SirBlazinBowl
New Member
In the past year, police said, they've begun finding startling amounts of cannabis on the streets, probably because of its profitability, lighter jail sentences for violations and its social acceptance. Police have no doubt the resurgence of marijuana is one of the reasons serious reported crime in the city has increased 7.5 percent compared with this time last year. Many gangs, some of whom don't hesitate to use guns to settle turf issues, now sell marijuana instead of other drugs.
The violence killed a 35-year-old man from Albuquerque, N.M., who was searching for crack cocaine to buy one June afternoon. But he was shot to death in his truck on a north Minneapolis street when he refused to buy marijuana from the two dealers and they robbed him, police said. The demand for marijuana has refocused the enforcement efforts of a local drug task force, resulting in three seizures of more than 1,000 pounds apiece since early 2004. Each bust had a value easily exceeding $1 million.
Minneapolis has become a destination point for such large amounts to satisfy a growing demand here, and that has created new markets in the inner city and has kept police scrambling to get peddlers off the streets.
This is a contrast to St. Paul and other parts of the state. St. Paul police seized about a hundred pounds of BC Bud, a highly potent marijuana grown in Canada, in the past few months, but methamphetamine is having the biggest adverse impact in the city, said St. Paul police Cmdr. Todd Axtell. Methamphetamine continues to grow in the suburbs and outstate, but it hasn't been a large problem in Minneapolis, police said. Ninety percent of the marijuana comes from Mexico, said Sgt. Jeff Miller of the narcotics unit. The rest is usually BC Bud. All forms of the drug are more potent now, and more users are being seen at hospital emergency rooms suffering from emotional problems, he said.
Hanging on the corner, a dealer is a constant nuisance who can bring violence into the lives of innocent residents. "Kids have to walk through these folks when they are going to the bus stop. Parents have to worry about gunfire when the kids come home from school or play outside," said Carrie Day-Aspinwall, who has been working since 1997 with the Weed and Seed federal crime prevention program in the Phillips neighborhood in south Minneapolis. "It really chips away at the quality of life."
"Unlike crack or heroin, selling marijuana isn't limited to a specific part of the city," Martin said.
Minneapolis police have worked their large marijuana cases in partnership with a Hennepin County and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) task force. The cases usually start with a drug seizure at the Mexican border, followed by a strategy to attack an entire organization and not just individual dealers, said Kent Bailey, who supervises the DEA task force that mostly focuses on Twin Cities activity. He previously worked in Los Angeles, where 64 percent of the city's homicides in a recent year involved marijuana.
Bailey said "tons" of marijuana are coming into Minneapolis. In the three cases involving thousand-pound seizures, two of the dealers admitted bringing in more than 10,000 pounds a year before they were caught, he said. If dealers are convicted of selling amounts near a thousand pounds, the federal penalty is a minimum of five years in prison.
The first of these large cases started in November 2003 and involved cookie shipments that were actually bricks of marijuana. Most of the drugs were seized in an apartment near Lake Calhoun.
In the second case, 1,200 pounds of marijuana were seized in a case that led investigators to Columbia Heights late last year. Twelve defendants were charged, including a man who was later charged with seriously injuring a University of Minnesota student in a fight outside a downtown Minneapolis bar
Newshawk: SirBlazinBowl - 420times.com
Source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN)
Copyright: 2005 Star Tribune
Contact: opinion@startribune.com
Website:The latest from the StarTribune
Author: David Chanen
The violence killed a 35-year-old man from Albuquerque, N.M., who was searching for crack cocaine to buy one June afternoon. But he was shot to death in his truck on a north Minneapolis street when he refused to buy marijuana from the two dealers and they robbed him, police said. The demand for marijuana has refocused the enforcement efforts of a local drug task force, resulting in three seizures of more than 1,000 pounds apiece since early 2004. Each bust had a value easily exceeding $1 million.
Minneapolis has become a destination point for such large amounts to satisfy a growing demand here, and that has created new markets in the inner city and has kept police scrambling to get peddlers off the streets.
This is a contrast to St. Paul and other parts of the state. St. Paul police seized about a hundred pounds of BC Bud, a highly potent marijuana grown in Canada, in the past few months, but methamphetamine is having the biggest adverse impact in the city, said St. Paul police Cmdr. Todd Axtell. Methamphetamine continues to grow in the suburbs and outstate, but it hasn't been a large problem in Minneapolis, police said. Ninety percent of the marijuana comes from Mexico, said Sgt. Jeff Miller of the narcotics unit. The rest is usually BC Bud. All forms of the drug are more potent now, and more users are being seen at hospital emergency rooms suffering from emotional problems, he said.
Hanging on the corner, a dealer is a constant nuisance who can bring violence into the lives of innocent residents. "Kids have to walk through these folks when they are going to the bus stop. Parents have to worry about gunfire when the kids come home from school or play outside," said Carrie Day-Aspinwall, who has been working since 1997 with the Weed and Seed federal crime prevention program in the Phillips neighborhood in south Minneapolis. "It really chips away at the quality of life."
"Unlike crack or heroin, selling marijuana isn't limited to a specific part of the city," Martin said.
Minneapolis police have worked their large marijuana cases in partnership with a Hennepin County and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) task force. The cases usually start with a drug seizure at the Mexican border, followed by a strategy to attack an entire organization and not just individual dealers, said Kent Bailey, who supervises the DEA task force that mostly focuses on Twin Cities activity. He previously worked in Los Angeles, where 64 percent of the city's homicides in a recent year involved marijuana.
Bailey said "tons" of marijuana are coming into Minneapolis. In the three cases involving thousand-pound seizures, two of the dealers admitted bringing in more than 10,000 pounds a year before they were caught, he said. If dealers are convicted of selling amounts near a thousand pounds, the federal penalty is a minimum of five years in prison.
The first of these large cases started in November 2003 and involved cookie shipments that were actually bricks of marijuana. Most of the drugs were seized in an apartment near Lake Calhoun.
In the second case, 1,200 pounds of marijuana were seized in a case that led investigators to Columbia Heights late last year. Twelve defendants were charged, including a man who was later charged with seriously injuring a University of Minnesota student in a fight outside a downtown Minneapolis bar
Newshawk: SirBlazinBowl - 420times.com
Source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN)
Copyright: 2005 Star Tribune
Contact: opinion@startribune.com
Website:The latest from the StarTribune
Author: David Chanen
