"Radical" Russ Belville's List: Behind the Headlines

• An attorney filed motions in district court Wednesday seeking to dismiss a charge of child endangerment against  Angela Brown, who has used medical cannabis to treat her son.

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  Immediately after the hearing, Brown, 38, of Madison, and attorney Michael Hughes of Bend, Ore.,  gathered with reporters at the Pantry Café in downtown Madison and said they are prepared to go to trial to maintain her innocence.
• "How is endangering your child taking his pain away?'' Brown said. "If someone answers that for me, fine, charge me, but until someone can explain to me how preventing pain is wrong, then I will continue to plead not guilty.''
• Lac qui Parle County filed two gross misdemeanor charges in June of endangering a child -- permitting to be present when possessing a controlled substance and contribute to the need for child protection or services. The charges came after Brown had been asked at the Lac qui Parle Valley Schools what she was doing differently to account for her son's improved performance.

• Brown told reporters that she administered cannabis oil to her son to help him cope with pain from a traumatic brain injury that led him to self-harming behaviors. Her son's pain was so intense he often curled into a fetal position. He broke his nose on more than one occasion, his clavicle on another, and said he wanted to end his life, according to Brown.

  "No mother wants to have to medicate her child, but I was desperate. He didn't want to live. He flat out said I don't want to live, I can't deal with this pain anymore,'' Brown said.
• 19 different prescribed medicines
• Trey suffered a traumatic brain injury when struck by a baseball in April 2011.
• "You can't find a sale,'' Hughes said.
• This was a mother-to-son relationship, and not an attempt to develop a customer,
• a small quantity of cannabis oil, and not enough to meet the threshold for the severe drug offenses
• He pointed out that Minnesota will allow the medical use of cannabis in July. He said there is "ample" evidence showing that Trey will qualify
• "In my opinion, it is science fiction to claim cannabis has no medical use in the United States,'' Hughes told the court. He pointed out that 33 states now have laws allowing its medical use.
• Assistant Lac qui Parle County Attorney Rebecca Trapp did not challenge the motions Wednesday in court, but told the judge that she would file written responses to the defense attorney's motions. Her responses are due Jan. 2. The defense attorney will have until Jan. 9 to respond to them. The court will then rule within 90 days on the motions for dismissal.
• She said the family is looking at the possibility of moving to Colorado in order to treat their son there with cannabis.
• "I don't want any other mother to have to go through this. That's why I'm putting myself out there because this is not me. This is absolutely not me in front of all these cameras, having all these people converge into my life. But if it helps one more person, isn't it worth it?" she asked.

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• “I’m not used to losing. But I lost. I lost in a very public way,” Morgan said. “But I also believe when you lose, the greatest gift you get is humility. I think with humility you can be much more reasoned, much more measured. And you can take failure and turn it into success.”
• Morgan and his law firm contributed more than $4 million in cash and loans to the People United for Medical Marijuana’s $7.4 million campaign, according to the state Division of Elections.
• The Drug Free Florida Committee spent $6.3 million — with $5.5 million coming from Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire Las Vegas Sands casino owner who was listed as America’s 12th richest person this year by Forbes.

• “We learned a lot,” Morgan said about his failed campaign. “The big words we learned about were loophole, immunity and children. Those were the three big words they kept coming at us with — distorted we think — but nonetheless very effective.”

  Morgan said he found it “interesting” that as a trial lawyer, who has earned a living by suing medical professionals, he was being accused of using the amendment to provide immunity to doctors who dispense marijuana. “I’ll make sure they don’t get it next time,” he said.

• Morgan said one of his key mistakes was trying to appeal to younger voters, including college students.

  “I spent so much time trying to motivate young people to come out and vote, which they did to a degree but not like I had hoped for,” Morgan said, while noting support from voters 65 and older had “dropped through the floor.”
• Morgan said another factor was that he had to spend so much time and money early in the 2014 campaign just to secure the nearly 700,000 voter signatures to get the measure on the ballot.
• “I made so many mistakes getting it on the ballot,” Morgan said. “I spent millions getting it on the ballot. We won’t have to do hardly anything getting it on the ballot this time.”
• Morgan said he will not be mounting a personal bus tour next time and plans to make patients who could find relief from medical marijuana the central focus of the campaign.

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• Lawmakers next week will consider a $583,000 funding request so the Oregon Liquor Control Commission can begin implementing the state’s new marijuana law.

   

  The liquor control commission is seeking $333,000 to pay for four positions -- a program manager, two policy analysts and a public affairs staffer. The state’s Chief Financial Office recommended adding $250,000 to that request to cover travel expenses, as well as legal advice from the Oregon Department of Justice and other professional services.

• Deister’s analysis outlined the complex issues the new staff must address, such as: where marijuana production, processing, and retail facilities will be located; how licensed businesses may advertise; how marijuana will move from the wholesale to the retail market; whether medical and recreational cannabis may be sold from the same retail outlet; how to track marijuana as it moves through the system so the state can determine taxes and prevent leakage into the illicit market; how to collect taxes; inspection and auditing procedures; determination of civil penalties for violations; and determining the extent to which testing will be regulated.

   

  Deister said marijuana program staff will also be responsible for choosing the computer system that will track financial reports and data from each licensee; process license applications and investigate the backgrounds of applicants; inspect licensed premises; audit and reconcile tax and sales reports and account for fees, taxes, and revenue distribution.

• After Prohibition, the Commonwealth and other states legalized alcohol in the wrong way, setting up a complicated distribution system that places sharp limits on where and from whom consumers can buy alcohol. These rules practically invited mischief by brewers, restaurants, wholesalers, and liquor stores.
• Since brewers of beer have only a few heavily regulated avenues to get their product to consumers, it’s no wonder they may feel pressured to pay off restaurants to carry their products, and that restaurants may be tempted to demand such payments.
• In a normal market, pay-to-play deals wouldn’t matter as much; consumers could just go elsewhere if a store or restaurant didn’t have the products they want. But since the law limits their buying options, sellers keep the upper hand.
• It’s reasonable to fear that the dispensaries will start to acquire the same kind of political clout that has allowed liquor stores and distributors to keep competition-stifling rules on beer distribution in place.
• (Memo to the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol in Massachusetts, the group trying to organize a pot legalization referendum in 2016: change your name.)

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• “We see the inevitability of large, well-run companies to sell cannabis,” said Brendan Kennedy, the CEO of Privateer Holding, the Seattle-based company that’s behind the Marley brand. “That train left the station a long time ago.”
• “My concern is the Marlboro-ization or Budweiser-ization of marijuana,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “That’s not what I’m fighting for.”
• “It’s a cultural thing,” said Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the country’s oldest consumer pot lobby. “All of us have at least a little bit of discomfort with the corporate stuff.”
• Alcohol and tobacco interests are also keeping an eye on the burgeoning market. The alcohol industry in particular has been communicating with representatives of NORML, DPA, and the Marijuana Policy Project, according to sources on both sides of the table.
• They want to know whether pot will be a friend or a foe—a complement to their products, or, as some marijuana reformers have argued, an alternative that could sap America’s love of drinking.
• St. Pierre hopes to create a “Dionysus lobby,” built on the shared interests of alcohol, tobacco and pot. All three industries want low taxes, the right to advertise freely, and the ability to make convenient sales, he said.
• He said that one of his warmest receptions came from the Distilled Spirits Council, or Discus, which represents the leading producers and marketers of liquor in the United States.
• The executive also assured the marijuana lobby that the nation’s largest liquor makers would not fight legalization as long as the public supported it.

• But Discus conveyed a threat as well, a complaint against the way marijuana advocates were demonizing alcohol in their campaigns. “Marijuana is safer than alcohol,” is perhaps MPP’s most used slogan in fact, and the group relentlessly argues that America would be a healthier place if we put down our tumblers and decided to toke. 

     

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  If such talk continued, the Discus rep said, according to St. Pierre’s recollection, the liquor industry would have no choice but to launch a counter-attack.
• Frank Coleman, Discus's vice president of public affairs, acknowledged the industry’s frustration with the claim that “marijuana is safer than alcohol,”

• "Our major concern is that groups—such as MPP—not demonize the alcohol industry as part of their strategy." 

  He then fired back at MPP's line of argument, which is often picked up in the press. He attached a copy of "Adverse Health Effects of Marijuana," a study published this summer in the New England Journal of Medicine, authored by the head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

• The Beer Institute is officially neutral on the question of marijuana legalization. But Chris Thorne, the vice president of communications, seemed to take a shot at the new industry and its claim as a safe alternative to booze. 

     

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  “We believe that it’s misleading to compare marijuana to beer,”
• There are a lot of unanswered questions about marijuana—questions about its effect on the brain, and on young people—and we think legislators would be wise to look at these questions as they consider the legalization of marijuana.”
• the president of the WSWA argued that if a state decides to legalize marijuana, it should regulate it with the same three-tiered distribution system set up for alcohol after prohibition—a move some analysts interpreted as a sign that alcohol companies would be open to moving pot as well.

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• But there are still significant problems that this limited reform does not address and troubling ways in which the law remains profoundly biased against some New Yorkers on the basis of race.

   

    First, the policy does nothing to address the gross, unwarranted racial disparities associated with marijuana arrests in NYC. That’s shameful.

   

    Second, the policy does nothing to address the illegal searches still often associated with marijuana law enforcement. That’s troublesome.

   

    Third, the policy pushes at least one category of problematic policing into the shadows: While data on marijuana arrests are reported through a centralized statewide system, summons data is notoriously limited and there is no effective reporting system.

   

    As Bratton himself noted in this week’s press conference, because of these limits, the public will now not know whether or not racial disparities persist in summonses as they have in arrests. That’s disconcerting.

• Sabet has tried to stoke those fears mainly by pairing the word big with the word marijuana, in the hope that Americans will flee in terror from the resulting phrase.
• Sabet warns that such businesses will make money by producing and distributing marijuana, meaning they will have a financial incentive to sell as much as they can. That is all completely true, but it is scary only if you view consumers as the slaves rather than the masters of people trying to sell them stuff. Most Americans do not see the businesses that supply them with useful and enjoyable goods and services as the enemy
• The campaign against Alaska’s legalization initiative, Measure 2, tried Sabet’s strategy, adopting the slogan “Big Marijuana. Big Mistake.”
• The opposition to Oregon’s legalization initiative, Measure 91, also played up the “Big Marijuana = Big Mistake” angle, highlighting the cornucopia of marijuana-infused foods and beverages that Oregonians could expect to see if they let free enterprise loose.
• Cannabis commerce does not seem to alarm voters as much as Sabet hoped it would. But it does seem to worry Mark Kleiman
• it can be done without involving the “potrepreneurs” now hoping to cash in on the Green Rush.
• D.C. should try “grow and give” and see how it works.
• There is another name for this form of legalization: prohibition. Back when the booze business was banned, people were still allowed to possess and consume alcoholic beverages (if they had purchased them before the 18th Amendment took effect, for example). They could even make their own fermented beverages, based on the Volstead Act’s exception for “nonintoxicating cider and fruit juices,” which the Treasury Department interpreted to mean “nonintoxicating in fact,” leaving leeway for significant alcohol content.
• Cannabis consumers who are not horticulturally inclined and do not have friends who are would still rely on old-fashioned pot dealers, and they would still face high prices, iffy quality, and limited choices. Consumers would not have to worry about getting busted for possession or home cultivation within Initiative 71’s limits, but anyone making money by supplying them with cannabis would still risk arrest and imprisonment.
• If smoking pot should not be cause for arrest, neither should selling pot,
• In a legal, competitive market, Big Marijuana will have only as much power as consumers give it. Using force to suppress such peaceful transactions cannot be morally justified by the concern that some people will consume cannabis excessively or that marijuana merchants will exercise their freedom of speech by informing potential customers about their products.

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• Yet anti-pot activist Kevin Sabet—who a week earlier had joked, in an interview with The New York Times, that “it looks bad; I want to be on the other team”—claimed “this was not the complete slam-dunk the legalization groups expected.” Later Sabet, co-founder and president of the prohibitionist group Project SAM, told the Associated Press, “I think we’ve slowed the legal-marijuana freight train.”
• Sabet’s spin seems delusional even to me.
• he unrealistically expects voters to be horrified at the very thought of a profit-driven cannabis industry.
• Last year Gallup found that retirees were the only age group in which a majority still opposed legalizing marijuana for recreational use. As those folks die off, the outlook for prohibitionists like Sabet will be increasingly bleak.
• Sabet also took solace from voter-approved bans on the production and sale of recreational marijuana in five Colorado cities. Yet the option of local bans probably improves the odds for legalization initiatives, since it reassures voters in cannabis-unfriendly communities who are put off by the prospect of a pot shop on the corner.
• Alaska and Oregon explicitly provide for a local option

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• Law enforcement made 47 sneak-and-peek searches nationwide from September 2001 to April 2003. The 2010 report reveals 3,970 total requests were processed. Within three years that number jumped to 11,129. That’s an increase of over 7,000 requests. Exactly what privacy advocates argued in 2001 is happening: sneak and peak warrants are not just being used in exceptional circumstances—which was their original intent—but as an everyday investigative tool.
• Out of the 3,970 total requests from October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010, 3,034 were for narcotics cases and only 37 for terrorism cases (about .9%). Since then, the numbers get worse. The 2011 report reveals a total of 6,775 requests. 5,093 were used for drugs, while only 31 (or .5%) were used for terrorism cases. The 2012 report follows a similar pattern: Only .6%, or 58 requests, dealt with terrorism cases. The 2013 report confirms the incredibly low numbers. Out of 11,129 reports only 51, or .5%, of requests were used for terrorism. The majority of requests were overwhelmingly for narcotics cases, which tapped out at 9,401 requests.
• So since the Patriot Act passed, the number of of sneak-and-peeks each year has grown from about 16 per year to over 11,000 in 2013.

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• Mexico Drug War Fast Facts
• More than 60,000 people have been killed from 2006 to 2012, according to Human Rights Watch.

• There are approximated 6,700 licensed firearms dealers in the U.S. along the U.S.-Mexico border. There is only one legal firearms retailer in Mexico.

   

  Nearly 70% of guns recovered from Mexican criminal activity from 2007 to 2011, and traced by the U.S. government, originated from sales in the United States.

   

  Ninety percent of the cocaine that enters the U.S. transits through Mexico. Mexico is also a main supplier of marijuana and methamphetamines in the U.S.

   

  Mexican drug cartels take in between $19 and $29 billion annually from U.S. drug sales.

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• ‘Good Cop’ Could Go to Jail After Reporting Misconduct in His Department
• “I can’t get killed for this job,” observed one of Adam Basford’s former colleagues in the Yakima Police Department, explaining why he had refused to come to Basford’s aid during a hand-to-hand struggle with an armed suspect. “I thought we were going to get killed, so I had to leave you there.”

• on August 18, 2013 when Basford attempted to arrest Antonio Cardenas, a recently paroled felon who was suspected of aggravated assault with a firearm. Concerned over the safety of bystanders, including a young girl, Officer Basford didn’t pull his gun. He found himself grappling with a younger ex-convict who was several inches taller and at least sixty pounds heavier, while every other available nearby officer found something better to do.

   

  Basford was able to subdue the suspect without killing him or risking the lives of people in the neighborhood. Rather than receiving a commendation, Basford is now off the force and facing criminal charges – not for taking down an armed, violent felon without using lethal force, but for filing a misconduct complaint against an erstwhile colleague.
• violent neighborhood riven with gang-related violence.
• On many occasions prior to August 18, he had called for backup, only to find – as he did that night – that no help was forthcoming. This wasn’t just because Basford’s fellow officers were afraid, but because he had violated the unwritten but binding rules of police solidarity by speaking out against routine misconduct and abuse within the department.
• Basford had just finished an administrative call when he heard gunshots and saw an armed man later identified as Cardenas racing through the neighborhood.

• Cardenas reached for his .44 Desert Eagle and squeezed off a shot. Basford managed to wrench the shooter’s hand away from his body at the last second, but still suffered a grazing gunshot wound to his knee. Already in severe oxygen debt from the struggle, Basford quickly began to feel the effects of blood loss. Worried that if Cardenas escaped he might finish killing him or attack a bystander, Basford applied a rear-naked choke – a potentially lethal hold that was, in this situation, used defensively.

   

  The combatants hit the ground, and Basford saw his backup, Officer Booker Ward, arrive.

   

  “He saw what was going on, heard me scream at him,” Basford later recalled. “We made eye contact, and he turned and ran away.”

   

  Two other Yakima PD Officers were on bicycle patrol nearby.

   

  “They heard me get shot,” Basford recounted to me. “They heard me scream for assistance. They were just two blocks away – but they were fifteen minutes from the end of their shift, and they went back to the station instead of coming to my aid.” Basford would find out later that the bike patrol officers “didn’t think the overtime would be approved.”

• This atypical lack of concern continued as Basford was debriefed by his supervisors. Usually, a police officer involved in a use-of-force incident invokes his “Garrity” privileges, which means that he cannot be criminally or civilly prosecuted for statements made during the official investigation. This time was different, according to Basford.

   

  “Our union representative, Officer Ira Cavin, told me that Garrity didn’t apply in this situation, because I had supposedly committed a criminal act,” Basford attests. To his astonishment, Basford was told that he would be charged with assaulting the man who shot him in the knee – but that charge was quickly dropped.

   

  Cardenas, who had served prison time for his role in a pair of drive-by shootings, faced his “third strike” if the DA charged him with a felony. For reasons that remain unexplained, he was allowed to plead guilty to a single charge of first degree “attempted assault” for shooting a police officer in the leg.
• But in the entire time I served as a patrol officer, I never – not once – received requested backup. The officers always told Dispatch that they had a traffic stop, or something else going on. I can understand that this would happen on occasion – but when it happens every time, something’s going on.”

• Basford was purged from the ranks because he saw his role as that of a peace officer sworn to protect persons and property, rather than a member of a privileged enforcement caste. While he fights to keep himself out of jail, nation-wide fundraising and support efforts are underway on behalf of Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer who killed Eric Garner with an illegal chokehold, and Darren Wilson, who shot and killed the unarmed teenager Michael Brown under what can charitably be described as highly dubious circumstances.

   

  Cops who kill, it appears, are considered worthier of support than peace officers who cross the Blue Line.

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• Anti-Pot Group Links Marijuana To Michael Brown’s Death

• Facebook has sent a letter to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration demanding that agents stop impersonating users on the social network.

• Sondra Arquiett was unaware as the DEA masqueraded as her while speaking to her friends. The DEA even posted photos of her with her son and another photo of her alone in panties and a bra.

  She has sued the DEA agent who set up the account. The Justice Department is backing him up, claiming federal agents have the right to do such things.

• "The DEA's deceptive actions... threaten the integrity of our community," Facebook chief security officer Joe Sullivan wrote to DEA head Michele Leonhart. "Using Facebook to impersonate others abuses that trust and makes people feel less safe and secure when using our service."

  The letter goes on to say that Facebook shut down the DEA's fake Arquiett account. It also demands that the DEA confirm it stopped all other cases of impersonation.

• How did the DEA end up with this woman's phone? In 2010, Arquiett was arrested and faced charges related to cocaine distribution. She pled guilty and received probation.

  In legal filings, a federal prosecutor said Arquiett "implicitly consented by granting access to the information stored in her cell phone and by consenting to the use of that information to aid in an ongoing criminal investigations [sic]."

  But in its letter, Facebook said it is "deeply troubled" by that legal position.

  Privacy researcher Runa Sandvik, who advises the Freedom of the Press Foundation, explained it this way: It's one thing to strike a deal and become an informant. It's another to lose complete control of your online identity.

  "Isn't this the definition of identity theft?" Sandvik asked.

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• Colorado rolling out 30 new tests to regulate marijuana industry
• Medical and retail marijuana dispensaries in Colorado will receive about 30 new rules related to almost every aspect of their businesses.
• The state Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) released the new rules Thursday. They change such things as the start-up licensing fees, and rules for cultivation, production, edibles, sales, employee training and product testing. Right down to a hand-washing requirement.
• Among the new rules is a revision of a proposal that caused an uproar at a hearing earlier this month, production caps on greenhouse or outdoor grows. The proposed rule would have allowed greenhouses to produce only half the amount of plants allowed at indoor or warehouse operations. The new rules do not make that distinction and allow the same number of plants, 3,600, for the first-level cultivation process.
• The enforcement division also established minimum "responsible vendor training" requirements along with minimum public health and safety requirements for anyone manufacturing edible marijuana products. The state has issued 18,666 marijuana occupational licenses.
• There are 496 licensed medical shops and another 242 recreational stores in Colorado. The state has received 177 additional applications for recreational stores and grow operations that could be approved by Oct. 1.
• Aside from safety and health training, new rules will normalize the amount of marijuana found in any edible - ensuring that a single serving size has no more than 10 milligrams of active THC, the intoxicating chemical in marijuana.
• Testing requirements have also changed. MED will not only require testing for potency in edibles, but also for chemicals like pesticides and for the presence of fungi.

• Others expressed concern with what the new rules don't include.

   

  Marijuana testing facilities will only test product from licensed cultivation centers, not home growers or medical marijuana caregivers.
• MED has not yet considered expanding testing services to caregivers.

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• Former ‘drug czar’ warns against marijuana use
• “Pot: Hot or Not? The Young, American Democracy, and the Drug Problem,” addressing the effects of marijuana and illicit drugs and their potential legalization.
• consumption of most illicit substances decreased during the years 2001-2007.
• • Monthly Drug Use 2001-2007
    
    Alcohol: 48.3% to 51.1% = +5.8%
    Cigarettes: 24.9% to 24.2% = -2.8%
    Marijuana: 5.4% to 5.8% = +7.4%
    Drugs: 3.1% to 3.7% = +19.4%

• “The use of court-mandated treatment has helped get people the care they need,” Walters said.

  Walters presented statistics that showed the the criminal justice system is the largest reason people enter treatment.
• • 2012 TEDS-A If only one substance reported for rehab...
    
    Marijuana = 53.3% CJ referrals, 16.1% Ind
    Alcohol = 38.9% CJ, 32% Ind
    Cocaine = 34.1% CJ, 34.2% Ind
    Heroin = 11.7% CJ, 66.5% Ind
    Meth = 50.6% CJ, 25.1% Ind
    
    Two Substances
    
    Marijuana = 45.7% CJ, 25.5% Ind
    Alcohol = 37.2% CJ, 31.1% Ind
    Cocaine = 22.9% CJ, 43.6% Ind
    Heroin = 17.5% CJ, 55.9% Ind
    Meth = 45.8% CJ, 30.7% Ind

• Walters warned against the potential dangers of legalizing marijuana for recreational use, citing evidence that claimed crime rates in Denver have increased dramatically since the installation of marijuana dispensaries in the state.

  “Denver is becoming the new Detroit,” Walters said in regards to the growing rate of crime in the city.

• Walters drew the crowd’s attention to a potential business owner’s point of view, and how marijuana legalization causes apprehension in an owner’s mind.

  “Who’s going to want to bring a business to a city or region where they can’t get a workforce that is sober?” Walters said.
• • FBI data indicate that the overall crime rate in Denver, the center of Colorado’s marijuana industry, was 10 percent lower in the first five months of this year than in the same period of 2013.  _Forbes June

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• Police Address Dangerous Swatting Trend

• Authorities have grown increasingly concerned over false emergency calls or reports made by unknown assailants. It's called "Swatting" and police in Connecticut say it's becoming all too common.

   

  In the last month swatting hoaxes have been reported in at least five different communities. In all these instances police can't figure out a motive.
• Greenwich
• "Swatting is using some sort of computerized technology to make it look as if a 911 call or any other emergency call is coming from here when in fact it's coming from somewhere else," said Officer Joseph Race of the Madison Police Department.
• "It puts not only responding officers in danger, the motoring public in danger because now it's other cars that have to get out of the way for our emergency lights but also the homeowner," said Race.

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• Millville hostage situation turns out to be 'swatting' prank, police say

• City police received an emergency alert over the weekend of an armed individual — possibly with a hostage — purportedly barricaded on Dove Drive.

   

  What it turned out to be, however, was an elaborate prank called "swatting" — involving video gamers making fake emergency phone calls about their opponents.

   

  According to Lt. Jody Farabella of the Millville Police Department, pranks like swatting are harmful, illegal and can cause injury — along with interfering with police and their duties.
• MILLVILLE 

• Police were able to suss out that the call was a hoax though, according to the lieutenant, by contacting the residents on Dove Drive.

   

  Pranksters are able to mask their telephone numbers when they make the call, Farabella explained, and the hoaxsters could not even be from the area.

   

  Swatting is done by online video game players who know the location of their opponents and falsely report to police that a crime is occurring at their residence. Through the computer or video game system, video or audio of police arresting the individual can be attained by the pranksters.

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• Bradenton man victim of "swatting" again
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  BRADENTON
• For the second time this month, Bradenton police were called out to a home to investigate false reports.    
  
  Mike Dolen was playing an online game last weekend, when someone watching called police to report he had killed his wife and was hunting down their daughter.
  
  The report was false.
  
  Saturday, it happened again.
  
  This time someone called to report a bomb inside the Dolen's home.
  
  Officers searched it and found nothing.

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• YouTube personality Whiteboy7thst won't face pot charge after hoax

• well-known YouTube personality will not face a marijuana charge after a so-called swatting brought police to his house, the Will County state’s attorney's office said Thursday.

  Alexander Wachs, who produces video game-themed content under the moniker Whiteboy7thst, was arrested Aug. 17 after Plainfield police said they entered his house in response to a false report of an armed and suicidal person, only to find at least 30 grams of marijuana inside.

                                     

  It was the third episode within a month in which Wachs, 24, was the victim of a false report to police known as a swatting.
• Wachs and his housemate, Kelly Popp, both faced felony charges of the manufacture or delivery of 30 to 500 grams of cannabis. But Charles Pelkie, spokesman for the Will County state’s attorney’s office, said that after a Tribune inquiry, prosecutors had taken a second look and decided to drop the charges.
• The “unique set of circumstances” that led police allegedly to discover the marijuana meant the evidence might not have survived a motion to suppress, he said.
• Chicago Tribune

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• Judge orders arrest of teen linked to 'swatting' call at Coopersville schools

• A judge issued a pickup order for a teen who failed to appear for a hearing Thursday, Sept. 11, on his alleged role in a “swatting” incident at Coopersville schools that led to a lockdown – and distress for students, parents and police.

    

  Bryce Robert Michmerhuizen, 14, is charged with using a computer to commit a crime and false report of a felony.

    

  Ottawa County sheriff’s detectives say he was involved in a Sept. 4 incident in which a 911 caller threatened “potential harm to students and staff.”
• OTTAWA COUNTY, MI
• Police found evidence of danger for students, and determined the call to be a swatting incident, in which a 911 call of a serious crime brings a large police turnout. In some cases, SWAT teams are called in, hence the name.
• Sheriff’s Capt. Mark Bennett said swatting calls have become “quite an epidemic” across the country.

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