Eidinger, who is known for his outspoken liberal views, is meeting with lawyers this afternoon to establish a plan of action against what he believes was an "unjust" and "political" raid. He wouldn't say for the record what the political reason for the arrests might be. Police seized $3,000 worth of inventory including tobacco paraphernalia and computers in the stores.

MPD spokesman Araz Alali says the arrests were part of an ongoing investigation, and wouldn't answer questions about why Capitol Hemp was raided and other hemp stores weren't. Police had warrants to search the locations, Alali says.

The blitz has caused both stores to be shut down today, but Eidinger claims both locations will be open tomorrow and resume regular store hours.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

By April, they'd intercepted 104 kilograms of khat supposedly headed to Shuremu from the U.K. in the mail. Cops got a search warrant and raided Shuremu's business, where they say they found 36 more kilograms of khat. Shuremu was arrested without incident. MPD referred to him as a "a major drug traffic dealer." They said his arrest had taken $95,000 worth of khat off the streets. But on July 19, after prosecutors requested the action, Shuremu's case was dismissed without prejudice. Prosecutors can refile, but a month later, there's no sign they will.
A bitter tasting leaf popular among East Africans, fresh khat delivers a buzz that makes people euphoric and talkative after chewing it. Though no one is quite sure if khat does anything more dangerous than stain teeth, it was outlawed in the United States in the 1990s. Reportedly, that hasn't stopped it from being popular among D.C. cab drivers.

So why, after all the hubbub MPD made, is Shuremu walking free? Shuremu's lawyer and the U.S. Attorney's Office declined comment on the matter, and an official inquiry to MPD has so far gone unanswered. But a police source close to the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because he didn't have permission to discuss the investigation, says it's simple: No one knows crap about khat.

"They couldn't find an expert to testify at the trial," he says. In drug trafficking cases, a law enforcement expert  usually testifies about the drug in question and how criminals distribute it. According to the source, MPD doesn't have a local khat expert. In such a situation, the Drug Enforcement Agency's Washington Field Office is sometimes tapped, but DEA spokesperson Melissa Bell says khat use isn't a "broad-based" problem ("It's more a cultural thing," she says) so the DEA doesn't have an expert on hand either.

That would seem to be good news for any burgeoning khat cartels. Quick, start selling—before the authorities figure out what's up.

Photo by cliff1066™ via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0 Generic

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk publicly about the case, says that's the day cops intercepted a package containing about 8 gallons of GHB addressed to a former Georgetown student who once lived near campus. The student graduated a year ago, according to the source. The graduate insists to police he knows nothing about the package, the source says. Police haven't arrested him. Cops watched the package for awhile, but no one ever came for it.

The source says dealers often send drug shipments to addresses that don't belong to them: "They track it online and they know when it's going to arrive." Once the package is delivered they scoop it up before anyone catches on. But what's odd about the GU case is that the dealers "usually use fictitious names."

GHB, which has a legal use as a prescribed sleep-aid, can be made by amateur chemists. Though it has a reputation as a "predatory drug", it's also used recreationally, traditionally by clubbers. The Drug Enforcement Agency says liquid GHB "sells for $5 to $25 per cap." Though that's a vague quantity, eight gallons of GHB would obviously turn a tidy profit.

Georgetown University spokesperson Rob Mathis emails that campus officials have "no knowledge of the incident." A call to the director of the university's Department of Public Safety wasn't returned. We've put in a request to MPD command for more information.

This wouldn't be the first time Georgetown has had a run-in with illicit chemicals, though. In October, two students (one from Georgetown and one from the University of Richmond) were arrested for manufacturing the hallucinogen DMT in a dorm room. The two freshmen admitted to concocting the drug, but told a judge that it was just an experiment and that they had no intention of  becoming traffickers. They were given probation.

Mathis says the "use, production and transfer/distribution of illegal drugs are issues we take very seriously. University policy strictly forbids the possession, use, transfer and/or sale of illegal drugs, which are violations of the student code of conduct, as well as local and federal laws."

Photo by Kyle Rush via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

You'd think that since David Simon's The Wire portrayed how instrumental police wiretaps are in taking down drug operations, the subterfuge—which can be employed after cops obtain a court order from a judge—would have worn itself out. But in the D.C. area, 29.5 kilos of cocaine authorities seized last week says it hasn't.

The seizure was a product of a lengthy operation that started in January. That's when court papers say FBI and Metropolitan Police Department investigators got up on William Bowman's cell phone under the Title III Interceptions law, which allows for wiretaps that have to do with serious criminal offenses. It's not clear how Bowman became a target.

In any event, documents say that back then, Bowman began using his phone to chat up multiple individuals, telling them he'd be able to supply cocaine in "the near future."

In February, according to papers, Bowman, who lives somewhere "in Southeast," began calling around again, this time to arrange meetings "at different locations in the vicinity of East Capitol Street and Benning Road."

Listening in on and watching Bowman for four months, authorities say they became privy to conversations between Bowman and some people he allegedly did business with, like Gezo Edwards (aka Zo), Robert Richards, and Willie Moorer. They also became privy to where they'd hidden some drugs—at a storage facility on Kenilworth Avenue in Hyattsville, Md.

Authorities mounted a camera in the facility, and on April 25, FBI agents spirited away the drugs.When, the next morning, Bowman discovered he'd been cleaned out, he went for his trusty cell phone again.

He called up Richards and Moorer and told them to get to the storage facility, say papers. They came, and Edwards "arrived a short time later." The gathering soon found itself in cuffs.

A law enforcement source says the seized drugs are worth millions. A pistol and an AR-15 Bushmaster assault rifle were also found in the storage facility. Lawyers for the defendants didn't immediately return calls.

It was a huge victory, says the law enforcement source, and the wiretap figured heavily into it. The source says despite shows like The Wire, dealers are still keen on using cells: "The problem is we've become so dependent on them" as a society at large. But he also says particularly savvy criminals know something else you can pick up by watching Simon's TV show: "The bad guys know there are wiretaps, but they also know how difficult they are to get."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Adams Morgan, January 26

Arbeit Macht High: Probably just about every day, some dopey American college student visiting Amsterdam stumbles into the Anne Frank House tripping their face off on mushrooms, only to discover that nothing harshes a buzz like genocide. (Years ago, this happened to some friends of ours, and if they're reading, we hope they're still ashamed.) A few Stafford County, Va., high school students on a field trip to the District learned the very same lesson yesterday, as two were taken to the hospital with a drug overdose while visiting the National Holocaust Museum. What would possess someone to get high before visiting the Holocaust Museum is hard to imagine, but remember: Just say no to drugs. And Nazis. -1

School's Out: Every kid has had the dream—they're on vacation, only to learn that their school has burned down and they never have to go back! It very nearly happened today for students at the Takoma Educational Center in Ward 4; a three-alarm fire seriously damaged the school, which was, fortunately, mostly empty, winter vacation having started earlier this week. And sorry, kiddos: You will probably go to some alternate location next month when you return to classes. -2

So Fresh, So Clean: Cross off yet another reason for your snooty New Yorker friends to look down on the District—online grocery delivery service FreshDirect is planning to expand to D.C. soon, challenging Giant's PeaPod service. The e-tailer is looking to raise $200 million to start operations here (most of which it will probably make back within a few weeks of delivering organic grass-fed brisket). Yeah, yeah, we know, the subway still runs all night and Metro doesn't. +3

Peace Out, Feds: Every national elected official from members of Congress to President Obama is clearing out of town, leaving just us locals around for the holidays—with a full 1/6 of the U.S. House skipping out on the final votes of the busy lame-duck session today. We don't want to stir up too much trouble, but it would be an opportune moment for Almost Mayor Vince Gray to stage a coup d'etat and occupy the White House as Obama heads to Hawaii. ¡Hasta la victoria siempre, D.C.! Let's seize those voting rights while we can! Or at least put the "taxation without representation" license plates on the presidential limo. +2

Yesterday's Needle rating: 57 Today's score: +2 Today's Needle rating: 59

But the two GU freshmen and campus visitor who were arrested Saturday for setting up a DMT lab in a dorm may have also had something a little lamer than a mind-blowing hallucinogen on hand: Fake pot.

According to a police source, though Charles Smith, John Romano, and campus visitor John Perrone were arrested in connection with DMT, what cops found along with chemicals like acetone and naphtha were several ounces of K2, a synthetic cannabinoid.

Legal for now, K2 is basically an herb sprayed with a chemical that mimics the effect of all-time-funnest chemical THC, which is found in marijuana. DMT and marijuana are sometimes mixed.

Originally, rumors flew that the secret lab was meant to produce meth. That might have been because some of the chemicals discovered could be used to manufacture the notorious drug. But that was before one of the three arrested admitted to cops that the lab, some of the parts of which were kept hidden in a suitcase, was meant to produce DMT.

The lab was discovered when campus police got a tip that drugs were being sold from room 926 in Harbin Hall. Besides chemicals, dry ice, mason jars,  and what might be DMT, they found about $1,300 in an envelope, according to the source. The source adds that Perrone, whose car yielded more evidence, is suspected of being the chemical mastermind behind the operation. (Which is to say, Georgetown's chemistry department may need to step it up.)

The drug case has been transferred to federal court. That essentially implies that Smith and Perrone (prosecutors aren't pursuing a case against Romano) are in serious trouble, and are unlikely to get a mere slap on the wrist.

If it turns out GU had its very own drug kingpins, maybe that has something to do with our current economic slump—the school is ranked the 15th most expensive in the country.

It was an interesting choice for a man who had grown up under heavy law-enforcement scrutiny. He'd spent more time sitting before a jury as a defendant than he probably ever did in school. He almost always walked away a free man. Most famously, he'd been tried for the same murder four times; every time, the jury hung. I wrote a particularly overly poetic cover story on Moore after the fourth hung jury. (No editor should ever tell me to "go epic.") His last case, a federal drug and conspiracy case, he beat in 2006. I popped in during the opening statements and saw Moore again at the defendants' table. He looked old, maybe even tired.

During our curbside reunion, Moore said he was also working on a documentary about his life. I assumed he wanted to set the record straight; he particularly hated the hype around him. He didn't like being celebrated as a thug or killer that got over. He saw himself as a victim of injustice and police overreaching. He gave me his number. He wanted help with his documentary.

So it was a little shocking to see the words "Teflon Defendant" appear on A1 of the Washington Post this weekend.

This time Moore had been stopped in Takoma Park for allegedly drinking in public. After he was caught, police claim they found a whole lot of cocaine. Later, officers found in Moore's apartment a gallon of liquid PCP, a loaded Smith & Wesson, a semi-automatic, and $44,000. Like every other arrest, Moore appears to be in some serious hot water.

Of course, as soon as I finished reading the Post story, I already started thinking up Moore's defense. For one: I don't think Moore drinks. It seems implausible that Moore would be walking around with a bottle of booze. He always styled himself as not your average alleged criminal. He always made sure to dress well. He is a strict vegetarian or vegan. He seemed good with his kids. He saw intoxicants as distractions, or worse.

In the Post piece, Moore's attorney assured that his client would be vindicated. I don't doubt it.

Photo Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

What do you do with your old, expired medications? Flush them down the toilet, right? Out of sight, out of mind.

But you probably shouldn't do that, as the chemicals will make their way into the local watershed. Which means you may eventually encounter them again—in stranger, and more disruptive, forms.

The problem is complicated. Even if everyone stopped flushing medicine down the drain, our own natural flushing, so to speak, will send those chemicals into the local watershed anyway. Sewage treatment plants can't filter out things like endocrine disruptors, a class of synthetic chemicals that "either mimics or blocks hormones and disrupts the body's normal functions," according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"We are finding these chemicals all over the place," Beth McGee, a senior water quality scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, told me last month. "It’s only been in the last 10 years where they have been looking for these chemicals. The next question is what they’re doing. What are the impacts at low levels?"

Seven years ago, male smallmouth bass in the Potomac River and its tributaries upriver from the District were discovered to have eggs in their testes, causing scientists to wonder if it was "the canary in the coal mine" to a much more serious problem. After all, the nation's capital draws its drinking water from the Potomac, but there isn't enough evidence to say for sure what's exactly going on. There are theories, though, including sewage, livestock waste and pharmaceuticals like birth control pills that are thrown down the drain.

Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, D.C. Water advises customers to avoid flushing prescription medicine into the local sewage system. But there's never been a coordinated public effort to curb drug-flushing habits.

So what can you do? On Sept. 25, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency is holding its first-ever "National Take-Back Initiative," where people can turn-in prescription medications and other controlled substances to help curb their illegal use by those who are not supposed to have them. While the DEA is not pressing the water-quality concerns related to prescription medicine, the local turn-in events are a good way to keep drugs out of the wrong hands and out of the local watershed. The DEA will be incinerating the turned-in medication and won't be flushing them down the drain.

Click here to find turn-in locations, including those at Metropolitan Police Department district stations.

Officer Robert Elliott was patrolling the Sursum Corda neighborhood, described in court papers as "a densely populated residential area known to him for high drug activity and gun violence," when he noticed a group of men standing on the corner, several of whom the cop recognized as having prior drug-trafficking arrests, according to court papers.

As Elliott passed by in his cruiser that December night, a teenager, identified in court papers as T.L., called out to him, "Hey Elliott, what's up?" The officer got out of his car and approached the teen. Everyone else on the corner promptly split. "You got any drugs or guns on [you]?" the cop asked, according to court papers. To which, the teen replied, "Yo, Officer Elliott, you know me. I ain't got no drugs or guns....Go ahead and search me."

The officer graciously accepted his invitation, removing two large "wads" of cash from the teenager's coat and pants pockets. The officer explained that he was seizing the money because "it was a high-drug trafficking area and it was a large amount of currency to have on your person," according to court papers. The officer also said he would place the cash "on the book" at the police station and the teen could "possibly" get it back if he could produce a pay stub.

The teenager began yelling, "They're taking my money....I got that money working at McDonald's," and loudly calling for his mother to come help him. Court papers indicate "some ten to fifteen people left their townhouses...to see what was happening."

The officer considered it "very dangerous" to attract a crowd–"especially in Sursum Coda," according to court papers. He later testified that suspects sometimes incite crowds to divert and overwhelm police in order to escape.

Elliott arrested the teen for disorderly conduct. A subsequent search of his person turned up 24 zip-lock bags of crack cocaine hidden in his pants.

At trial, the teenager's lawyer tried to suppress the cocaine, arguing that police lacked probable cause to arrest him and later moved for acquittal on the disorderly conduct charge "on the ground that he did not incite the crowd of onlookers or threaten to occasion a breach of the peace," court papers show. A trial court, however, found the teen guilty on both counts.

The appellate court today disagreed, noting that "yelling for help or screaming in fear or outrage when one is being (or has just been) robbed...on a residential street in the middle of the night may not be unreasonable....[Y]elling at the top of one's lungs to rouse the surrounding populace and obtain relief would not amount to a breach of the peace as we understand that term."

The court further noted, "We cannot overlook the fact that Officer Elliott had no right to take [the teenager's] money when he did. [The teen] may have consented to be searched, but he did not consent to the warrantless seizure of the cash he was carrying in his pockets....[M]ere possession of cash, 'even a lot of it,' did not give the officer probable cause to seize it (or to arrest T.L.)"

Both guilty counts have been reversed. "Theoretically," according to Thursday's ruling, "the government is at liberty to retry T.L. on the drug charge, but it will have to do so without the cocaine seized from his person in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights."

It turns out that when your uncle's a guru, he acts a little weird. He sits on a bed with the writer in silence, smirking. But I think the weirdest part in the piece comes before he joins the Hare Krishnas:

He thought about suicide, got kicked out of school and spoke of moving to Nepal. "Where did I go so wrong?" my grandmother, who still lives in Germany, wrote in her diary back then. One afternoon, terrified of losing her connection with her son, then 17 or 18, my grandmother, a good Lutheran, sat with him at the kitchen table and got high on LSD.

Emphasis added. Can you think of anything wilder than doing acid with your mom? No word on how her drawings skills were affected.

Speaking of drugs, police officers in Montgomery County discovered a drug operation Friday after being called to investigate a noise complaint. After the partiers refused to turn down the music, officers checked out the apartment, where they found $15,000 in weed, Ecstacy, and PCP. They also found a one-year-old child in a closet, which is much less fun.

Fatal Fall

Senior Jenn Choi said she was walking back to South Hall when she and her friends found a male sprawled out on the grass in Guthridge Park.' As we were walking along the way we saw this guy who was face up on the grass and we thought maybe he was just drunk and we kind of looked to see if he was ok,” Choi said. “But then we realized he was erratically breathing and that his wrist was swollen and he had cuts on his arm, and then we realized we had to call 911...'

Though he was whisked off to the hospital, Hubbard was gravely injured and didn't make it. A high school buddy of Hubbard's, Timothy Bartsch, tells City Desk in an email that he played soccer and lacrosse with the deceased: "He was a great kid. very smart, the type of kid that would do anything for you," says Bartsch.

And You Wonder Why She Only Dates Mature Guys: Montgomery County police report that a teenager sexually assaulted an older woman after she rebuffed his advances. The assault happened on May 1 in the 1200 block of First Street in Rockville at around 1:30 p.m.: "An adult female victim was walking from the Metro when the suspect approached.  He said he was sixteen years old and the victim told him she was twenty-one years old and he needed to move on. The suspect touched the woman inappropriately and fled towards Gude Drive."

To Catch a Bike Thief: Crackjack bike thieves may be on the loose on Capitol Hill. A member of the New Hill East email discussion group, Marika, writes on May 15 that, despite the fact that her condo has an attendant, a video camera, an automatic door,  four expensive bikes were stolen from the building's garage:

"Each bike had both a Kryptonite lock and a heavy chain lock. The thief knew exactly what he was looking for — he only took the valuable bikes — and came equipped with an industrial blow torch or a diamond saw, which according to the police is the only way to remove all those locks. So beware, there are professional thieves on the lookout for bikes on the Hill as well as the regular opportunists."

Now, that's Really Disorderly: A man tried to grab a police officer's gun on May 14, at around 2:15 a.m. in the 1200 block of Connecticut Avenue NW. Cops say the officer was attempting to interview the suspect in reference to a report of disorderly conduct: "That's when the suspect became combative and attempted to take the officer's issued service weapon." The officer subdued and arrested the perp.

Tune In, Turn Up, Cop Bout: At approximately 11:08 p.m. on May 14, cops Ebony Richardson and Cosandra Carr showed up at a house in the 3000 block of Brinkley Road in Temple Hills, Md., in response to a loud noise complaint.  They asked the occupants of the house to turn the music down, and they did. But before the officers got to their car, the volume went up again. When the officers returned to the house, the officers were allegedly assaulted. Backup soon arrived and eight people were arrested.

According to police, the armed suspect entered the java joint in the 2200 block of Georgia Avenue NW and (instead of specifying tall, grande or venti) demanded cash.

The man fled after the crime, but police caught up with him. "A subsequent search resulted in the recovery of a weapon, a bag used in the commission of the crime, and drugs," writes Lt. Alberto Jova in an email.

The same coffee shop was robbed on March 22 as well, around the same time. Cops don't yet know if it's the same perp.

LL covered the possible arrival of medical marijuana here in his column a couple of weeks back (a column that was widely read for other reasons). LL had tried to get in touch with Barr, now a libertarian political activist and presidential candidate, for the story, but didn't connect with him in time.

But now, via a Libertarian Party press release, we have his feelings on the matter.

The House vote last week, Barr says in a statement, "represents an important step in the direction of individual freedom and properly limiting the power of the federal government."

Just so you don't get the wrong idea, Barr doesn't mention the essential propriety of smoking marijuana in his comments, for medical use or any other—just that the federal government has no business telling states and their citizens how to regulate it.

It's not time just yet to celebrate/consult your doctor—the measure still exists in the Senate version of the budget, and its fate is likely to be decided in conference committee.

Full statement follows:

Last week’s vote by the House of Representatives lifting the 11-year old prohibition on the District of Columbia from taking steps to pass and implement any measure decriminalizing or legalizing the sale or use of marijuana in the District, represents an important step in the direction of individual freedom and properly limiting the power of the federal government.

“While I in fact sponsored the initial appropriations limitation in 1998, the years since then have witnessed such a dramatic increase in federal government power and an unprecedented decrease in individual liberty, especially since 2001, that I have come to realize that such limitations as the so-called “Barr Amendment” are not and cannot be justified. It has become necessary to reevaluate the power of the federal government that I and others once were able or willing to justify, and do what we can to roll back the tide of government control.

“I have applauded also the indications by Attorney General Eric Holder to begin easing federal efforts against individuals in states that have moved to decriminalize or legalize the use of marijuana, and the fresh approach to the federal anti-drug effort as articulated earlier this year by Gil Kerlikowske, Director of the Office of National Drup Control Policy (the so-called “Drug Czar”).”

Photo by Joeff Davis—Creative Loafing