Democrats from Illinois use Drug War as an excuse to spy on you.

I recently moved from a place where marijuana was practically legal to a place in Illinois where each milligram you possess lands you another year in prison (only a slight exaggeration). In addition, the police absolutely love making pot arrests. A friend of mine had his car searched recently and the police officer actually collected all the little pieces of dried leaves and specs of dirt off of the floor of his vehicle and claimed he was going to have them tested to see if any of it was cannabis.

Recently, I see that the Democratic Governor signed a new bill into law allows police to bypass any wiretapping laws if they suspect that drugs are involved. So now, the police here can wiretap anyone they want without a warrant and justify it by claiming that they thought drugs were involved.

To me this is using the drug war as an excuse to invade your privacy and shit on your civil liberties. It's not even about drugs anymore.

why did you move to police state central?

deprave said:

why did you move to police state central?

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I didn't know what I was getting into. It's like a third world country here. On the other hand, everything is cheap as hell here, except for weed.

bedspirit said:

It's not even about drugs anymore.

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I have some news for you that may come as a shock......



it NEVER was about drugs.

OF course it is about drugs. If it were about anything else, the population at large will be up in arms, but so long as they see these laws as protecting them from the drug addled fiends, any law will be ok. I have had discussions with people who were perfectly willing to open their houses up for random searches if it meant that we could rid ourselves of the monsterous drug epidemic. Remember that a large group of people distrust government above all other entities, but the moment that same government labels someone a criminal, or a drug user, that government is absolutely right and always trustworthy.

Are you saying that government officials are using a law intended for one purpose in order to further the cause of another? Ever notice they never repeal many laws?

canndo said:

OF course it is about drugs. If it were about anything else, the population at large will be up in arms, but so long as they see these laws as protecting them from the drug addled fiends, any law will be ok. I have had discussions with people who were perfectly willing to open their houses up for random searches if it meant that we could rid ourselves of the monsterous drug epidemic. Remember that a large group of people distrust government above all other entities, but the moment that same government labels someone a criminal, or a drug user, that government is absolutely right and always trustworthy.

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You make some good points.

spandy said:

I have some news for you that may come as a shock......



it NEVER was about drugs.

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Good point. In this particular case, connecting it to the drug war is a tough sell. The police can already have powers to get around warrants if it happens to be the middle of the night and no judge is available. This new law never requires a judges approval. The only role a judge would have is deciding whether the wiretap was admissible in a trial. Police can now wiretap all the time. They don't even have to tell a judge they're doing it.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2012/aug/20/no_warrant_needed_illinois_drug

One more reason to vote for the guy who would put a judge in SCOTUS that is not like Scalia or Alito or Thomas. We need all the leverage we can get when it comes to LEO's misdirected enforcement.


One of the reasons we have the laws we do with regard to police proceedure is because of the Conservative side of the court.

NoDrama said:

Are you saying that government officials are using a law intended for one purpose in order to further the cause of another? Ever notice they never repeal many laws?

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My main objection to SB1070 in Arizona

As an example of the widening gap between our politicians and the public, this is yet another story of a guy on trial for Marijuana possession that had all charges dropped because the jury disagreed with the law itself.

http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/14/kansas-prosecutor-defeated-by-glaring-st

bedspirit said:

I recently moved from a place where marijuana was practically legal to a place in Illinois where each milligram you possess lands you another year in prison (only a slight exaggeration). In addition, the police absolutely love making pot arrests. A friend of mine had his car searched recently and the police officer actually collected all the little pieces of dried leaves and specs of dirt off of the floor of his vehicle and claimed he was going to have them tested to see if any of it was cannabis.

Recently, I see that the Democratic Governor signed a new bill into law allows police to bypass any wiretapping laws if they suspect that drugs are involved. So now, the police here can wiretap anyone they want without a warrant and justify it by claiming that they thought drugs were involved.

To me this is using the drug war as an excuse to invade your privacy and shit on your civil liberties. It's not even about drugs anymore.

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Welcome to the U.S. of 1938 Germany...

This is a rural area, and I hear police and ambulance sirens more often now than I ever did in the city I lived in on the west coast. So I started listening to a police scanner feed I found on the internet and I find that these fuckers use thermal scanners for fucking everything. Last night some dude's girlfriend thought her boyfriend was going to commit suicide somewhere near the canal and a small army of police searched the place with scanners until they found him.

I bring it up because I have an inside source who tells me they regularly scan all the little towns around here looking for grow ops. Apparently someone had a small one going in a barn out in the middle of nowhere and they did an aerial scan to find that one.

I take back my "third world country" comment. This is a small rural area where the number of police per capita seems a little high and the amount of sophisticated equipment they have makes me wonder where the hell they're getting the money for all this shit.

The drug war is like a stimulus for douche bags.

canndo said:

One more reason to vote for the guy who would put a judge in SCOTUS that is not like Scalia or Alito or Thomas. We need all the leverage we can get when it comes to LEO's misdirected enforcement.


One of the reasons we have the laws we do with regard to police proceedure is because of the Conservative side of the court.

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Of course you could say that, but wasn't FDR president when Harry Anslinger vomited his prohibition ideas? FDR is the same guy that wanted to increase the number of Supremes to 16 (he'd pick them of course) . For all the party bickering back and forth, it really isn't about that though...

The problem isn't with a particular party. It is with people that are AUTHORITARIAN...they come in both Democrat and Republican models.

I too live in a rural area in the Chicagoland and am surprised at the number of police we have for our small peaceful town. Neighboring cities as well. There's a cop in the town next to me that will pull you over for doing one mile an hour over... no shitting.

Thats one thing I worry about with my location is the over zealous police force we have rocking.

D3monic said:

I too live in a rural area in the Chicagoland and am surprised at the number of police we have for our small peaceful town. Neighboring cities as well. There's a cop in the town next to me that will pull you over for doing one mile an hour over... no shitting.

Thats one thing I worry about with my location is the over zealous police force we have rocking.

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This place is a fucking culture shock for me. Where I lived before, no one gave a shit. The drug war was practically dead.

There was a video that went viral earlier this year about the cops in Illinois and how they have trained their drug dogs to give false positives to allow them to search any vehicle they wanted.

[video=youtube;rJqq6KCOkdM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rJqq6KCOkdM[/video]

bedspirit said:

As an example of the widening gap between our politicians and the public, this is yet another story of a guy on trial for Marijuana possession that had all charges dropped because the jury disagreed with the law itself.

http://reason.com/blog/2012/08/14/kansas-prosecutor-defeated-by-glaring-st

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I have talked about how mere posession of guns does not worry government and some here have argued that I am a defeatist. This is an example of real civil rebelion. Government does worry, greatly about jury nulification because there is nothing they can do to stop it and it would quickly erode the power of government over the individual.

Jury nulification is the nuclear option of the 2nd amendment refined and far more selective. It does not require the dismantling of government but it would excise unpopular laws like a scalpel. The only problem with jury nulification is that it takes an enlightened population.

canndo said:

I have talked about how mere posession of guns does not worry government and some here have argued that I am a defeatist. This is an example of real civil rebelion. Government does worry, greatly about jury nulification because there is nothing they can do to stop it and it would quickly erode the power of government over the individual.

Jury nulification is the nuclear option of the 2nd amendment refined and far more selective. It does not require the dismantling of government but it would excise unpopular laws like a scalpel. The only problem with jury nulification is that it takes an enlightened population.

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I've been reading a lot about jury nullification lately. I had never heard of it until New Hampshire passed a law requiring juries to be informed of that right. A lot of courts in other states will dismiss any juror who gets reported discussing nullification during deliberation. I totally agree that this is a valuable tool to fight unjust laws, I hope the word spreads in some of these more authoritarian states like Illinois.

bedspirit said:

I've been reading a lot about jury nullification lately. I had never heard of it until New Hampshire passed a law requiring juries to be informed of that right. A lot of courts in other states will dismiss any juror who gets reported discussing nullification during deliberation. I totally agree that this is a valuable tool to fight unjust laws, I hope the word spreads in some of these more authoritarian states like Illinois.

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Only thing is that it isn't a right and it could be argued that it is alltogether improper. As you can see though, they fear it enough to dismiss jurors who mention it. I have seen such a thing before.

Your duty as a juror is to judge the facts as they are presented and determine if the defendent is guilty of what he is accused of, it is not to judge the validity of the law.

However, an enlightened jury can decide the validity of the law, so long as they do not discuss the fact that they are nulifying the law itself until the accused has gone free.

bedspirit said:

This place is a fucking culture shock for me. Where I lived before, no one gave a shit. The drug war was practically dead.

There was a video that went viral earlier this year about the cops in Illinois and how they have trained their drug dogs to give false positives to allow them to search any vehicle they wanted.

[video=youtube;rJqq6KCOkdM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rJqq6KCOkdM[/video]

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They been doing that for years?
Where in the hell have you been?