White Goldstein's Criminal Defense Blog
Incidents of Drug Trafficking Increase in Tough Economy
Drug crimes attorneys certainly have no shortage of work in these challenging financial times. As the unemployment rate continues to rise, alternate sources of income are being sought across the country. Sadly, many people have chosen drug dealing as a backup plan. To make a bad situation grimmer, under funded programs and officers’ whose anti-drug programs have lost funding could be the cause of false arrests and wrongful convictions. Last year police made over 1,400 arrests at Los Angeles International Airport with the majority of the arrests being attributed to drug or theft charges. That number is up 144 cases from 2008, according to the Los Angeles Times. Just this week state troopers in Chillicothe, Ohio arrested three men after discovering 29.5 grams of crack cocaine and 16.5 grams of powder cocaine in the mens’ vehicle. Also in Ohio, the last two suspects of 38 defendants plead guilty in a huge federal drug case that targeted a long-standing marijuana and cocaine ring. Elsewhere in Auburn, Alabama, four men were arrested on drug trafficking charges after local police seized twelve pounds of marijuana.
Cases like these could be symptomatic of the economic downturn according to the 233 police agencies surveyed by the Police Executive Research Forum in 2009. The law enforcement organization based in Washington found a forty-four percent rise in crime that they attributed to the financial crisis. The NDIC (National Drug Intelligence Resource Center) reported last year that due to the proximity to Mexico and a high unemployment rate, drug crimes in the city of Los Angeles have increased. Finally, organizations like the DEA and the Media Awareness project have noted that because of budget cuts, programs to stop the trafficking of drugs are struggling to stay afloat. This is particularly troubling as depleted training of officers and lack of funding could potentially spell disastrous arrests and botched investigations nationwide.
