[HN Gopher] San Jose police union executive director charged wit...
___________________________________________________________________
San Jose police union executive director charged with smuggling
fentanyl into US
Author : hammock
Score : 310 points
Date : 2023-03-30 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonexaminer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonexaminer.com)
| qgin wrote:
| In my hometown when I was growing up, the longtime sheriff was
| convicted of drug trafficking. It made me wonder how often law
| enforcement is directly involved in the drug trade.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| I was going to make a sparky comment about this story coming from
| the Washington Examiner, but then I saw this:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/san-jose-police-union-e...
| vageli wrote:
| There is also the official press release on the DOJ site:
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/san-jose-police-union-e...
| johnea wrote:
| The ONLY thing that will EVER stop the cartels, and the
| overdoses, is LEGAL SUBSTANCE purchasing.
|
| The few modern efforts, of say Oregon, only eliminate criminal
| charges for posession. This will do NOTHING to defund the
| cartels, or stop the overdoses due to unknown strength/dosing.
| Jackie4Chan wrote:
| If the intention was to stop them, it would have been legalized
| a long time ago.
| anon291 wrote:
| Opioids have been a scourge on every society in which they have
| proliferated. They have their uses but there is no example in
| history of a place with legal opioids not having overdoses and
| dependency issues.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You can't overdose on coffee, but a lot of people will
| happily say that they are addicted.
|
| Yet it causes no greater societal issues, because it is
| legal.
| MandieD wrote:
| It's also not terribly psychoactive, doesn't make you drive
| unsafely, and can't permanently ruin your brain or change
| your personality, unlike that other addictive and legal,
| but often harmful substance that causes plenty of societal
| issues: alcohol.
|
| And I say this as someone who really likes wine and would
| drink it pretty much every day, if it weren't for that
| whole "can permanently ruin your brain" business.
| anon291 wrote:
| Opioids have a long history of causing societal issues.
| That is my point. Society has a long history, and AFAICT,
| the social impact is positive (more productivity).
| numpad0 wrote:
| Doubt it, extreme population density plus good education plus
| social mobility seems to suppress a lot of crimes too.
| cowpig wrote:
| Do you think that the Sackler family has had a positive impact
| on overdoses in the US?
| pstuart wrote:
| The Sackler's were unscrupulous dope peddlers. The whole
| premise of Oxycontin was a lie: specifically that it lasted
| longer than it did; combined with actively pushing the
| medication for cases where it wasn't necessary helped set up
| the crisis.
|
| That said, there will always be demand and that demand would
| be better served if not criminalized. These drugs should be
| made available for legal purchase but we need to find ways to
| incentivize minimizing the sale and consumption of such.
|
| I fail to see the difference between letting an adult drink
| themselves to death vs doping themselves into oblivion. The
| former is both legal and acceptable whereas the latter is
| not; but they're effectively the same.
| amdolan wrote:
| Pushing addiction and pushing treatment are two very
| different things.
| sobkas wrote:
| > Do you think that the Sackler family has had a positive
| impact on overdoses in the US?
|
| It's better to use prescription drugs than mystery substance
| available on the streets. At least you know what you are
| taking.
| [deleted]
| mjevans wrote:
| People need paths to help (recovery / redemption), integration
| in society, and happiness. Everyone, including those who would
| seek to escape with drugs (which should be legalized, taxed,
| and regulated so they are used responsibly), and those who need
| a direction to walk to reach success.
|
| Cartels, and predatory businesses who happen to be legal, make
| their money off of the suffering of others. Society, that is
| the collective will of the people, has the choice of choosing
| tolerance, compassion, and empathy to dry up the source of the
| evil poison that corrodes people and the places they live.
| stochastastic wrote:
| I don't think legalization is better for everyone, though. I
| live in Oregon and I've been very disappointed with the impact
| of decriminalizing possession. Cases are no longer clogging the
| courts, instead we have people using in my neighborhood park
| and on public transit. I stopped taking the train after a ride
| where we had to evacuate because someone was smoking fentanyl
| (apparently even the second-hand smoke can affect a person). It
| was, apparently, not his first time.
|
| You seem to support it, how would you address the
| externalities?
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| > I stopped taking the train after a ride where we had to
| evacuate because someone was smoking fentanyl (apparently
| even the second-hand smoke can affect a person).
|
| This is obviously proscribed under most localities' current
| regulations, since we mostly ban regular tobacco smoking
| indoors. Legalization advocates are not advocating for
| tolerating involuntary exposure or other externalities.
| Enforce the existing laws against second hand smoke, DUI,
| etc.
|
| > we have people using in my neighborhood park
|
| Annoying for sure. In my neighborhood, dog shit and hobo piss
| are omnipresent sidewalk hazards. But I don't think there's a
| solution to the dregs of society being a highly
| visible/smellable nuisance - real estate tends to be
| stratified by class, and I'm not financially equipped to
| insulate myself like the upper ones. Until we decide to
| actually deal with the economics that produce these
| frictions, it's just a fact of life.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm with you. "Legalize everything" stops working when
| addictive substances are involved.
|
| To play Devil's advocate for the opposition though, perhaps
| we need Fentanyl Island where we send people that want
| everything legal. Okay, not a serious proposal ... or maybe
| I'm channelling Brave New World -- a book I have come to
| believe was in fact supposed to represent a Utopian future
| after all.
| jl6 wrote:
| Another haha-only-serious plan would be for the government
| to stop seizing drugs at busts and instead covertly
| intercept them, lace a certain percentage with ultra-lethal
| poison, and send them on their merry way. As the body count
| rises, it becomes way too dangerous to buy anything through
| illegal channels.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Or just deputize Duterte and let him execute every addict
| and dealer he can get his bloody hands on. Genius idea, I
| wonder why no one else thought of the utterly
| psychopathic solution?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| > "Legalize everything" stops working when addictive
| substances are involved.
|
| I dunno. We tried making alcohol illegal for a while in the
| US. Alcohol is pretty addictive, isn't it? And we ran into
| the same problems we have with other illegal drugs, for the
| same reason.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > "Legalize everything" stops working when addictive
| substances are involved.
|
| I don't really think that's the case. Prohibition is what
| enables all the evils we hate. If all of these drugs were
| legal, and cheap, and sold at or below cost by the
| government, _and all other sales were illegal_, then guess
| what would disappear overnight? Dealers, smugglers, junkies
| supporting an expensive habit by fencing stolen goods....
| and most overdoses. _Actual deaths_. You still have your
| addicts, and maybe you get _some_ new ones - but they 're
| getting safer drugs from a place where there are also
| resources for getting yourself clean. It really, really
| sounds like a win/win/win.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Treat it the same as drinking in public. Fentanyl should be
| legal for anyone to buy and use, but that doesn't mean it's
| ok to do it in public and expose others to it.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Drinking in public should probably be legal though. Well,
| maybe not on the bus.
|
| In a lot of countries you can drink in public and it's
| fine.
| morkalork wrote:
| Wine and beer yes, but usually not spirits.
| csnover wrote:
| I don't live in Oregon but complaints here about drug use on
| transit--and antisocial activity in general--have also
| increased sharply since the beginning of the pandemic. So, I
| suspect if there is actually a causal relationship between
| legalisation and antisocial behaviour, that it is currently
| heavily outweighed by other more significant changes that
| have occurred in the same period of time.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Well it's not legal to smoke it on the bus either. Not to
| mention, this was going on well before decriminalization in
| OR, and it's happening up here in WA too.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| FWIW, OP said they think _legalization_ would stop the
| cartel, and you 're describing the local effects of
| _decriminalization_. These are different things. Personally,
| I don 't think either makes sense without having support
| systems already in place, like easily available SIS, rehab,
| readily available naloxone and a lot of other general welfare
| that we're missing in the US, like support for the homeless,
| mental health care, etc.
|
| Just as sort of an analogy to what I'm saying, citizens of
| all the states had access to some gambling addiction hotline
| even before gambling was widely legalized.
| adwi wrote:
| There's a value somewhere in the horrors of untreated
| addiction getting first-hand visibility. The true cost of
| policing, prosecuting, and jailing end-users must be
| enormous, maybe it will rally people to demand those
| resources get put toward direct outreach to try to address
| the root causes of the issue. Maybe it's a feature, not a
| bug.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| If that's a feature, it's a costly one, at the expense of
| ceding the public square to the substance abuse crowd. This
| LA Times story about the decline of the Metro system since
| the pandemic almost brought me to tears. I've enjoyed the
| lines and stations mentioned in the story, and I can see
| why they're deserted now.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-14/horror-
| t...
| [deleted]
| throwaway128128 wrote:
| Convicted of drug dealing... and yet she's on paid leave.
| Taxpayer funded vacation.
| joekrill wrote:
| Charged, not convicted. And we're (supposed to be) innocent
| until proven guilty in the US, so I'm guessing that's likely
| why she's on paid leave and not terminated.
| thephyber wrote:
| AFAIK, she is an executive for a labor union, not a government
| agency.
|
| This isn't taxpayer-funded, it is labor union dues funded.
| [deleted]
| swayvil wrote:
| [flagged]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The Washington Examiner is leaving out several salient facts.
|
| - the Police Officer's Association address was used to ship out
| packages to customers in the US, and Segovia operated her drug
| business partly out of the office; there's photographic evidence
| for both, taken from her whatsapp communications (which she
| turned over to investigators)
|
| - she discussed police business with her supplier(s)
|
| - at least one of her customers died of an overdose
|
| - after she was first contacted by investigators, she carried out
| an elaborate attempt to frame her housekeeper
|
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23732642-segovia-com...
| codetrotter wrote:
| > at least one of her customers died of an overdose
|
| Isn't fentanyl so dangerous that even a regular dose could
| kill? Idk, I'm not into fentanyl
|
| Edit: A cursory refreshing on the subject indicates that
| fentanyl is extremely potent, and that therefore it is
| difficult to dose correctly. I maintain that "overdose" is
| misleading in the context of fentanyl because it connotes user
| error. When in fact I think the blame lies on the suppliers,
| who may have sold fentanyl to users without the users being
| fully aware of what dangerous things they were really buying.
| nradov wrote:
| Yes, the recent increase in deaths aren't due to overdoses as
| we usually think of them. These are accidental poisonings.
| Mexican drug cartels are manufacturing counterfeit
| prescription drugs containing fentanyl. They have bad quality
| control and sometimes just put in too much. There is only a
| tiny difference between a recreational dose and a fatal dose,
| even for opioid addicts who have built up a high tolerance.
|
| https://peterattiamd.com/anthonyhipolito/
| rippercushions wrote:
| Opiate tolerance means that a dose that's perfectly OK for a
| hardened addict can kill a first-timer.
| function_seven wrote:
| > _after she was first contacted by investigators, she carried
| out an elaborate attempt to frame her housekeeper_
|
| Not only that, but she continued to make purchases! For all the
| dumb things she did prior to that contact (using her own
| addresses and a phone that's trivially associated with her),
| continuing to make buys while you know damn well you're being
| watched is just breathtakingly stupid. I don't get it.
| sophacles wrote:
| The idea is that continuing to make purchases adds
| plausibility to the framing.
|
| You appear as if you are cooperating fully, and innocent
| (because a guilty person who knows they are being
| investigated stops doing the illegal thing).
|
| If it was the housekeeper doing the crime, they wouldn't know
| bout the investigation so they would keep criming.
|
| Since you don't know how long you've been monitored prior to
| learning of the investigation you don't want to suddenly
| change the routine either... Same reasoning as the first
| point.
|
| The only real move you have is to hope hope the evidence
| points at the housekeeper and the frame-up tricks the
| investigators.
|
| Im not saying i agree with any of the above, but it's the
| type of reasoning behind the actions.
| function_seven wrote:
| I can't believe I didn't think it through like this. I
| reverse my judgement here.
|
| There are two ways this can play out for the accused: (1)
| The misdirection works and she's off scot-free, or (2) it
| fails, and she's in _roughly_ the same amount of trouble as
| she would have been had she not continued making the
| purchases.
|
| Thanks.
| adamwong246 wrote:
| It is almost as if the police believe they can act with
| impunity.
| samstave wrote:
| So youre telling me, all I need to do to get a seat on the
| San Jose California Police Union, is to not frame my
| housekeeper for my illegal drug smuggling empire, which
| certainly NEVER involved any of the upstanding cops in the
| actual police dept?
|
| -
|
| My father was a cop in Oakland in the '70s... He resigned
| after he witnessed OPD murder several people.
|
| His famous quote was "Once you're looking for 'bad'
| everywhere - pretty soon, thats all you can see'"
|
| --
|
| When I grew up in the 80s in Lake Tahoe (we moved from
| Oakland to Tahoe in 1979) -- the cops were known to have been
| outcasts from San Jose CA for being the worst offenders, and
| were pushed back to Tahoe as 'punishment' (in the same way
| that Catholic priests are 'punished')...
|
| We knew that the Tahoe cops were jerks, and it was widely
| known they were all San Jose rejects...
|
| Anyway, I got caught in a bit of legal trouble in 7th grade
| (was taking boats out for joy rides and leaving them on
| beaches)...
|
| And the 'detective' who found me was later found out as being
| on Escobar's pay roll....
|
| In the 1980s, Escobar was flying in tons of cocaine to
| truckee and south lake tahoe, and this cop, and the dad of a
| kid I went to school with were the guys who were funneling
| all that coke to Vegas and Reno...
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| OPD is... not great. Twenty years on and they're still
| under federal receivership.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's interesting, didn't know you were from Oakland. You
| might also want to read this other bit of local news that
| surfaced earlier this week.
|
| https://oaklandside.org/2023/03/27/murder-conviction-
| overtur...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| interesting -- an old man that built Casinos and lived in
| .. Sparks.. had a son who was a good-enough skier and
| definitely local to Tahoe in the 80s. The son had an "ad
| agency" which turned out to be a front for this activity.
| "You have to make a thousand a day" he was rumored to say..
| that means a thousand in your pocket each day in good
| times, or just cash moving when things are slow. What you
| say about Escobar and local flights, that fits. Miami Vice
| was a TV show at that time, not entirely fictional!
| kevviiinn wrote:
| TFA mentions both of the first two points but not the last two
| yieldcrv wrote:
| seems like the only thing she did wrong was failing to update
| department policy to be in favor of her activities
|
| in which case they could say drug running was "justified" in a
| grand press conference
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It won't altogether surprise me if she fields a defense
| saying that she was so frustrated by the lack of federal
| action that she decided to mount her own elaborate sting
| operation to take down the trafficking network. She's
| probably going to prison for many years anyway, might as well
| fleece the rubes on the way out and get free money sent to
| her commissary account.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| It's such a self own she handed over her phone without a legal
| fight or attempting to delete her totally unencrypted message
| history (of course another crime but it seems like the lesser
| from her legal point of view) with her drug sources with a
| phone apparently located in India.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Oh she tried to pass the Whatsapp messages off on the
| housekeeper too. Apparently she forgot that her chat logs
| photographs taken in the office.
|
| It's not very likely, but I'm really hoping the housekeeper
| sues her and ends up being awarded to the house she was paid
| to clean.
| p0pcult wrote:
| ACAB. Defund the police.
| knodi123 wrote:
| she's not a cop, but okay.
| speakfreely wrote:
| Thanks for checking in with the type of kneejerk, emotional
| reaction that provides no path forward for any reasonable
| discussion.
| uoaei wrote:
| Indeed, your kneejerk hostile emotional reaction to mere
| words is hampering a productive way to discussion.
| hinkley wrote:
| I had an ex from podunk midwest and one of her town's claims to
| fame was that the sheriff chaired the local DARE chapter until he
| got arrested for running a meth ring.
|
| I guess life is easier when you can arrest your competitors
| instead of just shooting them, but I don't have any idea how
| nobody narced on him to the feds (or at least their lawyer) for
| that long.
|
| But then police were organized crime before police were police.
| To this day I don't know why the Pinkertons still exist as a
| corporate subdivision name instead of being fully absorbed to
| distance from that profound emotional baggage.
|
| (Opinions colored by roommates' future BIL being murdered by cops
| in broad daylight in Chicago for DWB+autism, then moving to and
| dealing with Seattle PD's corruption/brutality problems)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > DWB
|
| Driving while black or am I just making up acronyms?
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Nope that's about right
| hinkley wrote:
| Black + autistic + in Chicago is a bad, bad combination.
|
| Illinois has more problems than Mississippi wrt to racial
| justice. For a blue state that's pretty fucked up, but then
| it's only about 55% blue.
|
| I think Chicago is currently winning the competition with NYC
| for number of convicted mayors as well. Clearly not something
| anyone should be proud of, but here we are. That whole Eliot
| Ness/Capone kerfuffle was Chicago, not NYC. See also
| Valentine's Day Massacre.
|
| > others have said that members of the Chicago Police
| Department who allegedly wanted revenge for the killing of a
| police officer's son played a part. - Wikipedia
| vkou wrote:
| > Clearly not something anyone should be proud of, but here
| we are.
|
| At least you manage to convict them, blatant corruption is
| quite prevalent in other parts of the country.
| hinkley wrote:
| Does that make you a "jail is half full" or a "jail is
| half empty" kind of a person? I think I need a diagram.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > For a blue state that's pretty fucked up, but then it's
| only about 55% blue
|
| fun fact, that's pretty normal. That's why all this talk
| about a national divorce is boneheaded-stupid. The only
| reason we have red states and blue states is because of
| FPTP and winner-take-all voting. But even in a place like
| california, democrats only outnumber republicans by about
| 2-1.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Divisions are also fractal. The outskirts of large cities
| are more conservative than the dense downtown. The center
| of a small town is more progressive than its outer
| streets, even in towns as small as a couple thousand
| people. This isn't the American Civil War of state vs
| state, it's (relatively) high density vs (relatively) low
| density.
|
| If we have a wide outbreak of violence it will probably
| look closer to Rwanda than the organized Union vs
| Confederacy fighting.
| [deleted]
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| What percent blue is Chicago? Bet it's not 55%.
| tedivm wrote:
| In 2020 Biden got 74% of the vote in Chicago.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I would guess that Biden got a lot of votes from
| independents and even republicans who were tired of the
| previous president's shenanigans.
| hgsgm wrote:
| The overall vote was very close in both 2016 and 2020
| thephyber wrote:
| It's important to parse the language and understand the
| domain.
|
| Major party affiliation of red + blue usually only adds
| up to about 60-80% in most regions. Not everyone is
| eligible to vote, registered to vote, or votes regularly.
| If people look at the percentage of the vote that
| Biden/Trump got in the most recent election, they are
| looking at the narrow end of the funnel. The "55% blue"
| is likely a cross-section closer to the beginning of the
| funnel.
|
| Also worth pointing out that Chicago has a 100+ year old
| "political machine". I don't remember the specifics, but
| each neighborhood has extremely powerful local
| politicians that hold a party office, but not a
| government office. It is not typical for American cities.
| hinkley wrote:
| As it was explained to me, most of the justice problems
| are in the Greater Chicago Area, so if anything that
| sidebar by me is being charitable about how fucked up it
| is.
| [deleted]
| letouj wrote:
| > I guess life is easier when you can arrest your competitors
| instead of just shooting them
|
| Well, with cops it's "in addition to", not "instead of".
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| American cops sure.
| hinkley wrote:
| Hollywood is quite fictional, but not as fictional as one
| might hope for.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| And just like a typical cop, she tried to frame someone for her
| crimes https://www.thedailybeast.com/san-jose-cop-union-exec-
| joanne...
| ribs wrote:
| She's not actually a cop, as far as I can tell. It's a little
| weird that the union would employ a civilian for the job, but not
| unimaginable.
| thephyber wrote:
| Most likely, she is family of police. Officers don't trust
| muggles.
|
| I have police in my family. Every vendor they employ (dry
| cleaner, tax assistance, plumber, locksmith, etc) comes from
| recommendations within the policing community. They don't take
| a risk to trust strangers.
| wslh wrote:
| Just an hypothesis: she was planted in the union because it was
| easier and faster than in the police.
|
| BTW, "The Departed" [1] is a great movie about this topic.
|
| [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407887/
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Maybe, but she might be just a solo entrepreneur. It's not
| hard to find dark markets if you're technically savvy, even
| before having the inside knowledge of someone adjacent
| to/involved with law enforcement.
| whinenot wrote:
| Check her family relations. It's all about who you _ _ ow.
| pvarangot wrote:
| [flagged]
| havblue wrote:
| "Joanne is a professional and competent manager and contact. She
| is always informed of conditions which effect her group," a
| recommendation on Segovia's LinkedIn profile reads.
|
| The grammar police haven't been doing their jobs lately either...
| bdcravens wrote:
| Unsurprising. Over 90% of the fentanyl seizures at the border
| aren't immigrants, but are Americans in American cars.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Nothing says ,,founding stock WASP" quite like Joanne Marian
| Segovia.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Have you seen her picture?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The cartels have used Americans as mules since cocaine took
| off. Americans are less likely to be searched, and while more
| expensive to be bribed, this is usually better than getting the
| shipment lost.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Not that expensive. This dumbass did it for the princely sum
| of 4000 pesos (~$220), then killed himself rather than face
| trial. He had 5 kids too.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/von-nukem-suicide-drug-
| cha...
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The wrong way to think about bribery is as a calculated
| payoff. Instead it's a spur of the moment thing.
|
| You are headed home, tickets already paid for, and then
| someone asks if you want to make a quick $200 real easy.
|
| This isn't always how it goes down, but you can imagine how
| an impulsive person may over react to a monetary reward and
| thus accept very little compensation. If you run the risk
| assessment, you aren't going to take the deal!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I guess. I'd be instantly suspicious, but he doesn't seem
| like a person of good judgment to start with. It's sad
| that he didn't have the wit or the character to plead
| guilty and try to straighten his life out for the sake of
| his family.
| thephyber wrote:
| > I'd be instantly suspicious
|
| It's their job to get extremely good at being less
| suspicious. The more rejections they get, the more they
| refine their approach, their appearance, their story,
| etc.
|
| I try to avoid giving credit to my ego for not falling
| for a scam/con (yet!) when capitalism and evolution are
| both optimized for finding efficient workarounds for any
| hurdle. Given enough attempts and enough time, capitalism
| will corrupt anyone and everyone.
| [deleted]
| hgsgm wrote:
| Having unprotected sex isn't particularly correlated with
| intelligence or self control. The opposite, in fact.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Might be stepping up efforts? Just came back to the US from
| Mexico (Yucatan) with partner and kids, had to make a drug
| dog walk (you walk at a steady pace as the drug dogs are
| exposed to you during the 10 meter walk) in the terminal.
| timemct wrote:
| I think that's been the practice for sometime now; we had
| to do the same thing at Puerto Vallarta's airport a few
| years back.
| notch898a wrote:
| They're really stepping up. Last year they dragged me into
| a hospital in cuffs and told the doctors to "inspect"
| inside my GI tract. That was a better part of a day affair
| along with a federal warrant and the works. A dog never
| even alerted (and even verbally told so by CBP, although
| the warrant lied and said otherwise). They also have a
| network of hospitals with staff openly hostile to tourists,
| who are fine acting even without a warrant or consent and a
| complaint to the state board results in the medical
| professional boards telling you that a patient has no right
| to deny consent even without a court order.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| uh, what? what was the lead up to this?
| notch898a wrote:
| Few hours walking around in a border town and eating
| lunch from what I recall. When I crossed back there were
| a whole team of people working me over and HSI got
| involved. No idea what triggered them. When they found
| nothing they sent the debt collectors chasing me for the
| hospital bill, obviously that won't be paid so I look
| forward to the lawsuit.
|
| edit: to note I don't know If I'm actually going to be
| sued, just will definitely find it humorous if they do
| so.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I would guess that the very temporary nature of your trip
| looked like you were just there to collect something and
| come right back. None of which justifies the subsequent
| outcome. Good luck in your lawsuit.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| This almost sounds like a combo of bad profiling software
| that flagged you and then parallel construction using the
| dog as cover.
|
| If you have the time and all, definitely start throwing
| lawsuits and hit hard in discovery.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| That's what the 2nd amendment is for
| jpmoral wrote:
| Not sure I understand, are you saying GP should've pulled
| a gun on the cops?
| jnsie wrote:
| Have had to do the drug dog walk the last few times I flew
| out of JFK. It seems to move lines much quicker and allows
| laptops, etc. to stay in bags going through the scanners.
| Think it's something we'll see more and more of, which is
| fine by me but they don't make much allowance for children
| who have no idea what is going on, in my experience (try
| telling two young kids that they have to walk side by side
| at a set pace and not touch the doggy)
| sparrish wrote:
| I had to do something similar in the Denver airport
| recently.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I actually thought the economics worked out that lost
| shipments were kind of irrelevant. There was so much south of
| the border and so little (percentage-wise) needed to make it
| through to sate demand.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| True, because many of those smugglers also smuggle military-
| grade firearms back to Mexico. It's very risky, but also very
| easy money. Sometimes there are enhanced controls to detect
| smuggling, but I'd bet anything they have well-bribed moles who
| warn the smugglers when that happens.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So we're already at gig-smuggling now?
| alexchantavy wrote:
| There was another article posted here that said the cartel
| is now using a gig work like model to be more
| decentralized. Can't find it though.
| SilasX wrote:
| Maybe California could prosecute them under the new rules
| about contractor misclassification!
| WJW wrote:
| You say "already" but offering random people money for
| doing crime is at least several centuries old.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Doesn't that suggest using Americans as your mules is the
| riskiest?
|
| Ima think most volume is moved via cargo or tunnels.
| fauxpause_ wrote:
| It does not suggest that. Sending with non Americans may
| simply be so likely to fail that it's not worth trying.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Bizarre thread. The Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels run China
| origin fentanyl in California. It is an enormous,
| industrial scale operation.
| olivermarks wrote:
| I had a young relative I chased around to try and get
| clean for years before he OD'd on opioids in a bay area
| Air BnB with his girlfriend. He would order laminated
| 'diving certificates' with drugs encased in them by mail,
| and other postal deliveries that were clearly really drug
| shipments. There is little reason for mules when 18
| wheelers are bringing in hidden drug shipments from
| Mexico and the postal service are delivering deadly drugs
| from India as was the case with the San Jose police union
| dealer.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| No, the relevant stat would be % likelihood of being caught
| for Americans vs non-Americans.
|
| Even if 90% of the people caught are Americans, if the number
| of Americans actually doing the smuggling outnumber non-
| Americans 20x, then that means they're lower-risk.
| bruceb wrote:
| Where does this stat come from? At the border or border
| checkpoint?
|
| These are very different.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| You can't claim by that stat that 90% of the fentanyl is
| brought in by American citizens through regulated ports of
| entry. By the very nature of illegal smuggling via illegal
| border crossings, you can't even know what percentage of
| fentanyl smugglers or fentanyl supply is captured.
| cr1895 wrote:
| > You can't claim by that stat that 90% of the fentanyl is
| brought in by American citizens through regulated ports of
| entry.
|
| They quite literally did not make that claim.
| [deleted]
| bena wrote:
| Their claim is that of the fentanyl seized at the border, 90%
| of that is from Americans in American cars. The other 10%
| would be from other sources.
|
| That does not include:
|
| Fentanyl seized at locations other than the border. Which we
| would know about.
|
| Fentanyl manufactured in the United States.
|
| Fentanyl in hospitals and other regulated areas.
|
| Fentanyl not seized at all.
|
| So they aren't making a claim about all fentanyl. They are
| making a claim of a certain segment of fentanyl.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| You also can't know how much gets through legal border
| crossings. What you have posted is a non-statement
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| Did you read the article? This wasn't someone driving a car
| across the border.
| bdcravens wrote:
| That's not the point - the point is that motivated Americans
| are the ones driving the fentanyl epidemic.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| There's a good amount of both.
| [deleted]
| scarface74 wrote:
| It's amazing that the "fentanyl epidemic" is being driven
| by the suppliers. But previous drug epidemics that were
| affecting the "inner city" were caused by the users ,
| "absentee fathers", "the lack of strong moral character".
| anon291 wrote:
| Nope.. both caused by open borders.
| thephyber wrote:
| Your observation is on point.
|
| People are strategically focusing our outrage. Political
| tribes need simple monsters/bogeymen. Their leaders
| (politicians, government officials, corporate leaders,
| and even police union executives) each use PR in
| different ways to focus their constituents' attention.
| [deleted]
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| [dead]
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Addicts are the ones doing that.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Or maybe Americans are overwhelmingly trying to smuggle
| across border crossings because traditionally Americans get
| less inspection than non-americans, whereas non nationals
| choose other methods(tunnels, drones, boats, other non-
| border zone crossings, mail/parcels, etc).
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _However, the U.S. Attorney 's Office of the Northern District of
| California said from July 2019 onward, officials intercepted and
| opened five of the shipments_
|
| So one shipment a year? It took four years to make a case? I know
| police cases take time but...this seems less like justice and
| more like she didn't pay off the right person.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| They don't really check every package.
|
| > She is alleged to have had at least 61 shipments mailed to
| her home from October 2015 to January 2023 from
| countries/regions, including Hong Kong, Hungary, India, and
| Singapore. The mailing documents were labeled as "Wedding Party
| Favors," "Gift Makeup," or "Chocolate and Sweets."
|
| TBH, this sounds like most electronic gizmos I order off
| aliexpress et al.
|
| But I think detailed records are only kept by customs on int'l
| courier packages, not postal service parcels.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Of course they don't.
|
| I've been a cigar hobbyist since the early 90s. Cuban cigars
| have been mostly to completely illegal in the US for the
| entire time, but with the advent of the widespread use of web
| pages, we started to get better and better access to the
| Cuban supply via overseas retailers.
|
| These retailers know full good and well that these cigars are
| contraband here in the states. But some of them were
| extremely lazy and would just ship entire pallets of
| merchandise. I'd guess that about 70-80% of the product
| bought overseas and shipped here actually got to the buyer.
| The rest were virtually all on these pallets where you'd have
| to be a complete idiot not to spot them.
| notch898a wrote:
| I would be astonished if customs even finds it useful to
| appropriate any budget for seizure of Cuban cigars. It
| wouldn't surprise me if they let them through because it's
| less work than filling out the seizure paperwork. Everyone
| knows it's a measure that achieves nothing, and not even
| the rabid anti-drug people are going to give them an
| attaboy for finding tobacco, and the political will to do
| anything meaningfully further with the embargo is
| withering.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I know that I've never lost a single item to customs in
| all the years I was procuring cigars internationally, and
| most retailers would send out a second shipment if the
| first was seized for whatever reason. Even the gray
| market retailers, who would buy in volume from companies
| with actual Habanos licenses and then sell at a discount
| to customers would do this. I think you're right and it
| was only cases where they made it extremely obvious would
| customs ever do something about it. Of course, it didn't
| hurt that the elites on both sides of the political aisle
| enjoyed the product.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Right, but they had intercepted and notified her by mail of
| seizing _kilograms_ of controlled substances on several
| previous occasions. She had even written back to acknowledge
| at least one of the notices and formally abandon her
| ownership interest in the package.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Opioid dependence is a helluva drug.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There's no indication she was a user of her product.
| Simple greed seems to be the explanation here.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Why would the DoJ share that someone had a medical
| problem? People could become sympathetic. Better to focus
| the public interest on the greed and abuse of office
| aspects.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I read a _lot_ of legal filings in criminal cases, and
| while you make a valid point my experience is the feds
| usually include whatever excuse /explanation people offer
| when they're caught. Culturally federally investigators
| more about 'here are the facts and how we collected them
| to establish probable cause' and leave the moralizing to
| prosecutors.
|
| Please don't read this as a blanket endorsement or
| suggestion that federal investigators are always ethical,
| I don't believe that to be so.
| aj7 wrote:
| $161,300 salary wasn't near enough.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| This is how the cartel works in Mexico - don't bother hiding,
| just take over the power structures. I wonder if she's connected
| to them.
|
| This is a bad sign.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| In other words, Regulatory-Capture (
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp).
| notch898a wrote:
| Brah this has been happening since at least the Contra affair
| jeron wrote:
| Funny you say that, as the journalist who broke the Contra
| affair was from the Mercury News, a San Jose newspaper
| ConanRus wrote:
| [dead]
| maicro wrote:
| [flagged]
| zeruch wrote:
| This towns police dept has long been an incompetent lot (while
| not anywhere nearly as bad as say, NOLA or Baltimore, they are
| still fairly boorish and prone to overreach) and prone to such
| stellar missteps as how it handled the Floyd protests in town
| (e.g. https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/sjpd-maims-activist-
| who-t...)
| thephyber wrote:
| I live in SJ, have police in my family, and have talked to
| police neighbors.
|
| SJPD has fewer officers per resident than any other major city.
| We have somewhere between 30% - 50% the number of sworn
| officers as San Francisco. SJPD is underfunded and surrounding
| cities are all better paying for officers. The officers that
| continue to work there mostly live many hours away and are
| required to work pretty high overtime hours.
|
| My personal assessment is California Prop 13 (from around 1979)
| is at fault. It has starved the city's funding, which makes
| SJPD uncompetitive against neighboring cities. Additionally,
| the city is a residential base for lots of the companies in the
| neighboring suburbs.
|
| In the late 2000s, the mayor at the time was very worried about
| the retirement costs of the department and made the comp
| package much less appealing/competitive for new hires/transfers
| than existing officers. This creates an exodus of experienced
| officers and means that we get worse recruits than other
| cities.
|
| Not trying to justify the unprofessional actions, but to add
| some factual color behind the recent history that got us to
| where we are.
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