Who Are the Real Drug Criminals?

In the great scheme of things, this story in our local paper may not seem like a big deal. But I found it very disturbing.

Donald Andrews ran a “smoke shop” in nearby Scotia. He was arrested for criminal possession and sale of a controlled substance, carrying a 25-year sentence, and spent three weeks in jail, before charges were dismissed.

The evidence against him was a photo showing what was purported to be a packet of crack cocaine on his store counter. But Andrews had some photographic evidence of his own: his store’s security camera videotaped a man surreptitiously placing the packet on the counter, photographing it, and then quickly hiding it again. He was a paid Sheriff’s Department informant.

Andrews is suing Schenectady County Sheriff Dominic Dagostino and local government bodies for violation of his rights.

Dagostino ridiculed suggestions that targeting Andrews (who’s black) was racially motivated; but said his office “is seeking” the informant.

My question: how, in any case, could a photo of a packet on a counter ever be considered sufficient evidence to throw a man in jail? What’s to prove the packet even actually contained crack? Or that Andrews had anything to do with it? Of course, the informant could also simply lie.

But the real point is how the insane “war on drugs” poisons society far more than drugs themselves ever could. Here is a local law enforcement agency so gung-ho to nail drug offenders that it seems to care little whether the nailees are even guilty (of what shouldn’t even be a crime).

And I’ve written before how police exploit the “drug war” pretext to fatten their coffers by confiscating (i.e., stealing) the property of alleged drug violators, usually flouting Fourth Amendment due process guarantees. Was the real motive here to grab Andrews’s assets?

The $500,000 he’s suing for is not enough. We can only look to our courts to smack down hard and deter this criminality by “law enforcement” agencies. If the Sheriff was paying this lowlife informant, then he’s responsible for the creep’s actions. He’s the one who should go to jail.