Originally published August 31 2013
Undercover police informant caught planting drug evidence in retail shop of black man
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) The notion of police using criminals to catch would-be criminals is once again under scrutiny, this time in New York as an informant was caught on tape planting "evidence" at the business of an African American businessman, in order to give his police masters something in order to justify his existence.
As seen in this local news report, the informant clearly places a small amount of crack cocaine on a counter of the businessman's store - a "smoke shop" that sells products which could be used for the "dual purpose" of smoking other substances as well.
"Often, the undercover agent is a shady character facing his own charges," says the television news reporter. "That makes him motivated to give police what they want, whether the suspect has done something wrong...or not."
Creating suspects out of thin air
The shop in particular has several security cameras, and, in the two views shown in the news report, there is little doubt left in viewers' minds that he fraudulently implicated the store owner, Donald Andrews, Jr., as peddling coke.
Here's how it went down.
Local police, suspicious of Andrews, sent "an undercover informant in twice in March (2013)," said the news report. It was during the second visit by the informant that he planted, then photographed, a small amount of crack cocaine that then led to Andrews' arrest.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, the amount of crack left by the informant could have landed Andrews in jail for four years or, under New York state law, 2-7 years.
Members of a local Christian activist group who were shown the video were understandably outraged.
"It was a set-up," said one of the members, Treasure Clayton, who is black. "And I believe that he was racially profiled and targeted, and it would be easy for them to say he was selling drugs because he was black."
Since the incident, the local sheriff's department has denied culpability, saying only that their procedures were not followed, and that the informant in the video has since "taken flight," according to the news report.
As for Andrews, he was released after he convinced police to look at the multiple camera angles showing the evidence being planted. Oh, and he's filed suit against the police.
Other police departments, and the FBI especially, have reputations for framing suspects using bogus "evidence" gathered by unscrupulous informants. This is especially true when it comes to so-called "terrorism" cases; the FBI loves to create these out of thin air.
As Natural News has reported often, the agency is guilty of finding vulnerable people, setting up phony "terror" plots and then luring the manufactured "terrorists" into a plot that FBI masterminds cooked up in the first place.
Manufacturing threats
Even The New York Times has reported that the FBI cooks up its own terror plots.
In recent months, FBI agents have arrested suspects who were planning a range of terrorist attacks, from shooting Stinger missiles at military aircraft to driving vanloads of explosives into crowded events. But these amazing cases might not have ever been made if the FBI itself wasn't planning the attacks.
A number of these cases were profiled recently in a Times op-ed column, which noted that the so-called plots were devised by an agency that seems to be operating as if the nation is so devoid of legitimate threats that it needs to manufacture some in order to seem relevant.
Of course, the government justifies this behavior.
"Many times, suspects are warned about the seriousness of their plots and given opportunities to back out," Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman said. But, the Times report indicates, some recorded conversations show that the warning is not always given, and that in some cases suspects are even encouraged to continue.
The world is dangerous enough without our government having to create a terrorist "make work" program for its FBI agents. Then again, without terrorist boogeymen, how would they justify adding new agents and bigger budgets?
Sources:
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.theguardian.com
http://www.naturalnews.com
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