Felonious Assault and Drug Smuggling

 What a day! Friday morning, when I was taking the elevator up to the Marshal’s office on floor 12, the US Attorney got in my elevator! He remembered me and we had a nice chat. At the office I finished up my fake license plates requests from Thursday. Then I decided to take a break and watch some sentencing hearings in court.

The most interesting sentencing hearing was for a twenty-five year old man. He was out on three years parole, after being imprisoned for a sex crime. He violated his parole three different ways. The first two ways were by not signing up for GED classes or attending Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, both of which had been court mandated that he do. In his defense he said he couldn’t afford GED classes and only missed CBT because it interfered with his work schedule. The third way he violated his parole was a little more ~serious~ of a violation.

The Ohio HIDTA Badge

One day, he was walking and he attempted to rob a 67 year-old man. The older man pulled out a knife and told him to get lost. A few days later he saw the old man at a corner store. Angered because of what had happened the other day he struck the elderly man with a beer bottle. The man had to get six stiches in his face.

When the judge asked him about the beer bottle incident (that the elderly man had reported to the police), the twenty-five year old said he didn’t use a beer bottle and gave the man six stiches with his fist. The judge was not interested in this story and said it seemed very unlikely that you could hit someone hard enough in the face to induce that amount of stiches. The judge also said regardless of weapon, a young man shouldn’t attack an older person, and that even without the bottle the crime would be considered felonious assault. He was sentenced to two more years in prison.

A Map of the biggest HIDTA agencies

After the sentencing, Susan (my mentor) took my on a field trip to the local HIDTA office. HIDTA, High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, is a federally funded program, existing (in every state) since the War on Drugs began. The office had crime analysts from all different bureaus: FBI, DEA, Marshal, Military, state police, and local police. What this team of people do is use their specialized skills to investigate international drug smuggling mainly via satellite maps and phone records. The Major who ran HIDTA talked to me saying that if I had interest in working for the federal government it was important to get as many various degrees as I could. This was so I can differentiate myself from the rest of the “bucket of individuals” applying for the same jobs as me.