cannabisnews.com: Mandate for Misguided Police on Medical Marijuana





Mandate for Misguided Police on Medical Marijuana
Posted by CN Staff on June 24, 2004 at 08:55:02 PT
By Diana Lejins
Source: Press-Telegram 
Long Beach police don't get it. They just don't get it. Despite otherwise outstanding service to the good people of Long Beach, the Police Department continues its intolerance toward the sick and dying in our community. Current LBPD policy requires that patients who use medical cannabis be cited or arrested. It's not the average rank-and- file officers, many of whom voted for Proposition 215 (The Compassionate Use Act), that are the problem. The command staff stands contrary to a change of paradigm involving medicinal marijuana. Their rigid, uncompromising attitude blocks the way. Plain and simple, they don't want to get it.
The June 15 council meeting was a prime example of their hard-hearted indifference. Standing in for a conspicously absent Chief Anthony "the buck stops here' Batts, Deputy Chief Luna disregarded a plethora of compelling testimony that swayed a compassionate city council. He stubbornly refused to allow lawful patients any relief from the terror inflicted upon them by a sadly out-dated zero-tolerance police policy. He offered excuse after lame excuse in resistance to various inquiries regarding existing policy and the possibility of change. His shameful attempts to demonize cannabis and portray law-abiding disabled seniors as hardened criminals in order to justify the department's stance bordered on the ridiculous. Blaming a physician-recommended medicine for the many crimes in this city is tantamount to saying that cars are responsible for all traffic deaths and no one should be allowed to drive them. This flawed reasoning undermines any sense of validity. Moreover, it makes the whole department appear insensitive, punitive and dogmatic. In response, the venerable council wisely voted to enjoin these guardians of public safety to create a policy within 91 days that complies with California law. Considering it has been eight years since the passage of Proposition 215, the time limit was more than adequate. Understandably, patients harbor a marked distrust for Long Beach police. This has been fostered by the cavalier attitudes of upper echelon about this issue. Since the passage of SB 420 last year, spelling out clear guidelines, the Police Department has ignored the impassioned pleas of individuals and various organizations. While numerous cities and counties throughout the state have implemented workable programs for legitimate patients, our police administrators have been utterly derelict in their duty to provide reasonable guidelines so that licit patients can remain law- abiding citizens. Sadly, their delay has developed into a cruel travesty of justice inflicted upon the ill and disabled. Judging from past performance (or lack thereof), the main concern of patients is that the authorities will attempt solely to patronize the council. The administration may try to develop a minimalist policy that may seem to follow the letter of the law but eludes the spirit of the law. They might engage in a myriad of delay tactics and discourage participation by the public or patient advocate organizations. They may create guidelines that are totally reliant on a governmentally-issued ID program that they know is currently non-existent and may not be implemented in the near future. Or, they could continue their course of strategic willful ignorance. Another pertinent factor in this equation is the huge monetary deficit that Long Beach faces. Arresting patients is not only costly for the patients, but depletes city and county coffers as well. Furthermore, this blatant violation of public civil rights and other laws that protect the disabled has pushed the city onto a path toward litigious jeopardy. Additionally, officers have been forced into a position of personal liability. When law enforcement administrators are crying the blues about budgetary restraints, they should be especially diligent in spending scarce taxpayers dollars. Hopefully, the Long Beach City Council will maintain due diligence and do whatever is necessary to enforce their directive come Sept. 14. In the meantime, how many more must die in senseless agony or suffer needlessly, forgoing their right to choose a medicine that could ease their suffering? How many will further deteriorate because they are in fear of arrest and persecution from those who are supposed to uphold the law and protect them? Just as police expect citizens to obey all laws, so do citizens expect the police to uphold all of them. It has been said that kindness and compassion for the more vulnerable members of our society cannot be mandated, but in the case of our misguided local law enforcement it may be the only way. Then maybe they finally will get it! Note: Diana Lejins is the director/founder of Advocates For Disability Rights, an American Sign Language interpreter for the deaf and a free-lance photojournalist. Her advocacy for the disabled evolved from her intimate involvement with the hearing-impaired language and culture. Advocates for Disability Rights may be reached at:  a4dr yahoo.com Complete Title: HED: A Mandate for Misguided Police on Medical MarijuanaSource: Long Beach Press-Telegram (CA)Author: Diana LejinsPublished: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 Copyright: 2004 Los Angeles Newspaper GroupContact: speakout presstelegram.comWebsite: http://www.presstelegram.com/Related Articles & Web Site:Medical Marijuana Information Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htmCity Urges Police To Change Pot Policyhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19023.shtmlMedical Pot Smokers Sway City Councilhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19014.shtmlRx for Medical Marijuanahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19004.shtml
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Comment #8 posted by FoM on June 24, 2004 at 20:53:27 PT
About Police
If police had to live in the area they worked the drug war and police abuse would slow down. When you live in the same area you realize you better listen to people from the community.
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Comment #7 posted by OverwhelmSam on June 24, 2004 at 20:44:29 PT
Let The Bull Loose
In my opinion, it's time to put many of the old police officers out to pasture and let some new blood run things. Work on getting the prohibitionist law enforceement officers (I use the term loosely) fired!
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on June 24, 2004 at 14:51:58 PT
Placerville OKs Limits on Medical Pot Stores
By Bee Metro StaffThursday, June 24, 2004http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/9763720p-10686515c.html
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Comment #5 posted by Richard Paul Zuckerm on June 24, 2004 at 11:33:44 PT:
RESPONSE TO MAX FLOWERS, COMMENT # 3.
Mr. Max Flowers, author of Comment number 3, sees criminal prosecution as a primary vehicle to implement positive change for med pot. The criminal process is The State's remedy. A private person has very little, if any, control over the criminal process. A private citizen, such as an aggrieved med pot patient, may submit an Internal Affairs complaint with the appropriate Internal Affairs officer of the offending municipal police force, and may speak with the county District Attorney [County Prosecutor] to REQUEST criminal proceedings be initiated against the offending police officer. The criminal process is instigated at the discretion of the government, not a private citizen.It is CIVIL PROCEDURE which is the aggrieved private citizen's appropriate course of action! A lawsuit filed against Long Beach can include a request for a TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER, TEMPORARY INJUNCTION, PERMANENT INJUNCTION, DECLARATORY JUDGMENT, COMPENSATORY DAMAGES, AND, MY FAVORITE: PUNITIVE DAMAGES! The best remedy would be a civil action against the offending public entity, with a request for a TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER, TEMPORARY INJUNCTION, along with the other remedies mentioned above, which should afford the civil litigant a PROMPT hearing in the California Superior Court, for Long Beach Police Department to correctly follow the State's Med Pot Regs!! Obtain a medical doctor attesting to your need for medical pot and include his report with the paperwork in the litigation.Richard Paul Zuckerman, Diploma in Paralegal, New York University, 2003, www.aclu-nj.org.
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Comment #4 posted by Max Flowers on June 24, 2004 at 11:19:30 PT
This is really wrong
From above article: While numerous cities and counties throughout the state have implemented workable programs for legitimate patients, our police administrators have been utterly derelict in their duty to provide reasonable guidelines so that licit patients can remain law- abiding citizens. Sadly, their delay has developed into a cruel travesty of justice inflicted upon the ill and disabled. -end excerpt-This is frustrating because the author, even with her good intentions, is spreading misinformation. The police administrators don't need to provide guidelines--minimum guidelines already exist under SB420, which is state law, and the police are required to abide by those. If the County of Los Angeles refuses to set guidelines, then the guidelines default to those set by SB420, which was the whole point of that legislation!! No one should have to wait for any bureaucratic decions by the city or county, as SB420 made those decisions for the counties and cities that are dragging their feet. Therefore, if the chief of Long Beach police refuses to follow state law, he is in violation of his duties and needs to be removed from office.Like you Dennis, I left southern CA for a better place. Not so much because of police abuse--I only learned how bad it was after leaving--but due to the crime and the general vibe of uncaring materialism and lack of any feeling of community. Now, reading about how Naziesque the police really are down there, and having lived in northern CA for 8 years, I can see that the populace is terrorized down there and that there seems to be no cohesive and effective activism down there. Up here in the bay area, DAs and police officials actually worry for their jobs if they start pulling stuff like this. The activism *works*. I'm not sure if the people of southern CA are angry enough yet... or maybe they're just totally frightened (which would be understandable, but unless they get over that and get MAD, they will not prevail).
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Comment #3 posted by Max Flowers on June 24, 2004 at 11:02:41 PT
Mr. Zuckerm
I don't understand how a police official can get away with brazenly refusing to implement state law. In doing so they are breaking the law themselves, no? If a cop rapes someone, he is breaking state law and is criminally liable. If his boss refuses to properly enforce a state law (H&S 11362), in direct disobedience of his bosses (the city he works for), why is he not just as criminally liable?These pricks need to be arrested. But who arrests the chief of police? A California state police officer?
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Comment #2 posted by konagold on June 24, 2004 at 10:51:25 PT:
bullys with badges who beat up on sick people
given yesterdays coverage of the beating that followed a high speed persuit, it seems that southern Cal cops are bullysin Long Beach they are bullies with badges who beat up on sick peopleindeed cops in LA and Orange County are one of the reasons that this second generation Native Californian moved to Hawaii over 30 years agoAloha
Rev. Dennis [Jesus in you
loves Jesus in me] Shields
http://thereligionofjesuschurch.org
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Comment #1 posted by Richard Paul Zuckerm on June 24, 2004 at 10:23:55 PT:
THEN SUE LONG BEACH!!!
If Long Beach has an unlawful policy, then sue them! If nobody sues them, the problem will continue! I attended California State University   Long Beach, in 1982 and 1984, and I was under the impression that municipal and campus police were fair minded people! They were nice to me!! Perhaps the federal government has brought on this med pot law enforcement insurgency, starting with the U.S. Air Force memorandum entitled Operation Garden Plot, which ended up in the local police SWAT teams and this excessively legalistic attitude towards local law enforcement personnel!About a year and half ago, the United States General Accounting Office ["GAO"] announced to the public that they no longer desire to fund the United States Drug Enforcement Administration ["DEA"], because the DEA has been unsuccessful in this "Drug War" of President Richard Nixon. What the GAO failed to tell the American public is that the DEA will NEVER stop the Drug War because the United States Central Intelligence Agency ["CIA"] launders over $600 Billion of drug money per year thru Wall Street, www.fromthewilderness.com [www.copvcia.com], while the DEA and other cops targed American citizens, an awful hypocrisy!! Major media in the U.S.A. will not tell you these things because the CIA has been controlling what your newspapers and television news reports to you, since the 1940s, what they call Operation Mockingbird. For example, Gary Webb was fired after reporting about CIA crack distribution in East Los Angeles, California [He later published the book entitled DARK ALLIANCE, which resulted in House Intelligence Committee hearings and a 2 volume report acknowledging CIA were not reporting drug transactions].I would seriously consider filing the lawsuit in State court, alleging common law tort and State Constitutional Tort, vicarious liability against the public entity, under your State Constitutional Right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. I would file for violation of the State Constitution, to try to develop jurisprudence of the State Constitution, rather than rush into federal court on federal constitutional tort. There are distinct advantages to suing in State court for violation of your State Constitution. First of all, federal courts curtail the time to sue for violation of your federal constitutional rights. Under the seminal, but bad, case of Wilson v. Garcia, the time to sue for violation of your federal constitutional rights is the time to sue for personal injury, unless there is a State law specifically setting a time to sue for federal civil rights violation. Unfortunately, as the dissenting opinion in Wilson v. Garcia says, a civil rights violation might entail Fraud or defamation, which would otherwise give us longer time to sue. Suing in State court for violation of your State Constitutional Rights, however, you would have more of an opportunity to file your lawsuit beyond the time set out in Wilson v. Garcia, supra.Second, you would have more difficulty suing a public entity in federal court than State court. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Brown v. Board of Commissioners, in a published decision, back in 1997, a 5-4 decision, that there is NO VICARIOUS LIABILITY against public entities in federal civil rights litigation. In STATE constitutional rights litigation, however, you automatically receive liability of the public entity, the deep pockets, the doctrine known as vicarious liability, which, in turn, tells the public entity to keep and eye on the individual tortfeasors so they are properly trained and supervised! Third, you would be more likely to receive punitive damages in a State court than a federal court. Federal courts, hired by corporate politicians, are more interested in protecting those who appointed them. Studies have shown that State courts have allowed higher punitive damages verdicts to remain than Federal judges who seem to be more likely to remit punitive damages verdicts!Fourth, you are more likely to receive speedy justice in State courts than federal courts. There are more State court judges available to decide your case quicker than the limited federal judges whose caseloads are ever enlarging!!THE ONLY ADVANTAGES TO FEDERAL CIVIL RIGHTS LITIGATION ARE THESE TWO:
[1] Congress enacted legislation for attorney fees of those attorneys who prevail in federal civil rights litigation, 42 U.S.C. Section 1988. So, the attorneys have an incentive to handle federal civil rights case because they know they will be reimbursed for their attorney fees IF THE LAWSUIT IS NOT FRIVOLOUS AND THEY PREVAIL![2] The plaintiff gets to keep the punitive damages in federal civil rights cases. Some States are getting greedy and are taking at least part of the punitive damages awards from the plaintiff. I'm not sure if the California legislature has done this. Apparently, New Jersey has not. But in some States, at least part of the punitive damages verdict goes to The State, not to the aggrieved plaintiff. This is part of the success of the big corporations seeking to put profit ahead of safety in the "Tort Law Reform." I have found one particular book to be indispensible: DISCOVERY AND PROOF IN POLICE MISCONDUCT CASES, c. 1995, by Stephen M. Ryals, Attorney at Law, published by John Wiley & Sons. Unfortunately, this book is not stocked at any of the law school libraries around New Jersey, as far as I know of, even though I have asked them in writing to get the book for the library!!!Keep in mind that cops lie in their police reports ["reportilying"] and during in-court testimony ["testilying"]. Within the past couple of weeks ago, I saw the obituary for Congressman Church, who led the Church Commission, one of the investigations into police perjury in New York City. I urge everybody interested in understanding and improving the field of criminal justice to read the law review article entitled PROVING THE LIE: LITIGATING POLICE CREDIBILITY, in the Summer 1999 issue of American Journal of Criminal Law, written by David Dorfman, Assistant Professor of Law, Pace University School of Law, White Plains, New York. In addition, read the works on police by New York University Law Professor with last name Skolnick. Probably the cops who lie the most are the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Please visit www.expertwitnessradio.org and www.fromthewilderness.com [the mirror Web site is www.copvcia.com] for more information about how often the federal cops lie? The United States Government are involved in causing violence and to dupe Americans into believing it was other malefactors so they can carry out their plan to create a "New World Order." www.takingaim.info; Shadow of the Swastika, www.sumeria.net/politics/shadv3.html; www.tarpley.net. The primary actors in this evil plan include The Rockefeller Group and The Rothschilds,  www.gulfwarillnesses.com/news/RATH.htm; www.honeri.org/denhague.html, for which I have sent MY supporting letter to Dr. Rath which he said would be forwarded to The Hague!!! www.bariumblues.com. Unfortunately, the curriculum of government schools fails to teach the relevant dark side of government, www.JohnTaylorGatto.com.Sir Francis Bacon had written that force is more often accomplished through the use of deception than violence. He also wrote: "Nothing doth more hurt in a State than that cunning men pass for wise." I look forward to seeing the movie entitled Fahrenheit 9/11, by Michael Moore, about the LIES by the Bush Administration [although I STRONGLY DISAGREE with his thoughts gun control, as the failure of psychiatrists to monitor psychiatric medication is more of a cause of the Columbine shootings]! Kerry is a member of "Skull and Bones", part of the evil plan to create a "New World Order." Kerry's wife is the daughter of another evil magnate for "The New World Order"! To deprive Americans of freedom and enslave us physically, mentally, and economically. I plan to vote for either Ralph Nader, Ron Paul, or Dennis Kucinich [assuming Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich show up on the Election Ballot this November!!]. There is no "lesser of two evils" in this upcoming election! Ralph Nader is my choice. You people who believe that voting for John Kerry is going to reduce the aforementioned terror and hypocrisy are as delusional as I am "paranoid schizophrenic"!!!Richard Paul Zuckerman, Box 159, Metuchen, New Jersey, (Cell telephone number)(908) 403-6990, richardzuckerman2002 yahoo.com.Diploma in Paralegal, New York University;
B.A. in Political Science, Kean College of New Jersey [Kean University], Union, N.J., 1995.Member of: www.norml.org; www.cannabisculture.com; www.hightimes.com; www.fromthewilderness.com [www.copvcia.com]; www.aclu-nj.org; www.njlp.org; www.greenparty.org; www.jpfo.org; www.nrahq.org; www.fija.org; www.njmilitia.org [under 10 U.S.C. Section 311, which defines the "unorganized militia" as every able bodied male between the ages of 17 and 45 years of age, which does NOT require government approval!!];Hardcopy subscriber to: Law Enforcement News (John Jay College of Criminal Justice); Taking Aim (Militia of Montana); and The Free Press (Kerrville, Texas).
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