By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com Webster Bivens may have been a drug dealer, but his place in law enforcement history is not proportional to his status as an alleged dealer. In the fall of 1965, Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents raided Bivens’ Brooklyn apartment. The FBN agents had neither an arrest warrant nor a search warrant….
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A DEA special agent was seriously injured after trying to stop a drug dealing suspect in a car as it entered a gas station in Chicago’s Ashburn neighborhood, the Chicago Tribune reports. The fleeing car struck the agent, causing head injuries and a broken leg. The agent, whose identity has not…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com This was not your ordinary drug bust. Border Patrol agents found more than $1 million worth of cocaine in a car driven by a 25-year-old Mexican man, Breitbart reports. The man was crossing the Pharr International Bridge when agents stopped him for a secondary inspection. Agents found 15 packages of cocaine…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com FBI agents listening to wiretaps of alleged cocaine dealers in South Carolina discovered a large training facility for fighting pit bulls in Lexington County, the Charlotte Observer reports. During the raid, agents seized 48 pit bills, many of them emaciated and tied to chains outside. On Oct. 1, the same investigation…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A former U.S. Border Patrol agent has been indicted – for the second time in a superseding indictment. Raimundo Borjas was issued with a revised indictment that charges whim with 10 counts of money laundering on top of the original charges of trying to avoid detection of deposited funds, the Arizona Daily…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist and former presidential candidate, began working as a confidential FBI informant in the 1980s after he was caught on tape discussing cocaine deals with a drug kingpin, the New York Post reports. Sharpton cooperated with authorities and helped the feds bring down the notorious…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A disproportionate number of low-level drug criminals who are behind bars are African Americans sentenced under strict laws from the days of the crack epidemic. Hoping to correct that disparity, the Justice Department is encouraging defense lawyers to help identify inmates for clemency, the New York Times reports. Penalties for drug offenses…
Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com At first glance, Daniel Ramirez looked like a hapless taveller on crutches. But when the 21-year-old was on a train traveling from California to Chicago, DEA task force officers said he looked nervous and suspicious, The Smoking Gun reports. More alarming, his cast was “uneven in texture, size and shaping not consistent…
