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Tag: drug dealing

  • Famous San Francisco Neighborhood Grapples With Drug Dealing

    Famous San Francisco Neighborhood Grapples With Drug Dealing

    Tackling drug dealing in the Tenderloin district cost the city more than $12.5 million from 2017-2018.

    San Francisco is home to the priciest apartment rental market in the country—but it is also home to “widespread and endemic” drug dealing relegated to the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

    A report by the SF budget and legislative analyst revealed details of drug dealing activity in the Bay Area, particularly in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district where more than half of drug arrests were made from 2017-2018.

    Of 883 people who were arrested or cited in San Francisco for selling drugs during that time period, 56% were from Tenderloin, according to the report.

    “There are dozens of people selling drugs at any given hour, including around our parks and schools and in the neighborhood,” said district supervisor Matt Haney, who represents Tenderloin.

    Haney held a Board of Supervisors hearing in April to discuss the drug problem in Tenderloin, Mid-Market and South of Market—which are all within Haney’s District 6. Haney acknowledged that “what we’re doing right now is not working,” hoping to develop a “comprehensive citywide strategy” that is currently lacking.

    “I’m not saying that people need to get a long-term prison sentence,” Haney said. “But each arrest costs us something like $10,000, so when we do arrest someone we should be smarter about what happens next.”

    According to the report, tackling drug dealing in Tenderloin, South of Market and Mid-Market cost the city more than $12.5 million from 2017-2018.

    Prosecutors say that “current sentencing practices do not deter” drug sellers from returning to their posts—which has resulted in what SF Chronicle has called a “revolving door of drug dealers.”

    As The Chronicle reported, “Prosecutors… say it takes an average of 244 days—about eight months—for a felony like selling drugs to make its way through the courts. Often as not, the suspected dealers are released by a judge pending the outcome of their cases. And just as often, the dealers head back to the Tenderloin and start selling drugs again.”

    Of 173 convictions cited in the report, 80.3% (or 139) of them received probation with some time served while just 18.5% (or 32) received longer sentencing.

    “Most of the people arrested or convicted get probation, which begs the question, How can we make probation effective and not have these guys go right back on the street?” said Haney.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Are Drug-Related Crime Rates Lower In Affluent Neighborhoods?

    Are Drug-Related Crime Rates Lower In Affluent Neighborhoods?

    A new study suggests that the socioeconomic makeup of a neighborhood may not affect the rate of drug-related crimes or criminal offenses.

    New research suggests that the socioeconomic makeup of a neighborhood does not appear to have any effect on the level of drug-related crime in that area.

    An analysis of crime and census data of a suburban area with an average annual income of $74,000 found that residential stability did not reduce the level of narcotics trafficking or high-level criminal offenses that, according to the study authors, often accompany such activity.

    The authors also suggested that focusing police activity on a single area might dispel crime in that location, but it would also displace dealers and related criminals to other regions, thus increasing crime rates regardless of income or ownership.

    The study, written by Christopher Contreras, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of California Irvine (UCI), and John R. Hipp, a professor in UCI’s Departments of Criminology, Law & Society and Urban Planning and Public Policy, was published in Justice Quarterly.

    To conduct their research, the pair reviewed crime and census data culled from a heavily suburban area in Florida’s Miami-Dade County between 2010 and 2014. The neighborhood had an average annual income of $74,000 and a home ownership rate of 72.5%.

    According to studies of drug dependency and abuse trends in the region during that time period, heroin-related deaths had increased sharply between 2011 and 2012 in Miami-Dade. Statistics also showed that laws designed to close “pill mills” and to limit the amount of controlled Schedule II medication that physicians could prescribe, caused a slight reduction in the number of prescription opioid-related deaths in Miami-Dade.

    However, four opioids—oxycodone, morphine, hydrocodone and methadone—were responsible for a slightly higher margin of deaths (32%) in 2013 than 2012.

    Upon reviewing the crime and census data, the study authors determined that “residential stability and high socioeconomic status do not necessarily buffer neighborhood blocks against an increase in robberies and burglaries,” as Contreras noted. “Communities with narcotics trafficking bring in serious, high-rate offenders, whose activities spill over into other neighborhoods.”

    According to the study authors, a contributing factor may also be due to changes in how drug trafficking takes place. Technology allows dealers to move more freely and conduct business in public places rather than isolated areas or street corners. When police pressure is applied to these scenarios, dealers can simply relocate and continue business. “Drug activity is displaced to somewhere else, along with higher crime,” noted Contreras.

    Keeping drug-related crime out of residential neighborhoods will require stronger law enforcement, according to study co-author John Hipp. But policymakers also need to “address the growing demand for opioids,” he added.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Professors Accused Of Selling Drugs, Sexual Misconduct On College Campus

    Professors Accused Of Selling Drugs, Sexual Misconduct On College Campus

    Female students allege that the professors tried to get them to “sexually service professors at other colleges.”

    Several professors at John Jay College of Criminal Justice are under criminal investigation for sexual assault and drug dealing.

    Four of the accused professors are on administrative leave, while more are named in the accusers’ complaints. They are being investigated by the New York State inspector general and Manhattan district attorney.

    The complaints allege that the professors used and sold drugs on the New York City campus. As the New York Times reported, “Drug use and sex were said to be common in the offices of some professors and in an area known as ‘the Swamp’ in one of the school’s buildings.”

    Anthropology professor Ric Curtis, 64, was the ringleader of the alleged misconduct. The accusers and eyewitnesses claim Curtis frequently used and sold drugs in his office at John Jay. They recalled seeing drug paraphernalia in his office, including a pipe, a grinder and needles.

    Curtis, former chair of the sociology, anthropology, and law and police science departments, has been at the school for 30 years.

    One accuser, 24-year-old recent graduate Naomi Haber, told the New York Post that Curtis convinced her to go off her medications, including antidepressants, for bipolar disorder—and “introduced weed into my life, instead.”

    Haber also claimed that Curtis held on to his “devotees” by hooking them with drugs. “Ric supplied weed to his devotees, several times a day, which made it even harder for [‘swamp’ devotees] to leave once they had become dependent on the drugs and by extension, him.”

    The women also accused the men of sexual assault, and attempting to have them “sexually service professors at other colleges,” as well as rape, according to the Post.

    John Jay was apparently aware of the allegations since at least May, the Times reports, and found significant quantities of drugs and drug paraphernalia in an internal investigation.

    However, the school did not alert police until September—and when it did, John Jay did not disclose the “circumstances under which [the evidence was] recovered.”

    Another accuser, 39-year-old Claudia Cojocaru, a former student who is now an adjunct professor at John Jay, criticized the school’s handling of the allegations.

    “They were incredibly rude and victim-degrading. They made us perform like circus animals, distorted the facts, and distorted what we talked about,” she said. “They tried to brush the whole thing under the rug, so to speak. They re-traumatized us by making us relive all sorts of traumatic experiences.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Whistleblower Alleges Tesla Covered Up Employee's Drug Dealing Ties

    Whistleblower Alleges Tesla Covered Up Employee's Drug Dealing Ties

    Whistleblower Karl Hansen alleges that raising those concerns to Tesla management was what got him fired in mid-July.

    Last week, a former Tesla security employee filed an explosive tip with the Securities and Exchange Commission, claiming the company hacked employee cell phones and turned a blind eye to drug dealing and large-scale theft at the Nevada Gigafactory.

    Whistleblower Karl Hansen claimed that raising those concerns to Tesla management was what got him fired mid-July, according to The Mercury News. Hansen lodged his complaint with the feds on August 9, according to his attorney Stuart Meissner, of the New York-based firm Meissner Associates. 

    The sweeping complaint claims that Tesla spied on its own workers by wiretapping their phones and hacking their computers, including those of another recently axed whistleblower, Martin Tripp. 

    Hansen also accused the company of keeping secret the results of its internal probe into a cartel-connected coke- and meth-dealing ring that one employee operated out of the Nevada site, a claim to which the DEA supposedly alerted the company.

    On top of that, Hansen alleges that Tesla neglected to disclose information about $37 million worth of raw materials stolen this year, an incident that supposedly led to the firing of another worker who reported it all to police. 

    Tesla fired back against the allegations with its own statement, saying the claims were “taken very seriously” when Hansen came forward with them—but ultimately, the company claimed, they couldn’t be proven. 

    “Some of his claims are outright false,” the company said, according to a statement published by CNBC. “Others could not be corroborated, so we suggested additional investigative steps to try and validate the information he had received second-hand from a single anonymous source.”

    But, Tesla claimed, Hansen refused to keep speaking with the company. 

    “It seems strange that Mr. Hansen would claim that he is concerned about something happening within the company,” Tesla added, “but then refuse to engage with the company to discuss the information that he believes he has.”

    Elon Musk was more to-the-point in his appraisal of Hansen. 

    “This guy is super [nuts],” he wrote in a Twitter DM to a Gizmodo reporter, using the peanut emoji to drive home the point. 

    “He is simultaneously saying that our security sucks (it’s not great, but I’m pretty sure we aren’t a branch of the Sinaloa cartel like he claims) and that we have amazing spying ability,” Musk added. “Those can’t both be true.”

    View the original article at thefix.com