After a long investigation, Munich police have arrested two leaders of a Croatian-based crime ring responsible for up to a fifth of all burglaries committed across Germany. The investigation into the criminals began in January 2016, when German police witnessed a group of three young women skillfully break into a home in the Munich suburb of Lehel. The crime ring was reliant upon young women, who were less likely to be seen as suspicious and less likely to receive harsh jail sentences in the event that they were caught.

According to Reinhold Bergmann, the commissioner for organized burglary crime, these women were traded among the families of the crime ring, often through marriage, and were forced to commit the robberies against their will. Police arrested twenty of the young women used as “worker bees” by the crime ring in Munich, as well as two mid-level gang members in western Germany. The women and girls who worked for the organizations were trained to say that they were teenagers upon arrest, presumably so that they would be tried as minors, but it remains to be seen how many truly are teenagers as most of them have forged identification documents. Details about how these young women were recruited into the organization are still unclear but those that were married into the family (rather than those who were blood relations) may have been victims of human trafficking. This organization was built upon home burglaries but their operations appear to reach much further and deeper than the stereotypical mafia clan.

Detectives arrested members of the group in northern Spain this July and the arrests this week will chip away at the organization, but there are believed to be dozens of other “tentacles” of the group still operating in Belgium, France, Italy, and beyond. Millions of dollars worth of property has been stolen in Germany, much of which seems to have been funneled into the mansions in Croatia where the police found the two leaders this week. Some small items including jewelry and watches were recovered in the mansions, but the majority of the stolen property will never be returned.

This week’s arrests are a feather in the cap of Munich’s police department but they also raise questions about exactly how powerful this organization is. No doubt police forces from multiple countries are working together but it is difficult to share information across time zones and language barriers, especially when so few details about the scope and reach of the organization have been revealed. Hopefully these arrests will be the first in a larger chain but for the moment, Germany is the only nation that seems to truly be effectively combatting these crime families.

Jillian Sequeira

Jillian Sequeira was a member of the College of William and Mary Class of 2016, with a double major in Government and Italian. When she’s not blogging, she’s photographing graffiti around the world and worshiping at the altar of Elon Musk and all things Tesla. Contact Jillian at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post The Story of the “Worker Bees”: Key Arrests in Germany’s Largest Burglary Ring appeared first on Law Street.

A police officer in Seattle was arrested last Friday on charges of conspiring to distribute hundreds of pounds of marijuana. According to the FBI, which has been investigating the trafficking scheme since the summer of 2015, Officer Alex Chapackdee would drive pot from Seattle to Baltimore and other neighboring cities in Virginia and Maryland.

A preliminary hearing for the 44-year-old is tentatively scheduled for May 22, but that hearing could be canceled if the grand jury returns an indictment in the case.

.@SeattlePD officer Alex Chapackdee described as ‘good, caring cop.’ Now facing drug charge. More reaction live at 6:30 @KIRO7Seattle pic.twitter.com/xqaRwLoakS

— DeborahHorne (@DeborahKIRO7) May 8, 2017

Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole called Officer Chapackdee’s conduct “disgraceful and disappointing” in a statement Monday.

“While [it is] always disturbing to investigate one of our own, I am proud of the detectives and commanders who worked diligently on this case,” the statement said. “While he will have his due process in the courts, I hope these charges demonstrate to our community that SPD will not tolerate corrupt behavior in our ranks.”

The federal complaint detailed the trafficking scheme that Chapackdee was involved in. While driving in police vans, Chapackdee and others would allegedly deliver hundreds of pounds of marijuana from the Seattle area to Baltimore and other surrounding neighborhoods in Virginia and Maryland. The mules were working on behalf of Tuan Van Le, Chapackdee’s brother-in-law and ringleader of the trafficking scheme.

Trafficking any amount of marijuana across state lines is considered a federal offense. If convicted, Chapackdee faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison, with a maximum stint of 40 years. He could also face a fine of up to $5 million.

Federal prosecutors allege that Chapackdee and his associates–a team of four–took several one-way flights from Seattle to Baltimore’s BWI airport in order to pick up cash payments for Le’s Seattle-grown marijuana, which they then drove back to the west coast.

According to the FBI’s complaint, Le would also pay Chapackdee $10,000 a month “to keep an eye on all of Tuan Van Le’s marijuana grow houses” and to provide him with information about law-enforcement activities.

Chapackdee’s attorney said that his client’s participation in the marijuana trafficking scheme is a “huge fall from grace, an embarrassment.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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This was a fun week for weird arrests–full of drugs, more drugs, and drunk escorts. Read on to see the top five strangest and weird arrests of the week.

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Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Weird Arrests of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

If you ask most Americans when slavery ended, they would probably answer…well, most Americans probably wouldn’t know. For the more informed citizen however, the answer would likely be in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, or more accurately still in 1865 with the passage of the 13^th Amendment, which explicitly outlawed the practice in the United States. Both of these answers are incorrect, however. That is because even today there are an estimated 60,000 people living in slavery in this country. Furthermore, according to the same Washington Post article, worldwide that number balloons to a staggering 30 million people, with those in less developed countries being much more susceptible to the illicit practice. To fully comprehend how this heinous enterprise–that most presume is finished–can still exist and worse yet thrive, it is necessary to first understand something very fundamental: What exactly is modern day slavery?

Slavery as an Institution

History 

Slavery began at the birth of civilization and has continued in one form or another since then. The foundations of western culture were built on the backs of slaves as both Greece and Rome relied heavily on their human machines. This continued in Europe after the fall of these empires through the dark ages, the renaissance, and reformation. It was also a central aspect of colonialism and imperialism.

But while Europe and by association its colonies, which had slaves before Europeans arrived, may have the highest profile accounts of slavery, the practice was global. In the Middle East slavery was already in place at the time of the ascendancy of Muhammad and continued from the seventh century until the twentieth.  In fact it wasn’t until 1982 that Mauritania became the last country in the world to publicly abolish slavery. Even with this ban, Mauritania is still the country where citizens are mostly likely to be slaves, with about four percent of the population being classified as such.

Slavery was also an established institution further east. China, one of the oldest civilizations, had slaves for thousands of years. It wasn’t until the 1950s when the last acknowledged slaves could be found in isolated mountain areas. Slavery was a major institution in India, as well.

Even in Africa slavery existed long before Muslim or European slave traders arrived; however, unlike those two groups, African nations rarely imported non-Africans as slaves. Regardless, while the means and exact roles of slaves in society may have differed, in virtually every corner of the globe slavery has been an ingrained practice for millennia.

Modern Day Form

Thus the concept of slavery strictly being a product of the antebellum American south is inaccurate, but the reality of it being a global issue is not. Furthermore, the definition of slavery today is also not some stretching or reclassification of the accepted term. Modern slavery means being owned and controlled as property by another person through either physical or mental threats. Slavery can take many forms. Some of the most common forms include forced prostitution, forced agricultural or domestic work for adults and children, and families being forced to work for nothing in order to pay off generational debts. While these are modern forms of slavery they are also traditional, in fact the only thing that has changed is how slavery is seen publicly, namely if it is seen at all. Below is a video that describes further the conditions of modern day slaves.

Those Most at Risk

Throughout history slave groups have often been made up of people for a specific reason such as ability to work long hours, exotic appearance, a particular type of skill, or as a result of conquest; however, slaves today are increasingly likely to be found at the margins. This is in stark contrast to when slaves were well-known members of the household and in certain cases in old Islamic Caliphates could have children that one day might even aspire to the throne.

In this way then slavery has changed most dramatically. Long gone are the public slave auctions. Instead today slavery is a much more under-the-radar practice of a group on the fringe of society. This group often includes children or migrants who are either tricked or forced into slavery when they are young or if they move.

The problem can be exacerbated by a number of other factors, as well. Ethnic divisions is one example; a historical legacy left by imperialists in sub-Saharan Africa has led to one of the highest rates of slavery in the world. Another is wealth or more accurately the lack of it. In Haiti, for example, children may be sold into unofficial slavery by their parents as a means of income. Yet another is cultural; in India–the country with the largest estimated slave population at roughly 14 million–the legacy of the caste system remains and can prevent authorities from preventing cases of slavery.  The video below offers a greater breakdown of the victims of the modern day slavery system.

First Responders

Thus there are many factors to consider that have led to the continuation of slavery worldwide. There have, of course, been many efforts globally to end the practice. Currently in every nation on the planet there are laws on the books forbidding slavery.

The problem is though that these laws are ineffective. To combat slavery then, the mantle again rests on non-governmental groups as it has since the first abolition movements. Since the passage of laws forbidding slavery is no longer the end goal, this patchwork of groups now has its sights focused on other means of ending this practice.

Steps to Freedom

Probably the most important step to ending slavery is raising awareness. While this may seem naïve or practically unhelpful, slavery today is a forgotten issue. To many it is a battle that has already been fought and won and thus no longer bears consideration; however, as these groups stress, to the forgotten 30 million people who struggle under the guise of slavery every day, it is still an urgent issue. Furthermore while the value of a modern day slave is hard to calculate by anyone other than the owner, the fact that slavery exists shows that certain people or groups are profiting off of it.

Along this same vein, once awareness had been raised it is also crucial that governments are required to actually enforce their anti-slavery laws. This could include creating an agency or task force specifically charged with finding and preventing slavery as other agencies such as the FBI or FEMA exist to handle specific problems.

Once awareness and enforcement have been improved it is also necessary to cultivate the people who were formally slaves. This means providing food, shelter, and teaching basic skills to people who often had nothing else to turn to and became slaves out of necessity. This would also help prevent a reoccurrence of these individuals falling prey to the same crime again. Below is a video that highlights some of the things that can be done to combat modern day slavery.

These steps and actions are already being implemented by these groups. In fact, the United Nations has already spoken of some success with governments more strictly enforcing their laws and businesses enacting tougher measures that would prevent the enslaving of workers at any level of production. However, as a practice that has existed for thousands of years, slavery will not just vanish overnight. Thus, it will take time and additional resources; however, without solid and immediate gains combined with an existing general lethargy, slavery is likely to endure.

A Problem With No End in Sight

Although slavery has been and is still a global problem, the suffering is not equal. A person in a developed country with a high per capita income is less likely to be a slave than his or her opposite. Furthermore in wealthy countries, slavery has long been taboo. Many western countries for example began abolishing slavery in the early nineteenth century. Thus countries with the greatest ability to end the practice may feel the least inclination to do so.

While there are many solutions to the slavery problem, so far none has gained enough traction to bear much fruit. While groups in the West and other places come to grips with the consequences of the slave societies of their past the same trade is still being employed right under their noses. Although slavery today may not be as much of a concern as it used to be, for the people affected by it is as real as it has ever been. While the correct way to stop slavery remains elusive, what is important is that the continued existence of slavery be at the very least acknowledged. This is vital because only after admitting slavery is still a problem can it then be addressed.

Resources

Primary

U.S. Constitution: Thirteenth Amendment

Additional

Washington Post: This Map Shows Where the World’s 30 Million Slaves Live. There are 60,000 in the US

New Internationalist: A Brief History of Slavery

National Geographic: How We Can End Slavery

Slavery Injustice: Slavery in Ancient China

UN News Centre: UN Officials Urge Concerted Action to Eradicate Modern Forms of Slavery

Anti-Slavery: What is Modern Slavery

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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