11/01/09 - Bradley Jardis

Program
Century of Lies

Bradley Jardis, a working policeman is under fire for his involvement with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition + Cliff Thornton of Efficacy & extract from PBS program: "Botany of Desire"

Audio file

Century of Lies, November 1, 2009

The failure of Drug War is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors and millions more, now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century of Lies.
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Hi. This is Winston Francis of the Official Government Truth saying, If you like the way the drug war works, don’t bother visiting us on the web at www.drugtruth.net.
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Ahhh, yes. There’s the point. If you like the way the drug war works and if you remain silent, it means you like the way drug war works. We do have with us our guest, Mr. Bradley Jarvis, a working cop who’s having some trouble up in… well, I’ll let him frame the local but, they don’t like the fact that he is a speaker for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Mr. Bradley Jarvis, are you with us?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: Thanks for having me.

Dean Becker: That’s Jardis. I’m sorry. I’m saying it wrong there, right?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: Yes, I’m a Polish boy. Jardis.

Dean Becker: Well, fair enough. Now Bradley, you have been a member of LEAP for how long?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: I would say four or five years now.

Dean Becker: Did this trouble start with your superiors immediately, or how did this develop?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: Yes. Well first, for all your listeners, I’ll let them know that right now I’m currently on administrative suspension, which means I still have my credentials and firearm. It just means I can’t work and this happened because I went public with… excuse me. This happened because, I presume, it is because I went public with discipline that I was receiving at my department.

Dean Becker: The discipline, let’s talk about that. It was your failure to follow an illegal order, is that it?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: Well, yes. This spawned out of an incident between myself and a sergeant of mine. This particular sergeant started coming after me last February. Actually February 23rd because on February 22nd, I was in a newspaper article with two Law Enforcement Against Prohibition members, up here in New Hampshire. Ronald White, who’s the Superintendent of the Merrimack County Department of Corrections and he would be the equivalent of a jail warden, I believe, where your listener’s are, and also Superintendent Richard Van Wickler of the Cheshire County Department of Corrections.

In the article that we were featured in, was in the most conservative newspaper of the state. It was on the front page and the title of the article was “Opposing the Drug Laws They Enforce” and it essentially was a profile of myself and the two jail bosses and it was us talking about why we are making a stand and why we’re going out and speaking about why the drug war needs to end.

After this article ran, the very next day when I reported for work; you know, I knew that it wasn’t going to make everyone happy that I was in the newspaper talking about these things, but I would argue that just because you get into law enforcement, you don’t surrender your rights to be an American citizen and to speak out if you recognize something is a problem and I think anyone who serves on the front lines is the best person to speak out, if they recognize a problem.

So my sergeant told me that I was a ‘dark rain cloud’ over this place - referring to the police department, and the next couple days, he did several things, well actually he did three things that resulted in my sending a written request to my lieutenant that he protect me from him and it resulted in my lieutenant removing me from his supervision. I can only imagine because the lieutenant recognized that I had made a good case, that this guy was now ‘gunning’ for me.

Over the last couple months, my relationship with this sergeant hasn’t been wonderful, but it’s been respectful. At the end of July, I was investigating a case of a gentleman who was handicapped and he was ordered to leave an eating establishment, in the jurisdiction where I work, and he actually had a service dog. Under New Hampshire state law, Chapter 167 D, it’s actually a crime to discriminate against someone because they have a service animal.

The sergeant, he very rudely removed me from the case in a way that I felt was unethical and I told him I was going to notify the media about the way he did it and his instant reaction was, ’I order you not to speak to the media!’ One thing I would point out is, the reaction that I had with this particular sergeant would not be a reaction I would have to any other person or supervisor who works at my department. Because this particular police sergeant, like I said, had been treating me less than respectful and I would argue, and I believe I have the evidence to back it up, that it’s because of my membership in LEAP.

So once I told him, I said, “I’m not going to follow that order. It’s unlawful.” he essentially stormed out of the police station. I was too upset to keep working because he did remove me from the investigation. So I went home early from work and then this whole incident spun out of this interaction where the lieutenant suggested to the police chief that I be suspended.

During the course of the investigation, I was represented by the Union President at the Epping Police Department, not knowing that he was also trying to get me in trouble and I told the lieutenant that the union president was trying to get me in trouble and that and I found out the lieutenant knew about it and the lieutenant essentially, in my belief, violated the National Labor Relations Act, which requires that I have fair Union representation.

I went to the Police Chief and I told him about it via an email and he emailed me back acknowledging that the situation was rather unfair. The way he acknowledged it, the email, I’ve actually posted it online at forum.freekeene.com. I’ve made all of this stuff public. In his email he said, “WOW - Someone stepped in "it" BIG TIME. But I don't "know" anything right now.”

The best way I can articulate it for your listeners is, imagine that you get alleged that you do something. You go out and hire an attorney. This attorney goes behind your back to the cops. The attorney then represents you in court without you knowing that the attorney went behind your back. You find out about it, you tell the judge and the judge doesn’t do anything about it.

Dean Becker: This whole scenario you just described, that’s what happens with most court appointed attorneys. That they go talk to the DA and the Judge and a lot of things go on behind your back in the ’good ole boy’ arrangements that are not to your benefit. We’re speaking to Mr. Bradley Jardis. He’s a cop. Tell me again where you’re based, Bradley?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: I live in Hooksett, New Hampshire. The law enforcement agency that I am currently employed but, forbidden from going to work, is the Epping New Hampshire Police.

Dean Becker: I thought you were just kind of slurring a curse word ‘effing’ New Hampshire, huh?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: No. No, I don’t dislike you. No. It’s Epping. E-P-P-I-N-G.

Dean Becker: Alright, alright. Real good. Bradley you, as a speaking for LEAP, you get a chance to talk to various fraternal groups; schools and other organizations, right? What has been your reception? How are you being accepted?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: A lot of people frequently, in fact I would say just about everywhere I go, someone raises their hand and they say, ’Well, what do you do if you catch someone on the street with marijuana or with something?’ and because you know there’s very few - less than five, I believe - active duty, rank and file law enforcement officers that are speakers for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and the big reason why is, a lot of cops are afraid to step forward and say, ’Look, this is a problem, we need to change it.’

I would say, judging from what I’m going through right now, that they have good reason to be afraid. But there is strength in numbers and the more people who stand up, I mean I’ll gladly go through what I’m going through right now, if it means that we can move our organization to have more members, ultimately ending the drug war.
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Dean Becker: I have this little informational message from Winston Francis to share.
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If we end the drug war now, all of our efforts are for nothing. Victory cannot come from admitting defeat. Lives lost. Families ruined. Billions spent. All for nothing. Almost a century. Generations of fighting. All for nothing. Giving up is the only true path to failure. We must continue to fight, to spend and jail and kill to honor the memory of those who fought before us. It is what we know. So it is what we must do. Follow the leader. Do not falter. Your path has been chosen for you.
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Dean Becker: That’s right. You have no free will. Your path has been chosen for you. Do what the elders say. You know, Trust and Obey. Yeah. Kickin’ in the door, kickin’ in the door, we shall bring salvation, kickin’ in the door.

We’re speaking with Mr. Bradley Jardis, a law enforcement officer who’s working on behalf of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, in his spare time. Bradley, do you ever get a chance to, I don’t know, sit around the campfire or maybe at the clubhouse with some other law enforcement officials and just talk about this? Does the subject ever get broached?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: Well, unfortunately right now I’m not exactly in good relations with many of my co-workers. A lot of them are upset that I went to the media about the predicament that I find myself in. But in the past I have.

I walked into work one night and several officers just had finished doing a raid on a marijuana grow operation and there was about a hundred thousand dollars worth of marijuana on the table and of course the array of guns that were found and everything that you see on the news all the time, and I said to a couple of my co-workers that were there. I said, “Does anyone here find it funny that this is a plant that is literally worthless, that like will grow in the forest and it’s annoying, that’s why they call it a weed, and yet it’s worth a hundred thousand dollars.

I’ve tried to inject points like that every once in a while and I’ve tried to make comparisons and a big comparison that I’ve used and I’ve actually given it to my police chief before. I said, “Chief, do you think President Barrack Obama would ever be president if he had been caught using cocaine when he was a young man?” My chief said, “Well no,” and I said, “He would just be another convicted black man who would have never been admitted to the bar, never had the opportunity to run for state senate and never would have made it to the highest office in the land, because he made a mistake as a kid.”

I try to use comparisions and I’ve tried to take the angle, which I take when I give presentations, that kids make mistakes and a lot of these officers truly believe that they’re doing the right thing. It’s understandable. I never gave much thought to what we do and how we handle the drug problem. Which we do have in this country. We have a serious drug problem and we need to solve it.

But you don’t think about the average person. If you said, ‘We have a drug problem, that we need to legalize drugs to fix it,’ to someone who’s never heard that message before it’s quite alarming, and to someone who works in the law enforcement profession to hear that, it’s like, ‘Wait a minute. That makes absolutely no sense.’

It upsets people, so sometimes it’s hard to make the argument and tell people, ’Look, this isn’t about whether drugs are good or bad. Because there are bad drugs and there are worse drugs. This is about, do we want the black market to control this? Do we want terrorist groups like Al Qaeda to make billions of dollars off literally worthless plants and do we want kids’ lives to be ruined? Do we want our neighborhoods to be left safe?

Literally, I don’t remember a burglary or robbery call, that I was involved with, that wasn’t involved, somehow, with the war on drugs. Usually it’s someone who has a drug problem who needs money for drugs. I’ve tried to use these comparisons with other officers to try to educate them. I’ve had another officer say to me, ’I agree with a lot of the things that you say, but I’d never say it.’

Dean Becker: Bradley, we have, I don’t know, fifteen thousand total member, some several hundred current or former law enforcement officials who speak on behalf of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and we have so few that are still working, like you and considering the circumstance, what you have run up against, there’s little wonder why, because it’s just not a topic that gets the open dialog; that gets the debate; that gets examined. It’s time to examine it, isn’t it?

Mr. Bradley Jardis: Well, nothing good changes. Or if you look back through history, nothing good in this world changes unless someone is willing to make themselves a target and believe me, I knew when I got into this, that it wasn’t going to make me Mr. Popular and I’m not trying to pat myself on the back here but what I’m trying to say is that, this is just part of what was instilled into me at the police academy was that, we’re suppose to make the community safer. We’re suppose to protect and sever the people who employ us and it’s not protecting and serving the people under this current policy, it is making them far more likely to be victims of crimes.

I mean there’s so many people who find themselves burglarized or robbed and they have no idea that it’s related to the drug trade. These are just good people who work hard, day in and day out and don’t get involved in politics and the message I’m trying to send is, we who work in law enforcement who answer to the people, we have to be the ones to try to educate people and say, ’Look. This is a problem.” This is a problem and it’s like you said, it’s a very touchy thing to do and my situation certainly exemplifies that, but I think this is like dominos. It’s like a snowball rolling down a mountain. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger and one of us steps out and says this is wrong, another one steps out and says this is wrong. People have to listen.

As much as the situation I’m in right now, as much as it’s been very hard on me, fortunately I have a lot of friends and family who support me. But it’s garnering attention and people, whether or not they agree with me at first, they have to say to themselves, ’Wait a second. Why is this guy doing this? Why is this guy saying “we need to legalize drugs”?’ It’s going to catch peoples’ attention and they’re eventually going to realize, this isn’t about whether drugs are good or bad. That has nothing to do with it. Because I’ll tell you right now, from a police officers perspective, the number one drug that causes problems for someone like me, is alcohol… and it’s legal!

Dean Becker: Yeah. It’s just plain crazy. I’ll tell you what. We’re speaking with Mr. Bradley Jardis, he of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Bradley, I got to wrap it up with you for now. I’m going to invite you back here soon and hopefully hear some good results on your story. Thank you so much for being with us.

Mr. Bradley Jardis: Take care.
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Dean Becker: OK. We’re going to do this little clip. Pay attention to this. This is what they’re teaching kids down in Mexico. This is how you survive.
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There’s only one way to run a drug war
You have to make one choice
It’s the silver or the lead.
No need to think about it
Take the money or you’re dead
The drug war lives on forever.

Glory, glory halleluiah
Glory, glory halleluiah
Glory, glory halleluiah
Take the money.

Take the money.
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Our guest next week on both the Cultural Baggage and Century of Lies show, will be Mr. Cliff Thornton of Efficacy-online. Let’s go ahead and play… he’s the 420 report for this coming Friday. I want you to hear a little bit of this discussion with Mr. Cliff Thornton.

Dean Becker: You know, it’s been a long time since I talked to my brother, from another mother, Mr. Cliff Thornton, he of Efficacy-online up there in Hartford, Connecticut. Hello, Cliff.

Mr. Cliff Thornton: Hey Dean, how are you? Long time no talk to.

Dean Becker: Cliff, we’re going to have you on both Cultural Baggage and Century of Lies, the full hour next week, because there’s much we want to talk about. What are some of the points you would like to address?

Mr. Cliff Thornton: Well first of all, and don’t get me wrong here Dean and listening audience. I’m for the outright legalization of Cannabis. However, the deal and the drive to get this drug legalized, I think we’re missing a very vital point. There cannot be legalization without indemnification. What I mean by that is this. If instead of having, let’s say, the cannabis cigarettes made by RJ Reynolds, why don’t we put this within the community and those communities that’s been hardest hit by the drug war, to offer some type of assistance. Those are the pertinent points that I want to talk about, and talk about at length.

Dean Becker: We could even extrapolate that thought to the whole of the drug war. I mean, you and I had an earlier discussion, I brought up the fact that legalization of all drugs would decimate the black community, but you had some further points you wanted to bring forward.

Mr. Cliff Thornton: Well, when we look at the Mid-West and the Far-West, we see basically those communities are basically white communities. The policies in and around methamphetamine has decimated those areas. We’re not just talking about thousands of whites, we’re talking about tens of thousands of whites in those areas. This is not just a black and brown indemnification, this is across the board.

We’ve got to really start looking at how we can draw money out of these institutions that have been fighting the drug war. We’ve got to look at, when we do go to this legalization, medicalization and decriminalization of these drugs, how we’re going to reallocate, we have to go from a war economy to a peace economy and we’ve got to have help, because drug policy created and sustained this underground economy that so many here in America and throughout the world, have adapted to.

Dean Becker: Well Cliff, sign us off with your website please.

Mr. Cliff Thornton: You can reach us at efficacy-online.org.

Dean Becker: Cliff, we’ll talk to you next week.

Mr. Cliff Thornton: Thank you, Dean. It’s always a pleasure talking to you.

Alright my friends, it’s time to ask yourself once again, ‘Just how long do you want the drug war to last?’ Well, that’s too long.
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In case you didn’t get a chance to see it, there was recently a great show on PBS, based on a book, “The Botany of Desire” and they had some very positive things to say about drugs and especially about marijuana. Here’s a couple of ’slices’ from that program.
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…and then you’ve got this class of plants that is producing these molecules that incredibly have the power to alter what goes on in the human mind.

This plant, by making just such a molecule, has gotten us to spread it all over the world. Scientists call it Cannabis. It is better known as marijuana.

Cannabis recognized, metaphorically speaking, that this was it’s path to world domination. Produce more of this molecule and there will be more marijuana plants given more habitat, by this creature who likes what this molecule seems to do…

…and by trying to figure out just how that molecule works, scientists stumbled on an amazing discovery about the workings or our brains.

This plant has opened up this very fruitful path of inquiry into understanding how memory works; how consciousness works; how emotion works.

We have unlocked this whole mechanism, which we didn’t know existed and we would not know existed, if not for this plant.

Human beings are born with an innate drive to experience other states of consciousness periodically. I think you can see this in young kids who begin spinning at early ages. Amusement park rides serve the same purpose. There’s an endless stream of activities that can shift consciousness. Everything from singing, dancing, having sex, jumping out of airplanes, and drugs are clearly one way of getting these experiences.

People like to have that altered consciousness. I’m not saying that’s good, but individuals seek it out.

Marijuana seems to have made an evolutionary decision long ago that it was going to grow it’s ‘lot’ in with human beings.

From the plants point of view, this psychoactivity is an attractive characteristic, which has brought the plant great success.

There’s a lot more marijuana being grown today and the reason is that human like it. They like it ’cause it get’s them high.
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Once again, this is from PBS. Their program, ‘Botany of Desire‘. Here’s your second slice. Enjoy.
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…and in 1992 proof came that the brain does make a compound very much like THC. It was discovered by none other than Rafael Meshulam who named it Anandamide.

We call it the ’brain zone marijuana’ because the compound that is made by the brain - Anandamide - shares all the properties, in terms of at the receptor level and cellular level, that THC has.

It turns out that when Anandamide is released in the brain, like marijuana, it affects such basic things as appetite, pain and memory… and it plays a critical role in a sometimes underappreciated mental function, forgetting.

When I first heard that, it didn’t seem adaptive, to me, to have a drug for forgetting. Memory, we understand, has great survival utility. You learn that that’s a poisonous mushroom or that’s a dangerous animal and you stay away and you remember that. But why would forgetting be adaptive and I asked Michael this question and he said, ’Well, tell me. Do you really want to remember all the faces you saw on the subway this morning?’

Forgetting well, is almost as important as remembering well. Forgetting is about editing. It’s about taking the flood; the ocean of sense information coming at you… and forgetting everything but what’s important. So life is not just about accumulating new memories. Memory can cripple us too.

(sounds of gunfire - soldier in the background screaming, “Get up! Get up!)

You have soldiers returning from war zones that are traumatized by experiences that, in effect, they can’t unlearn. So if you could help them unlearn that, essentially a productive kind of forgetting, either with a drug or some other kind of regime, that would be incredibly useful.

…and that’s exactly what A. Lichtman is trying to do. He’s studying how mice remember and forget. First he trains them to find an underwater platform.

The mice are natural swimmers but they’re looking for a way out. They swim all around the perimeter of the tank. They’re swimming, swimming, swimming. Sometimes they bump into the platform by mistake and they climb onto it. Other times they never find it… (video in background, ‘So then at this point he’s been at it for awhile’) …and the experimenter has to gently guide them to it or place them on the platform.

Then, Lichtman takes the platform away. A normal mouse quickly realized the platform is gone, but a mouse who’s Anandamide receptors have been blocked, is unable to forget.

They don’t learn to give up. They keep on looking for that platform even though it’s gone.

Scientists like Lichtman hope that leaning how to regulate Anandamide may one day lead to treatments for people who are haunted by their memories.

If they can elevate naturally occurring Anandamide in humans, we might be able to have whole new therapeutic targets to treat Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

By using a plant that has been around for thousands of years, we discovered a new physiological system of immense importance. We wouldn’t have been able to get there if we had not looked at a plant.
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This buds so good, that when I smoke it, the government freaks out.
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Alright. That’s about it. I want to just ask you again. How long can you sit and watch the madness of this drug war unfold and do nothing about it? Please let me know, send me an email, dean@drugtruth.net. Be sure to check out next weeks show with Mr. Cliff Thornton. We’re going to have a lot of good things to talk about.

I remind you once again that there is no truth, justice, logic, scientific fact, no medical data; no reason for this drug war to exist. We have been duped. The drug lords run both sides of this equation. Please visit our website endprohibition.org.

Prohibido istac evilesco.

For the Drug Truth Network this is Dean Becker, asking you to examine our policy of Drug Prohibition.

The Century of Lies.

This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston

Transcript provided by: C. Assenberg of www.marijuanafactorfiction.org