Drug War Story

A featured news story in today's (Nov. 26,2008) New York Daily News has NY Giant kicker Lawrence Tynes asking George Bush to pardon his brother. His brother, locked up since 2004 in a Federal Pen in Arkansas, is doing 27-years as kingpin of a marijuana moving operation that was found to have moved 3,600 pounds of pot from Texas to Florida over an unspecified period of time.
He'd normally have gotten a max of 10-years, but had a prior drug felony. Then he refused to cooperate (snitch) and allegedly was involved in witness intimidation.
So he wound up with the 27-years.
And the comments from the readers of the Daily News on line--always a boisterous crowd--were chilling. "The drug dealer deserved more time," shouted one; "Do the crime, do the time," shouted another and others were equally cold.
And maybe the idea that he had a prior and the witness intimidation actually was what got the people riled up.
But looking at it from the outside--and I did not study this case, but hundreds of cases like this, here's how it goes.
Tynes and friends move a little Mexican brickweed and make a few bucks. It was being moved from Texas, which means Mexican brick. That sells for $200 a pound, tops, on the Mexican side of the border, $300 a pound on the US side. In Florida it would bring maybe $500 a pound wholesale. So 3,600 pounds represents a gross earnings for the 5 people in the conspiracy of Three quarters of a million to a million bucks, absolutely tops. Before expenses, which would have been fairly substantial over time. So maybe the five earned $175 g's over several years--$30,000 to $40,000 a year. Nice, but pocket change, not the stuff of drug kingpins.
They get busted and all are asked to talk. Tynes won't give up his 4 pals and he won't give up his Mexico connect. Absolutely stand up for his pals; absolutely life saving where the Mex connect is concerned, as the game these days has been taken over down there by people raging wars. And they do find families and so forth. So giving them up would have been suicide/murder: Suicide for himself and murder of his family.
The 4 guys he also stood up for, however, all turned on him and walked away scott free. The intimidation would have come from 1) anger that the people he protected ratted on him; or 2) the Mex connection. Tynes might very well have had nothing to do with it.
So this mid-level pot dealer running a little dope a couple/few times a year winds up this drug kingpin doing a mandatory 27-years.
Personally, I say drugs should be legal and if you go to hell in a handbasket for abusing them, so what? But even if I thought differently, I'd smell a small-time assistant DA out to make his/her mark with a case like this. Kingpin my ass.
That's what I'm thinking, anyway.