San Jose police union executive director charged with smuggling fentanyl into US
washingtonexaminer.com
washingtonexaminer.com
- the Police Officer's Association address was used to ship out packages to customers in the US, and Segovia operated her drug business partly out of the office; there's photographic evidence for both, taken from her whatsapp communications (which she turned over to investigators)
- she discussed police business with her supplier(s)
- at least one of her customers died of an overdose
- after she was first contacted by investigators, she carried out an elaborate attempt to frame her housekeeper
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23732642-segovia-com...
Not only that, but she continued to make purchases! For all the dumb things she did prior to that contact (using her own addresses and a phone that's trivially associated with her), continuing to make buys while you know damn well you're being watched is just breathtakingly stupid. I don't get it.
-
My father was a cop in Oakland in the '70s... He resigned after he witnessed OPD murder several people.
His famous quote was "Once you're looking for 'bad' everywhere - pretty soon, thats all you can see'"
--
When I grew up in the 80s in Lake Tahoe (we moved from Oakland to Tahoe in 1979) -- the cops were known to have been outcasts from San Jose CA for being the worst offenders, and were pushed back to Tahoe as 'punishment' (in the same way that Catholic priests are 'punished')...
We knew that the Tahoe cops were jerks, and it was widely known they were all San Jose rejects...
Anyway, I got caught in a bit of legal trouble in 7th grade (was taking boats out for joy rides and leaving them on beaches)...
And the 'detective' who found me was later found out as being on Escobar's pay roll....
In the 1980s, Escobar was flying in tons of cocaine to truckee and south lake tahoe, and this cop, and the dad of a kid I went to school with were the guys who were funneling all that coke to Vegas and Reno...
https://oaklandside.org/2023/03/27/murder-conviction-overtur...
A department with bored, but honest, cops will be pretty safe - and stay boring. Albeit with annoyances like traffic rules being enforced.
A department with criminals running it will do what the criminals need, including murdering whoever they need to.
If they’re smart, maybe it means the other criminals steer clear?
They are extremely paranoid when hiring - especially “experienced” officers who often turn out to be rejects.
Recently the BLM folks were able to get a big say in police hiring.
They’ve been demanding more Black officers.
It’s hard to get any officers at all, and the city doesn’t have many Black residents.
So they’ve been pushing to change the rules about hiring officers with “previous experience” - basically turning “previous experience” from a negative to a positive.
> So they’ve been pushing to change the rules about hiring officers with “previous experience” - basically turning “previous experience” from a negative to a positive.
It's crazy. You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of reality.
You appear as if you are cooperating fully, and innocent (because a guilty person who knows they are being investigated stops doing the illegal thing).
If it was the housekeeper doing the crime, they wouldn't know bout the investigation so they would keep criming.
Since you don't know how long you've been monitored prior to learning of the investigation you don't want to suddenly change the routine either... Same reasoning as the first point.
The only real move you have is to hope hope the evidence points at the housekeeper and the frame-up tricks the investigators.
Im not saying i agree with any of the above, but it's the type of reasoning behind the actions.
There are two ways this can play out for the accused: (1) The misdirection works and she's off scot-free, or (2) it fails, and she's in roughly the same amount of trouble as she would have been had she not continued making the purchases.
Thanks.
We are saying her crimes are made worse by her police adjacency
Police union interests are aligned with the interests of drug cartels and other grave threats to society, for each keeps the other relevant.
I'm not sure if the reasoning is fairly complex, or boils down to a couple factors, a few I can name:
1. People inflate their lifestyles to depend on crime income, and the financial situation doesn't exactly improve when they get caught; you get new expenses
2. Pathology... ie. they just can't help themselves. If you've known a klepto, or pathological liar, you know they are often addicted. It's bizarre to see behaviors like stealing in the same way as drug addiction, but they can be.
3. They simply think they'll get away with it. Good chance they thought they wouldn't get caught in the first place. So now they just got to tweak the method, or figure it will take the same amount of time to catch up with them; by then they'll be out of it (and in prison)
You can see this kind of thing with white collar crime and almost everything. Even with sex criminals. There was a guy that committed many sex assaults by intentionally attempting to infect w/HIV, through deception... (said he was using protection). Kept doing it after getting caught.
Guess it doesn't make sense to question why a criminal would act like a criminal.
It's not very likely, but I'm really hoping the housekeeper sues her and ends up being awarded to the house she was paid to clean.
in which case they could say drug running was “justified” in a grand press conference
Isn’t fentanyl so dangerous that even a regular dose could kill? Idk, I’m not into fentanyl
Edit: A cursory refreshing on the subject indicates that fentanyl is extremely potent, and that therefore it is difficult to dose correctly. I maintain that “overdose” is misleading in the context of fentanyl because it connotes user error. When in fact I think the blame lies on the suppliers, who may have sold fentanyl to users without the users being fully aware of what dangerous things they were really buying.
I guess life is easier when you can arrest your competitors instead of just shooting them, but I don't have any idea how nobody narced on him to the feds (or at least their lawyer) for that long.
But then police were organized crime before police were police. To this day I don't know why the Pinkertons still exist as a corporate subdivision name instead of being fully absorbed to distance from that profound emotional baggage.
(Opinions colored by roommates' future BIL being murdered by cops in broad daylight in Chicago for DWB+autism, then moving to and dealing with Seattle PD's corruption/brutality problems)
Driving while black or am I just making up acronyms?
Illinois has more problems than Mississippi wrt to racial justice. For a blue state that's pretty fucked up, but then it's only about 55% blue.
I think Chicago is currently winning the competition with NYC for number of convicted mayors as well. Clearly not something anyone should be proud of, but here we are. That whole Eliot Ness/Capone kerfuffle was Chicago, not NYC. See also Valentine's Day Massacre.
> others have said that members of the Chicago Police Department who allegedly wanted revenge for the killing of a police officer's son played a part. - Wikipedia
Major party affiliation of red + blue usually only adds up to about 60-80% in most regions. Not everyone is eligible to vote, registered to vote, or votes regularly. If people look at the percentage of the vote that Biden/Trump got in the most recent election, they are looking at the narrow end of the funnel. The “55% blue” is likely a cross-section closer to the beginning of the funnel.
Also worth pointing out that Chicago has a 100+ year old “political machine”. I don’t remember the specifics, but each neighborhood has extremely powerful local politicians that hold a party office, but not a government office. It is not typical for American cities.
At least you manage to convict them, blatant corruption is quite prevalent in other parts of the country.
fun fact, that's pretty normal. That's why all this talk about a national divorce is boneheaded-stupid. The only reason we have red states and blue states is because of FPTP and winner-take-all voting. But even in a place like california, democrats only outnumber republicans by about 2-1.
If we have a wide outbreak of violence it will probably look closer to Rwanda than the organized Union vs Confederacy fighting.
So it’s not as simple as “winner takes all.”
NB: fusion voting is where candidates are endorsed by multiple parties. So you can be a Democrat and a Libertarian.
Yes it is. You just misunderstood what I meant.
from https://www.archives.gov/electoral-college/allocation
> All States, except for Maine and Nebraska have a winner-take-all policy where the State looks only at the overall winner of the state-wide popular vote. Maine and Nebraska, however, appoint individual electors based on the winner of the popular vote for each Congressional district and then 2 electors based on the winner of the overall state-wide popular vote.
Would you just drop the stereotype that Democrats care about black people any more than Republicans do? It's staring you in the face, you admit it and somehow cling to this lie.
Would you just drop the stereotype that Democrats care about black people any more than Republicans do? It's staring you in the face, you admit it and somehow cling to this lie.
Well, with cops it’s “in addition to”, not “instead of”.
If the writers introduced the so-called good guys as the Grim Reapers or Compton Executioners [3], the viewers wouldn't believe it.
[1] https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...
edit: to note I don't know If I'm actually going to be sued, just will definitely find it humorous if they do so.
If you have the time and all, definitely start throwing lawsuits and hit hard in discovery.
Exactly but on the other hand, if not his responsibility, could acting suspicious be a free GI check hack? Health coverage can be expensive in the US.
Hack methodology:
1. Sprinkle tiny amount of drugs on yourself
2. Go to border
3. Free GI check
4. Profit?
Even though they’re complete fucking buffoons it’s a really good idea to not fuck with CBP, they get paid to fuck people up with impunity.
The problem with poisoned drugs was created by doctors, corporations, the police, and politicians. Cartel king pins, plus smaller "mom & pop shops" (~$10ks-millions operations) play their role, but the vast majority of people caught will be stupid and/or desperate smucks, who have done practically nothing.
These will be the people doing life sentences. The cartels leaders almost always get away (until maybe they die). The "mom & pop" shops I mentioned, often quite large in their own respect do get busted from time to time... however the majority of time in prison will be done by pawns, especially from these types of busts.
Then the government spikes the ball and does a victory dance, while most of society is "fine" with it... yet things consistently get worse. More violence, more dirty money, corruption, overdoses, etc.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/von-nukem-suicide-drug-cha...
You are headed home, tickets already paid for, and then someone asks if you want to make a quick $200 real easy.
This isn't always how it goes down, but you can imagine how an impulsive person may over react to a monetary reward and thus accept very little compensation. If you run the risk assessment, you aren't going to take the deal!
It’s their job to get extremely good at being less suspicious. The more rejections they get, the more they refine their approach, their appearance, their story, etc.
I try to avoid giving credit to my ego for not falling for a scam/con (yet!) when capitalism and evolution are both optimized for finding efficient workarounds for any hurdle. Given enough attempts and enough time, capitalism will corrupt anyone and everyone.
>It's sad that he didn't have the wit or the character to plead guilty and try to straighten his life out for the sake of his family.
That won't overcome the fact he now owes 15kg of goods to the cartel, and probably has no way to pay it, and he's staring down the barrel of being in prison full of people who have nothing but time to settle the debt. I think this guys death warrant was signed as soon as he got caught, and probably halfway written by the time he was even asked for the favor. Quite possible he did the best thing for his family.
It's more likely to have been $220 plus some sort of profit sharing. The cartels are probably smart enough to align incentives instead of an over reliance on violence where it can be avoided.
They quite literally did not make that claim.
That does not include:
Fentanyl seized at locations other than the border. Which we would know about.
Fentanyl manufactured in the United States.
Fentanyl in hospitals and other regulated areas.
Fentanyl not seized at all.
So they aren't making a claim about all fentanyl. They are making a claim of a certain segment of fentanyl.
Practically it is much easier for cartels to buy thousands of rifles from Africa or the Middle East than to try and get them across the border from the US. Handguns are trivial to source directly from Chinese factories producing Glock and 1911 knockoffs.
Heck, you can order every part individually to assemble a Glock directly from Wish.com if you know what to search for.
[1] - Pages 11-14 https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/report/nfcta-volume-ii-par...
Mexico only initiated 32k traces in 2021, which lends further support to my point that the majority of guns are not coming from the US. That number is incredibly small compared to the net new volume of guns cartels get on a yearly basis.
“Most cartels buy in bulk, and the weapons are coming from places like Nicaragua and other South American countries. Also Asia and some from the Middle East,” a Tijuana-based police authority who requested anonymity explained. “And, another factor is the CNC machines making uppers in clandestine shops in Mexico.” https://www.foxnews.com/world/mexico-guns-black-market-tepit...
Is that from the page labeled 9 of that PDF? That's wrong on 2 counts.
The first is that that graph is showing a breakdown by destination (i.e. 60% of requests to trace a gun that was later traced to a gun show came from Mexico, not that 60% of guns in Mexico are from US gun shows).
The second is that an FFL still has to conduct a background check, even if the sale occurs at a gun show. All of those guns either had a background check, or the dealer is going to jail. The "gun show loophole" only applies to normal people trying to sell a couple of guns. As soon as the ATF thinks that someone is "engaged in the business of dealing firearms" they are required to be licensed as an FFL, and must do background checks regardless of where the sale occurs. It's all in https://www.atf.gov/file/100871/download
One of the reasons Republicans were so eager outraged that the Clinton admin ATF was trying to track gun smuggling from the USA into Mexico was that it was such a bad look for them.
Ima think most volume is moved via cargo or tunnels.
Even if 90% of the people caught are Americans, if the number of Americans actually doing the smuggling outnumber non-Americans 20x, then that means they're lower-risk.
These are very different.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/03/29/san-jose-poa-office-m...
> SJPOA spokesperson Tom Saggau ... was shocked to learn about the allegations swirling around Segovia, who he has known as a beloved figure in the office for over 20 years.
> “She was looked at as the grandma of the POA,” he said. “She’s the one who planned all the funerals when we had officers killed in the line of duty...
The grammar police haven't been doing their jobs lately either...
That movie does a fantastic job of demonstrating how copspeak is designed to hide the fact that they're stupid.
SJPD has fewer officers per resident than any other major city. We have somewhere between 30% - 50% the number of sworn officers as San Francisco. SJPD is underfunded and surrounding cities are all better paying for officers. The officers that continue to work there mostly live many hours away and are required to work pretty high overtime hours.
My personal assessment is California Prop 13 (from around 1979) is at fault. It has starved the city’s funding, which makes SJPD uncompetitive against neighboring cities. Additionally, the city is a residential base for lots of the companies in the neighboring suburbs.
In the late 2000s, the mayor at the time was very worried about the retirement costs of the department and made the comp package much less appealing/competitive for new hires/transfers than existing officers. This creates an exodus of experienced officers and means that we get worse recruits than other cities.
Not trying to justify the unprofessional actions, but to add some factual color behind the recent history that got us to where we are.
I've known plenty of great LEOs growing up in the area, but I've encountered (especially in the last 20 years) an almost caricatured level of clowns wearing the uniform. It's soured me on LEOs in general, and certainly the police management in SJ as a practical thing. After the utter bungling of the protest handling, including the refusal to fire Jared Yuen and the keystone kops moment with the Sanderlin rubber bullet shooting, it just became impossible to defend this circus.
As far as funding goes, SJPD in recent years got a 41M punch up, so I'm not sure how it's so underfunded.
My personal theory is that crime has little to do with policing and mostly related to how people feel in a society and whether they can meet their economic needs. Throwing money at police departments improves neither unless the department focuses on those ends.
SJPD’s use of Community Service Officers takes low urgency work away from sworn officers for less than half of the cost of a sworn officer and requires fewer trigger-happy people to interact with the community. The numbers I mention are sworn officers, excluding CSOs, so I suspect that augmented force helps each dollar go further.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/san-jose-police-union-e...
BTW, "The Departed" [1] is a great movie about this topic.
I have police in my family. Every vendor they employ (dry cleaner, tax assistance, plumber, locksmith, etc) comes from recommendations within the policing community. They don’t take a risk to trust strangers.
This isn’t taxpayer-funded, it is labor union dues funded.
Just last year - https://sanjosespotlight.com/former-santa-clara-county-sheri...
I'm in favour of near-full legalization. It's should be my right to get as high as I like. And seeing how many in public officials do drugs and do not voice in favour of legalization is just showing the how two-faced they are.
This of Biden's son. Total tweaker. While his dad signed super tight anti-drug laws, that cause the imprisonment of many (mostly blacks): why is his son still free?
So one shipment a year? It took four years to make a case? I know police cases take time but...this seems less like justice and more like she didn't pay off the right person.
> She is alleged to have had at least 61 shipments mailed to her home from October 2015 to January 2023 from countries/regions, including Hong Kong, Hungary, India, and Singapore. The mailing documents were labeled as “Wedding Party Favors,” “Gift Makeup,” or “Chocolate and Sweets.”
TBH, this sounds like most electronic gizmos I order off aliexpress et al.
But I think detailed records are only kept by customs on int’l courier packages, not postal service parcels.
I've been a cigar hobbyist since the early 90s. Cuban cigars have been mostly to completely illegal in the US for the entire time, but with the advent of the widespread use of web pages, we started to get better and better access to the Cuban supply via overseas retailers.
These retailers know full good and well that these cigars are contraband here in the states. But some of them were extremely lazy and would just ship entire pallets of merchandise. I'd guess that about 70-80% of the product bought overseas and shipped here actually got to the buyer. The rest were virtually all on these pallets where you'd have to be a complete idiot not to spot them.
Please don't read this as a blanket endorsement or suggestion that federal investigators are always ethical, I don't believe that to be so.
This is a bad sign.
The few modern efforts, of say Oregon, only eliminate criminal charges for posession. This will do NOTHING to defund the cartels, or stop the overdoses due to unknown strength/dosing.
That said, there will always be demand and that demand would be better served if not criminalized. These drugs should be made available for legal purchase but we need to find ways to incentivize minimizing the sale and consumption of such.
I fail to see the difference between letting an adult drink themselves to death vs doping themselves into oblivion. The former is both legal and acceptable whereas the latter is not; but they're effectively the same.
It's better to use prescription drugs than mystery substance available on the streets. At least you know what you are taking.
Yet it causes no greater societal issues, because it is legal.
And I say this as someone who really likes wine and would drink it pretty much every day, if it weren't for that whole "can permanently ruin your brain" business.
Source: https://www.econtalk.org/sam-quinones-on-meth-fentanyl-and-t...
Cartels, and predatory businesses who happen to be legal, make their money off of the suffering of others. Society, that is the collective will of the people, has the choice of choosing tolerance, compassion, and empathy to dry up the source of the evil poison that corrodes people and the places they live.
You seem to support it, how would you address the externalities?
To play Devil's advocate for the opposition though, perhaps we need Fentanyl Island where we send people that want everything legal. Okay, not a serious proposal ... or maybe I'm channelling Brave New World — a book I have come to believe was in fact supposed to represent a Utopian future after all.
I dunno. We tried making alcohol illegal for a while in the US. Alcohol is pretty addictive, isn't it? And we ran into the same problems we have with other illegal drugs, for the same reason.
I don't really think that's the case. Prohibition is what enables all the evils we hate. If all of these drugs were legal, and cheap, and sold at or below cost by the government, _and all other sales were illegal_, then guess what would disappear overnight? Dealers, smugglers, junkies supporting an expensive habit by fencing stolen goods.... and most overdoses. Actual deaths. You still have your addicts, and maybe you get _some_ new ones - but they're getting safer drugs from a place where there are also resources for getting yourself clean. It really, really sounds like a win/win/win.
Am I, though? As the fundamental claim behind your dismissal of all the other benefits, including the massive death tolls, it behooves you to back this one up.
> there are many countries with harsh punishments for drug dealing and the culture around drug usage just does not exist like it does in the US
Oh, they're harsh here, too. Can you show that the harshness of the penalties has led to a reduction in drug use?
> Some places will even shun addicts and not help them with their addiction
Cruelty and brutality can certainly influence peoples' behavior. So can compassion and understanding. I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree about how morally righteous it would be to just crush and brutalize anyone involved in the illegal drug trade. Whatever "illegal" is defined as, based on our government's criteria (and disregarding groups like the AMA).
https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-exp...
Nobody thinks drug crime is good. I discussed a solution that would instantly end drug crime, because I think drug crime is a horrible, unacceptable problem.
> but it really goes to show that we do not have to tolerate open crimes and accepting criminal behavior
It really feels like you didn't understand the fundamental concept of legalizing drugs. That doesn't mean legalizing crime. And it doesn't have to mean legalizing public intoxication any more than legalizing alcohol did.
In a lot of countries you can drink in public and it's fine.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-14/horror-t...
This is obviously proscribed under most localities' current regulations, since we mostly ban regular tobacco smoking indoors. Legalization advocates are not advocating for tolerating involuntary exposure or other externalities. Enforce the existing laws against second hand smoke, DUI, etc.
> we have people using in my neighborhood park
Annoying for sure. In my neighborhood, dog shit and hobo piss are omnipresent sidewalk hazards. But I don't think there's a solution to the dregs of society being a highly visible/smellable nuisance - real estate tends to be stratified by class, and I'm not financially equipped to insulate myself like the upper ones. Until we decide to actually deal with the economics that produce these frictions, it's just a fact of life.
Just as sort of an analogy to what I'm saying, citizens of all the states had access to some gambling addiction hotline even before gambling was widely legalized.
I live in Oregon and that's not true: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-11-23/oregon-pu...
> we have people using in my neighborhood park and on public transit. I stopped taking the train after a ride where we had to evacuate because someone was smoking fentanyl (apparently even the second-hand smoke can affect a person).
This happens regardless of the legality. The big question is whether they can be encouraged to take their usage to safe sites, which is why the whole encampments thing that people don't want was key to a plan involving decriminalization. That's to say, the big picture matters in harm reduction, not the individual steps. We have a large system of incentives that drives the industrial prison complex that have all been in place a long time. You won't see material improvements with one law passed.
> You seem to support it, how would you address the externalities?
The first step is getting our police count up; we had 300 cops for the entire city and were only answering active violent calls. They've hired 300 more. The next step is getting the people who are ready to get off the streets off by opening up the transitional sites that the city and county are fighting over. After all that, we need to invest in non-12 step recovery centers for anyone battling chemical addiction. What you're left with after that is manageable.
I say all of this as someone who has lost a lot of friends to the opioid crisis and has watched Portland's meth problem first hand. I watched heavy-handed policies fail time and time again, deity-focused 12 step programs try to shame people into recovery and fail, and watched as forces of power used those failures to fuel a drug war and prison complex that rivaled no other country on Earth. This isn't just about doing things differently; it's about stopping the hard-nose crap that got us here with no end in sight and actually addressing the problem. The journey will be painful as the journey to here has been painful but it'll be worth it.
Argh, that makes it even worse!
> I say all of this as someone who has lost a lot of friends to the opioid crisis and has watched Portland's meth problem first hand.
Sorry to hear that. I’ve been fortunate not to have friends or family caught up in it, but we lost a neighbor last year.
I hope you’re right that things will get better.
In the meantime, it feels disingenuous to act like the impact so far has been positive for everyone, or like legalizing and hard-nose crap are the only options. I think it undermines trust and pits different parts of Portland against each other. It’s easy to get a laugh or an eye roll from my neighbors on the north side of town when I pass along some of the ”obvious” solutions my friends and colleagues from the west side have shared with me. Please consider our perspective: even if we double the police force and start addressing crime more promptly, our neighborhood is still worse off because we have more crime. Other parts of the city don’t seem to appreciate that.
I definitely didn't mean to give that impression. They are not positive times; my point was that these times were expected. An entire system has been built around the industrial prison complex that compounds these issues. We won't see improvement for a bit.
> Please consider our perspective: even if we double the police force and start addressing crime more promptly, our neighborhood is still worse off because we have more crime.
100%. Money was diverted away from neighborhood groups and given to racial identity groups years ago. That's when this decline started; just this week that money has been reallocated to neighborhood groups. The county has picked up funding of the racial identity groups; if you notice, those donations come from one person and most of these organizations help that person get elected materially.
> Other parts of the city don’t seem to appreciate that.
I'm still newish to Portland, but if it's any comfort I live in SouthEast. These points aren't just forum talking points to me, they are the very way I understand my immediate world and experiences.
Addictiveness, long term health detriment and short term OD chance should all be factored into legalization discussions.
Things that should probably be legalized ASAP: Psychedelics, cannabis
Things that may be safe to use occasionally but with high OD risk: cocaine (example). Perhaps with a prescription?
Things that have extremely high risk to long term mental/physical health and overdose: Heroin, PCP, meth, fentanyl
---
Point being: No, I disagree, even in a world where the choice of the individual should have high weight, there are some things that should not be allowed to flourish (particularly with profit motives) and must be stamped out.
and methamphetamines are not much different: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/know-your-amphetamines