in poppy cultivation will have a minimal effect on the drugs trade, given the exponential growth in opium production since 2002. "This decrease is no more than a ripple in the ocean," Reinert added. "Without an urgent change of direction in the country's counter-narcotics policies, the international community will be unable to prevent the consolidation of opium production in the south of the country, and the consolidation of the Taliban which is financed by the illegal drugs trade."

Instead of pushing farmers into the waiting arms of the Taliban and related insurgent groups by pursuing crop eradication, the West and the Afghan government should revisit the Senlis proposal, which was rejected out of hand when introduced in 2005, said Senlis policy analyst Gabrielle Archer. "It is clear that a long-term, sustainable solution is required to solve Afghanistan's opium crisis -- and prevent the insurgency's funding by illegal cultivation," she said. "Poppy for Medicine would allow farmers to diversify their crops, and give Afghanistan an opportunity to be part of a legal pharmaceutical industry. We need the Afghan people on our side if we are to be successful there, and this initiative could go a long way to winning back much-needed hearts and minds, which would be highly beneficial for our troops fighting there."

The hearts and minds of the Afghan population are turning increasingly against the West and the country's occupation by foreign troops, warned Yaseer, ticking off a seemingly endless series of incidents where Afghan civilians have been killed by coalition forces, the most recent being the reported deaths of 90 civilians -- 60 of them children -- in a NATO bombing raid last week. That raid prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to call this week for a reevaluation of the foreign military presence in his country.

"Everyday there are new uproars in parliament and local councils," said Yaseer. "They say there is no difference between the Soviets and the coalition forces. They bombard whole villages in the middle of the night because they hear four or five Taliban are there. These killings keep happening all the time, and people are fed up with it. This is all developing very rapidly now. 'Why did you bring this war to Afghanistan?' the people ask. The gap between the people and the government is growing larger every day," Yaseer said.

With coalition military casualties on the rise, the Taliban grown fat off opium profits and ever more aggressive, and growing hostility to the West in the Afghan population, a minor down-turn in opium production doesn't look so impressive.

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According to Mexican press reports this week, Mexico's Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD -- Democratic Revolution Party) is preparing to consider legalization of the drug trade as a response to the wave of narco-violence that has swept the country in the last year and a half. Around 5,000 people have been killed in prohibition-related violence since President Felipe Calderón escalated Mexico's long-running drug war by enlisting the military in the fight in December 2006.

PRD presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador came within a handful of votes of winning the presidency in 2006, and the party remains the second strongest political force in the country, behind the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN -- National Action Party). But because of party infighting since that election, the PRD may drop into third place after this year's midterm elections, behind both the PAN and the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI -- Revolutionary Institutional Party).

According to the Mexico City newspaper El Universal, the PRD's national council is calling on the party's legislators to begin discussing legalization as part of a "grand national accord" to deal with violence and insecurity in the country. The proposal came from the PRD's New Left faction, led by Jesús Zambrano, and was approved unanimously by the national council.

In an interview with Mexico's Televisa TV network, the PRD coordinator in the lower house, Javier González Garza, upped the ante, saying legalization should be considered not only in Mexico, but also in the US. "We can't continue thinking that we are going to combat the problem of drug trafficking without more radical measures, and one of them has to be the legalization of drugs in the United States," he said. "After the United States will we continue with Mexico? Of course, or both at the same time... This war, the way it is outlined, is going to be lost, we're all going to lose, it makes no sense and there need to be some changes."

Some 25,000 Mexican army troops are fighting drug traffickers along the border and in a number of major cities and drug-growing areas. Many observers blame the spike in violence -- more people have been killed already this year than in all of last year -- on the aggressive stance of the Calderón government. But the US government is pleased; it recently passed a $1.4 billion, three-year anti-drug assistance package for Mexico, most of which will go to beefing up military and police capabilities.

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Former State Department official Thomas Schweich, who was the US government's point man in the effort to wipe out the opium and heroin trade in Afghanistan until last month, has accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai of protecting drug traffickers and obstructing anti-drug efforts in an article to be published in the New York Times magazine on Sunday, but which appeared on the newspaper's web site Wednesday night.

opium poppies "While it is true that Karzai's Taliban enemies finance themselves from the drug trade, so do many of his supporters," Schweich wrote. "Narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government," he wrote, adding that drug traffickers were buying off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and other officials. Schweich accused Karzai of resisting heightened anti-drug efforts and opposing the eradication of opium poppy fields, long a dream of US drug warriors.

"Karzai was playing us like a fiddle," Schweich wrote. "The US and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai's friends could get rich off the drug trade; he could blame the West for his problems; and in 2009 he would be elected to a new term."

The Karzai government wasn't the only problem, Schweich wrote. He criticized both the US military and NATO forces for indifference, if not outright hostility, toward the anti-drug battle and argued that failing to cut Taliban profits from the drug trade means fighting could continue indefinitely.

"The trouble is that the fighting is unlikely to end as long as the Taliban can finance themselves through drugs -- and as long as the Kabul government is dependent on opium to sustain its own hold on power," he said.

Almost everyone is to blame for the Afghan drug mess, the now-retired drug warrior fumed. "An odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban were preventing the implementation of an effective counter-drug program," he said.

In a Thursday press conference in Kabul, Karzai rejected Schweich's charges."As I had said two years ago, Afghanistan never takes the blame (for the drugs threat). The Afghan nation due to desperation, war... has been forced to resort to this issue," Karzai replied when asked to respond to Schweich's comments. "Without doubt, some Afghans are drugs smugglers, but majority of them are the international mafia who do not live in Afghanistan," he said.

Afghanistan produces more than 90% of the world's opium. Production has expanded dramatically since the US invaded and overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.

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Three Greek police officers taking part in a raid on a hashish plantation were ambushed and shot by suspected growers armed with AK-47s Sunday night, leaving one officer in critical condition with a head wound. The attack took place in the village of Malades on the Greek island of Crete, about nine miles from Heraklion, the island's largest city.

Port of Heraklion, Crete Sunday's shooting is the second serious attack by hash growers against police on the island in seven months. Last November, three police officers were shot and wounded when their convoy was headed to the village of Zoniana, just west of Heraklion. The Greek government responded with a massive police sweep and house-to-house searches. Police arrested 16 people in connection with the ambush and a series of bank robberies, but recovered few of the heavy weapons believed to have been used in that assault.

Crete has a longstanding tradition of gun-ownership, and weapons remain readily available despite police efforts to crack down. Marijuana growing is rife in remote mountain villages on the island. Marijuana growers and dealers routinely take pot-shots at police helicopters or vehicles patrolling their area, prompting the Greek media to refer to the region as a "Greek Colombia" and a "state within a state," according to Agence France-Presse. Local officials in Crete are often accused of protecting growers and traffickers, the agency noted.

As was the case after the Zoniana ambush, Greek police responded this week with another manhunt. Greek Police head Vassilis Tsiatouras ordered a contingent of police from Athens to the scene, including Greek SWAT teams, members of the criminology service, officers of the police drugs squad, and members of the homicide force. In all likelihood, their search will reach the same inconclusive results as before.

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A disturbing report from NPR illustrates that many police departments have become dependent on confiscated drug proceeds in order to fund their anti-drug operations:
Every year, about $12 billion in drug profits returns to Mexico from the world's largest narcotics market ? the United States. As a tactic in the war on drugs, law enforcement pursues that drug money and is then allowed to keep a portion as an incentive to fight crime.
?

Federal and state rules governing asset forfeiture explicitly discourage law enforcement agencies from supplementing their budgets with seized drug money or allowing the prospect of those funds to influence law enforcement decisions.

There is a law enforcement culture ? particularly in the South ? in which police agencies have grown, in the words of one state senator from South Texas, "addicted to drug money."

Just pause for a second and think about the implications of a drug war that funds itself with dirty money. It is just laughable to think that such conditions could exist without inviting routine corruption, from our disgraceful forfeiture laws to the habitual thefts and misconduct that occur with such frequency that we're able to publish a weekly column dedicated to them.

It is truly symbolic of the drug war's inherent hopelessness that illicit drug proceeds are needed in order to subsidize narcotics operations. If we ever actually succeeded at shrinking the drug market, we'd be defunding law-enforcement! Progress is rather obviously impossible under such circumstances.

Drug enforcement is a job like any other, and police have mouths to feed, bills to pay, maybe a little alimony here or there. So they take their paycheck and sign out; I don?t blame anyone for that in and of itself. But consider that law-enforcement operations artificially inflate the value of drugs, only to then hunt down those same proceeds, collect, and redistribute them within the police department. Morally, is that any better than the dealer who pushes dope to put food on the table?

Really, a structure such as this is not designed to achieve forward momentum towards reducing drug abuse. It's the law-enforcement equivalent of subsistence farming and it ought to warrant income substitution programs not unlike those we push on the peasants of Colombia and Afghanistan. All of this lends substantial credence to the popular conception that "the drug war was meant to be waged, not won."

Each day that the drug war rages on, its finely tuned mechanisms become more effective at sustaining itself and less effective at addressing the issues of drug abuse and public safety that supposedly justify these policies in the first place.

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Police Corruption

Stop the Drug War (DRCNet) - Police Corruption

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

Crooked policing runs the gamut this week: from a former chief of police busted for dope dealing, to a cop nailed for acting as a middleman in a bribery scheme, to some lying cops being scrutinized by a federal judge, to a crew of rogue detectives costing their employer a nice settlement, to another rogue cop who's been on the lam for the last five years. Let's get to it:

In Schenectady, New York, a former Schenectady police chief was arrested September 24 along with his wife on multiple drug charges. Gregory Kaczmarek, who was chief of police from 1996 to 2002, faces multiple felony cocaine possession charges and second-degree conspiracy to distribute marijuana. The charges grew out of an earlier bust that wrapped up Lisa Kaczmarek and the couple's son, along with 20 other people in the Albany area. The Kaczmareks are accused of picking up drugs in Long Island and selling them in Albany. Kaczmarek has been dogged by rumors of cocaine use for years, and had denied being a cokehead when he was named chief. He retired in 2002 over a non-drug-related corruption scandal.

In Midland, Pennsylvania, a Western Pennsylvania police officer was arrested September 25 for acting as a fixer for a drug suspect who was offering to pay $5,000 to the arresting officer to make his charge go away. Kenneth Williams, 54, a part-time officer in Midland and Industry, was arraigned on charges of bribery and obstructing administration of law. According to state police, Williams offered the money to another Midland officer in April 2007. He was supposed to get $1,000 for brokering the deal, but all he got was busted.

In New York City, an NYPD detective and a deputy US marshal were the subject of a court hearing yesterday to determine whether they should be prosecuted by the US attorney's office for lying in an evidentiary hearing in a drug case. The hearing comes a week after Judge Nicholas Garaufis tossed out the evidence in the case of Edgar Matos, saying he found the officers' version of events to be "a complete fabrication" that "defies credibility." NYPD Detective Adam Heege and Deputy US Marshal Dennis Tait testified that they were looking for Matos' cousin in a homicide investigation and calmly approached Matos, who then reached into his pocket and threw away ziploc bags containing drugs in front of them. Unusually, the judge chose to believe Matos -- and common sense -- when Matos denied throwing the drugs to the ground.

In New Orleans, the city of New Orleans has offered to settle a lawsuit filed by three men who said police planted drugs in their building and falsely arrested them in 2002. The case against the four men began falling apart when the four NOPD detectives involved in the case ran into problems of their own, and the city dropped the charges in 2003. The raid looked even sleazier after attorneys in the civil suit got testimony from informants that contradicted what the officers had reported. Since the bust, one of the officers involved, Det. Earl Razor, was fired from the force after he tested positive for cocaine as he was being investigated for stealing heroin from a drug dealer in police custody. A second, Det. Eric Smith, resigned from the force in 2003 shortly before being indicted for identity theft for using a stolen Social Security number to lease a Corvette. He later pleaded guilty. The lead detective in the case, Det. William Marks, was pulled over by an Illinois state trooper in November 2003 for speeding in a borrowed NOPD vehicle. The trooper reported finding two women in the car, one of whom was a convicted felon with an outstanding Chicago warrant for prostitution, and a partially-burned blunt and pot pipe under the seat, as well as a stolen 9 mm handgun in the trunk. Marks was later fired. The fourth detective, Steven Payne, had lent the NOPD vehicle to Marks, and he was later fired for possession of a stolen weapon. The city of New Orleans has offered the plaintiffs $85,000 to go away, and if that offer is accepted, the city will be getting a bargain.

In Chicago, a fugitive Chicago police narcotics officer remains at large five years after he vanished instead of facing trial for leading a crew of crooked cops who for a decade busted drug dealers but didn't arrest them, instead stealing and dealing their drugs and money and reselling the drugs to other dealers. Sgt. Eddie Hicks, a 30-year veteran of the force, was a superstar narc, making dozens of raids, and getting away with his crime spree until he and his crew were swept up in an undercover operation in 2001. According to federal prosecutors, Hicks and crew robbed and extorted hundreds of pounds of marijuana and kilograms of cocaine from their dealer victims, sometimes posing as members of a DEA squad. He is wanted for RICO violations; conspiracy, possession, and distribution of a controlled substance; and failure to appear. The FBI is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

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From sea to shining sea, cops, jail guards, and court officers go bad. This week, in addition to the usual rogues' gallery of corrupt cops, we get an abusive one, too. Let's get to it:

In Jackson, Alabama, a Madison County deputy resigned last month after an internal investigation found that he either gave narcotics to an inmate or allowed the inmate to take them himself. Deputy Dustin Newman, 24, resigned on August 18 after investigators determined that "the only fact disputed is whether Newman took the drugs from a property box himself or just provided information which led to the drugs being taken by the trusty."

In Knoxville, Tennessee, a University of Tennessee Police Department officer was arrested September 17 for selling drugs in student housing. Officer Matthew Chambers, 35, faces one count of sale and distribution of Schedule II narcotics for selling one oxycodone tablet to a snitch. In a perhaps not so surprising twist, Chambers' attorney claims the snitch is his client's former girlfriend, who ratted him off in an effort to get charges she is facing reduced.

In Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, a Mt. Juliet police officer faces aggravated assault charges after being caught on video using a chokehold on a man suspected of hiding marijuana in his mouth. Mt. Juliet Police Corporal William Cosby pleaded not guilty September 18. Police car video showed Cosby choking James Lawrence Anders Jr. until he passed out during an April traffic stop. Anders was charged with marijuana possession, but those charges have now been dropped, and Anders has filed a civil lawsuit over the incident.

In St. Helens, Oregon, the Columbia County drug court coordinator was arrested over the weekend for allegedly selling drug investigation information to drug dealers and users. Emily Davis Cayton, 30, was initially charged with drug possession, but prosecutors said her case could go before a grand jury and result in further charges any day now. Investigators said they got a tip through their "informant system," but are unsure what information was leaked or how much Cayton was paid. She was arrested after a weeks-long investigation, they said. Cayton is now on paid administrative leave from her drug court gig.

In Walla Walla, Washington, a state prison guard was arrested Monday after being caught bringing "a substantial amount" of drugs into the prison. Prison guard Camren James Jones, 20, was jailed on suspicion of delivering cocaine, heroin, methadone and marijuana. Authorities described the amount of heroin as about the size of two golf balls.

In McAllen, Texas, a former Border Patrol agent was sentenced September 16 to five years in federal prison for lying about cocaine seizures. Juan Espinoza, 31, pleaded guilty to making false statements or entries in August 2006. Investigators found that Espinoza had seized cocaine from drug traffickers and conspired with others to distribute it. He had been free on bond, but now he's behind bars.

In Mineola, New York, a former NYPD officer was sentenced Monday to five years in prison for stealing handguns from a police evidence room and trading them for painkillers. Former Officer Hubertus Vannes had pleaded guilty in May to criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminal sale of a firearm. He admitted trading three guns to a man in return for painkillers and was caught with 76 pills when arrested. The guy he traded the guns to has also pleaded guilty and will be sentenced October 14.

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Budget-conscious European junkies looking for the biggest bang for their drug buck might want to visit Kosovo, if a report from Balkan Insight is accurate. According to the report, Kosovo has the lowest street prices for illicit drugs in the entire Balkan region.

Kosovo is the former Serbian province largely populated by ethnic Albanians who broke away from Serbia in 1999. It is currently a UN-administered territory still occupied by several thousand US and NATO troops.

According to the US State Department's 2008 report on international drug trafficking: "Kosovo is a transit point for Afghan heroin moving to Western Europe by way of Turkey. Narcotics traffickers capitalize on weak border control in Kosovo. The Kosovo Border Police is a young service, lacks basic equipment, and only has a mandate to patrol the "Green Border" (area where there are no official, manned borders or administrative boundary line gates) from two to three kilometers beyond the actual border and administrative boundary lines. NATO's Kosovo Force (KFOR) has roving teams that patrol the green border up to the actual border and administrative boundary lines, but traffickers easily take advantage of numerous passable roads leading into Kosovo that lack border or administrative boundary line gates. Moreover, narcotics interdiction is not part of KFOR's mandate; they seize narcotics they happen to encounter while performing their duties, but they do not actively investigate narcotics trafficking. Kosovo Border Police and Customs agents are susceptible to corruption. Kosovo officials are attempting to tackle the problem, but United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) officials believe some officers allow narcotics shipments."

Albania and Kosovo are also the home of well-organized Albanian drug trafficking organizations that helped fund the Kosovo independence movement. Ironically, the NATO blockade of Serbia during the Kosovo crisis accelerated the growth of the Eastern European organized crime groups that are now smuggling Afghan heroin into Europe. By blockading Serbia, the center of the East European economy, NATO sanctions created the conditions for a rapid expansion of clandestine activities.

Now, a gram of heroin in Kosovo goes for as little as 10 Euros, compared to 15 to 25 Euros in Bosnia & Herzegovina, 25 to 40 Euros in Macedonia, and at least 25 Euros in Albania and Serbia. You can get a gram of cocaine in Kosovo for 50 Euros, while that same gram would cost 60 Euros in Macedonia and Bosnia and 70 Euros in Albania and Serbia. Prices for marijuana, around 5 to 10 Euros a gram, however, are similar throughout the region.

Balkans prices are significantly lower than in Western Europe, where the UN Office on Drugs and Crime put the average price per gram of heroin in 2006 at 67 Euros, or in the US, where the UN had a gram of heroin going for $170. That 50-Euro gram of cocaine you bought in Kosovo would cost you 85 Euros on average in the rest of Europe.

Time to party in Pristina?

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A Texas constable and probation/parole officers in Massachusetts and North Carolina are in the spotlight this week. Let's get to it:

In Brownsville, Texas, a former Cameron County constable was sentenced September 11 to four years and nine months in federal prison for selling marijuana from the precinct evidence room. Former Constable Saul Ochoa, 37, had pleaded guilty in July to selling 10 pounds of marijuana to a confidential informant in return for the dropping of three additional counts of marijuana sales. All told, Ochoa is suspected of selling at least 175 pounds of seized marijuana he stole from the evidence room. Only 15 pounds were in the evidence room when there should have been 190 pounds. Ochoa was the only person with a key to the evidence locker. Ochoa told investigators he sold the drugs to finance a $40 a day cocaine habit. When he was arrested in May, police found eight pounds of marijuana, along with a loaded 9 mm Beretta, two shot guns, shot gun ammunition, and an M-16 in his squad car. Investigators also found a small amount of cocaine in his wallet and evidence bags with control numbers matching a constable's office marijuana seizure. At Ochoa's home, investigators found a digital scale, a lighter, pipe, two hunting rifles, a brick of marijuana, and more empty evidence bags.

In New Bern, North Carolina, a former North Carolina probation and parole officer was sentenced September 11 to 46 months in federal prison for aiding in the peddling of crack cocaine. Patricia Lisa Gederberg, 42, was convicted of possession with the intent to distribute more than five grams of crack and aiding and abetting. According to federal prosecutors, Gederberg used her state-issued vehicle to meet with contacts she provided with classified documents and for the transportation of drugs. She was charged last October and copped a plea in December.

In Springfield, Massachusetts, a former state probation officer was sentenced September 9 to 2 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to a series of drug dealing charges. Juan Latorre, a 23-year veteran probation officer, was arrested in March 2007 with three other men as police broke up a large Oxycontin and other pain pill distribution network. Police seized $100,000 in cash during the bust. Latorre pleaded guilty to possession of an opium derivative with intent to distribute, possession of methadone with intent to distribute, possession of diazepam with intent to distribute, and violation of a drug-free school zone. While that case was making its way through the courts, Latorre was busted again and has now ended up also pleading guilty to an additional four counts of heroin distribution and one of possession. His attorney said he was strung-out on Oxycontin after a previous injury.

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We have cops and prison guards getting into drug war trouble from coast to coast this week, from San Diego to Chicago and from Florida to Maryland. Let's get to it:

In San Diego, a San Diego police officer was arrested September 2 for allegedly tipping off drug dealers about an ongoing investigation. Officer Juan Hurtado Tapia, whom traffickers allegedly called "El Corrupto," was charged in federal court with obstruction, fraud and making false statements. A federal complaint said Tapia ran criminal history checks on a police computer for members of a drug trafficking ring and warned at least one suspect not to try to cross the border from Mexico on a particular night. Tapia is now on unpaid leave.

In Hagerstown, Maryland, a rookie prison guard was arrested September 4 for smuggling pot and cigarettes into the Roxbury Correctional Institution. Rookie Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services Officer Krista Blank is charged with possessing marijuana and contraband, and with possessing the materials with the intent to distribute them inside a place of confinement. That is four separate charges -- two each for the pot and the cigs -- for which she faces up to 10 years in prison.

In Lakeland, Florida, a Polk County detention deputy was arrested September 4 for selling Oxycontin tablets to undercover detectives. Deputy Shawn Thomas Lucas, 30, was arrested after detectives received information he was selling pain pills and set up a buy, where he sold them six whole Oxycontin tablets and nine half-tablets, for a total of 4.4 grams, or about $200 worth. During a post-arrest search of his vehicle, detectives recovered a load .45-caliber handgun. Now, he is charged with armed drug trafficking. Lucas told detectives the pills had been prescribed to his deceased father and he was peddling them because he and his family were having financial difficulties. Lucas has now resigned from the sheriff's office.

In Jacksboro, Tennessee, two Campbell County law enforcement officers were arrested September 5 for allegedly stealing drugs from the Jacksboro Police Department and trading them for prescription drugs. Jacksboro Police Officer Ancil Parker, 30, and Campbell County jail guard Tonya Robinson, 34, are both charged with delivery of a schedule II controlled substance and official misconduct. Robinson also was charged with one count of theft under $500. The pair are being held responsible for marijuana and cocaine that went missing from the police department last year.

In Chicago, a Chicago police officer and another man were arrested Monday for plotting to set up the man's estranged wife on drug and firearms charges. Bogdan Mazur, 47, tried to set up his wife by scheming to deliver 44 grams of cocaine, 62 grams of marijuana and a gun with a defaced serial number to his wife, and enlisted Officer Slawomir Plewa, 30, to help him out. Mazur allegedly arranged with Plewa to have him detain and arrest his wife even though both knew the charges were false. The woman was acquitted of the gun and drug charges in January. Now Plewa is charged with official misconduct, perjury, obstruction of justice, unlawful restraint and false reporting. Mazur faces charges of filing a false police report, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to manufacture or deliver cocaine and cannabis, and unlawful possession of a firearm, according to police reports.

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A cop with a pain pill habit gets in trouble; so does yet another jail guard. Let's get to it:

In Elwood, Indiana, an Elwood police officer was arrested August 29 for stealing prescription pain pills from the department's evidence room. Officer Shaun "Andy" Murray, 28, is charged with official misconduct, theft and possession of a controlled substance after he admitted stealing 10 hydrocodone tablets from the evidence room. Police said he admitted taking pain pills on numerous occasions over the past year and that he had admitted he had a drug problem. Murray went on leave and entered a treatment program August 23.

In Alamance County, North Carolina, an Alamance County jail guard was arrested August 28 on charges she gave drugs to a county jail inmate. Detention officer Jo Ann Hensley, 58, is accused of providing marijuana to an 18-year-old inmate sometime between August 11 and 13. She is charged with drug distribution and possession of a controlled substance on a jail premise. She was fired the same day.

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A key Coast Guard anti-drug fighter gets caught doing cocaine, plus the usual array of miscreants in blue. We don't usually mention cases that only involve drug use, but when it's a top Coast Guard commander in charge of fighting drugs, we think we should make an exception to the general rule. Let's get to it:

Coast Guard drug bust, 2004 In San Francisco, a senior Coast Guard officer who supervised anti-drug trafficking efforts in the Western Pacific was arrested August 20 on cocaine charges. Capt. Michael Sullivan, a 26-year veteran, was charged under military law with wrongful use of cocaine and obstruction of justice, a step that sets up an evidentiary hearing and could prompt a court-martial. Officials gave no further details, but said he had been removed from supervisory duties. Sullivan, who was the Pacific area's chief of response since May 2007, supervised the operation of 20 major Coast Guard cutters and directed law enforcement units that protect ports and fisheries and fight drug trafficking and illegal immigration, according to his official biography.

In Benton, Louisiana, an already convicted ex-cop pleaded guilty Monday to seven additional charges. Former Shreveport police officer Roderick Moore, 53, was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to trading drugs for sex with a stripper in Caddo Parish in June. Now he has pleaded guilty to an additional seven counts of possessing drugs with the intent to distribute. The pleas in the drug cases come two days after he pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated. Although Moore theoretically faces up to 145 years in prison, his sentencing judge said the sentences would run concurrently. The maximum he faces for any one count is 30 years.

In Jackson, Mississippi, a Jackson code enforcement officer was arrested Sunday after being found with six packages of marijuana and $19,000 cash during a traffic stop. Code officer Britanny Arnold was a passenger in a vehicle driven by another man, who was carrying $670,000 in cash. Both Arnold and the driver are now charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. Both have bailed out of jail.

In Rutland, Vermont, a former Vermont state prison guard was sentenced August 20 to seven months in jail on drug charges. Former guard Sheri Ann Fitzgerald, 44, had pleaded guilty in March to felony possession and sale charges involving cocaine as well as a misdemeanor charge of possessing a narcotic. Fitzgerald had been a prison guard since 1989, but was fired after being arrested. She has until September 4 to get her affairs in order and report to jail.

In Saginaw, Michigan, a jail guard at the Saginaw Correctional Facility was formally charged August 20 with supplying drugs to prisoners. John Singer, 45, now faces one count of delivery and manufacture of marijuana and one count of operating a drug house. He went down after a two-month investigation by the Bay Area Narcotics Team, one of whose members posed as a drug dealer willing to supply him for sales on the inside. He was arrested as he met with the officer in what he thought would be a drug transaction.

In Houston, a deputy constable was arrested August 18 for accosting drug dealers and stealing their money. Precinct 4 Deputy Constable Terrence Richardson is charged with engaging in organized crime and robbery. Word of Richardson's exploits percolated up from underground to the ears of the Houston Police Department, which set up a sting operation that snared him as he tried yet another rip-off. At last word, he was still in jail on a $200,000 bond. He is also now a former deputy constable, having been fired the night he was arrested.

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Cops "misplacing" money, cops providing help to a pot crew, a court security officer peddling pain pills, and a jail guard getting caught bringing in the goodies. Just another week in the drug war. Let's get to it:

In Bartow, Florida, a Lake Wales police officer was arrested August 13 for providing police information to a friend of his who headed up a marijuana distribution ring. Officer Keenan Olson, 50, faces one count of conspiracy to engage in a pattern of racketeering action, five counts of unlawful use of two-way communications device, and four counts of unlawful use of computer access after he was tied to an investigation that ultimately netted 18 arrests. Olson was overheard on wiretapped phone conversations revealing that a certain car belonged to an undercover officer, confirming that an arrest warrant had not been issued for a ring member, and counseling his friend on how to move forward with his marijuana ring by avoiding police-controlled phone calls and drug buys. Olson resigned the day he was arrested.

In Newport News, Virginia, a Curry County Adult Detention Center officer was arrested August 14 after being caught on videotape supplying drugs and other contraband to prisoners. Officer Charlie Aguirre, 23, is charged with bringing contraband into the jail, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and attempt to commit a felony. He met an $11,000 bond and was released the same day. Aguirre is the fourth Curry County jail guard to be arrested for smuggling dope to inmates this year.

In Dedham, Massachusetts, a former Stoughton District Court security officer was sentenced August 15 to two years in jail for selling prescription pain pills on the courthouse grounds. Keely Johnson, 32, was convicted of two counts of possession with intent to distribute a Class C drug and drug violation near a school or park. After the state attorney general's office received a tip Johnson was peddling pills at the courthouse, undercover officers went in and twice bought Percocet tablets off her. Johnson only got three months for the possession with intent charge, but two years on the drug-free zone charge.

In Hamburg, Pennsylvania, a former Lykens police chief was sentenced Monday to nine months in jail and three months house arrest for "misplacing" $3,200 in money seized in drug arrests. Former Chief Chris Wade must also serve two years on probation and pay $6,000 in fines and restitution.

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A Boston cop goes to prison for being muscle for drug dealers, and a Miami-area cop and two prison guards get caught up in a massive Oxycontin and health fraud scandal. Let's get to it:

In Boston, a former Boston police officer was sentenced July 29 to 11 years in federal prison for acting as an enforcer for drug dealers. Former Officer Jose Ortiz, 46, pleaded guilty in a conspiracy to extort $265,000 from a man targeted by Colombian drug dealers working in the area. In the scheme, dealers approached a man seeking people who would work in their drug sales business, then told him one of the people he recommended had ripped them off and he was responsible. In August 2006, Ortiz showed up in uniform at the man's workplace, saying he was there on behalf of the dealers, who would kill the man if he did not pay $265,000. In May 2007, the man, who had gone to the FBI with the threats, gave Ortiz $4,000 in cash and four kilos of cocaine in a Revere parking lot. The FBI then swooped down on Ortiz and arrested him.

In Miami, a Hialeah police officer and two Miami-Dade corrections officers were arrested Wednesday along with 59 other people in an illegal Oxycontin and healthcare fraud ring. Fifty-two of the 62 people arrested were Miami-Dade employees, including 17 bus drivers, 10 bus attendants, five school security guards, and six garbage men. Hialeah Police Officer Danette Dell and jail guards Lori Lucky and Reginald Fletcher are among those facing grand theft and other charges in the scam, in which government employees used their health benefits to buy Oxycontin, then resell the pills on the black market.

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Prison guards get busted as cocaine traffickers in Louisiana and New Jersey, and a pair of North Carolina cops plea to helping out the local cocaine trade. Let's get to it:

In Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Texas prison guard was arrested Monday night after Louisiana state troopers found 1.2 pounds of cocaine in her vehicle during a drug dog search after a traffic stop. LaQuatta Felder of Houston works at the Darrington Penitentiary in Rosharon, Texas, and was traveling with a former Darrington prisoner, Joseph Harris. Both were booked into the the Jefferson Davis Parish Jail for possession with intent to distribute cocaine.

In Newark, New Jersey, a veteran Newark prison guard was charged July 24 with leading a cocaine trafficking ring that bought the drug in Texas and Florida and sold it in New Jersey. Senior corrections officers Eugene Braswell, 29, worked at Northern State Prison. He first came under scrutiny last August, when he shot and killed a former Northern State prisoner outside his home. The investigation into that shooting led to two arrests earlier this month, and then Braswell and three others were arrested last week. Police found $16,000 in cash and a .357 magnum revolver when they searched his home. He is charged with leading a narcotics network, other drug charges, money laundering and conspiracy. Bail was set at $500,000.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, two former Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers have cut a plea deal with federal prosecutors in the case against them for conspiring with a drug dealer and an informant to sell crack cocaine. Ex-officers Gerald Holas Jr. and Jason Ross agreed to guilty pleas in return for a prosecutorial recommendation they be sentenced to the statutory 10-year minimum sentence for drug conspiracy. In return for the recommended minimum, the two men must make "full, accurate and complete disclosure" to federal authorities about their involvement in the conspiracy. If they're found to have lied, or if they commit any crime, the deal is off. The pair went down after a confidential informant told the FBI a drug dealer was being protected by them. They claimed they were "working" the dealer to make more arrests, but the feds didn't buy that. Now, local prosecutors say they will dismiss any drug cases brought by the pair. Those could number in the hundreds. The plea bargain must be approved by a federal judge in the fall.

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