Undercover students used in drug busts at UW campuses

[neversickanymore]

Undercover students used in drug busts at UW campuses
September 14, 2014
Sean Kirkby/Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

WHITEWATER – Moments after Javonni Butler was busted for selling marijuana in 2011, he says, police officers offered him a deal: Buy drugs to help convict others, and they would "sweep this under the rug."

Officers had just arrested Butler, a University of Wisconsin-Whitewater student and then-Whitewater city council member, for selling what court records describe as small quantities of marijuana twice to another student wearing a recording device.

He faced two felony charges that each carried a maximum of three and a half years in prison and a $10,000 fine and a misdemeanor count of marijuana possession. His arresting officers, Butler says, warned that the charges would "ruin my life."

Butler declined.

In October 2011, he pleaded guilty to one felony and one misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to 45 days in jail. He was suspended from all UW System schools and lost his eligibility for federal financial aid. And, because the state's constitution bans convicted felons from holding public office, he was forced to resign his seat on the city council.

Butler, 25, is still angry, saying students are being pressured to become informants to avoid the consequences he faced.

"It's just pitiful, it's disgusting," Butler says. "They pretty much put kids in a spot until they have no choice but to snitch."

Continued with graphs http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com...tudents-used-drug-busts-uw-campuses/15635993/

 

[S.J.B.]

Some of those arrest rates are insanely high. What a sick system. It works well, too: because the consequences in the U.S. are so heavy for drug crimes, it's much easier to break someone's integrity and get them to rat someone else out.

 

[neversickanymore]

It works well, too:

Not well enough to make a positive difference

 

[S.J.B.]

But Stephen Richards, a UW-Oshkosh criminal justice professor, says student informants often turn in their own friends and "they've made lifelong enemies when they do that."

He knows from experience. After being arrested for conspiracy to distribute marijuana in 1982, Richards was asked to become an informant. He refused, was sentenced to nine years in prison and served three.

What an inspiring way to bounce back in life.

 

['medicine cabinet']

Hah seriously...seems like such a waste of money. Undercover students at college? Of course there are going to be drugs there its college, but why the hell do they even deal with the probably piddly amounts they would find.that's money that could be used to solve a cold case and give a family closure, or to catch a rapist, or anyone else that commits violent crime against others. Busting kids for drugs in college is like shooting fish in a barrel.

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

A lot of universities have narcs or undercover cops on them who are students, or are posing as students.

Usually though, they only go after the people who are selling, making, or growing very large amounts of drugs. Or people who are selling drugs from a legit local business that's a front, and leave the students who have small amounts alone. At least it was like that at the large university I attended.

You would hear about or read about very large busts where people who were either students or who lived in the city got caught selling, making, or growing large amounts of illegal drugs. Or people who would sell drugs to people out of the business they owned, or from where they worked.

But they would leave the students alone. They're not all bad though. When I was at a university and a few times when I drank too much and would black out, and go to other bars and dance clubs and keep drinking they would watch out for me. Or when a friend of mine drank too much and walked home one of them asked him if he was OK.