Federal Judge Asks DEA To Explain Why All 179 Of Its Stash House Sting Targets Are Minorities
from the stings-themselves-still-problematic-even-without-the-bias dept
Federal judges appear to be tiring of the government's long-running entrapment programs. One of the federal law enforcment's favorite "enforcement" efforts is creating crime in order to bust "criminals." Agencies like the ATF and DEA find someone in need of cash -- usually a minority someone -- and use undercover agents and confidential informants to convince them to raid a drug stash house for some easy money.
The twist is the drug stash house is fake. There are no drugs. There are no armed guards protecting the drugs. Once the mark arrives with a weapon and a plan of attack, the ATF arrests the person for thinking about robbing a fake stash house to steal nonexistent drugs.
The other twist is the prosecution. Since the drugs never existed, the ATF is free to claim the targeted stash was large enough to trigger mandatory minimum sentences.
A handful of judges have already found stash house stings to be a questionable use of government resources, if not ultra-shady operations that put the government in the position of being the judge and the jury by fabricating drug amounts to ensure longer sentences are handed down.
Here's what federal judge Ruben Castillo had to say about stash house stings:
It is undisputed that between 2006 and 2013, the defendants charged in this District in the ATF false stash house cases were 78.7 black, 9.6 percent Hispanic, and 11.7 percent white. During this same period, the District's adult population was approximately 18 percent black, 11 percent Hispanic, and 63 percent White. These numbers generate great disrespect for law enforcement efforts. Disrespect for the law cannot be tolerated during these difficult times. It is time for false stash house cases to end and be relegated to the dark corridors of our past. To put it simply, our criminal justice system should not tolerate false stash house cases in 2018.
Castillo also noted that the government never engaged in this type of borderline entrapment during the darkest days of Prohibition.
[E]ven during the low points of the great violence caused by the alcohol wars of Prohibition, the ATP did not seek to use "false alcohol warehouse" tactics against any ethnic organized crime groups to promote public safety.
Judge Jane Stranch's words -- written for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals -- were no less harsh.
The unseemly nature of the Government’s activity is emphasized by its failure to achieve its declared goals of jailing dangerous criminals and making our streets safer. Evidence showing that these hurry-up set-ups achieve the stated goals was not proffered and the facts here demonstrate why: no known dangerous individuals or criminal enterprises were researched or targeted and no pre-existing drug rings or conspiracies were broken up. In fact, this sting trapped Flowers, a gainfully employed young man with no criminal record.
Unfortunately, the court found no way to reverse the sentence handed down. The barriers to a successful lawsuit against a federal government agency are almost insurmountable, and the ATF knows this, so it has no reason to stop performing the laziest form of "enforcement" it can engage in.
Judge Otis Wright tore into the ATF in his decision as well:
In these stash-house cases, the Government’s “participation in the offense conduct” is what makes them particularly repugnant to the Constitution. Everything about the scheme—and therefore almost everything bearing upon a defendant’s ultimate sentence—hinges solely on the Government’s whim. Why were there not 10 kilograms in the stash house? Or 100? Or 1,000? Why were the guards allegedly armed—necessitating that Defendants bring weapons along with them? All of these factors came down to the ATF and the undercover agent alone. That sort of arbitrariness offends the Constitution’s due-process demands.
The end result was only five years shaved off the defendant's 19-year sentence -- a sentence that rested solely on the ATF's claims about the total weight of the nonexistent drugs in the nonexistent stash house the defendant never raided.
Perhaps the remedy lies somewhere earlier in the process, well before mandatory minimum sentences -- prompted by government agents' claims about nonexistent drugs -- are imposed. Judge Jed Rakoff is demanding the government produce some evidence that its stings don't primarily target minorities.
This case involves a DEA sting operation utilizing a number of fictitious drug shipments. They follow the same pattern as the ATF's stings. The government approaches its marks and tries to talk them into robbing fake drug dealers of their fake drugs. Then it swoops in and arrests its dupes the moment they start moving forward with robbery suggested by the government.
The opening paragraph of the order [PDF] makes it clear Judge Rakoff thinks these stings are bullshit:
By their very nature, so-called "reverse sting" operations, in which the Government creates the illusion of crimes in order to catch would-be criminals, are open to potential abuse, since they are not cabined by the demands of reality, but only by the vagaries of imagination.
The seven defendants in this case -- all "men of color" -- are arguing the government is engaging in selective enforcement by primarily targeting minorities with sting operations. Judge Rakoff appears to think that might be true. Or, at the very least, the government should be obliged to explain why every single one of its sting efforts result in arrested minorities.
After some discussion about which discovery standard should be applied to selective enforcement allegations, the court comes to this conclusion:
[T]he appropriate standard is that where a defendant who is a member of a protected group can show that that group has been singled out for reverse sting operations to a statistically significant extent in comparison with other groups, this is sufficient to warrant further inquiry and discovery.
Here, defendants have presented evidence that not a single one of the 179 individuals targeted in DEA reverse sting operations in SDNY in the past ten years was white, and that all but two were African-American or Hispanic. This is in stark contrast to the racial makeup of New York and Bronx Counties, which are 20.5% African-American, 39.7% Hispanic, and 29.5% White. This is also in contrast to NYPD crime and enforcement data for felony drug arrests (42.7% African-American, 40.8% Hispanic, and 12.7% White), firearms arrests (65.1% African-America, 24.3% Hispanic, 9.7% White), and robbery arrests (60.6% African-American, 31.1% Hispanic, 5.1% White).
And, just in case the government wants to argue this is merely a statistical fluke, the defendants also have some expert testimony they'd like the DEA to attempt to rebut.
Furthermore, defendants have provided compelling expert analysis demonstrating that these numbers are statistically significant. According to a rigorous analysis conducted by Dr. Crystal S. Yang, a Harvard law and economics professor, it is highly unlikely, to the point of statistical significance, that the racially disparate impact of the DEA' s reverse sting operations is simply random.
Here's how Yang explains the unlikeliness of 177 of 179 targets being "randomly" Black or Latino:
[U]nless the pool of similarly situated individuals is comprised of at least 96.0% Latinos or Blacks~ it is highly unlikely that one could get a sample of 179 targeted individuals where 177 or more individuals are Latino or Black.
The government will need to produce paperwork showing how it initiates stings and how it decides on sting targets.
Accordingly, and for now, discovery will be limited to the Government providing to the defendants, by no later than November 22, 2019, (1) all DEA manuals, circulars, protocols, and the like that provide guidelines for how and when reverse stings should be originated; and (2) all notes, memoranda, or other investigative material showing how defendants were identified and evaluated as targets in this particular reverse sting operation.
It's unlikely anything turned over by the DEA will say "exclusively target Latinos and Blacks." But this won't help the government, which will still need to explain how guidelines and protocols that don't insist on targeting minorities seem to produce nothing by minority defendants. And if it can't explain that to Judge Rakoff's satisfaction, the claims of selective enforcement will move forward.
More judges should push back against "reverse sting" operations. There's been no evidence offered these operations do anything more than put harmless people behind bars for years. When the targets are fake drugs and fake drug runners, zero drugs/drug runners are being taken off the streets.
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Filed Under: dea, doj, entrapment, jed rakoff, racism, stash houses, targeting minorities
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They're not really harmless if they can so easily be convinced to rob a [fake] drug stash house at gunpoint. However, other than possibly carrying an illegal firearm and trespassing it seems they haven't really committed any other crime if the house is fake, there are no guards and no drugs.
Someone really needs to bitchslap law enforcement in the US, all of it, coast-to-coast, back to the 19th century and start over.
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They are harmless if it takes convincing. You say "easily" but the accounts I've read of such cases often involve bullying and constant attempts at persuasion.
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Someone needs to prosecute the DEA for running so many drug houses with so many tons of drugs for these poor people of color to try to rob.
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Coming up next.
Cops will tell them that they have a gps tracker on their cars and then when they go out to look they will be arrested for attempting to steal that non existent tracker
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Re: Re:
I say "easily" because no amount of persuasion short of threatening my family would convince me to rob a drug house at gunpoint. But fair enough.
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"Agencies like the ATF and DEA find someone in need of cash ... convince them to raid a drug stash house for some easy money. "
Sounds to me like law enforcement is conspiring to commit burglary and then hang it on fall guy, isn't this how organized crime operates?
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This statement begs a question: But for the intervention of federal agents, would those people have ever even thought about trying to rob a stash house, much less made the actual attempt? Because damn near every time I hear about a sting involving federal agents and violent crime or terrorism, the gist of the story is “the feds duped some poor dumb bastard into doing a crime that wouldn’t have happened without the feds being involved”.
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Organized crime syndicates and governments tend to operate in similar ways. Just look at what the impeachment hearings have accused Trump of doing.
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Sounds like RICO...sorry Popehat.
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I'm pretty sure they do that.
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Re: Re:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/471/the-convert
Great example of how hard law enforcement will attempt to create criminals (or terrorist in this case).
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Do those even exist outside of the feds' imaginations?
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These are the problems here. Not the statistical spread of "criminals" caught this way, but the very fact that the LEOs never bothered to find actual criminals, but fabricated both the criminal and the circumstances of the crime itself.
Why bother looking for existing criminals that you can't easily locate when you can just make one yourself?
I feel sorry for the public when the judges seeming can't or won't resist such practices from law enforcement. This idea of looking at statistical groups won't solve the basic issue that the crimes have been manufactured by officers.
"I don't see a problem with jailing people for imaginary crimes as long as you jail them proportionally."
Riiiight...
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Re: Re:
IT'S NOT RICO, DAM---
--actually, it might be, depending on how organized they are. The thing that most people get wrong about RICO is that it must be an organization whose primary purpose is a criminal enterprise. They can't just be a book club whose members engage in the occasional bank robbery on the side. But if the book club has a Bank Robbery Division...
At least, that's my understanding of it. So if the sting groups are a unique division within the DEA, and don't carry out any other less-controversial law enforcement activities as a group, well, you could at least start to wonder if it might be something you could consider as RICO. But if each team is just assembled from a larger task force of DEA agents, no, it would not.
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Used to have..
Entrapment laws..
https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-645-entrapment-elements
Its kinda confusing..what is/isnt..considered PArt of the entrapment. Including predilection..
i will bet 2 points... this solicited, had previous Problems, as well as a need for Drugs. more then the idea of a thief robbing a thief..
Just a side point here..
Our justice system is based on 'After the fact' Justice. Other wise we could arrest corp moguls JUST for thinking of ways to screw the public.
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for those concerned
no known dangerous individuals or criminal enterprises were researched or targeted and no pre-existing drug rings or conspiracies were broken up.
Police need to put the following disclaimer at the bottom the arrest report:
"No criminals were harmed during the making of this reverse sting operation."
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I have no doubt they were coerced by "law enforcement officers" into doing what they did. I also doubt that same exact not-really-a-crime-because-they-were-arrested-at-the-door would have occurred without "LEO" intervention. But the fact remains that they did, in fact, attempt to carry out a [fake] crime and I'd bet dollars to donuts they lean toward crime and are not at all harmless people.
I'm not saying what happened to them was just or justified. The feds should be on trial, not these people. I'm only arguing that "harmless" is not a good descriptor for them.
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The racist targeting doesn't surprise me in the slightest. But I do find it quite incredible that the law allows people to be arrested for attempting imaginary crimes against imaginary people in the first place. If some idiot is convinced that Star Wars is real, could they be arrested for trying to steal the Death Star from Darth Vader?
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Did you miss this part? According to you someone gainfully employed with no criminal history leans towards crime?
It's that type of mentality that everyone is a criminal that fuels these type of unconstitutional escapades by law enforcement...especially if the would be criminal is a minority.
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If you're gonna make up the drugs and the armed guards, then you might as well go ahead and make up their race too. Just insist that all the accused are white and the problem is solved.
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Re: Re:
No, they don't exist. Which makes actus rea impossible.
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By declaring that those trapped by the “reverse stings” are “not at all harmless people” despite also declaring that the subjects were coerced into committing fake crimes that wouldn’t have happened without LEO intervention, you sure as shit sound like you’re saying what happened to them was both just and justified. The ends do not justify the means, especially if — as is suspected — the means are “the feds coerced some poor bastard into doing a crime they wouldn’t have done otherwise”.
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Why do you assume the firearm is illegal (and not provided by the friendly entrapping federal officer) and that the individual is trespassing (they are going to a place that they have been instructed to go to by their friendly entrapping federal officer).
So carrying something you were given, going to someplace you were directed to go to complete the 'job' (that is entirely fictional).
Why don't we see more 'southern border' friends locked up for attempted assassination of the president? Because the first court that heard the 'fake assassination attempt' would throw it out of court, but swap out 'fake drug house raid' and suddenly it's a Imaginary felony, but unlike imaginary property, there are real penalties for sharing...
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but he was probably 'working while brown' which we all know means that he just hasn't been caught yet, so lets just apply some pressure and see what happens...
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"no amount of persuasion"
Anonymous Coward are you aware of the FBI sting operations to take down alleged terrorists? They targeted individuals and gaslit them to the point that they had ostracized all their friends and acquaintances except for FBI plants, and yes, the cost for all these agents is phenomenal.
I'm pretty sure, once law enforcement wants to sting you, they will threaten your family, or force you at gunpoint, if that is what it takes to get you to cooperate. And when they revise their reports for the trial, you'll find grounds for a coercion defense rather difficult to prove.
This is about filling prisons with warm bodies. Private prisons, likely.
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'That's ah... coincidence. Yeah, total coincidence.'
They get to basically write their own crimes and every single one of them had a non-white person as the 'bad guy'.
Racist and corrupt as hell, nice two-for-one there.
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Just be glad that they weren't sent to the electric chair and fried using imaginary power.
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The US is marching in lockstep toward that outcome
I'm pretty sure they would if they could.
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Catching Real Criminals Is Hard Work
These days, real criminals actually hire teams of lawyers and (as necessary) private military contractors to manage law enforcement, whether directly by use of force, or more commonly by capturing the justice system they work for.
These days even law-enforcement is less interested in enforcing the law, but in enforcing the will of the people who control their paycheck.
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A missed opportunity
DA:. "Just drugs seems a bit minor. Are you sure there wasn't anything else apparently there"
Cop: "Um, well there were imaginary guns"
DA:. "Well that is gun running on the charge sheet Anything else?"
Cop: "Oh yeh, there were non-existant illegal immigrants"
DA:. "Great, that's human trafficking. What else?"
Cop: "Errrrrr......."
DA:. "Oh come on, let your imagination run wild"
Cop:. "......Nuclear weapon....?"
DA:. "There you go. Brilliant, that's one count terrorism. That will do for now. Cheers"
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Considering how the history of policing in the United States can be traced back to slave patrols, law enforcement has always enforced the will of those who control law enforcement’s paychecks.
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Also the DA: “…do you think we can stack on a RICO charge somewhere? There’s this one motherfucker online that I want to prove wrong.”
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Federal Judge Asks DEA To Explain Why All 179 Of Its Stash House Sting Targets Are Minorities.
Well your honor, if you were a mathematician, you would understand that statistically that these things can happen.
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Re: A missed opportunity
... that becomes a lot less funny when you realize that's basically exactly what is happening, and it's costing people years of their lives as a result of nothing more than the imagination of those creating the stings and spineless judges who go along with them.
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DUH! .... maybe it's BECAUSE All the Crack Houses, Heroin Dens and Drug Seller ARE America's Slimy MINORITIES. They Sell DOPE because its easier than ACTUALLY WORKING A JOB!!?
The Ratio to Clean White Kids selling Dope is like 200,000 to 1
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These imaginary drug stashes would make excellent targets for real SWAT teams.
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That would be because it's legal to push dope if you are the rich, white Sackler family!
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Well aren’t you just a wonderful Confederate.
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"I don't see a problem with jailing people for imaginary crimes as long as you jail them proportionally."
Neither do I. Imaginary conviction and imaginary jail time. Sorted!
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I once borrowed a friend's dark blue Lincoln towncar to do a job south of Brooklyn. You should have seen all the nasty looks I got from people walking as I drove through Brooklyn!
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(((white)))
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To the fellow wyrm you are an asshole for saying you don't see a problem for jailing people for imaginary crimes as long as they do it proportionally how could you even say that the whole operation is nothing but total bullshit as far as I'm concerned the government can go to hell for doing such immoral and deceitful activities maybe just maybe the tactics they are using will take out their own family members at some point one thing for sure D.T.A. don't trust anyone especially the law or government in conclusion just another example of the law lying cheating stealing and killing they cannot be trusted but one thing for sure the lord almighty knows what their doing and maybe they get away with it here on earth but come judgment day and they will pay because everyone will stand before God and answer for all our wrong doings there's almost one thing for sure their laying with the devil here and will be living in hell with devil when it's all said and done the bottom line is most of the officials that are in charge are not even deserving of life itself seeing as how they conduct business I personally would rather have dinner with the roaches an rodents they have more morals in my opinion than pretty much all the officials that run that show their not worth a square of one ply toilet paper they will burn and I know kharma will get them the same as everyone else. Have a nice day
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Re: 'That's ah... coincidence. Yeah, total coincidence.'
Well in certain parts of the US there are plenty of people smokin crack all day long and having 10 kids because they can get more out of welfare for them. That is not imaginary.
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Ten kids to get more welfare.
Um...no.
Women have a quiverfull of kids for many reasons. Baby fever; religion; poor birth control; they like being pregnant, whatever. But the additional money does not cover the expenses of a kid, even when they're grossly neglected. So each child makes the whole family poorer.
It doesn't help that the US has systematically eliminated contraception, abortion and prenatal services across the US so that the destitute are grossly underserved. It also doesn't help that most medical options that involve not having babies are commonly not covered by medicaid and medicare-part-D. Abortion certainly isn't.
I can't say it never happens. Maybe there are places where a woman gets pregnant specifically to increase her (meager) welfare and then dumps the baby and forgets to report it. But I suspect those incidents would number less than one hundred across the entire nation. So, not rare enough to say it's a thing.
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Smokin crack all day long
One hit of crack cost about as much as a pack of cigarettes. Destitute people smoke. It's the one chemical indulgence they can afford.
Crack is a problem for lower-to-middle working class, because they can afford it. It's a cheap high that lasts about five-to-fifteen minutes, but it's super addictive, and it wrecks your heath.
So it's like sugar, except more so. And illegal.
But the women on welfare having kids can't afford even cigarettes or booze, let alone crack.
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Terrorists, huh? And DEA is the problem??? If this is an act of terrorism, how is what cops do everyday when they kick in doors to seize someone’s property against their will?? People are killed by law enforcement during these raids all the time. Is that ant act of terrorism as well, or has Stockholm Syndrome clouded your judgement here. Act is the same. Terrorism, wow.
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Posting after bedtime
So, not common enough to say it's a thing.
So, rare enough to say it's not really a thing.
Either / or.
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Re: Terrorism
The ATF cases aren't terrorism. But in case discussed on This American Life at GP's link, the FBI was attempting to entrap American Muslims into a conspiracy to commit terrorism. IIRC the targets refused and reported the FBI agent, and the FBI retaliated by arresting one of those targets and trying to get him deported.
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Re: Smokin crack all day long
Have you ever smoked it Uriel?
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Re: Ten kids to get more welfare.
It was not imaginary to see the rats scurrying past my house to a pile of trash on the street fifty feet long and five feet high in front of the house of just such a person who had ten kids screaming into the wee hours of the morning who also didn't pay his garbage bill, but was too proud to accept charity from me when I offered to pay his garbage bill to get his front lawn cleaned up. "I have ten kids!" he cried.
"That ain't my fault," I responded. "Get this motherfucking garbage cleaned up or you won't have any kids when the State shows up."
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Re: Smokin crack all day long
You forgot to mention how violent people get when they're jonesing.
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