Religious Rehab in Florida Sparks Protest About Mandated Florida AA Attendance

The Americans United Sarasota-Manatee Chapter has spoken out against the lack of secular (non-religious) treatment options for inmates at the Sarasota County jail.

We need more people and organizations to stand up and demand separation of church and state. To give inmates and citizens options in the Drug Courts and have probation officers step up to the plate and stop mandating Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. This practice continues in Daytona Beach,Palm Coast the state of Florida not to mention the entire nation.Let’s put in end to this unconstitutional practive now!

http://www.au.org/media/church-and-state/archives/2011/04/religious-rehab-at-florida.html

Lewiston AA Member Indicted On Murder Charges

Bob Ryder 21, pleads not guilty to murder charges after Androscoggin County,Maine Grand Jury indicted him for murder. Bob Ryder is a Androscoggin Alcoholics Anonymous member of Maine. He told his sponsor of the murder,yet the sponsor waited 2 weeks before going to police!

AA members keep secrets about the crimes of fellow AA members.Another sponsor eventually thought they should tell police.They were concerned with breaking anonymity. They might of only reported after being afraid that they would be implicated in the murder considering one sponsor gave Bob advice on how to cover up the smell of Danita Browns decomposing body in Bobs basement.

http://bangordailynews.com/2011/08/26/news/lewiston-auburn/21-year-old-lewiston-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-murder/

Detroit AA Member Pleads Guilty to Stabbing Man!

Fulk 30, pleads guilty to assault to do great bodily harm in connection with stabbing Detroit man. She let the judge know that she goes to AA meetings.

Well that should make it all okay,right? It would be nice to know which meetings she is attending! But wait-she will be anonymous, and no one will know unless she chooses to describe the horror story for all members to hear including and not limited to children present and encouraged to attend.

http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2011/07/woman_pleads_guilty_to_assault.html

Inmates Going To Outside NA and AA Meetings Escapes

Many inmates are allowed out on day passes to attend AA/NA meetings in your community ! Some escape and commit more crimes.

http://wvgazette.com/News/201103230625

Daytona Beach Florida Transient Wanted On Cocaine Charges

Alberta Pangburn, a transient is wanted for violation of probation for multiple drug related and prostitution charges. Alberta Pangburn is listed as having been arrested over 26 times in Volusia County Florida ! Another example of someone being failed by Narcotics Anonymous of Daytona Beach Fl. The judges including Judge Will need to realize mandated 12 step programs are not working out very well, and is against people’s constitutional right to be forced to attend religious programs.

Update– Alberta Pangburn has been arrested three times since this last bulletin.
That makes for a total of 29 arrests total. It would be nice to see her turn her life around,
but a playground is no place to have court mandated criminals going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings!
Name:

ALBERTA PANGBURN

Gender:
F
Race:
W
Age:
27   (on date of arrest)
Charges:
  • FLEE/ATT ELUDE W/LIGHTS SIREN ACTIVE
  • DRIVING W/LICENSE CANCELED SUSPENDED/REVOKED
  • OBSTRUCT OFFICER WITHOUT VIOLENCE
  • POSS/USE/ALT/ TO USE PERSONAL ID TO MISREPRESENT (FTA)

Man sent to Alcoholics Anonymous for 90 days for Felony Child Neglect

Raymond Dascott 56, Marathon Florida passed out drunk walking 18 month child in stroller. I am sure he would of been accepted with the poor child at the AA
meetings had he fulfilled that part of his probation.Like the child has not been through enough.
Deputy Colen found 56 year old Raymond Dascott on the ground. In the stroller was a year and a half old child. Also in the stroller: two Keystone Ice beers, still cold.

The deputy woke Dascott, who continued to lay on the ground as he was speaking. Dascott said he was “resting”. He said he’d gone to the Tom Thumb with the child and was returning home to his residence on 24th Street.

The child’s grandmother was located and came to the scene to take charge of the child, who was not harmed during the incident. Dascott was arrested and charged with child neglect.

Dallas Texas Drug Court Deals With Drug Cartel

 In Dallas Texas Judge Lela Mays is the Drug Court Judge who tells a woman to “check in with her higher power”. Then all of the ‘Cartel Customers’ are sent to AA or NA meetings to join the children and teens and other vulnerable members of society that do not know of their felony crimes with heroin, prostitution and crack.

Dallas court gives customers of the cartels a shot at redemption

Courtney Perry/Staff Photographer
Judge Lela Mays listens from the bench as she asks a woman in the S.T.A.C. (Successful Treatment of Addiction through Collaboration) program about her recent relapse during a session of Mays’ weekly women’s drug court.
 DIANNE SOLÍS

Staff Writer Published: 14 March 2011 11:07 P.M.

Call it the courtroom of the higher power. Magistrate Judge Lela Mays presides over sessions that unroll like therapy or an Oprah confessional, with zero tolerance for violations. There are nurses and exotic dancers, lawyers and waitresses, the unemployed and the prostituted.

Call the characters in this drama the customers of the cartels.

The docket overflows with drug addicts. Any failures here pump money to the cartels fighting violently for their business. Collateral damage for U.S. society is high. All the women in this drug treatment courtroom have been charged with felonies related to their addictions to cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, alcohol or some cocktail of those substances.

Rachel Fairbanks takes a front-row seat.

She’s a petite 23-year-old with swingy black hair and a diamond stud piercing her left nostril. The single mom’s cocaine addiction makes caring for her 4-year-old son, Nathan, doubly difficult.

Rachel must check in with her probation officer and come to this fifth-floor courtroom once a week, attend a Narcotics Anonymous meeting three times a week, and do community service that can include weeding along county roads or painting public buildings.

Two to three times a week, she’ll urinate in a cup under supervision — an undignified chore that assures she’s drug-free and that the urine is her own.She says jail would be easier.That was in May. In June, she slips up. She’s ordered to wear a narcotics patch for missing required meetings with her sponsor and getting behind in restitution payments.

Series of excuses

At a later session, Rachel is called near Judge Mays’ oak podium — perched at the diagonal for the best range of vision in this beige courtroom. Rachel swears the missing drug patch fell off.The 47-year-old judge is soft-featured, favors hoop earrings and is about Rachel’s height. Her presence leaves no doubt she commands this theater.

“Did you do community service?” Mays asks.

A stream of fast-paced, crisp excuses spills out.“No ma’am. My mom is out of town and I had to work my second job. … I had to work all weekend. I can do it next weekend.”Zero tolerance. That includes two weeks in a minimum-security jail for not wearing the narcotics patch.Another woman’s case is worse.

“How did that drug patch get positive?” the judge asks.

“I don’t know,” comes the answer. The other addicts roll eyes at each other, as if on cue. Peer pressure plays a big role in the court’s choreography of treatment.

“You tested positive for cocaine and amphetamines.”

“No?”

Mays sighs and looks unhappy. “This is the second person today who said, ‘I didn’t use.’ Y’all cut that stuff out. It doesn’t work.”

And that’s why so many days, Mays asks the women to check in with their higher power — a force affirming their path to redemption.

For some, that power seems to flow from spirituality, or inner confidence or the judge herself. She can spot a suspicious bruise at 20 feet, knuckle-bump when a struggling addict experiences success, and spin a drug user into lockup in such honeyed tones you barely grasp what’s happened until the beefy bailiff nears.

Uphill battle

Behind the courtroom, in her private chambers, Mays, a single mother of two, tells of visiting Ciudad Juárez. The Mexican city, across the border from El Paso, has the worst violence in Mexico. Cartels and youth gangs that assist them there were largely behind some 3,000 deaths in 2010. A fifth of all narcotics-related murders in Mexico took place there, according to the Mexican newspaper chain Grupo Reforma.

“People get caught up in the wave of violence,” Mays says. “If people knew there was a way out, they could do something positive with their lives.”

Repairing lives tied to drugs is difficult. To stay in the program that Mays supervises in Dallas, participants must hold a job or be searching for one. Living situations are scrutinized. Law enforcement checks are extensive.

Her courtroom stays filled. Although many regulars are end users of drugs from Mexico and Colombia, there’s been steady growth in prescription drug abuse. That mirrors federal surveys showing growth in nonmedicinal use of legal drugs over the last decade.

Some offenders who face Mays have drug offenses. Others have nondrug offenses. Federal surveys suggest a link.

In 2009, 56 percent to 82 percent of those arrested and tested with urine analysis had used some type of drug substance, in 10 cities surveyed by the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program run by the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The data is well-regarded; it’s based on physical evidence rather than question responses.

“People say: ‘I want to be tough on crime. I want to put people away,’” the judge says. “If you don’t deal with the drug problem, they come right back. … They educate themselves to be a better criminal.”

Treatment is harder than incarceration, she says. “It’s really easier to do three hots and a cot. But this holds you accountable.”The Dallas County drug treatment courts handle more than 400 cases at any given time in five court sessions a week.

Such courts have been in operation about two decades. Nationwide, there are about 2500 drug courts for adult offenders. But they see only a small portion of offenders; about 5 percent of drug-involved arrestees enter a drug court each year, said John Roman, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute, a think tank.Drug courts average a 10 to 20 percent reduction in re-offending, Roman said, adding that they provide $2.21 in benefits for every $1 in costs.

“Drug treatment courts aren’t a silver bullet,” Roman said. “But it is an important tool for the criminal justice system to use and probably to use more than we do.” Crucial to success is a judge who stays connected to the struggle of the addict, he said.

At the Washington Office on Latin America, another think tank, senior associate John Walsh calls for more attention to drug treatment. But “the heart of our policy remains arrest and incarcerate,” he says. Drug courts address the problem, but with eligibility requirements that tend to accept those who have no violent crimes on their records yet, Walsh says. “They weed out the more serious offenders … for whom the experience of a drug court could be beneficial.”The Dallas program will take those with violence on their record on a case-by-case basis.

Failures and phases

It was an odd courtroom moment. An aging addict named Carla singles out the youthful Rachel for her support. Rachel glows like a candle. Someone pats her on the back.Carla could have been her grandmother. She’s tall, big-boned, 60-plus years of age with a face that looks strained, perhaps by half a life spent in combat with cocaine.

Carla says she feels stupid, depressed and is tired of being sick.The judge tells her: “You have 35 years of addiction. You need to put in 35 years of recovery.”Weeks later, Carla disappears from the Monday courtroom. She calls Rachel.“Rachel, I have been smoking crack again,” she says.

As the weeks go by, there will be other failures. In February, Rachel lands in jail for violating probation. Mays, ever vigilant about affirmation, asks a certain addict at one session if she remembers a certain song with the lyric that goes something like, “We fall down.” The thin woman in a bubble-gum pink T-shirt and jeans eases out a melody fused with memory, lyrics that match her life.

“We fall down, but we get up. You can turn it around. … For a saint is just a sinner who fell down and got up.”This woman, too, will disappear in the weeks ahead.For those who keep coming for Monday sessions in the courtroom, there will be applause when they move through phases in the treatment program.

There’s applause when they land jobs. There’s applause when they celebrate an anniversary off drugs. Sometimes, it’s so noisy that other judges send bailiffs to quiet Mays’ fifth-floor courtroom. And each session ends with communal affirmation.“I believe in myself,” says Mays as the chorus follows.“I can do anything.“I am worth the good things in life. “I deserve every good thing that happens to me”.