High Desert Highwaymen: More Scenes from the Drug War in Treasure Valley

[phill4paul]

In his private life, Justin Klitch of Payette, Idaho may be kind, personable, generous, and compulsively honest. While on the clock, however, he's a professional thug – in the original sense of the expression.

The Thugs of India were a nomadic, secretive order of highway robbers notorious for gaining the confidence of travelers before ambushing, plundering, and sometimes killing them. Klitch plays a similar role as a patrol officer with the Idaho State Police, conducting pretext stops of drivers in order to search their vehicles for drugs or large amounts of cash. He does this in the tacit but provable hope of justifying the “forfeiture” – that is, the theft – of their vehicles and anything else of value he and his comrades can find.

A third-generation ISP officer, Klitch patrols an area laden with potential lucre, a stretch of I-84 in western Idaho bordering Oregon, where medicinal marijuana use is legal. Forty percent of all pot confiscated in Idaho is medicinal marijuana legally obtained in Oregon. Kendall Jeffs, a medical marijuana user who lives in western Idaho, describes the anxious trip home from Oregon as being akin to “crossing the Berlin Wall. It's like going into another country.”


Video and more at link: http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2014/06/high-desert-highwaymen-more-scenes-from.html

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OTeqXFMzdGQ/U6OkJNGyoUI/AAAAAAAAKhU/5NLFymM8RwU/s1600/HDDETF+Patch.jpg

[tod evans]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to phill4paul again.

Outta rep ...........:o

[ClydeCoulter]

Is it appropriate that an 8 ball is on one side of the balance on the patch?

[presence]

“put his hands under my bra, and brushed both of my nipples with the backs of his fingers. He already had my significant other in custody in the back of the police car. If I said a word, at the time, my man would probably still be in jail...and the way he did it – I can only assume he had done it before”


*self censored*

[Henry Rogue]

Ruled by Criminals.

The 68-year-old man, who had no criminal record of any kind, was helpless as Klitch and Christensen hijacked his truck, taking it to the “sally port” of the Payette County Sheriff's Office.*Roseen was told he was free to leave – but that his vehicle and property would remain in the custody of the violent armed strangers who had ambushed him. For several hours Roseen was held hostage while at least seven officers ransacked his truck and pawed through his property. Despite mangling and mutilating Roseen's belongings, no contraband was found.
Roseen survived the encounter with Klitch and his fellow thugs, but before being set free he was handed a ransom note in the form of a spurious citation for “inattentive driving” – an infraction Roseen supposedly committed by coming to an abrupt stop against the curb in the parking space after Klitch rode his bumper all the way into the rest area.
In entirely predictable fashion, the ISP has invoked the pernicious principle of official impunity – more commonly called “qualified immunity”– in*demanding that Roseen's lawsuit be dismissed. The trooper himself appears to have been ordered into*purdah: He has ignored**my*repeated requests for comment about his conduct during the encounter, particularly his decision to turn off the dashcam rather than recording what he insists was a perfectly legal and routine search of Roseen's vehicle.