A massive Methamphetamine bust went down in Georgia recently. Close to 50 people were charged. GG2.net reports:
Around 50 Indian American convenience store owners and employees have been arrested, in Georgia, and charged with selling substances used in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine (meth), a highly addictive stimulant.
An indictment unveiled in a US magistrateÂ’s court, on Monday, said the arrests were made in six Georgia counties over the past month under an operation to hunt down peddlers of meth ingredients. Several of those arrested have been released on bonds ranging from $10,000 to $50,000.
Some of the defence attorneys have accused the investigators of targeting immigrant merchants, most of them of Indian origin. Attorney Steven Sadow, who is representing six defendants, said he will investigate if officials singled out Indians in their “Operation Meth Merchant”.
“I want to know why they went after the Indians to begin with,” said Sadow. He proposes to file a motion to “dismiss all charges based on selective prosecution”. One of the defendants also asserted that the charges stemmed from stereotyping and generalisation.
A list of defendants can be read in the DOJ release. There are a lot of Patels up in there. It doesn’t immediately strike me as “selective prosecution.” I mean Indians do own a lot of convenience stores, and convenience stores do sell drugs. Of course a quick news brief doesn’t give the full story, especially the “convenience store demographics” of the area.
The Walker County Messenger has more:
“We went where the evidence led for all the stores,” said David Nahmias, U.S. attorney for Georgia’s Northern District, at a news conference last Friday afternoon. “The problem is not limited to these 25 stores.”
Of the 49 people indicted in the operation, 43 are of Indian descent.
Patrick Crosby, public affairs officer for the U.S. attorneyÂ’s office, reiterated Nahmias comments.
“We weren’t going after Patels, and just like the U.S. attorney (Nahmias) said, we didn’t know who these people were when we started,” Crosby said. “We just followed the evidence.”
MSNBC has more detailed coverage.
Wait till the juries give them more time than they will ever give to Kenny boy.
This is interesting:
Is your average immigrant convenience store owner going to know what ‘meth’ is? Or did the witnesses say, ‘methamphetamine– by the way, that’s an illegal drug’? Were they on notice, either explicitly or implicitly, that they were not to sell large quantities of these items?
Is your average immigrant convenience store owner going to know what ‘meth’ is?
Very good point. I missed that.
Is your average immigrant convenience store owner going to know what ‘meth’ is?
if they live in a rural area they should-meth is probably the #1 cause of burglaries and property crimes (including against small business). also, many states are passing laws about pseudoephedrine, this is in the news a lot because people who sell over the counter drugs are going to be impacted by this a lot (in my state, which is one of the top meth hubs in the country, you can’t get pseudoephedrine drugs in solid form without showing ID and stuff now).
They can use Sudafed to make meth as well there are a lot of Over the counter drugs you can get to synthesize methane in your home grown Bhatti. My aunt is a pharmacologist and she pointed out like 20 OTC medications in a grocery store once that could be used to make drugs (the illegal ones, the ones the govt. decides can’t be exploited for money so they decide to illegalize them)
Horseshit… they didn’t do anything illegal. This can’t possibly hold up in court: why should shopkeepers be held responsible for their customers? If I bought a baseball bat from a sporting goods store and used it to beat someone to death, should the store owner be punished as well?
Unless the store owners actually gave the undercover officers instruction on how to make meth, there shouldn’t be a case.
1) remember, the story said they told them they were purchasing it to buy meth (true or not, but there should be videotaple if it is a normal convenience store).
2) quantity is usually the issue from what i know-if someone is buying stuff in bulk that’s a good clue as to what’s going on.
Convenience stores don’t usually carry audio just black and white video and a timecode to save on costs. But maybe… Really doubt that if these fellas were storeowners there should be any case against them. Police should just learn to not be idiots and put some salt with the pepper.
In the past, convenience store surveillance cameras usually didn’t have audio. Do they have it now?
Here’s a local paper that calls the people arrested “low-hanging fruit”, which sounds right to me.
Jeez, why don’t they go after the dealers?
A lot of these guys may not know that it’s against the law to sell ingredients if they know what they’ll be used for. Oh well — it’s still against the law, and I think they’ll still go to jail based on the evidence of the undercover officers. (The presence of audio may be immaterial.)
If it were me, this might be the moment where I bust out the “Me no speakee English” defense.
Still, it seems to me this isn’t a “ring” they’ve rounded up, it’s a bunch of stupid convenience store workers who are not even connected to each other. It’s also not correct to call them “low hanging fruit,” since these people aren’t in any strict sense involved with the production or distribution of the drug.
Is there any evidence that this is a “ring”?
This is ridiculous. I don’t see how it’s a ring if they are merely selling the commonplace ingredients that go into making this substance. Did they say, “Yes, go ahead, boys and gals, do illegal things with these items” and make meth kinda money on their sale?
Selling the disparate and unexceptional components for an illegal drug doesn’t constitute selling the drug itself. Hope the “justice” system can see this.
Some of these stores had meth kits.. those stores did know what was going on. Some stocked all the meth ingredients in bulk and close to each other. Source Some of them were guilty. However it’s hard to believe 72 yr old men and women were involved in this.
This is what I believe happened. The average store owner notices an increased demand for cough syrup and associated ingredients and he starts stocking them and selling them at inflated prices to make a killing.
I wonder if (they must have) the police carried out an awareness campaign, distributing information to be aware of the meth situation in the state and listing the ingredients associated with meth production. If the cops did that and the store owners continued selling the ingredients in bulk, then they are guilty. They were miusing the law thinking that selling common over the counter drugs is legal and they can’t be touched. If the cop’s didn’t do that, most of them will be acquitted and the federal govt will have a lawsuit up their nether orifice.
This is a terrible thing for the desi community, Average Joe SixPack will tag all sepias as gay terrorist loving’ drug dealers now.
Meth Conviction precedents elsewhere
This is what I believe happened. The average store owner notices an increased demand for cough syrup and associated ingredients and he starts stocking them and selling them at inflated prices to make a killing.
Yep. I’d buy that. How many of us know an Indian uncle that would probably do the same thing and just look the other way if they suspected a bit of shadiness? A few blackmarket deals never hurt anyone right? Think of all the pirated videos at Indian stores.
Still I believe the entire policy sucks. Go after the dealers first and then the users. The guys with the raw materials shouldn’t be the main target when they are otherwise running a legit establishment.
Selective prosecution is always a possibility when 43 out of 49 people belong to one minority ethnicity. I mean we all knew that these Hindoos were upto no good. I shudder to think what a jury of their ‘peers’ would look like.
“I want to know why they went after the Indians to begin with,” said Sadow
There is a very simple reason why the Indians were swept up first in this deal. A good old southern christian jury is way more likely to convict Indians then some good old boy from Roma, Georgia.
If it turns out that these people WERE in fact selling meth-kits knowing fully well that(and not just randomly selling ingredients) then, by all means, punish them for breaking the law.
I disagree with Al Mujahid: if the Hindoos are up to no good, then throw their asses in jail.
Dumb question:
What is a meth kit, and how is it remotely plausible to sell it in a convenience store?
I just got forwarded this link in an email to me. It has some more details.
And how many of us have been to a store run by a desi Uncle where the desi employees are told what to do and really exercise no discretion of their own or don’t necessarily have a clue about many things. As someone mentioned above, it wasn’t just the owners that were prosecuted here.
Anyway, it’s hard to draw any conclusions about this without knowing exactly what happened–and specifically what was said during the interactions between the undercover agents and the people selling the goods. However, it is shady that the figures are skewed by ethnicity, that immigration is involved in this (harder to press a civil suit contending discrimination if you’re in India ;), that they decided to run a “send a message” arrest sweep on a community that was probably easier to target, etc. Unless these people disproportionately own the convenience stores in Northern Georgia and the areas of Tennessee that were targeted (which, as was stated in the post, is really possible), it smacks of the need for at least more information. Plus there’s the broader question of whether enforcement tactics like this are effective in reducing addictions (of all kinds, not just to illegal drugs) and consequently whether the so-called war on drugs is worth the cost.
btw, here’s a hilarious article about a Tennessee county government official that was apparently moonlighting as a meth dealer.
Damning news report
If all this on tape, most of these guys are screwed.
Motel on exit 350? I checked google maps.. it shows a super 8 and a comfort inn. Dunno if they are owned by desis. There is a considerable amount of hostility towards meth peddlers on the net(because of the horrific side effects of meth) and I am afraid this will lead to some violence against desis. I read quite a few responses on WASP forums that went “they can’t blow up our kids with bombs, so now they are poisoning them with meth” Apu = Gay-Terrorist Lovin’-Drug Dealer. Time to put up an American flag and “say no to drugs” bumper stickers.
The people who sold these ingredients probably didn’t realize the effect of their actions, most likely because no one in their family was affected by it. Doesn’t justify it though, some of them do deserve to go to jail. The people who did this are no different from the food-adultering sobs that kill kids in India. Greed kills.
Let’s hope no innocents are caught up in this. Feds were involved in this for over a year so it’s unlikely that this will be another Tulia
Ok – so the WHOLESALE distributor of Sudafed, Nyquil, etc wasn’t aware that this region was ordering the product in higher than average numbers?
The corporation didn’t notice their sales have gone up exponentially in this region?
50 shop owners in a ring equals a lot of product sold. The Patels were just the last point of sale. If we looked into the corporation records, we could probably find “rings” like this all over America.
This is total bullshit, and demonstrates that there are parallel justice systems in this country – any Desi here who has a legal background would be doing a service to their community to look into this case closely and possibly do some pro bono work.
It’s good Karma.
Thanks for the link, VV. That information is pretty damning on the specifics if it’s accurate and fair (it is coming from a government affadavit used for prosecution, after all)–at least as applied to those particular people that are cited in it. They certainly sound like dealers (and fairly bad ones, at that) and it’s hard to have much emotional sympathy for some of these people (i.e. the ones with some wealth, store ownership, citizenship, etc.)–they didn’t really need to be doing that. Still doesn’t mean they should go to jail for 10 years or whatever it turns out to be for a crime with fairly little violence involved in it (and certainly none directly).
I still want specifics, too, on all the people involved–especially the employees–and a larger context (i.e. how big a problem are these convenience stores in the chain of meth distribution and addiction). I also wonder how these people are supposed to get a fair trial if the government is leaking very specific evidence against them to the press.
…any Desi here who has a legal background would be doing a service to their community to look into this case closely and possibly do some pro bono work.
It’s good Karma.
Totally disagree. They won’t be doing me a service. I’d rather they help completely innocent people (and there are many caught up in the system). You can’t make defending these people a religious duty by claiming “good karma”, especially as evidence mounts that some of them knew what they were doing. Isn’t that sort of extremist view what you are always preaching against Truthmissile?
By the way, not to pick on you but doesn’t your very name, “Truthmissile,” betray your ideals? In various comments you condemn the Bush Administration for its heavy handed policies (i.e. bringing freedom to Iraq by use of bombs and military). If you are attempting to bring “truth” into the discussion than shouldn’t “truth” be self-evident as opposed to delivered in the form of a missile to make your opponents submit? This has nothing to do with the post above but I have been thinking about it for a while now. How about “truthbringer.” 🙂
Imagine 50 Apu’s in a prison cell.
What is a meth kit, and how is it remotely plausible to sell it in a convenience store?
I’d assume it would be like the “crack kits” that were being sold in Dallas until the cops shut them down. In a paper bag, you’d find a rose inside a test-tube looking holder, a lighter, Brillo pads, a mirror, and other things that you would use to smoke crack or do cocaine. All the things in the bag were legal, but the convenience store workers were getting busted on drug paraphernalia charges.
When they’re putting Sudafed into the meth kids, you’re past paraphernalia and now getting into ingredients to make the drug itself… if the shopkeepers really knew what they were doing and are guilty, then good that they were arrested. But Truthmissile has a point too: if we are going to arrest the suppliers, let’s look further up the chain to the distributors and arrest them as well, because they too must know what’s going on when their stock is depleted so quickly in a certain area of the state.
But that would be arresting people from the drug companies themselves, and corporate america would never let that happen. 🙁
Abhi, Truthmissile is like Lovebomb, it’s wonderfully poetic IMO.
Unrelated, the ‘love bomb’ was a hilarious piece of kitsch:
Truthmissile & Andrea Your observations about the corporations are spot on. May be the feds should install tracking triggers on the sales records of these companies.
They do seem to be doing something about it.
Saurav, from my reading on this issue, these stores are big part of the problem. Georgia Law prohibits sale of more than 3 containers of cold medicine per customer. When these stores violate the law, they make it easier for Meth cooks to make drugs. When they conveniently stock all the items required for meth on a shelf in their stores, it’s downright criminal. If a meth cook had to go to 50 stores to get enough ingredients may be the meth production would slow down and the price would go up. If guilty, a term of 10 years is about right.. in a Federal ‘Pound me in the Ass’ prison. At least that seems to be the precedent.
I am not sure how widespread this problem is and if more desi owners around the country are involved. There seems to be some conspiracy to this, consider that one of the accussed suggested the name of a motel where they could safely do their ‘thing’ and one of them asked another store owner for more cough syrup when he ran out of stock.
My only concern is for any innocents caught up in this. The Tulia incident happened in ’99 and was extremely disturbing. There was a desi lawyer involved in the acquital of the Tulia African Americans. I hope for the Feds sake there wasn’t any profiling involved because that would damage the case against the guilt ones.
Punjabi Boy, Apu did go to jail once… (for public nudity I think)
VinodV, cool it with the homophobia, eh?
Abhi, you think the government never starts out using tactics against the most indefensible people in order to extend them later to people you might sympathize with a bit more? 😉 That’s the process by which the Bangladeshi woman you posted about got totally f@#$ked. Also, you’re convicting these shop owners and workers rather quickly on the basis of media reports that rely primarily on govenrment documents and quotes.
In any case, if we’re talking about criteria that pro bono lawyers use to choose their clients, I’d rather they represent people who are involved in efforts that help their own cases but also strive to change the laws and procedures that are treating them unfairly. These folks are a good example. Probably helps the most people–innocent and otherwise–in the long run.
LoL
I have got to watch that episode.
Abhi, you think the government never starts out using tactics against the most indefensible people in order to extend them later to people you might sympathize with a bit more?
Thats besides the point. I don’t want to commit another wrong just to right the system. The “wrong” here is applying “good karma” logic to defend them because they are brown.
Yeah, I agree. Except if they were targeted for being brown. Which they may have been (but it’s unclear).
Anyway, as I articulated above, I think “good karma” logic sucks. People should just do the right thing, politically, because it makes sense. Like not reading National Review as a news source 🙂
I personally will always have sympathy for the workers of convenience store. I used to work at one convenience store while going to Grad school. (This is a while back ..about a decade). – A couple of other students were also working here. It was illegal as students were not allowed to work outside campus(if they are on F1 visa) but to pay for tuition a lot of us did it. – In another shift there was a student whom I knew, worked. One evening the Cops had placed a trap on the store. – They sent a really mature looking young man to buy beer in the store. As evenings were very busy time, the clerk did not check the ID before selling beer. – Immediately Cops came in and placed this poor fellow under arrest and took him to a local holding cell. – He called my roommate whom he was a good freinds with. Fortunately at the time my cousin was visiting (He is older). So my cousin went to the station along with my roommate.
– He was so shaken up that he couldnt even speak. They put a class B misdemeanor on his record.
I dont know, If you ask me this is not the best use of the law inforcement dollor.
I don’t live somewhere where meth addiction is a huge problem, so I don’t fully understand all the dimensions of this problem or its magnitude. That said, while convenience stores might be a big part of the problem, all you’ve done is lay out a bunch of legal arguments and some details about one production chain of meth. This says nothing about why people do meth, whether or not shutting down these stores will lead to the end of production in the area, higher meth prices due to more difficulty in obtaining materials, or, as I imagine, some other mechanism by which people who would have become meth users can destroy their lives. What’s the benefit to taxpayers or would-be meth users who have now been “saved” if this just leads to deportations and harsh jail sentences with limited reduction in meth use or, more broadly, in the root causes of self-destruction? An extended prison term, as you so eloquently described it, seems kind of horrible for a convenience store owner or employee guilty of a crime that’s fairly non-violent (even if it’s part of a big social problem).
More broadly, I just don’t believe that people should be sent to what currently constitute our jails (and certainly not deported) unless it’s really, really necessary in a utilitarian sense (i.e. they need to be separated from other people). And even then, most of the time (i.e. for non Ted Bundys), confinement for treatment is probably a better option than confinement for retribution’s sake alone (or even in combination with an attempt to raise the cost of criminal activity).
When the people we elect to run the country start following a “social contract” or other ethical model of behavior in practice rather than in words alone, that’s when I’ll consent to it.
-s
This is the same thing as the famed “Drug War” that consecutive US administrations “fight”. Basically, kill all the Columbians and anyone else who is producing this, but not do anything to curb the demand. When a black man is caught with some drugs he will be imprisoned because it will be deemed that he intended to distribute, but when a white man/woman is caught with the drugs .. just slap on the wrist ..possesion or sometimes no prosecution … nothing…. Goes to show for whom the law is written …
Does anyone know the “convenience store demographics” (as Abhi put it) of both the area in question and nationwide? 43 of 49 does seem awfully high. Given all the convenience stores I’ve hopped into in my life, I can’t imagine near 85% of them were operated by Indians; perhaps ownership is a different matter.
I’ve seen demographic info on the ownership of hotels/motels on this site in the past, so I imagine similar data might be out there somewhere for convenience stores.
In one of the articles linked to on this thread, one Peter Crosby “noted there were individuals arrested that had American names.” Would Peter Patel or John Patel count? Just wondering.
And in general, do folks believe that a desi minimart owner is more likely to engage in shady tactics than any other ethnicity? I mean, I’ve known some suspect Indian uncles, but my sample set there is pretty small – northeast Louisiana is not particularly a hotbed of Indian activity.
Saurav – meth is a major problem in rural and suburban communities and it is bad, bad, bad. The meth labs produce really hazardous and toxic materials that not only endanger the ‘cook’, but the local environment, surrounding people, and most especially and sadly, children.”Meth kids’ are heart-breaking, but then so is any kid who is neglected because their parents use.
Here’s one link.
I have no idea what is going on in this case: I can only hope justice is served. It seems there may be a mix of types – some people who were actively complicit and really did know and were turning a blind eye, and maybe some who really didn’t know what was going on, and shouldn’t have been rounded up. But, again, it’s hard to know from the information we have. I agree with Rohan: what is the demographic? This seems like an awfully high number (43/49).
I have no sympathy for anyone who turns a blind eye to drugs – my ex-husband was a user and even with the best treatment in the world he didn’t stop using. The sad thing is many in the desi community brush this kind of stuff under the rug. His family, well-educated and well-to-do, didn’t really want him to get treatment and didn’t take it seriously. They just wanted to make sure none of the aunties or uncles found out. It makes me furious.
Meth kids
“The five children ranged in age from 1 to 7 years. The one bedroom home had no electricity or heat other than a gas stove with the oven door opened. Used hypodermic needles and feces littered areas of the residence where the children were staying. Because there were no beds for the children, they slept with blankets under a small card table in the front room. The bathroom had sewage backed up in the tub, leaving no place for the children to bathe. A subsequent exam revealed that all the children were infected with hepatitis C. The youngest was very ill. His liver was enlarged to the size of an adult’s. The children had needle marks on their legs, hands and arms from accidental contact with syringes.”
Of course, this is no excuse for rounding up potentially innocent people, but, like I said: it is sick, sick stuff. 15-20% of labs are found because they explode from the toxic, unstable by-products.
In re to Abhi, after reading some more details of the case (i.e the timeline and knowledge, I would like to take back my request for people out there to do pro bono work for these guys). They could very well have been running a very serious ring.
But I don’t take back the idea that this is a systemic issue, and picking on the end result of a system that essentially condones the abuse of a very dangerous drug in the name of profits is wrong. This is precisely the role for good government to fill – to come in and determine what levels of sale equate fair and legal consumer use, versus dangerous criminal misuse.
BTW, I have no intention to make “opponenents submit” – that’s not my goal whatsoever. We live in a society that is bereft of passionate, well-informed discussion. I like heated discussions, as that brings us closer to the some kind of understanding.
I like the idea of a “truthmissile” – it’s a play on words of the “Patriot Missile” – I’m highly critical of the War Industry in this country, and see it as more of a problem than a solution to anything. It really doesn’t do any “defending.” I’d rather have a lot more “truthmissiles” in this country, than the kind that kill innocent people.
peace:
They probably knew what was going on and just looked the other way, because they didn’t really think of it as a serious offence.
I think that this operation was effective in the sense it will raise awareness amongst risk-averse store owners, and put a major damper on the sale of meth.
Though luck for the 49 people arrested though.
stupid tangential question:
uh. . .what do you need a rose for when doing cocaine? or brillo pads for that matter? sorry. . .my knowledge being limited to movies, i thought a mirror and a business card would suffice . . .
I believe you throw away the rose and just use the florists tube
DesiDancer’s right – they don’t need the rose, just the test tube. And according to this website, you use the brillo pad as a screen.
Not that I know anything about smoking crack….
/proud to be drug free
You don’t drink? 😉
Anyway, can we draw a line between things that really ought not be put in the category of “those awful, horrible drugs” and those that should? There’s nothing worse than seeing fine video production and taxpayer money work wasted on anti-marijuana ads.
MD, thanks for the information. It confirmed and expanded what little I had read before, thereby frightening me. So I curled up in the fetal position.
In any case, I think the more I learn about this, the more I will come to my inevitable conclusion about these kinds of law enforcement efforts–they’re fairly fruitless, use up resources, and don’t address whatever the underlying causes of meth use are.
It’s amazing how the people in charge of “The War On Drugs” just totally throw out any understanding of basic economics and psychology when they try to figure out how to stop what I would imagine is essentially a consumer problem driven by poverty, boredom, lack of or poor mental health provision, lack of opportunity, bad information or misinformation, blah blah blah. It’s not like reducing the homegrown supply of meth or coke or anything else reduces the underlying causes of self-destruction (or does anything to stop flow of meth from superlabs).
How do you rank drugs based on safety? I haven’t tried all these drugs, but my recollection of safety first to last…
How about this ranking: 1. Marijuana 2. Caffeine 3. Magic Mushrooms 4. LSD 5. Alcohol 6. Cocaine/Crack/Meth 7. Heroin/Oxycontin/Vicodin Pharmaceuticals 8. PCP
We can all agree that Meth is just terrible…I know the Gita says we shouldn’t use any type of drug, but then someone pointed out that Marijuana was one of Shiva’s favored herbs – maybe marijuana was considered a medicine back then? This was discussion we had on it… http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/001661.html
Marijuana was one of Shiva’s favored herbs? No wonder his prick is worshipped even to this day!
Truthmissile, The fact that you listed Mary Jane as less of a threat than caffeine (which I find absurd and would be more than happy to debate with you) tells me that you probably indulge in the stuff quite often. Invoking Shiva to justify your use is a classic sign of addiction. 🙂
As for me, I prefer caffeine.