Posted on 05/21/2012 7:31:52 AM PDT by Altariel
At 5:30 a.m. on May 10, armed men broke into the bedroom of Kirk Kyle Farrar’s 12 year-old daughter and shook her awake. The men led her downstairs at gunpoint and forced her to lie on the floor next to her mother and father, with her hands behind her head. Another armed man took Farrar’s two-year-old son from his crib, and would not let his parents hold him. “My son screamed for his mother for what seemed like an eternity,” Farrar wrote in an email to friends, obtained by Reason. “I will never forget the hopeless feeling of not being able to comfort my son or daughter.”
The armed men who broke into Farrar’s home were officers with the Meridian, Idaho, Police Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. They were executing a federal warrant for Farrar’s arrest for the crime of selling bongs.
Farrar’s wasn’t the only family traumatized that morning. Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Idaho National Guard, and four Idaho police departments raided the homes of 13 other headshop owners and employees on May 10. All of the headshops had their inventory seized. One shop lost more than $80,000 worth of merchandise (bongs and pipes marketed as “tobacco water pipes”). Another headshop owner had his and and his employees' vehicles seized.
The investigation into these 13 shops and their employees (two of which are still at large) for selling drug paraphernalia was led by U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson, a Barack Obama appointee. Nine of the shops were also accused of selling "spice," a synthetic alternative to the prohibited and significantly safer drug marijuana.
In his email, Farrar denies selling spice. "Piece of Mind Boise has never carried these products EVER! We made a commitment from the start not to carry it because we believe it is dangerous and not being used in a legal fashion."
He also notes that his cousin, "[who] has never previously committed a crime and has absolutely no criminal record," has been charged with "with 4 Federal felony charges stemming from selling tobacco products."
“The open sale of drug paraphernalia promotes unlawful drug use and helps drug traffickers thrive,” Olson said at a press conference on May 10. “These indictments show federal, state and local law enforcement partners will attack drug trafficking on all fronts.”
During a speech at the Center for American Progress earlier this month, Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske said that the law enforcement-only approach to America's drug problem was not "humane, compassionate" or "realistic." He also said that the Obama administration does not believe it can "arrest its way out of the drug problem."
Reason spoke to one headshop owner. At his attorney’s behest, this owner declined to go on the record, but did say that local police had been aware of the store’s existence and sales of glass pipes for years, but had never threatened charges or discouraged the business from operating. The owner believes that the raids came at the behest of federal law enforcement officials.
According to the Idaho Statesman, “the DEA, Idaho National Guard, IRS and the U.S. Marshals and Attorney’s offices worked on the case,” which the agencies built over the course of an entire year.
As if more evidence were needed that President Obama's drug war looks a lot like George W. Bush's: The charges against Farrar and the other Idaho headshop owners are reminiscent of the federal prosecution of actor Tommy Chong under Bush's DOJ. Chong was convicted in 2003 for distributing paraphernalia through his company Nice Dreams Enterprises. Chong was fined $20,000, and made to forfeit his domain name, all of his inventory, and $103,514 in cash.
“These over zealous freaks need to be at our southern border arresting the the drug dealers and pushers.”
No, then they might actually get shot at by someone that really wants to kill them.
Rhetorical Question: What the hell is going on?
True enough. I stand corrected.
“WTF were they doing there?”
Indeed.
Doesn’t the Governor activate the NG?
Yes, unless the Feds activate it....
http://science.howstuffworks.com/national-guard.htm
Idaho Gov. Butch Otter is a Republican.
Bet Hussein’s handlers are already hard at work rewriting this story.
When did Dean Graziosi become a U.S. Attorney?
“Bipartisanship” in action....
What is Butch Otter saying about this?
Butch was a Reagan appointee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Otter
See how Reaganesque Hussein is?
Thankfully the family did not have a poodle or it would have been shot in front of the children
Are we going to see a Geospatial Department mockup of the family compound and an action timeline to support Hussein’s gutsy call?
She looks like a dyke if ever there was one! Nothing or no one is more vicious & evil than so-called liberals who also happen to be homo or lezzie.
Would they have reported shooting the dog?
This raid was to make Hussein look good.
How closely did he work with the Republican governor?
Is there an official Hussein press release yet, or does he get to joke about this at a party for the police Wednesday Night?
Per our Constitution and history an Amendment is required to have a federal prohibition. There exist no Amendment authorizing the federal government to have another prohibition. The Federal Government’s Drug Prohibition is illegal and should be rejected by every American.
Obama’s storm troopers are getting a workout. No one is safe.
Take all of your pro-drug hippie anti-police friends back to the DU and enjoy anarchy there.
Exactly. How is it that we required the Volstead Act for alcohol prohibition, but not something similar for MJ? Completely absurd.
These agents in this case are nothing but JBTs. There is no justification whatsoever to carry out normal arrests in this way. They should be named and shunned in their communities, if nothing else.
Wear your chains lightly.
Thank you for verifying that you supporting pointing loaded weapons at tired, frightened children.
The police head of the government hydra thanks you for your support in feeding the beast! Don’t worry, after it devours them, it will come for you, in turn.
The local news didn’t mention that the police raided homes, and that the National Guard and DEA were involved. The local reports simply sounded like the shops themselves were raided.
The fact the military was used makes me very very angry.
It is the path of least resistance.
The feds won’t take on the heavily armed narco gangs in our country, but they will go nuts on a head shop guy.
Better not tear the tag off my mattress.
“The local news didn’t mention that the police raided homes, and that the National Guard and DEA were involved. The local reports simply sounded like the shops themselves were raided.
The fact the military was used makes me very very angry.
“
Naturally not, that would make the government hydra look unsympathetic.
We can’t have it commonly reported that children were threatened with death.
It might cause people to rethink whether the “cure” was worse than the disease.
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