Today’s story on CBC.ca about the plague of dealer-on-dealer drug crime in Gotham City St. John’s reeks of PR-serving, headline-grabbing BS.

It contains no actual news, no story, just a bunch of quotes from cops and lawyers about how out-of-whack the illegale drug trade is getting now that dealers have started turning on each other en masse.

I mean, get a load of their weapons!

If this had followed a report on something that actually happened, an instance of such a case that the CBC themselves had investigated, I would see the need. But the entire report is in response to nothing other than whatever information the RCMP and RNC have decided to disseminate. A lot of which amounts to, “well, crimes like these are rarely reported, but we know.”

It’s like ambulance chasing without the actual ambulance. Just reports on how loud the sirens were.

You’d probably look this happy, too, if you were inclined to rob booze from the NLC, did so twice in two months, and then got away with it.

According to VOCM, it’s been almost a year since the man pictured here in a surveillance image allegedly walked out of a liquor store in Holyrood and drove off with stolen goods for the second time. He’s been eluding the RCMP ever since.

Friday the 13th arrived one week early for a couple of RCMP officers in the central Labrador community of Sheshatshiu. Last Friday, while responding to an assault complaint, one of the officers tried to subdue a man with pepper spray when the man nabbed the spray, escaped the house and took off — in their police car.

So far so good.

A passing motorist came to the officers’ aid and eventually they tracked down their stolen vehicle with the culprit still inside.

According to the officers, the man drove toward them in so menacing a fashion that one of the officers drew his weapon and fired upon the vehicle.

But their volunteer chauffeur, who witnessed the event, says the man started driving away from the officers, at which point both pulled out their piece, each emptying a chamber into the car’s back windshield.

It’s hard not to believe the second version of events, given the officers’ sheer incompetence leading up to that point vs. the witness, who volunteered his services to the officers, presumably in the interest of actually serving justice. Also, he’s got nothing he needs to cover up, whereas the officers just might

Furthermore, why would anyone fire at a vehicle coming towards them? Supposedly, the officer who claims to have fired on the vehicle did so in self defense. But you’d think you’d have a better chance of escaping the harm of an oncoming vehicle by, I don’t know, getting out of its way than you would by shooting at it.

But hey, what’s a couple of stray bullets in a residential area when you’ve already endangered people’s lives by handing your pepper spray and your vehicle over to a belligerent drunk?

Here’s hoping that, unlike with most bad buddy cop movies, this one doesn’t get a sequel.

[via CBC.ca]

According to a report from The Telegram today, The RCMP flew their AS 350B3 helicopter up and down the island’s west coast last week in search of marijuana grow sites and bagged themselves eight of them. In total there were 136 plants seized.

As a discerning commenter on the story noted, “136 plants in 8 sites = 17 plants per site. Grow ops? They have to be kidding.”

In fact, none of the commenters so far seem impressed with the RCMP’s latest big bust, with some crying out for the drug to be legalized so that more focus can be given to combating the real crimes, such as acts of violence and theft, being committed in our province.

No arrests are noted in the story.

Update:

CBC Early Edition News just confirmed that there were no charges laid over these grow sites. You would think the RCMP would be more interested in busting the perpetrators than simply confiscating the plants.

Now that the headlines are abuzz with the bust, there’s no chance a stake out of the areas would yield anything.

I was pretty excited when I heard Ramona Dearing say she was going to start the show on Radio Noon today with an interview with the United Nations’ synthetic drug expert, Matthew Nice.

Earlier this week the CBC ran a story where they published unquestioned speculation from the RCMP about how ecstasy was being marketed to kids in the province as candy.

Getting an ecstasy expert on the line and sharing with us some hard facts about the drug should go far towards making up for their rather uncritical treatment of such a serious subject.

Or so I thought.

Little in the way of facts or figures were presented in the conversation. Nice explained that high blood pressure and heart failure can result from long term use of MDMA (the active ingredient in an ecstasy pill). Of course, the same could be said for prolonged use of bacon.

As for death caused by overdose, Nice had this to say: “People die from overdose.”

Right, but how many people die from overdose? How often? Under what circumstances? This kind of information is actually very hard to find. You’d think if people were dropping like flies over this shit the authorities would be pushing the numbers.

As for the RCMP’s assertion that ecstasy pills are brightly coloured and cartoon-clad to appeal to kids, Nice agreed. He then went on to explain that his definition of “kids” is the under-24 club-going demographic — hardly the image the RCMP were trying to conjure with their references to Spider-Man.

I can appreciate that there is an agenda in place here, which is to get ecstasy off the streets. What I can’t appreciate are the tactics by which this agenda is being carried out.

Tactics such as proliferating vague or false information about ecstasy only strengthen that drug’s staying power. The truth will always surface, and as it does the validity of the authorities and their agenda will be weakened

One thing Nice did confirm, which was of value, is that a lot of so-called ecstasy pills, who’s main ingredient should be MDMA, are cut with far more harmful substances which attempt to either mimic the effects of the drug or encourage addiction. That, I think we can all agree, sucks.

If the RCMP really wanted to send the message home about the dangers of ecstasy pills, they wouldn’t be conjuring boogie men to try and scare us, they’d be publishing lab tests which confirm what chemicals are found in the pills they confiscate and explaining to us in honest detail what the effects of those chemicals can be.

Information, not speculation, please.

The RCMP bagged themselves a major drug bust yesterday, seizing around 15,000 ecstasy pills, some coke and close to $4,000 in cash — down from yesterday’s initial report from the CBC, which has since been edited, of $150,000 in cash (though the sub they sent out to my RSS feed reader still contains the error).

I guess the CBC got caught up in all the excitement. It happens.

That would pretty much be it in terms of story, were it not for the following from a subsequent CBC report:

RCMP Const. Stephen Conohan said the ecstasy pills are colourful and have cartoon characters such as Spider-Man on them. Police say it’s an effort to trick children into thinking they are eating candy.

“It’s no big deal if I take one with a Spider-Man on it,” Conohan said of how drug dealers hope young kids respond. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”

This theory of ecstasy being marketed as candy is offered by RCMP Const. Stephen Conohan with no proof whatsoever, and yet the CBC just regurgitates it without any effort to question or substantiate the statement.

“Do you have reports from children that dealers have tried to offer them ecstasy as candy?” might be my first question.

Next I’d probably ask what makes these colourful, cartoon-covered pills any different, marketing-wise, than the pills that have already been on the market for many, many years. Like these ecstasy pills from 2005:

Finally I might ask, my reporter’s hat snug over my head, what these ecstasy pills taste like, since any kid who’s offered a piece of candy is going to give that thing a good chew (then immediately spit whatever’s in their mouth out and run home crying, the taste of an ecstasy pill is reportedly so bad).

Never mind the fact that any kid young and stupid enough to believe a pill with Spider-Man on it is candy isn’t going to have access to the kind of money that would make them a worthy market, anyway.

Anyone who takes ecstasy knows they’re taking ecstasy. The cops are trying to paint a picture of youth in danger, but they’re being really sketchy about it.

Due to the illegal nature of ecstasy pills, what was originally just a dose of MDMA (makes people feel happy and empathetic, no proven harmful side effects, being tested as therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder) has become an unregulated cocktail of who-knows-what. It’s the “who-knows-what” part that can be dangerous — to anyone who takes it, not just some made-up demographic from the drug war PR department.

We don’t need to be mislead about street drugs in order to believe there’s a problem. That only leads to more problems.

It would be awfully nice if we could address the problems of street drugs as they are, and not as they are perceived. In order for us to do so, the police need to keep their focus on telling us the truth, and the media need to keep their focus on holding the police to that standard.

[image via]

The police soaked up more guns in St. John’s yesterday than a shamwow soaks up spills. From CBC.ca:

More than 30 firearms and other weapons, including handguns and shotguns, along with boxes of bullets, a flak jacket and a samurai sword, were removed from the apartment on Baird Place.

The seizure was part of an investigation of illegal weapons by a joint task force of the RNC and the RCMP.

Go team!

Though this is hardly exciting news. It’s hard not to think this is just the tip of one very hairy ice berg.

Meanwhile, did someone say shamwow?

They must have some serious kitchen parties in St. Anthony.

Northern peninsula RCMP announced what might be the biggest ecstasy bust in the province’s history today. 5,000 ecstasy pills and three kilograms of cocaine were seized.

“This seizure would be significant in any urban setting in this country, but when you consider the location where these drugs were destined, it certainly highlights the problem with drugs that does exist in our communities, urban and rural alike,” Staff-Sgt. George Noseworthy, RCMP said in a statement.

Has this guy ever heard of trafficking? Most of the drugs weren’t staying in buttfucknowhere. They were probably en route to St. John’s.

[Image via]