Sunday, November 08, 2020

Police Warrant : Report to a Justice Document


"The following is a list of exhibits that were seized from 1215-2020 Jasmine Crescent in the city of Ottawa as a result of a search warrant on the 7th of October 2020."
"33.6 grams of heroin and 86.2 grams of fentanyl were seized. A money counter, a] Voodoo AR-15 Style BB gun, [two Ziploc bags of] buff [weighing about 598 grams (buff defined as a substance added to drugs to dilute potency and increase volume). Clear plastic packaging material, [a] sentry safe, digital scale, [and] rubber bands [were seized]."
"[A] large amount of Canadian currency [also seized and] to be counted by the asset forfeiture unit."
"Accused is now deceased; no charges laid. SIU investigation currently ongoing."
"[All of the seized items were ordered to] be detained in the custody of the Ottawa Police Service until 8 January 2021."
Report to a Justice : Police Document
Black man falls to death after Ottawa police conduct no-knock raid
 
Black Lives Matter sprang into action as they do every time a black man falls afoul of the law and is injured or dies, as they claim that blacks receive harsher, brutal treatment from police, are stopped far more frequently in their vehicles than white men, and are the victims of police homicides while undertaking arrests of blameless blacks going about their business. Society is condemned for the fact that blacks are disproportionately represented in the prison system. That blacks are disproportionate to their presence in society at large, involved in gangs, guns, drugs and smuggling appears irrelevant.
"I was mad. Whatever they were trying to do, it was wrong. There was no justification in the whole situation. There's way too many officers. It's a 12th-floor apartment. There's no due diligence there."
"I knew I had to get this story out. There's most likely countless other stories of this happening that are unreported and way more abuses of power."
"Another black man died today.... If they're truly working for the public, this wouldn't have happened. They treated him like he wasn't a human, but everyone makes mistakes and that's the point of being human."
"You have to learn from your mistakes. He didn't get the chance."
Raymond Aust, 20, Queen's University student, Anthony's brother
Mother says son who fell from balcony 'didn't have time to live'
 
One such case in question was that of a 23-year-old resident of Ottawa who leaped to his death from his bedroom window moments following a police drug raid at his family's Ottawa east-end apartment building, initiated by the Ottawa police tactical unit. Police have been accused of causing the death of Anthony Aust, and his family and the black community are demanding answers, demanding that Ottawa's black police chief undertake an investigation, and hold those involved accountable for the man's death.

The Aust family has hired a lawyer. At the same time, the Special Investigations Unit is undertaking a probe of exactly what had occurred the morning of October 7 when video surveillance footage from within the 12th-flooor apartment showed armed tactical officers breaking down the apartment door, throwing through it into the apartment a flash grenade and making use of a "dynamic entry". All of which tactics have been contested by the family as outrageously unnecessary.

Anthony Aust was, at the time, out on bail, his activities monitored by police and by the courts. He was awaiting trial fir firearm and drug offences, charges that were laid in January following a traffic stop. As part of the bail plan he was wearing a GPS-monitoring ankle bracelet. Video surveillance cameras were installed in the apartment, also part of the bail plan. The criminal charges against the young man were drug possession for the purpose of trafficking, firearm possession and breaking conditions.

All criminal charges which despite that he was out on bail awaiting a hearing, he simply continued to indulge in. That he was doing so, that he was in possession of quantities of hard drugs meant to be trafficked, and devices to enable that trafficking, appears to have evaded the notice of his family. All of which appears to be of no account as well to those accusing the police of causing the man's death by their very presence. A man who chose to evade accountability by momentarily forgetting people cannot fly.

Dynamic entry is a practise used by tactical police squads when they have a founded concern that evidence could be destroyed or that a risk exists to the public and to officers. That all of this took place at all, has resulted in a coalition of black community groups asking police Chief Peter Sloly for a meeting to discuss the raid, where Nhora Aust, Anthony's mother, was informed by police they were looking for a gun and cocaine as they searched her home.

Police have not divulged as public information what was found in the apartment when they searched the home where Anthony Aust flung himself out of a bedroom window of his family's 12th floor apartment. However, when a search warrant is issued police must afterward submit a "report to a justice" under the Criminal Code of Canada, a document that lists an itemized account of what was seized. The justice of the peace who had signed a warrant expects the document to be completed and returned to him within 30 days.
"[Dynamic entries are the] bread and butter [of tactical officers because of how common they are]. We conduct hundreds of them a year in Ontario."
"There are demands from the court system, the judicial system. They like it much better when the accused is in possession of the evidence."
"Narcotics are generally considered disposable evidence, much like child pornography."
Jeff Kilcollins, retired, formerly a duty inspector, Ottawa police force, 20-year SWAT team member


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posted by Pieface @ Sunday, November 08, 2020

Tuesday, October 01, 2019

The Iraqi Drug Quandary

"The government authorities are very shy in addressing this situation."
"They do not admit this problem because of the social traditions. Even the media is not discussing it."
Abbas Maher alSardi, mayor, Zubair, Iraq
In this Dec. 5, 2017, photo, blindfolded suspected drug dealers are displayed with their goods and weapons in a detention facility in Basra. (AP)

And quite the situation it is. Good Iraqi Muslims becoming drug addicts. There is social shame associated with that, but perhaps what is materially more critical is that poverty results from drug abuse. In traditional Muslim families where the male of the family is the wage earner, that earning potential is disrupted to addiction and prison. Once imprisoned for the offence of being a drug abuser, there is a criminal record, and with that record no respectable business will hire such an offender. Poverty.

There are now thousands of meth addicts in Iraq where drug problems have always been rare. "If crystal is in front of  you, you have to take it", states Hussein Karim, 32, reduced now to living in a windowless room with his wife, their three children and  his disabled brother. It has been two years since he has taken drugs and he goes out of his way to avoid seeing anyone who might deal drugs. His employment possibilities as a heavy equipment operator in construction, then as a fighter for the Popular Mobilization Units is all in the past. No one will now look to hire him for a salaried job.

Basra province, the southernmost governorate in Iraq, is where the most serious of drug problems has arisen, with 1,400 people, mostly men, convicted of drug possession or sale, and mostly crystal meth. Over 6,800 people have been imprisoned nationwide according to Iraq's Supreme Judiciary Council. It's a start; the numbers involved nothing alarming for a country of 39 million people, and where mostly Basra and Baghdad, the capital have been struck.
Unemployed Iraqis confront riot police during a protest to demand jobs in Basra, where anti-narcotic officers say that the use of crystal meth is doubling year on year.
Unemployed Iraqis confront riot police during a protest to demand jobs in Basra, where anti-narcotic officers say that the use of crystal meth is doubling year on year. Photograph: Nabil al-Jurani/AP

Placing people in prison appears to be the only solution to the problem that community leaders and government officials can think of to deal with the growing problem. The shame associated with having a family member drug-dependent extends not only to the family but to society at large. Zubair is a city of 740,000 just north of Basra where drug use is particularly high among youth, many of them unemployed.

The government responds by dispatching dozens of police teams nightly to fan out across Basra province, to target users and dealers in an effort to expunge outward signs of the problem afflicting society. This drug imbroglio is only the latest phase of a long slide into criminality in the region. Beginning with the absence of Saddam Hussein, whose reins on 'law and order' ensured that few would risk stepping out of line. His criminality was the only kind permitted.

The drug situation was seen to emerge about seven years ago when gangs moved into the drug trade, handling large quantities of crystal meth available from neighbouring Iran where production labs had sprung up, according to the head of research for the UN drug agency. Iran has made an effort to close down those labs, seeing production moved to other countries. According to Judge Riyadh Abid al-Abass of the Bastra Criminal Court, drugs also filter in to Iraq from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

There are hints that Iraq's militias which came into being to fight the invasion of the Islamic State, known as the Popular Mobilization Units, have involved themselves in the drug trade. Prisoners claim some units work with the traffickers and have allies in the government. Those traffickers are somehow capable of eluding detection. Those that are caught have been able to escape from prison soon after capture and speculation over the role of the militias is rife.
Credit Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Hundreds of prisoners are crammed into holding rooms in police stations. The pungent odour of sweat, excrement and urine can be over-powering. The average duration of a prison term for first time offenders is typically 15 months. For the government of Iraq to claim that drug abuse is a new phenomenon, attributable to the downfall of Saddam Hussein removing his iron fist of control, and introducing criminal behaviour in the population is either naive or defensively evasive.

Fundamentalist Islamists like the Taliban control the cultivation of poppies and the production of opium in Afghanistan to fund their terrorist war in the country. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the crony militia founded and funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran, along with the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza all have octopus arms involved in the drug trade for fun and profit in the Americas. While these groups portray themselves as Muslim scholars whose lives are dedicated to Islam which forbids the use of drugs and alcohol, they traffic in it with verve and vigour.

After ISIS: Iraq has a drug problem
Members of the Iraqi Kurdish security forces pour gasoline over a seized drug haul before they burn it in the northern city of Arbil in 2013. Photo: Safin Hamed / AFP


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posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 01, 2019

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