Legal Commentary

Federal Drug War Funding Takes a Hit

By Jeralyn

Excellent news...Congress cut funding for Byrne Grants and local cops say the war on drugs will suffer.

Congress in January cut funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant by two-thirds, from $520 million to $170 million for fiscal 2008. Local agencies say that's a threat to the officers who do much of the law enforcement spadework.

One of the results of Byrne Grants: Tulia, Texas.

Best-known is a case in Tulia, Texas, where a 1999 Byrne-funded investigation led to the cocaine arrests of 46 people, most of them black, on evidence so flimsy that 38 were pardoned by Gov. Rick Perry in 2003. The undercover agent responsible for the arrests was convicted of perjury and the defendants got a $5 million settlement from the state.

The Texas ACLU has identified more than a dozen other Byrne-funded operations it says were abusive and several other states have investigated similar complaints. Texas has imposed strict limits on Byrne-funded drug task forces.

The meth busters are upset. They probably don't need to worry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will help them out. They support Byrne Grants. Here's record on anti-meth bills. Of course, the problem with these meth bills is they end up increasing the supply from Mexico. [More...]

[Iowa Sheriff] Kendall said Iowa's problem is methamphetamine, which now comes mostly from Mexico since Iowa tightened access to over-the-counter medications that contain ingredients used in home meth labs.

Here's more on Obama's misguided support of Byrne Grants for the war on drugs. [Added: Hillary Clinton supports Byrne Grants and anti-meth bills as well.]

From Thomas, it looks like the bill is H.R. 2764, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate) Under the paragraph "STATE AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT ASSISTANCE":

(1) $170,433,000 for the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program as authorized by subpart 1 of part E of title I of the 1968 Act, (except that section 1001(c), and the special rules for Puerto Rico under section 505(g), of the 1968 Act, shall not apply for purposes of this Act), of which $2,000,000 is for use by the National Institute of Justice in assisting units of local government to identify, select, develop, modernize, and purchase new technologies for use by law enforcement and $2,000,000 is for a program to improve State and local law enforcement intelligence capabilities including antiterrorism training and training to ensure that constitutional rights, civil liberties, civil rights, and privacy interests are protected throughout the intelligence process;

Read the whole section though, it's amazing how much money the feds are throwing into the war on crime and drugs, and how much less for drug courts, treatment, programs to stop prison rape, etc. Even Bush acknowledged (see the linked news article above)"the [Byrne Grant]program should end because crime is down and the money is needed elsewhere."

The bill was a huge funding bill covering many issues besides crime-fighting. It looks like neither Hillary nor Obama were present for the final vote on it.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee had the right idea. She introduced H.R. 253 in January, 2007, the "No More Tulias: Drug Law Enforcement Evidentiary Standards Improvement Act of 2007" to "increase the evidentiary standard required to convict a person for a drug offense, to require screening of law enforcement officers or others acting under color of law participating in drug task forces."

In addition to limiting Byrne Grants, it provided:

at a minimum, no State that fails to prohibit criminal convictions based solely on the testimony of a law enforcement officer or informants should receive a grant under such program; and (3) corroborative evidence, such as video or audio tapes, drugs, and money, should always be required for such criminal convictions to be sustained.

Unfortunately, it only got three co-sponsors in the House and didn't go anywhere.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 23, 2008 (boomark / email).