You could not be more wrong if you tried. I happen to be one of the defendents, and I only have 3 kids, not 10, and I support them all as I am the only one working in my household. As for drugs, I haven’t touched them in over 20+ years. I don’t know where you get your “statistics” from, but maybe you should do a little more research before you run your mouth about things you know nothing about. I have been working since the age of 14, how about you? I served this country for 16 1/2 years, how about you? I helped defend your right to talk all this crap about me without even taking the chance to know me, and am proud of it. Did I make a mistake, hell yeah, but who hasn’t. As for being losers, I have never been, nor will ever be a loser, and I’ll be damned if I would let some ignorant person try to tell me any different.

I was a former Arizona Army National Guard recruiter, directly involved with former SSG Damien Castillo, the former SFC Darius Perry, Former SSG Raul Portillo, and also the informant Frank Arvizu who was also a member of the Arizona Army National Guard. Castillo, Perry, Portillo, myself to include SFC Doyle Morrison all of us worked together in the same recruiting office on Valencia Road in Tucson, AZ, I remember Frank Arvizu when he came to recruit me to work as what he described as working for the FBI, making money, but not on the Payroll. I asked him how can this be done, and he said our job is to set up dirty cops, border patrol agents, immigration officers and other law enforcement officials, He never went in details, but he gave me his name number and address hand written on a piece of Arizona National Guard memo note paper which I still have today. The address was in Yuma Arizona. As far as Perry, Morrison, Castillo, none of these soldiers displayed any facets or behaviors having to with drug running. For the first year I was assigned as a recruiter I drove the Government Car that was assigned to SFC Perry, often I would have to open the trunk and transport prospective applicants personal belongings, other than spare tire and associated equipment for the spare tire and recuiting materials there was nothing else in the trunk. None of these former soldiers of the Arizona National Guard presented any negative behavior that would be characteristic of Running Drugs. Our office enviorment was very close. One could not conceal very much working as closly as we worked. I find it very interesting that the FBI never contacted me concerning this case especially since I was so closley involved with at least three of their suspects. I even contacted the FBI and no one ever called back. I dont believe the Government was concerned about fairness or ethics as long as there was a 100% conviction rate. I dont believe the Government wanted any of these cases against all individuals concerned to ever come to trial, or else investigative errors would have surfaced. I know a good man was torn from his family, for a mistake that was made, yes by him, but in this case I do not believe the crime deserves the time, There was no drug cartel, the Government had to either use confiscated drugs or purchased the drugs with tax payer money. I remember when Perry introduced me to Fank Arvizu, we were both told that this was an operation to catch dirty law enforcement officials.
Some one did flip as the investigators accurately described it, but it was not those arrested or presently serving time.
It was the Government. I would like my voice heard in defense of my friend

I don’t understand why these people are going to jail for such serious amounts of time when in every case it was their first offense. When the government determined the size of the load as well as the location, and when the drugs never made it anywhere.

It makes no sense. In No way did these people SEEK to do this. It was presented to them in a malicious up manner, and there are situations where the people refused to do the runs but the snitch blackmailed them into doing it, as well as blackmailing them into “recruiting” people.

I think it is retarded that the government did this. They wasted our tax money for such an unintelligent operation, and are sentencing people who just needed some cash and did something stupid. There are people judging them all over the world and no one knows the whole story because it didn’t go to trial so special circumstances never came out.

The judge wanted to “Make an Example” of these people, but the stupid part is most of these people were in no way connected to drugs before or after the event, and the ones that were connected were very deep in the operation and snitched out their friends to get themselves off. They only received probation. So what is the government saying with that. They are stating that if you know people who deal/traffic drugs then it is ok to deal/traffic drugs only if you roll over on your friends.

Where as the other people either wouldn’t roll over on someone or didn’t know anyone to roll over on because they were NEVER connected to drugs in any way before. That is the stupidity of the whole thing.

Why don’t they do this in a rich white community in nebraska or somewhere. Those people are useless anyway. They targeted the poor minority.

Some crap people were sentence to prison but a lot of very decent people were ripped from their families, children, friends and loved ones because the government wanted to say they did something great that wasn’t great at all.

In essence this whole sting was set up by the government by corrupt people to corrupt people who weren’t corrupt to begin with. They were just living their life day by day and working hard to make a decent living then the government came a long and shit on their doorstep. In all cases the person who recruited them was very familiar to them and in all cases this was their first offense.

I would like information on who to write and who to pester to plea against this insanity and get at least one of these people out of prison.

In all of my life I have never been so disappointed with my government and its allocation of its assets.

They literally wasted millions of dollars to ruin decent peoples lives. and spend more millions housing them in jails for no reason.

I wish more people read this column. So that they could know what really happened. It is my hope that someone can veto this whole stupidity because it is something that should never have existed. I would like to tell people not to judge any of these people from only the things they read because they don’t know the whole story. I am 100% sure that none of you know the true story but you just sit here and judge in your ignorance. From only what the federal government wanted you to know because you live your lives from what TV and newspapers make up because they want you to feel the drama and the oooh and the ahhh.