Search Results: sheriff (472)

It’s looking like the start of a beautiful friendship between the next Harris County sheriff and district attorney — or however else you want to put that in criminal-justice speak.

DA-elect Kim Ogg has pushed decriminalizing misdemeanor amounts of marijuana for the past two years and will finally have the chance to implement it come January 1 — but the proposal likely will come to hold more weight given Ogg is far from the lone reformer trying to change the criminal-justice landscape in Harris County. Sheriff-elect Ed Gonzalez has publicly pushed for the end to arresting people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, too. And with the two foremost law enforcement officers in the third-largest county in the nation gunning for what is bound to be a sweeping reform, Houston NORML Communications Director Jason Miller says the message this will send across the state and even the country will no doubt be significant.

Here’s what they plan to do.

Jim McDonnell.

Long Beach Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell was sworn in as Los Angeles County Sheriff yesterday afternoon.
There’s no question that he was elected in November to reform a department rocked by federal charges against deputies that included allegations of excessive force against inmates, assaults on jail visitors, and the attempting thwarting an FBI investigation by hiding an incarcerated informant. It sounds like a clear task, but it won’t be easy. LA Weekly has more.

Tim Casey, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s longtime lawyer, wants out of the hot-potato Melendres racial-profiling case now that it’s in a “compliance phase.”
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona don’t want him to leave so fast, though — not with questions and things left to discover related to corrupt deputy Ramon Charley Armendariz, who hung himself in May rather than submit to arrest.

Sheriff Scott Israel has more important things to do than campaign against affordable healthcare for Floridians.


United for Care, a pro-medical marijuana lobby backed by attorney John Morgan, faces its biggest opponent: Florida’s cops. In June, members of the newly formed Don’t Let Florida Go to Pot coalition assembled in Tallahassee to educate voters on the dangers of marijuana and discourage voters from passing Amendment 2, which will be on the ballot this November. Although the group has more than 100 partners, its biggest advocate is the Florida Sheriff’s Association.
However, support from that group is not unanimous — only 63 of Florida’s 67 sheriffs have jumped aboard the Reefer Madness train. Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is one of the outliers who has resisted joining. His stance is notable not only because he runs the biggest police agency in Florida but because BSO is the largest sheriff’s department in the country. More at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.


The battle royal over medical marijuana went down last night. And by “battle royal,” we mean a debate between the heads of the two opposing sides.
John Morgan, the Orland-based attorney and medical marijuana advocate who has poured millions of his own money into getting Amendment 2 passed, debated the head of the Florida Sheriff’s Association, Sheriff Grady Judd, last night in Lakeland. The debate pitted Morgan, who heads United for Care, and Judd, sheriff of Polk County and president of the largest opposition to Amendment 2. Broward-Palm Beach New Times has the full story.


Kadesha Roberts was camped out at a friend’s condo in a cookie-cutter, tile-roofed development off McNab Road when the knock came. The short Jamaican woman with spiked hair opened the door to find a UPS man clutching a large package. After identifying herself, she grabbed it. Then all hell broke loose.
Broward deputies bolted toward her. Roberts dropped the package and tried to squeeze inside, but not fast enough. Cops snatched up the box, discovering bales of marijuana wrapped in green cellophane. Roberts was put in cuffs and the evidence shipped off to the county’s crime lab. That was July 2010, and normally the story would have ended there. Roberts would have been popped for trafficking and the UPS box would have been the prime evidence against her.
But the case wasn’t a slam dunk. Several pounds of the marijuana apparently vanished. More on this scandal at the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.


Valarie Joaceus looks beat. Inside her tidy living room in North Lauderdale, the blinds drawn tight against the July sun’s bite, she’s slumped on a leather couch, a heavy-set, middle-aged mom overloaded with worry. Joaceus’ two sons — 26-year-old Jonathan and 25-year-old Gregory — have had their trouble with police. The oldest even spent two years in prison on a drug charge. But the latest conflict has crushed Joaceus’ patience. Because this time, she says, it’s a Broward Sheriff Office deputy who broke the law.
“That day was just the icing on the cake,” she says. “What the hell was that man doing in my house?”

David Lloyd Cass.

There’s no dispute that vicious, Southern California killer Stephenson Choi Kim managed to enjoy his maximum security inmate status with sex dates, porn, marijuana, a vibrator, cigarettes, restaurant food, razor blades, tools and an AT&T cell phone (plus earpiece and charging cord) inside the Orange County Jail system.
But at a just-launched trial there’s a tense debate about whether Kim owes his perks to a corrupt jail deputy–David Lloyd Cass, or merely gross incompetence inside the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD). OC Weekly has more.


The many opponents of legalized marijuana in Florida have come and gone, defeated with facts and science and the power of the people. But, like a ferocious hungry hydra looking to devour the movement at every turn, opposition continues to rear its long, scaly talons at preventing medical weed from being legalized.
The most recent — and perhaps biggest — opposition to date comes in the form of the Florida Sheriffs Association, which has launched a staunch anti-Amendment 2 campaign called “Don’t Let Florida Go to Pot.”

Wing-Chi Poon/Commons.

Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told the media last summer that returning marijuana to a medicinal user was “not how we do business.”
But Wilmot did not return calls or even issue a statement this morning after the U.S. Supreme Court decided — by its inaction — that Wilmot must give the pot back to the patient. With the decision to turn down the Yuma case for a hearing, the U.S. Supreme Court has sided squarely with the state’s medical-marijuana law.

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