Havre Drug Case Bungled

Well it appears that two of Havre’s finest got off scot free from last year’s drug charges. You may recall that the Corrector reported back in August of last year that two State employees were arrested for drug dealing and for not following the medical marijuana laws pertaining to the sale and distribution of medical marijuana. Lanie Fitzpatrick was employed by Child and Family Services and her sister Melissa was employed as a juvenile probation officer. Several illegal buys and turns of events led task force officer to be certain crimes were being committed and they made the arrests.

State District Judge Julie Macek dismissed all charges against both women. Gee ……. We must have been wrong about the poor girls and they were innocent right? The Havre Daily “News” reported in Wednesday night’s paper that:

“A state district judge Tuesday dismissed charges against two governmental employees from Havre, accused of violating the law while working as medical marijuana caregivers, ruling that the state committed governmental misconduct and overstepped its legal bounds in conducting the investigation leading to the charges.”

Well it seems that in order to catch lawbreakers our law officers think they themselves are above the law. The reason cited by the Judge for letting the sisters off was that illegal procedures were used in the sting operation. The undercover cop had an illegal fictitious drivers license he used to also illegally obtain a medical marijuana card.  But let a kid buy a cigarette while underage and they have that sting operation down to perfection so maybe they should stick to raiding convience stores and leave the drug enforcement to the Feds.

This whole story makes me wonder about our law enforcement drug team. If they had all these tips about the women dealing and the illegal sales why would they need to resort to Gestapo tactics like falsifying driver’s licenses and illegal searches?  It is no wonder we have a high rate of crime in Montana when everyone knows the law enforcement will screw something up and you will get off for most crimes anyway.

Does this mean that the girls get their tax funded state jobs back? Do we get to pay them back pay? What about the $27,000 in cash that was seized from the women during the raid? What about the kids these people work with? When I screw up at work and the customer brings something back they get a refund out of my budget. Will these officers refund the taxpayers for the costs of this investigation/raid/wasted court costs? NO……………… you guys will just pony up some more tax dollars so we can go to round two.

Havre Daily Corrector Aug 25-2010
Havre Daily "News" Aug 31-2011