HoustonChronicle.com – Language barrier ensnarls meth cases — This is a genuine eye-roller.
ROME, GA. – When 49 convenience-store clerks and owners in rural northwestern Georgia were accused of selling materials used to make methamphetamine, federal prosecutors declared that they had conclusive evidence: Hidden microphones and cameras, they said, had caught the workers acknowledging that the products would be used to make the drug.
But weeks of court motions have produced many questions. Forty-four of the defendants are Indian immigrants %u2014 32, mostly unrelated, are named Patel %u2014 and many spoke little more than the kind of transactional English mocked in sitcoms.
So when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to “finish up a cook,” some of the Indians said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.
The case of Operation Meth Merchant illustrates yet another difficulty that law enforcement officials face in combating a highly addictive drug that can be made at home with ordinary grocery-store items.
Many states, including Georgia, have passed laws recently restricting the sale of cold medicines, and across the country, police are telling merchants to be suspicious of sales of charcoal, coffee filters, aluminum foil and kitty litter.
Yes be very suspicious if someone buys charcoal and intends to “cook” with it.
discovered by P/ McEntee
I can believe it. The guy up the street from me was trying to make his own charcoal out of old firewood using a propane torch. A big bag of charcoal is like six bucks. Maybe he thinks he is W down at the ranch. I could picture him making his own lighter fluid and serving burgers which taste like keosene or something.
If by calling them “Keystone” you’re implying they’re stupid, you’re wrong. These guys know exactly what they’re doing. Cops are really only concerned about arrests. After that, the case is out of their hands. If the case gets dismissed by a judge or he gets found not guilty by a jury, cops don’t feel it’s their fault. They blame it on the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, but never themselves.
In other words, cops are more than happy to arrest innocent people to make themselves look good. Plus, they have the mentality that everyone is guilty of something in some way, so they rationalize away any guilt they feel.
I still can’t get over this one. There actually are a small number of folks out there who became cops for all the right reasons: protecting truth, justice, the American Way. You know, like Superman.
There are so many enclaves of corruption, ineptness and incompetence, whether we talk about small towns or big city departments, that you have to wonder if anything other than the gradual shifts of inertia in society actually make a difference in crime?