Transcript

Century of Lies 05/29/11

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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DEAN BECKER: Hello my friends. Welcome to this edition of Century of Lies. I'm Dean Becker. Here in just a moment, we're gonna bring in our live guest, Susie Byrd. She's a two-time City Council woman in El Paso. And she--I wanna say follows in the footsteps but parallel footsteps to a long-time guest, Mr. Beto O'Rourke, another El Paso Councilman who decided not to run this last cycle; but she successfully petitioned the El Paso Council and a U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison to work on the Shawn Huckabee case. This involves an El Pasoan who was framed for drug crimes in Ciudad Juarez. Now, let’s just bring her in, let her talk about that and—all the horror stories going on down there in Mexico. Hello, Susie?

SUSIE BYRD: Hi, how are you? Good to speak with you.

DEAN BECKER: Well, it's--go ahead.

SUSIE BYRD: Well, you know. Kind of the interesting thing about living on the border in this time and what's going on with Mexico is that constituent work has gotten more complicated than sort of fixing potholes. And one of the cases that I worked on with a father Kevin Huckabee is the case of his son Shawn Huckabee, and their—and his friend Carlos Quijas.

In 2009—in December of 2009, they traveled to Juarez to do what many people from El Paso do—to do some business, visit family. They went to go get their car fixed—Shawn went to go get his car fixed. On the return to El Paso, they were detained by the Mexican military and taken to a holding place—I think a Mexican military holding place. And there they allege that they were tortured and got some subsequent doctors' analysis uphold what their version of the case.

The Mexican military, according to several eyewitnesses, planted drugs on the young men and they've been imprisoned since December of 2009. They've gone to court a couple times now and they were found guilty, and they'll be imprisoned for five years. And they're appealing right now and continue to appeal with the help of their families.

And so we've been working as sort of as a City Council representative, kind of working with the families; trying to determine a way that they can get a fair hearing, fair trial and certainly be free from persecution. And we're hoping that of not just as American families that are in Juarez, but certainly also of Juarenzies who are on a daily basis subjected to all sorts of violent crimes but also some of that crime by the Mexican military.

DEAN BECKER: Now, once again we're speaking with Susie Byrd, El Paso Councilwoman. And Susie, today's El Paso talks about Friday, the day before the mayor declared that Juarez is no longer the most dangerous city in Mexico; and five people were gunned down that day.

SUSIE BYRD: Right.

DEAN BECKER: It's—it may have good days, but it's not really getting better, is it?

SUSIE BYRD: Well, now, I can't imagine six to seven people killed a day being better. It's all relative, I guess. If you want to think about in terms of quantity but there's—every day in Juarez, there's families that are ripped apart. There’s people that leave their loved ones and don't know what's happened to them, so I don't know that "better" is better really.

And I think the problem that you know the new mayor Teto Murguía is trying to sort of position Juarez in a more friendly—or you know, “it's not as bad as it seems” kind of thing. So they—the week before—renamed Juarez as The Heroic Juarez. I think that actually the state of Chihuahua renamed the city as The Heroic City. And then Teto Murguía on Friday said, "You know, it's not as bad as everybody else." And so, you know, there—those are all ways I think that sort of the political establishment in Juarez not dealing with what's happening on the ground and what people are feeling and seeing and hearing on a daily basis in Juarez.

DEAN BECKER: Yeah, I had a—you know I saw another story in today's Houston Chronicle talking about the fact that they're now going to allow the—from the Nafta Agreement—they're now gonna allow the Mexican truckers to drive their loads on into Mexico on an extended basis. That's not very certain to help stop smuggling, is it?

SUSIE BYRD: No. I'monna—I think probably what worked—you know--what we've been seeing for decades really is that a lot of the trade comes through on legitimate trade through the ports of entry. Most of it's coming through the ports of entry. And the difficulty about trying to stop the drugs from coming in is that they are a very, very small volume but with a lot of value. There's a very high value trade obviously.

And so you know they're looking for very small amounts that are coming through 15,000 trucks a day sometimes coming through in El Paso. And trying to stop them or trying to figure out who has the drugs is just sort of a ridiculous task in a lot of ways. And what they've found is even though they’ve caught a lot more drugs coming maybe in the last two or three years—coming through the southwest border counties—it really has done nothing more than exacerbate the violence in Juarez and in other Mexican cities.

DEAN BECKER: You know, I’m not a big drug user, but I can tell you this that here in the city of Houston, the price of drugs has not changed. The availability of drugs has not changed. I'm fairly certain it's not doing a dang bit of good.

Let me—the same story I was reading today from the El Paso Times—that Juarez is no longer the most dangerous city in Mexico—right underneath that, next to that, “Fighting the Border War: Mexico Detains Nearly 50 Members of 2 Drug Gangs.” These are other stories, recent stories. “Juarez Police Captain Gunned Down at Home,” a student killed in Juarez school, “Mexico Mass Graves of 219 Signal Major Cartel Rift,” “Juarez Authorities Arrest Alleged Extortionist,” and the list goes on and on. And I guess what I’m trying to say here is that we're fooling ourselves if we—

SUSIE BYRD: Oh, yeah.

DEAN BECKER: if we...go ahead.

SUSIE BYRD: It—it's—you know, a friend of mine that I play soccer with was down in Juarez yesterday just to go visit a niece and some family. And she said they got there, they got to the church where everybody was hanging out, everybody feels like it's a safe place. And the minute she got there, a woman came running in, that she was car-jacked.

It—I think for a long time people were trying to say that the violence is only limited to the trade—to the drug trade. So if you were not in the trade you were safe, and if you were killed, you were essentially guilty. And I think what we're seeing now is that the violence unleashed by the drug war has had victims; young victims, female victims, people not involved in the trade that are harmed.

And you simply—I think one of the things I always take for granted living in the city that I live in and the neighborhood that I live in: safety feels like something that you have a right to and that just has not been the case in Juarez. You know we’ve—we go out walking late at night, we feel comfortable, we feel safe. And just five minutes from my home, people are staying in, they're not going out.

Juarez was a city where people felt very comfortable being out and about. It was kind of like a street city, everybody was out in the streets and enjoying themselves. That's no longer the case. You stay home if you want to be safe.

DEAN BECKER: You know about fifteen years ago, I was still doing oil and gas work; and it was El Paso natural gas. I was doing an audit there and me and a bunch of other auditors went into Ciudad Juarez and had a great steak dinner and you know, just a wonderful time. Feeling, you know, safe.

SUSIE BYRD: Yeah.

DEAN BECKER: And those days are gone, are they not?

SUSIE BYRD: Oh. They're absolutely gone, and I think a professor here at UTEP I think said it best he did—Tony Payan did an article for the—I think for Time magazine. He said, "You know, there's been many efforts to really separate our cities whether it's sort of a tough stance on immigration and shutting down the borders. All of those things have never really separated us. If we had to wait in traffic for two hours to get back over we would still go over.”

But really this recent—well not so recent violence in Juarez has really made it so that families of people that have spent a lot of time in Juarez are no longer going over. They just don't feel safe. For example my friend that I talked about earlier, her aunt was dying and they just felt like they couldn't go over to help them much because they really feared for their safety. So those kind of familial ties have really been strained by the violence and people feeling like it's just not safe to be in Juarez.

DEAN BECKER: you know, again. From today's El Paso Times, another set of links here. I wanna read just a couple more of these: “Juarez Journalist Says Death Threats Part of Daily Life,” another one, “Ultralight Aircraft Now Ferrying Drugs Across U.S./Mexico Border;” another one, “Man's Head in Hands Left on SUV Hood in Juarez.”And again I'm just barely breaking this list. I'm just saying this is not something we can ignore; this is not something we should wait on. This is something we've got to observe and deal with, don’t we?

SUSIE BYRD: Absolutely, and I think the problem that we're seeing both from the Mexican side and also from the United States side is that the—it's sort of the response from the policy makers in D.C. and the policy makers in Mexico City is, "We just need to tweak it,” or, “We need more resources here." But it's not anybody really talking about what the fundamental problems are that are driving the violence in Juarez, but also in other major cities throughout Mexico.

Eventually the consumption of drugs in the United States and the fact that prohibition creates crazy markups you just can’t compete with, and people want to make a lot of money to feed the consumption in the United States. And it's sort of become the perfect storm and it truly undermines the community safety in many many cities in Mexico. And rather than talk about sort of the fundamental policies that are in place that are creating the dynamic in Mexican cities, it's sort of just, you know, "let's put a little more money here, a little more money there and the same strategies that haven’t proven to reduce drug demand or drug access in the United States and have not proven to reduce violence in Mexico.

DEAN BECKER: Yeah, yeah. Just keep pouring money down that same rat hole. Eventually it'll clog or drain or whatever they think is gonna do, I suppose. Once again folks, we're speaking with Susie Byrd, she's a Councilwoman in El Paso. You know Susie, I was in El Paso for a conference; I guess it's two and a half years ago. We—a group of us about forty—took a bus trip into Ciudad Juarez to go to another little sub seminar, I guess it was. And I noticed on every street corner—I don't know if they were Federal or state police, but I think it was a very dark blue almost black uniform. And there were gentlemen—there were these cops or military on every major street corner and I noticed even in the little city parks there was like a little machine gun nest there in the middle.

SUSIE BYRD: Right.

DEAN BECKER: It's—it's—I guess what I'm trying to say is that more bullets is not gonna solve this. It's gonna take common sense right?

SUSIE BYRD: Right. In fact, every major new flow of military personnel into Juarez has only increased the violence—the level of violence. So March, 2008 when a new group of military were sent to Juarez, it got out of control. And everybody thought, "this is, we've never seen anything like it." And then subsequent—every subsequent new kind of addition of military officers into Juarez has really just strained and accelerated the levels of violence; it's not helped at all.

And I think kind of from what the news that you hear is that Calderon is kind of looking for ways to address it. But you know, if you just think about it, in a city—how scary it would be to have soldiers military soldiers walking the streets in your neighborhood, and I just—it doesn't feel right. It certainly isn't right. And I think that's why the—in the United States, there's always been certain prohibitions against it, but that's happening again just south of us; just five minutes south of us.

DEAN BECKER: Yeah.

SUSIE BYRD: But it—the Mexican military presence has done nothing other than accelerate the levels of violence.

DEAN BECKER: Wow. Susie we've had about—

SUSIE BYRD: Go ahead.

DEAN BECKER: Well, we got about a minute left. What did you want to say?

SUSIE BYRD: You know the other kind of interesting thing is that Calderón moving the military into cities—they've stopped all of their eradication efforts; or not all of their efforts, but you've seen a huge increase in the amount of marijuana being produced for—in Mexico. So it's kind of had an odd effect in terms of the marketplace— where you're seeing a lot more availability of marijuana from Mexico on the streets of the United States.

DEAN BECKER: Yeah. Shootin' ourselves in the foot with a machine gun. That's what we're up to.

SUSIE BYRD: Yeah.

DEAN BECKER: Alright, well Susie, is there a website? So the last closing thoughts you'd like to share?

SUSIE BYRD: No I just—we want people to pay attention to what's going on in our city and our community. Really, El Paso and Juarez are one city and one community. We're really hurting and we need people to understand that what's currently on the ground right now isn't working and we need a different approach. And we hope people stand up for an approach that's logical, that’s rational, that helps us reduce drug access and availability but also helps create a safe environment in Mexico.

DEAN BECKER: Alright, well Susie Byrd, El Paso City Councilwoman, thank you so much.

SUSIE BYRD: Thank you.

DEAN BECKER: Bye.

SUSIE BYRD: Bye.

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DEAN BECKER: Radley Balko is a senior writer for Huffington Post who focuses on civil liberties in the criminal justice system. There was a recent post you made about a U.S. war veteran gunned down here in these United States; tell us how that happened, what that was about.

RADLEY BALKO: Uh, what we do know is that on May 5th, a SWAT Team in Pima County, Arizona raided four houses, and—early in the morning—and one of them belonged to this 26-year-old Marine who had done two—served two tours of duty in Iraq named Jose Guerena. And Guerena had no prior criminal record; there were no drugs in his home. He was the father of two young children. One of them is six years old—he was at school when this happened—the other is four, he was a actually in the home, as was Guerena's wife, Vanessa.

And the police came into the home—they claim that they had their sirens and lights on and that they knocked for 45 seconds before they entered. I've heard that neighbors dispute that claim, as they didn't hear anything until the shooting started. The police broke in and Guerena confronted them with his rifle, an AR-15 rifle, at the end of a long hallway. They saw the rifle and opened fire. They fired seventy rounds in about 10 seconds. They hit him 60 times, and killed him.

And they—since then the police story about what happened has changed a number of times; and it's getting pretty disturbing. They initially claim that Guerena fired at them; they later admitted that he didn't fire. In fact the safety to his gun was still activated. They—two officers claimed to have seen muzzle fire. They later claimed that he fell into another room, so they couldn’t see if he was dead or not. In any event, they waited. They would not let the paramedics access him for more than an hour; basically left him to bleed out and die alone in his own home. And they found nothing; there were no illegal weapons, there were no drugs.

They initially claimed that this was a marijuana investigation; they later changed that and said that this was—they were investigating a ring of home burglaries. And then about the last week or so, the Pima County Sherriff’s office is basically just completely shut down. They sealed the search warrants and police affidavits; they won’t let anyone read them or access them. And you know, they've basically stopped the flow of information; except that the lawyer for the police union which, you know—not an elected position, so this isn't a public official—but somehow he's getting information from the police about the raid and he's using it to attempt to smear Mr. Guerena.

He says that they found all these weapons and body armor; and they—he says they found a portion of a police uniform in his house, and said that this was a good indication that Mr. Guerena was part of this home invasion group that was dressing up as police officers to rob drug dealers and rob innocent citizens in Pima County.

The problem with that is there was nothing in Guerena's home that was illegal. In fact, the portion of police uniform that Mr. Storie the union lawyer referred to was actually a border control baseball cap, which you can buy at amazon.com and a number of other places. It's not at all unusual for a former Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq to have weapons and body armor in his home. It's probably not all that uncommon for your average resident in Arizona to have those things. So it's really kind of unfortunate what's going on.

It's possible that Guerena was a part of some home burglary ring, but you know what the Police Department is doing right now is they're basically—they've entered kind of the bunker mentality, where they're not releasing any information. But they are allowing this police union lawyer to smear this guy and keep in mind this guy has done—he's broken no laws. No drugs, no weapons; had no prior criminal record. And in fact, the police union lawyer even conceded that, you know, if the SWAT team had come into the house without firing any shots and done their search, they wouldn't have found enough evidence to even arrest Mr. Guerena.

DEAN BECKER: Once again, we're speaking with Mr. Radley Balko. Now Radley, you're well aware that this is not a rarity; that similar stories happen across America—if not on a daily basis, certainly on a regular basis, right?

RADLEY BALKO: Well, there are about 150 SWAT raids per day in the U.S., and the vast majority of those are to serve search warrants for non-violent drug offenses—or suspected non-violent drug offense. Now even if they get the right house and everything goes according to plan every time, I submit that a armed basic—the battle unit—police unit breaking into homes a hundred and fifty times a day to enforce consensual non-violent crimes is not really an image that we should associate with a free society.

And of course, it doesn't go right every time; they often get the wrong house. They—innocent people—I've documented close to 50 cases now where a completely innocent person—I mean someone who hadn't even committed a drug crime was killed in one of these raids. Police get killed in them; non-violent offenders get killed in them. It is a—it's a trend that has happened slowly over the last 30 years. But it's had some pretty devastating—if entirely predictable—consequences.

DEAN BECKER: Well Radley, do you have a website that you'd like to share with the listeners, so they can learn more about this?

RADLEY BALKO: Well they can—my personal blog is theagitator.com, but I also write now for The Huffington Post. So you can look for my work there too.

DEAN BECKER: One of the Pima County Sherriff’s deputies was wearing a helmet cam. We're gonna listen to the audio. The first sound you hear is that of them breaking through the door.

[Loud slamming]

DEAN BECKER: Seven seconds later, you hear the sound of seventy rounds being fired at this Iraq War veteran on the suspicion that he might have some weed.

[Multiple gunshots]

DEAN BECKER: Another deputy makes his bones with round seventy-one.

[Gunshots and people talking]

DEAN BECKER: Once again, justice is served in America.

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[Wind blowing]

DEAN BECKER: The winds of prohibition howl as the irrational maelstrom blows. Pipe-dreaming warriors raise their eternal chant, dancing for rain in the eye of a drug war hurricane.

[Sounds of a storm]

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[Music]

DEAN BECKER: Drug Truth Network.

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TERRYY NELSON: This is Terry Nelson speaking on behalf of LEAP—Law Enforcement Against Prohibition-a group of officers, judges, prosecutors, wardens, and others that think the war on drugs is a failed public policy and must be stopped. Instead of war on drugs it is a war on people. With more and more states legalizing medical cannabis—there are now 16 states plus the District of Colombia—we must be near the point where the government has no recourse but to reclassify cannabis and remove it from Schedule 1.

All the drugs that are Schedule 1 have the designation of having no medicinal use. And the definition is, "drugs with a high abuse risk". These drugs have no safe, accepted medical use in the United States. But 16 states think cannabis does have medicinal uses.

LEAP will travel to Washington DC in June to hold a press conference at the National Press Club to commemorate on the 40th anniversary of the war on drugs, the failure of this public policy. We will of course focus our remarks on the failure of the war on drugs and the harm that this has caused to millions of American citizens.

We are hearing more—often from the Drug Czar's office—that there is no longer a war on drugs, but only the rhetoric has changed as $16 Billion has been wasted and 680,000 arrests—351,000 for cannabis—have been made to date.

But it appears that even the Drug Czar has had enough, as he applied for the Chief of Police position in Chicago, but was passed over for another candidate. It can't bode well for a war when the main general is looking for a way out of his predicament. Perhaps the new mayor of Chicago wanted a chief that was more effective policing the city than the Czar appears to have been in eliminating drug use and abuse. Perhaps simply creating citizens with arrest records and destroying their lives is not what the mayor wants for his city.

Realistically, our country can no longer afford to continue spending billions of dollars on a failed policy. Realistically, our country needs the taxes that can be collected on the cannabis business and it needs its citizens to be able to get better jobs, and become tax payers instead of a drain on our limited resources.

LEAP is also proud to announce that we have completely reworked our website to make information easier to read. Please visit our new site at www.leap.cc or www.copsaylegalizedrugs.com. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter if you feel so inclined.

Let's work together to stop this craziness and help build a better future for ourselves and our children. Stay safe. This is Terry Nelson at www.leap.cc signing off.

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DEAN BECKER: Alright, thank you Terry Nelson. And thank all the good folks at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Their website again is LEAP.cc. If you're working to change these drugs laws, get in touch with them. They'll send one of our speakers there to your organization, or to your city council or whatever organization you're working with, because that's what we do. And we would like for you to give us a call and have us help you change these stupid laws.

Again, reading from El Paso Times, "US Cattle Inspectors Leave Mexico Amid Drug War," "Mexican Forces Unearth 17 More Bodies," you know, "Mexico Outfits on U.S. Money Laundering Lists Thrive," You know? It is the banks that love this drug war as much as the drug barons down there in Mexico, because they launder the lion's share. They get to keep 75%, and sometimes 95% of the money; give back 5 cents on the dollar to these drug barons if they'll launder the money. That's what's goin’ on and we've got to stop this.

Couple of things happening this week, the global commission on drug policy's gonna host a live press conference on Thursday, June 2nd at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. This has the former Presidents of Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Switzerland, the Prime Minister of Greece, Kofi Anon, George Schultz, Paul Volker, all of them calling for a paradigm shift in the global drug policy.

And I bring that up because we're gonna be covering that for you; we'll be bringing that to you next week, along with the—we're gonna do an interview with the two co-editors of a book "El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin." That's gonna feature Molly Molloy and Charles Bowden, the author.

8 murders a day; the story of Ciudad Juarez. I guess it all boils down to this: All of this truth does us no good if we don't use it. And I would urge you to please do your part. There's no truth, no justice, no logic, no reason for this drug war to exist. We've been duped. Please visit our website: endprohibition.org.

Prohibido estac evilesco!

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DEAN BECKER: 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.