The Tiny Giant – RBG
This “little old lady” is more than worthy of being the pop icon which she is! She is a gem. She is a legal genius. Many men, as well as women, have benefited from her wisdom as a Justice on our highest Court.
What a great line for women’s rights: “All I ask of our brethren is tha they take their feet off our necks”!
YOU really should watch the documentary to understand her courage, her genius, and the importance of her work!
If you do not know who she is, you should watch the CNN Film: “RBG”
THIS “little old lady” is a giant! 🙂
I (computer moron that I am) cannot find the documentary online. Perhaps you can. Or order it from Netflix. She is a modern marvel!
https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-adk-adk_sbnt&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&hspart=adk&p=youtube+videos+the+cnn+film+RBG#id=6&vid=2f739f247a2edf6d613250853b8b8b5f&action=click
America’s For-Profit Criminal Justice is Crushing the Poor
The poor and black Americans [especially black women, the fastest growing segment of the prison population] are hammered by our criminal justice system. America’s For-Profit Criminal Justice is Crushing the Poor is a good video, and I have several articles on our website on this issue.
More Than 40 DC-Area Inmates Have Committed Suicide in Custody Since 2014
Ken’s Comments:
Yes, folks, this is how bad our prisons are, and YOU should “give a shit” and complain about it because it affects you in many ways. By the way, what they say in the video about mental health care, and how they try to prevent suicides is total BULLSHIT. I have SEEN the guards sleep right through the entire duty shift and then awaken to check off the boxes that say they have checked on each inmate on suicide watch every 20 minutes!! They do it all the time!
IF the practices described in the article are in fact being implemented, it is a much-needed improvement and should be replicated nationwide.
This article shows that they save a few, but in prisons across the nation the outcome is very, very different.
Excerpts from the article:
More than 40 inmates in jails and prisons in the Washington, D.C. area have committed suicide in custody since 2014, according to an investigation by the News4 I-Team. Records obtained from correctional agencies in D.C., Virginia and Maryland under the Freedom of Information Act show 400 other inmates attempted suicide since 2014, many of whom were saved by correctional officers and jail staff.
The I-Team’s findings show an ongoing mental health crisis in local jails, correctional officials say. They also show the importance of mental health training, CPR and other life-saving techniques among local correctional officers, those officials said. In late 2017, at least three inmates were rescued from suicide attempts by correctional officers at the Montgomery County correctional facility in Boyds, county records show.
“America’s jails and prisons have become mental health facilities,” said Montgomery County Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Director Robert Green. “When someone is intent on harming themselves, it’s our job [to intervene].”
“Private Kendale Graves and Corporal Norman Pyles saved an inmate who’d attempted to hang himself. Graves cut the inmate down. Pyles helped perform CPR,” Green said. Pyles said, “Once I stopped giving 30 compressions, [the inmate] started breathing. When he started breathing, [the situation] became a lot calmer.”
In another recent incident, correctional Officer Andrew Martin caught a suicidal inmate who had jumped from an upper level fence. “The only thing that hit the floor were his feet,” Martin said. “There were so many ways that could have gone wrong for me and for him. I’m glad it worked out exactly the way that it did.”
Montgomery County’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said it uses a strategy of direct supervision, in which jails are constructed to provide better sightlines and closer access to inmates by officers.
The I-Team obtained records from the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County, St. Mary’s County and Charles County in Maryland. They also received records from the Virginia Department of Corrections, Fairfax County Corrections and the D.C. Department of Corrections.
These records showed nearly 400 suicide attempts since the beginning of 2014. There were 16 suicides each in that same frame in Maryland state prisons and Virginia state prisons. There were four suicides in the D.C. jail, and two each in Prince George’s and Charles counties.
In early July, a 35-year-old man killed himself at Montgomery County’s correctional facility days after being convicted of a homicide. Correctional officials in D.C., Virginia and Maryland said they are taking steps to help equip correctional officers to better detect and stop inmates from attempting suicide.
“We have inmate suicide observation aides,” Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spokesman Gerry Shields said. “Inmates get paid to monitor those on suicide watch. They sit outside their cells and record all activity. The inmates take a class and must pass a test to be an observation aide.”
A D.C. Department of Corrections spokeswoman said the agency has created suicide-resistant cells, which have fewer chokepoints along walls.
“[The agency] provides mandatory mental health and suicide prevention training to all staff, including officer recruits, in a pre-service training, as well as to all staff in annual in-service, required by all employees,” she said.
A Virginia state corrections spokesman said staff members attend yearly mental health training programs.
“One of our best practices is our Corrections Crisis Intervention Team training, which teaches basic to advanced de-escalation skills to security staff,” he said. “This is a 40-hour program that trains officers to specifically respond to offenders in mental health crisis.”
Putin is an absolute Genius!- tRump – kra
Folks, I post anti tRump information here because he is a disaster for any criminal justice reform.
If constructive change must come, he must go!
So here are a couple of reminders:
- I am dead serious when I say that Vladimir Putin is either the smartest man on the planet or the luckiest!
Who would have thought that the foundations of American democracy could be so badly damaged, that trust in our most valuable institutions – the ones needed to keep us safe, like the FBI and the Intelligence agencies – could be so deeply eroded, that significant economic turmoil could arise, that vast swaths of the American populace could be convinced to believe in a man who is a humongous pathological liar, that America’s reputation on the world stage could be mortally wounded … all by simply getting Donald tRump elected as president?!
2. I remind you that November will be here soon. One of the surest and fastest way to prevent further damage to our nation, and to undo some that has been done, is to VOTE in the 2018 mid-term elections! We must send a loud and clear message by voting out of office EVERY politician who has not vehemently, vocally, actively opposed tRump and his malicious, useless, cruel, ineffective policies and his other idiotic, immoral, unethical, and dishonest conduct!
3. He has now announced that the White House will no longer release summaries of his talks with world leaders. Remember that incredibly embarrassing call he had with the president of Mexico about the wall – the one where it actually was recorded?!
With each passing day, each passing week, the nincompoop known as Donald tRump, America’s temporary president, proves again that he is:
out of control
out of his league
out of his mind
out of touch with reality
… we need him to be just plain OUT! 🙂
I post anti Trump comments because all responsible citizens have a duty to do so! And I shall give the nitwits who respond in his defense, the mindless morons who support him, exactly the amount of my time they are worth: NONE. I shall not respond at all to their idiotic, hateful, racist, comments.
Introduction to new connections on LinkedIn – kra – GREAT INFORMATION!
Greetings:
Thanks for connecting on LinkedIn. You may want to subscribe to our weekly eNewsletter. Check out our website, loaded with useful (Enter “Practical Tip” in search bar!) and important information you will not see elsewhere! To learn a little about my credentials/experience, click on “Board Members” on our website.
Should you or any of your connections ever have any questions about any of these articles or about any problem with the criminal justice system, or about civil rights, don’t hesitate to call me. 302-423-4067. I work every day from 3 or 4 am until 10 pm. I get calls from all over the country about everything from grad students looking for guidance with their classes to freeing the innocent and others from prisons, calls about saving lives… etc., …and glad to answer them all. If I don’t know an answer, I’ll say “I don’t know, but let’s find out!”
Everybody is affected by our dysfunctional criminal justice system. Read these Articles to learn some solutions to the problems!
Porn star or not, read this! Practical Tip # 89 – Accusers face risks in breaking nondisclosure agreements – Don’t Sign a Nondisclosure! – kra With Letter to the Editor
Practical Tip on Pardons, Expungements, Commutations/Clemency – With fee agreement
Florida shooting: NRA sues as Florida enacts gun-control law – with Letter to the Editor – kra I just about fell out of my chair when a Pulitzer Prize winning author called me a minute ago and said: “Great letter, Mr. Abraham!” He now calls me Ken.
Letter from a concerned citizen, Pam Rehmer, about racism in the criminal justice system. Although polls show that 74% of Americans don’t think the system is racist, many, many studies show that it is.
More Band-Aids won’t solve wave of drug violence!
Politics – Politics is what destroyed our criminal justice system!
Abolish the “Sex Offender” Registry! Learn the FACTS instead of all the “Sex Offender Hysteria” kra
Prison Abuse – Why Massive Indifference is a Massive Mistake – kra
Got a Problem with the Criminal Justice System? CALL this Guy!
Culture of Cover Up – Prison Abuse – Mind Boggling!
Please take a moment to join our Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE group on MeWe, the fast – growing social media platform positioning itself as an alternative to FB!
Yes, he was funny as hell, but also wise:
Feel free to reproduce anything I have written anywhere at any time, with or without attribution. The important thing is to share the information, educate the public, most of whom are clueless about what a disaster the criminal justice system is!
Want to debate any of this? Call any time; I work from 3 or 4 a m until I drop every day. Better yet, please invite me to a public forum to debate any of these issues!
Make A Difference
So many say “why bother, there’s nothing I can do!”
Well, I sure hope one of those is not you!
For you can be far, far more influential than you think,
All you need do is share some well-thought-out-ink!
kra 3/11/18
READ http://www.citizensforcriminaljustice.net/practical-tip-how-you-can-become-a-prison-reform-advocate-here-is-how-do-it/ PracticalTip: How YOU can become a “prison reform advocate” – or any ADVOCATE! Here is how! EASY as 1, 2 ,3 ! DO IT!
Why Am I Up in The Middle of The Night?
Because there is so much injustice in the justice system; it’s just not right,
So I rest when I can, but, largely, I fight, fight, fight,
I remember when the system did in fact work quit well,
But since our “war on drugs”, it’s gone straight to hell!
Kra 3/22/18
Learn neat stuff: The BBC series “Planet Earth – Blue Planet” Have you seen shrimps attack a starfish? Did you know that there are fish with jaws so powerful that they can bite through rock? Have you seen the astonishing transformations which cuttlefish use to disguise themselves? Did you know there is a predator which eats great white sharks?
Ken Abraham, former Deputy Attorney General of Delaware, founder of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE.
Former Delaware Supreme Court Law Clerk, prosecutor, defense attorney and general practitioner, teacher/professor, business broker, entrepreneur business owner, drug addict, prisoner, homeless person, … currently putting it all to good use “raising as much hell about the criminal justice system as legally possible” and helping people all over the country. 🙂
Why did a top NC prison officer hide bloody shanks in his office ceiling?
Ken’s Comments:
Duh. Put it all in context with the testimony and it is clear that “officer” Wall was a scumbag who promoted deadly violence in his prison. Open the article and see the pictures and watch the video. Is it too strong to call a law enforcement officer, a person in completer authority and control over helpless inmates “scum of the earth” when he acts this way? I think NOT!
Excerpts:
A former high-ranking administrator accused of fostering violence at one of North Carolina’s most dangerous prisons acknowledged in federal court Tuesday that he kept homemade weapons such as shanks hidden in the ceiling of his prison office. Testimony from former unit manager Jeffery Wall came during the second day of a civil trial examining whether Wall’s supervisor, the top official at Lanesboro Correctional Institution, ignored serious problems and allowed Wall to maintain a “violent, contraband-driven fiefdom.”
An investigation by The Charlotte Observer last year found that state prison policies and management failures allow corruption and violence to thrive.
A video taken inside Lanesboro in 2012 — and obtained by the Observer — shows Wall meeting with gang members just minutes before those inmates, armed with homemade weapons, became involved in a fight that killed inmate Wesley Turner. Hours after the murder, video also shows Wall gesturing to the killer. To investigators and the killer’s lawyers, his meaning seemed clear: Keep your mouth shut.
Later, investigators found bloody weapons hidden in the ceiling of Wall’s old office.
The lawsuit being litigated at Charlotte’s federal courthouse this week was brought by Stacey Wynn, an inmate who suffered serious injuries following two November 2011 assaults at Lanesboro. Wynn, who is serving a life sentence following a 2008 murder conviction, was permanently disabled after one of the attacks, his lawyers say.
Three prisoners armed with shanks attack a rival gang member and another inmate, killing one.
Wall was eventually fired in 2013, after Parsons had left Lanesboro and after the homemade shanks were found hidden in the ceiling of Wall’s office.
In a cell block inside one of the state’s most dangerous prisons, an inmate stabs a rival gang member 13 times. When investigators examine surveillance videos of the murder, they’re troubled by what happens a few hours later.
Parsons testified that it was easy for inmates to make weapons, from broom handles, batteries and even toothbrushes. But it was sometimes hard for prison officers to find those shanks, Parsons said. Inmates often hid contraband in body cavities, Parsons said. And, he said, they would even go so far as to tie dental floss around forbidden items, flush them down the toilet before a cell search and later use the dental floss to retrieve them.
Wynn, who also took the stand Tuesday, testified that some inmates simply walked around prison metal detectors. He said the injuries he suffered in the 2011 attack have made it impossible for him to lift much weight above his head or work some prison jobs.
Read the Whole Story and watch Videos
Where are the Bill Kuntslers when we need them?! Disturbing the Universe kra
When in law school, my hero was the late great trial lawyer William Kunstler, unafraid to tackle the establishment. His most famous case probably was his representation of “The Chicago Seven” when they – some protesters at the Democratic National Convention – were prosecuted. He ripped the government’s case to pieces. 🙂
See http://www.pbs.org/pov/disturbingtheuniverse/ Disturbing the Universe and order the complete documentary!
He was a great man, a fabulous lawyer, ahead of his time. We need many more of him to disturb today’s universe of injustice!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D41F6qN8iM – the song “Where were you when I needed you”! 🙂
Bill Kuntsler
“William Kuntsler, Disturbing the Universe”,
A movie likely to stir up some discourse,
For this guy had the guts to stand up for freedom, had the guts to ruffle feathers,
A lawyer who stood like a giant oak, not short like low mossy heather,
Never shrinking from advocating for underdogs, 20th century rebels with a cause,
He fought with fire for the true value, the immeasurable strength, of a Constitutional clause:
Free Speech.
When warranted, he had some judges in a tizzy,
In Chicago he made one blockhead positively dizzy,
Threatened with contempt, he challenged intolerant people,
His persuasive arguments were as fertile as any sepal,
We all had heroes along the way,
Whether Tiny Tim or Doris Day,
King, Kennedy, Socrates, Ali, Lincoln, all were as solid as bricks,
And they were some of the heroes who constituted my mix,
I am happy to say that Bill Kuntsler, a Constitutional warrior with great might,
Certainly caught my attention, standing up for what is right. KRA 2009
04 Oct 1985, Hartford, Cn — 10/4/1985-Hartford, Connecticutt- During an afternoon break at U.S. District Court in Hartford, attorney William Kunstler accused the government of trumping up a case against Puerto Rican nationalists. Kunstler is representing Ferdinando Ojeda-Rios at a bond hearing where the FBI said Rios is a suspected Cuban agent who engineered the $7 million Wells Fargo robbery. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS
Watch MSNBC’s Ruhle Show How Private Prison Companies Are “Cashing in” on Trump immigration Policies – Backgress -kra
Ken’s Comments:
And, as I have explained ad nauseam, these are the worst prisons in the nation. Rapes by staff, random beatings .. you name it … are commonplace.Health care? Fuggeddaboutit! Euphemistically called “detention centers”, they are 21st century gulags.
Excerpts from the Article:
In today’s money, power, politics: private prisons. They are cashing in on President Trump’s get-tough policies at the border. Since 1997, the Federal Bureau of Prison has paid private companies to build and operate prisons to ease capacity at government-run facilities. The share of federal prisoners nationwide held in private prisons has surged from just 3 percent in the late 90’s to more than 20 percent today. The biggest factor fueling growth is, you guessed it, immigration detention centers.
Who are these companies? CoreCivic, also known as CCA; Management and Training Corporation, known as MTC; and the GEO Group are three of the biggest players in the private prison business. Together, they operate some 14 federal facilities nationwide, providing 27,000 beds for federal inmates, and that is growing.
That growth was under threat when the Obama administration attempted to phase out all contracts with private prisons. The big three players decided to take action, and they spent big on the 2016 campaign. Guess how. GEO donated $1.1 million to Republican candidates and political action committees. CoreCivic spent another $1.1 million on lobbying efforts. And MTC spent nearly half a million bucks to do the same. And those efforts, they certainly paid off.
When President Trump reversed the phase out decision early in his administration, that is despite a 2014 lawsuit accusing GEO of forcing immigration detainees to work for little or no pay by threatening them with solitary confinement. Sounds like slavery, doesn’t it? Critics say the private business model encourages cost-cutting and even slavery to boost its bottom line profits. And guess what? It’s working.
Since President Trump’s election, shares for GEO have shot up 25 percent, while CoreCivic stock is 12 percent higher. MTC is not publicly traded, but its revenues are said to be robust. I want to point out some of the larger shareholders, if you want to check your 401(k), BlackRock and Vanguard, and granted, they may own them as part of an index, but they choose to do that.
Read the Whole Story and see the Video
Letter to the Editor or Op Ed Submission – Why aren’t these “pushers” in prison?! – 6/17/18 kra
Updated and sent out again, as I had not yet seen it in print:
Letter to the Editor or Op Ed Submission – Who gave them a “get out of jail free” card? – 7/12/18 kra
Did you see the recent broadcast about the DEA whistle blowers trying to hold major drug distributors accountable?! (major corporations; the three largest of which are distributors Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen, which control probably 85 or 90 percent of the drugs going downstream. ) You’ve heard the expression “Money Talks”? Apparently the executives of these large corporations said “we have so much money you cannot touch us”!
Why are the executives of these corporations not in prison? Is it because they spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying (I call it legal bribery) Congress and other elected officials? More than 200,000 mothers’ sons and daughters, your neighbor’s brothers, sisters … died as a result of opioids in recent years, and these “executives” are largely responsible. Learn the FACTS; See https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/ Watch the video and read the article!
Raise a ruckus, folks; call on the U S Department of Justice, the U S Attorney in your area, and your state’s Attorney General to investigate and prosecute these criminals in ties and suits! Is this the kind of America you want? Where money talks and killers walk?
Ken Abraham, Deputy Attorney General of Delaware 1974-1979, founder of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE, Dover, DE, 302-423-4067
………..
Letter to the Editor or Op Ed Submission – Why aren’t these “pushers” in prison?! – 6/26/18 kra
Did you see the recent broadcast about the DEA whistle blowers trying to hold major drug distributors accountable?! (major corporations; the three largest of which are distributors Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen, which control probably 85 or 90 percent of the drugs going downstream. ) You’ve heard the expression “Money Talks”? Apparently the executives of these large corporations said “we have so much money you cannot touch us”!
Why are the executives of these corporations not in prison? Is it because they spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying (I call it legal bribery) Congress. and other elected officials? More than 200,000 mothers’ sons and daughters, your neighbor’s brothers, sisters … died as a result of opioids in recent years, and these “executives” are largely responsible. Learn the FACTS; See https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/ Watch the video and read the article!
Raise a ruckus, folks; call on the U S Department of Justice, the U S Attorney in your area, and your state’s Attorney General to investigate and prosecute these criminals in ties and suits! Is this the kind of America you want? Where money talks and killers walk?
Ken Abraham, Deputy Attorney General of Delaware 1974-1979, founder of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE, Dover, DE, 302-423-4067
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
I get lots of letters published, and ghost write for others. The keys to getting your Letter published are:
1. Keep it to 250 words or fewer.
2. Do not make it about “poor little old me”. Describe the problem as one which not only affects the individual, but is a senseless or ineffective measure, policy, or law which also harms communities and society. For example, with reentry, the obstacles make it unnecessarily difficult for the individual, but also harm society by making it hard to become productive, spending money and paying taxes in the community, and they cause increased recidivism = increased crime.
3. Speak from your heart.
4. Google any facts you are not sure about.
5. Do not name-call.
Do what works: Write that Letter!
……………
Letter to Editor – sign name, town, state, and your phone number (they often call to verify that you sent it), and “Member of Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE” if you like – shows you are part of a large group.
Send the email to yourself, and put on the “bcc” bar the email addresses for Letters to the Editor for the top ten newspapers in your state and several national ones – The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, U S A Today (google the Letter to Editor email addresses). Any questions, CALL me at 302-423-4067!
Need a Letter on some criminal justice issue and not a great letter writer? NO EXCUSE! Email me a rough draft and call me and I’ll polish it up! kenabraham3138@gmail.com .
ANY QUESTIONS, CALL ME AT 302-423-4067.
…………………
Excerpts from the story:
In the midst of the worst drug epidemic in American history, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s ability to keep addictive opioids off U.S. streets was derailed — that according to Joe Rannazzisi, one of the most important whistleblowers ever interviewed by 60 Minutes. Rannazzisi ran the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control, the division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry. Now in a joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post, Rannazzisi tells the inside story of how, he says, the opioid crisis was allowed to spread — aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives.
JOE RANNAZZISI: This is an industry that’s out of control. What they wanna do, is do what they wanna do, and not worry about what the law is. And if they don’t follow the law in drug supply, people die. That’s just it. People die.
“This is an industry that allowed millions and millions of drugs to go into bad pharmacies and doctors’ offices, that distributed them out to people who had no legitimate need for those drugs.”
Joe Rannazzisi is a tough, blunt former DEA deputy assistant administrator with a law degree, a pharmacy degree and a smoldering rage at the unrelenting death toll from opioids. His greatest ire is reserved for the distributors — some of them multibillion dollar, Fortune 500 companies. They are the middlemen that ship the pain pills from manufacturers, like Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson to drug stores all over the country. Rannazzisi accuses the distributors of fueling the opioid epidemic by turning a blind eye to pain pills being diverted to illicit use.
JOE RANNAZZISI: This is an industry that allowed millions and millions of drugs to go into bad pharmacies and doctors’ offices, that distributed them out to people who had no legitimate need for those drugs.
BILL WHITAKER: Who are these distributors?
JOE RANNAZZISI: The three largest distributors are Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen. They control probably 85 or 90 percent of the drugs going downstream.
whistleblower-main.jpg
BILL WHITAKER: You know the implication of what you’re saying, that these big companies knew that they were pumping drugs into American communities that were killing people.
JOE RANNAZZISI: That’s not an implication, that’s a fact. That’s exactly what they did.
In the late 1990s, opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone became a routine medical treatment for chronic pain. Drug companies assured doctors and congressional investigators — as in this 2001 hearing — that the pain medications were effective and safe. Purdue Executive to Congress in 2001: Addiction is not common, addiction is rare in the pain patient who is properly managed. With many doctors convinced the drugs posed few risks, prescriptions skyrocketed and so did addiction.
dea-capitol.jpg
Many people who’d become addicted to painkillers turned to shady pill mills — pain clinics with rogue doctors to write fraudulent prescriptions and complicit pharmacists to fill them — one-stop shopping for controlled narcotics.
JOE RANNAZZISI: Pain clinics overnight popping-up – off an entrance ramp, or an exit ramp on an interstate. And all of a sudden there’s a pain clinic there.
BILL WHITAKER: Had you ever seen anything like that before?
JOE RANNAZZISI: Never. In fact– it was my opinion that this made the whole crack epidemic look like nothing.
JOE RANNAZZISI These weren’t kids slinging crack on the corner. These were professionals who were doing it. They were just drug dealers in lab coats.
BILL WHITAKER: You know what a chilling picture that paints?
dea-diversionsquad.jpg
JOE RANNAZZISI: I do, ’cause I watched them get arrested, and I was the one who approved the cases.
Despite arrests of unscrupulous purveyors, opioids kept flooding the black market. The death toll kept rising. This map shows the U.S. death rate from drug overdose in 1999. By 2015, the map looked like this. Most of these deaths were opioid related. Joe Rannazzisi told us prosecuting crooked doctors and pharmacists wasn’t stemming the epidemic, so he decided to move up the food chain.
JOE RANNAZZISI: There had to be a choke point. And the choke point was the distributors.
BILL WHITAKER: What took you so long to go to that choke point of the distributors?
JOE RANNAZZISI: This was all new to us. We weren’t seeing just some security violations, and a few bad orders. We were seeing hundreds of bad orders that involved millions and millions of tablets. That’s when we started going after the distributors.
joer-interview.jpg
A distributor’s representative told us the problem is not distributors but doctors who overprescribe pain medication, but the distributors know exactly how many pills go to every drug store they supply. And they are required under the Controlled Substances Act to report and stop what the DEA calls “suspicious orders” — such as unusually large or frequent shipments of opioids. But DEA investigators say many distributors ignored that requirement.
JIM GELDHOF: They had a business plan. Their plan was to sell a lotta pills and make a lot of money. And they did both of those very well.
“All we were looking for is a good-faith effort by these companies to do the right thing. And there was no good-faith effort. Greed always trumped compliance. It did every time.”
Jim Geldhof, a 40-year DEA veteran, ran pharmaceutical investigations from dea’s detroit field office. Frank Younker supervised the agency’s operations in Cincinnati. Joe Rannazzisi was their supervisor. They saw distributors shipping thousands of suspicious orders. One example: a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, a town of just 392 people, ordered nine million hydrocodone pills over two years.
JIM GELDHOF: All we were looking for is a good-faith effort by these companies to do the right thing. And there was no good-faith effort. Greed always trumped compliance. It did every time. But don’t sit here and tell me that, “Well, we’re not sure what a suspicious order is.” Really? I mean this– this co– this pharmacy just bought 50 times an amount that a normal pharmacy purchases and they are in a town of 5,000 people. You don’t know that that’s suspicious? I mean at some point you’re just turning a blind eye to it.
BILL WHITAKER: These companies are a big reason for this epidemic?
JIM GELDHOF: Yeah, absolutely they are.
JIM GELDHOF: And I can tell you with 100 percent accuracy that we were in there on multiple occasions trying to get them to change their behavior. And they just flat out ignored us.
In 2008, the DEA slapped McKesson, the country’s largest drug distributor, with a $13.2 million dollar fine. That same year, Cardinal Health paid a $34 million fine. Both companies were penalized by the DEA for filling hundreds of suspicious orders — millions of pills.
Over the last seven years, distributors’ fines have totaled more than $341 million. The companies cried foul and complained to Congress that DEA regulations were vague and the agency was treating them like a foreign drug cartel. In a letter, the healthcare distribution alliance, which represents distributors, told us they wanted to work with the DEA. Effective enforcement, they wrote, “must be a two-way street.”
BILL WHITAKER: Frank, you said you were tough but fair. The industry says you guys were unfair. That you were taking unfair hits at them.
FRANK YOUNKER: Tell that to the people who lost their sons and daughters. See how fair they think it is.
In 2011, more than 17,000 Americans died from opioid prescription overdoses. That same year Cardinal Health, the second largest distributor, started pushing back at Joe Rannazzisi. The companies’ attorneys went over his head and called his bosses at the Justice Department, who called in Rannazzisi to have him explain his tactics.
Rannazzisi says the drug industry used that money and influence to pressure top lawyers at the DEA to take a softer approach. Former DEA attorney Jonathan Novak said it divided the litigation office. He said in 2013, he noticed a sea change in the way prosecutions of big distributors were handled. Cases his supervisors once would have easily approved, now weren’t good enough.
JONATHAN NOVAK: We had been achieving incredible success in an almost unstoppable wave, and then suddenly it stopped.
Novak prosecuted cases brought to him by Joe Rannazzisi’s investigators. He said his caseload started to slow down dramatically.
JONATHAN NOVAK: These were not cases where it was black — where it was grey… These were cases where the evidence was crystal clear that there was wrongdoing going on.
He said his bosses started to bog down the system, demanding ever more evidence.
JONATHAN NOVAK: But now, three undercovers by four officers over three months, that wouldn’t be enough. Maybe we need an expert to explain how recording equipment works. Maybe we need an expert to explain– the system for prescribing. What’s a prescription? It felt honestly confusing and almost insane. Where was this coming from?
Jim Geldhof says his investigations were getting bogged down too. He was looking into one mid-sized distributor that had shipped more than 28 million pain pills to pharmacies in West Virginia over five years. About 11 million of those pills wound up in Mingo County, population 25,000. Suddenly, he said, he ran into roadblocks from one of attorney Jonathan Novak’s bosses.
JIM GELDHOF: “I spent a year working on this case. I sent it down there and it’s never good enough. Every time I talked to this guy he wants something else. And I get it for ’em and that’s still not good enough.” You know? And this goes on and on and on. When this– these roadblocks keep– get thrown up in your face, at that point you know they just don’t want the case.
BILL WHITAKER: But this is the DEA. That’s what you’re supposed to do.
FRANK YOUNKER: Yeah.
JIM GELDHOF: You would think.
The DEA’s toughest sanction is to freeze distributors shipments of narcotics — a step they haven’t taken in almost two years.
JONATHAN NOVAK: I mean there’s no denying the numbers. At the height of the opioid epidemic, inexplicably, they slowed down.
He said one big reason for the slowdown: DC’s notorious revolving door. Novak said he saw a parade of DEA lawyers switch sides and jump to high-paying jobs defending the drug industry. Once they’d made the leap, they lobbied their former colleagues, novak’s bosses, and argued the dea’s cases were weak and ultimately would lose in court. It had a chilling effect on dea litigators.
As cases nearly ground to a halt at DEA, the drug industry began lobbying Congress for legislation that would destroy DEA’s enforcement powers.
The bill, introduced in the House by Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, was promoted as a way to ensure that patients had access to the pain medication they needed. Jonathan Novak, who worked in the DEA’s legal office, says what the bill really did was strip the agency of its ability to immediately freeze suspicious shipments of prescription narcotics to keep drugs off U.S. streets — what the DEA calls diversion.
MATT MURPHY: Yeah, pressure was put on for him to be moved out. I’m pretty confident of that. There was no reason to take the guy who was the most qualified person in DEA to run the Office of Diversion Control out of the Office of Diversion Control.
The investigation requested by Congressman Marino against Rannazzisi went nowhere, but soon after, Rannazzisi was stripped of his responsibilities. He says he went from supervising 600 people to supervising none — so he resigned.
When Joe Rannazzisi looks back he has one regret.
Joe Rannazzisi: You know all these people that died happened under my watch. The one thing I wanted to do, the one thing that I just thought would have the most impact, is to lock up, arrest one of these corporate officers. You arrest a corporate officer. You arrest somebody that’s involved in the decision process, knowing what the law is. If you make that arrest, then everybody sits up and takes notice because three-piece-suit guys just don’t do well in prison. They don’t.
Joe Rannazzissi now consults with state attorneys general who have filed suit against distributors for their role in the opioid crisis. Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn is running for the Senate. As for Congressman Marino, he was just nominated to be President Donald Trump’s new drug czar.
Manafort Likely To Go To Jail After Court Hearing, Former U.S. Attorney Predicts – Video
Ken’s Comments:
I share that prediction. This clown is remarkably stupid, unbelievably arrogant, or both. Judges take a dim view of tampering with witnesses!
It won’t surprise me if he lands behind bars, and it won’t surprise me if Trump, with his total disregard for the rule of law, pardons him, as he did with that criminal Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The voters turned out Arpaio; at least they had some sense/values.
Excerpts from the Article:
He’s going to have to bring his toothbrush,” a former U.S. attorney said.
“Go directly to jail. Do not pass ‘Go.’ Do not collect $200.”
Those words from the game Monopoly sum up what former U.S. attorney Harry Litman said Paul Manafort should expect from his scheduled court hearing next Friday about revising his bail.
Special counsel Robert Mueller has asked a judge to revoke bail for President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager over accusations of witness tampering.
Read it and see the Video report
Contact Us
Citizens for Criminal JUSTICE
430 Kings Hwy
Ste 414
Dover DE 19901
302.423.4067
