In early March, the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force arrested 18 people, ages 17 to 30, following almost a year of undercover operations in Belmont. Eight men and one woman face charges of distributing marijuana. One man faces charges of distributing both marijuana and imitation cocaine. Eight suspects face cocaine charges.
In JADE press releases and the accompanying daily newspaper articles, pot and cocaine were cast as equal threats to Belmont’s “quality of life.” But in real life, JADE honchos admit that marijuana dealing really isn’t a problem in Charlottesville.
“We could make marijuana arrests all day long, but that’s not our mission,” says Task Force commander Lt. Don Campbell, an 18-year City police veteran. “Our main goal in Charlottesville is reducing the violence and disorder associated with open-air drug markets. We don’t see the violence from pot that we see from cocaine.”
On one hand, Campbell’s line reflects the popular view that marijuana poses relatively little danger to public safety. Yet when agents nab a pot dealer, they are pleased that they have eradicated a social menace, perhaps because Federal drug laws still classify marijuana with other drugs—like cocaine and methamphetamine—that threaten the social order. And even as the area’s police officers acknowledge they face enough challenges just keeping up with citizen calls for service, other law enforcers, like the JADE Task Force and the Commonwealth’s Attorney, will happily wring stoners through the legal system if the opportunity arises.
Midway through his studies at UVA, “David” started feeling depressed. He took time off school, experimented with prescription drugs, and finally discovered that smoking pot helped him function. David started getting high every day.
“I went back and got my degree,” he says. “My last semester was one of the best I had at UVA, despite being a so-called pothead.”
David, who is being identified by a pseudonym for this article, graduated in 1995. He stayed in Charlottesville, working about 40 hours a week at a handful of service jobs and setting aside about $200 for recreational marijuana use per month.
“I had about five different friends who hooked me up. If one of us needed a hookup, we helped each other out,” says David. “It’s a social thing, not business.”
David, his friends and probably most of Charlottesville’s recreational marijuana smokers buy and sell the drug for fun, not profit—the point being to maintain a safe, steady supply chain instead of generating easy money. The marijuana trade is generally not conducted with the mercenary salesmanship and violence that police say describes the City’s cocaine market.
“Cocaine and crack drive the violence in this community,” says Campbell. “We know we can’t stop drug dealing. People will always want drugs, and other people will always make money off that. But we can disrupt it and drive it off the streets.”
City courtrooms reflect JADE’s emphasis on cocaine, says defense attorney Denise Lunsford. “Are they out there pounding the pavement looking for pot dealers? That’s not my perception,” she says. “They’re not going after it the same way as crack, cocaine, meth.”
But marijuana users do end up in court—last year Albemarle and Charlottesville Police collectively sent about 303 pot cases to courts, most for misdemeanor posession. Lunsford says these are usually wrong place-wrong time situations. A lead-footed driver might be pulled over with a joint in the ashtray, for instance. First-time offenders typically face misdemeanor possession charges.
“It’s fairly routine,” says City Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman. First-time offenders can have the charge dismissed and expunged from their record if they agree to pre-conviction probation. A second offense likely will earn a suspended jail sentence.
“I can’t remember the last time someone went to jail for simple possession,” Chapman says.
For Charlottesville police officers, busting marijuana smokers is like office work—unfulfilling, with lots of papers to shuffle. When police catch someone dumb enough to speed with weed, police will issue him a summons and let him go. The officer must return the evidence––all of it––to the station, tag it, bag it and place it in a locker, filling out forms along the way. The officer hopes the suspect will plead guilty, because if he fights it, the evidence must actually be driven to a Richmond lab to determine whether it’s cannabis sativa (for the sake of traffic and taxpayer concerns, we suggest all further such tests be conducted at C-VILLE offices). In the end, the marijuana is unceremoniously incinerated.
“A lot of officers feel like it’s a lot of paperwork for nothing. I hear a lot of comments like that,” says Officer Dwayne Jones, who patrols the Corner. “I treat it like a traffic citation. Sometimes I have to calm people down and let them know it’s not the end of the world.
“We don’t make the laws,” he continues, “but I have to say I believe the worst drug out there is alcohol. The overwhelming majority of calls we get, for traffic accidents and disorders, involve alcohol. I’ve never seen anyone behave violently when they’re high on marijuana.”
The JADE Task Force is not your average beat cop, however.
If the President’s drug policy had more to do with public safety, alcohol would be the first substance banned. The White House Office of Drug Control Policy and the Drug Enforcement Administration are multi-billion dollar bureaucracies arguably interested only in doing what they did yesterday. So the Drug War marches on.
In Charlottesville, Washington’s hostile posture toward pot allows JADE and the Commonwealth’s Attorney to treat smokers like enemy combatants, if they choose. It is often in their interest to do so.
The JADE unit––six police officers from Charlottesville, three from Albemarle County, two from UVA and one from the State, plus help from a DEA agent and three agents from the federal department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives––works out of an office below City Hall. Access is obtained by entering the correct digital code and then passing through a heavy wooden door. Inside the offices, there is a coffee machine and two posters. One shows Osama bin Laden in crosshairs and reads “Wanted, Dead or Alive,” with “Alive” crossed out. The other poster is a collage of marijuana plants and piles of buds with the words “It’s not medicine, it’s an illegal drug.”
After September 11, JADE added terrorist investigations to its list of mandates, and images of war and terror adorn the office walls. A cartoon eagle sharpening its claws is posted near Polaroids of weapons and drugs seized by JADE officers. A photo of the World Trade Center hangs in the room where undercover agents don wigs and bulletproof vests for undercover ops.
Campbell says JADE “is looking at some people” in their terrorism investigations, but won’t say more. Like the battle against pot, the war on terror is not his primary focus.
It used to be, Campbell says, that agents would find 50 people milling on a street corner dealing cocaine. Most arrests were “jump outs,” says Campbell, as in “jump out” and grab the slowest crackheads before they run away.
As City Hall tries to court middle class homebuyers, Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo says eradicating open-air drug markets is his department’s foremost mission. Campbell says it’s working.
“We don’t see people blatantly dealing in the streets anymore,” he says. “We had to adjust the way we do things. The dealers are moving indoors, and that’s more dangerous for us. Now we do more monitoring with devices. Civilian informants are our bread and butter.”
As a pot smoker, David’s interaction with the black market happened discreetly. He was not involved in either violence or big money, so in the era of “jump outs” he never would have registered on JADE’s radar screen. Because the Feds continue to classify marijuana as an illegal Schedule I narcotic, however, people like David have no choice but to associate with criminals in pursuit of their pleasure. This makes them fair game for JADE.
A mutual friend introduced David to “Brian,” a fellow pot enthusiast (also identified here by a pseudonym), in 1995, and David obliged when Brian asked for a hook-up. Four years later, Brian was arrested after twice selling cocaine to an undercover JADE officer.
According to documents in Albemarle General District Court, Brian agreed to a “cooperative agreement” to “do certain things in exchange for favorable consideration by the Commonwealth at his trial.”
Defense attorney Lunsford says some of her drug clients choose to inform in exchange for leniency. She says officers ask for names and whether the informant could immediately go buy drugs from that person.
“If they hear about someone dealing, especially in large quantities, they’re more than willing to use it,” Lunsford says. “Body wires, phone taps are no problem.”
In February 2000, Brian asked David if he was still “helping people out.” David said yes, and over the next five weeks he sold Brian marijuana three times in one-ounce and two-ounce quantities.
Nine months later, an unfamiliar number appeared on David’s pager. When David called, a member of the JADE Task Force answered the phone.
“I asked if someone was in trouble,” says David. “He said, ‘Yeah, maybe you.’”
According to David, the officer arranged to meet him at night in a parking lot near Downtown. When David arrived, he found three officers sitting in a parked car. Flashing badges, they asked David to take a ride with them. They told David they didn’t think he was a threat, and that he could help himself by helping them. He was facing three potential felony charges for distributing marijuana, with a maximum of 30 years in jail.
“They were sweating me. They wanted me to inform on anyone I could for any drugs—anyone selling marijuana, ecstasy, mushrooms,” says David. “They wanted me to give names and tell them if anyone had a gun. They gave me a beeper number and told me to think about it.
“It was a tough decision,” he says. “They asked me to betray the trust of people I’d known for a long time, to basically be a judge and jury on my friends.”
David never beeped the agent, and two months later he was arrested. “I have to say they were cool about it,” he says.
After consulting a lawyer, David pled not guilty “to buy time.” After his trial date was set he negotiated an agreement to plead guilty to two felonies if the prosecution would not request jail time. During sentencing, David’s character witnesses and pre-trial probation officer argued on his behalf. According to David, Commonwealth’s Attorney Chapman argued he was a “drug dealer” to the judge and “said something about how I might possibly involve kids.”
In January 2002, David received a five-year jail sentence, of which all but 30 days was suspended. He served 15 weekends sleeping on a mattress on the Regional Jail’s gym floor.
“It sucked. No heat, no blankets, and they left the light on all night,” he says. (Brian, by contrast, received no jail time for his cocaine conviction. Presumably his willingness to narc out his acquaintances helped his case.)
David paid his $1,800 fine and refrained from alcohol and drugs for his 18-month probation, during which time officers were allowed to search him or his property at any time, for any reason. He enrolled in substance-abuse counseling through Region Ten.
“If somebody says your name, then the agents know you,” says David. “Even if you don’t do anything that gives an officer probable cause, you can become a suspect just through the people who know your name.
“All this wasn’t exactly a nightmare,” David says. “But in my opinion, someday marijuana will be legal, and I’ll still be a felon. There’s a lot of resources being thrown down a black hole.
“Marijuana is part of the social setting in Charlottesville—business owners, students, professionals, lawyers, people in the media. Are we really saying that these segments of our society are bad people?”