Inmate Sentences May Be Getting Reduced

This is good news for those of you who have family members locked up in prison. The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a sweeping overhaul of the criminal justice system, after a remarkable political shift from Republicans who voted in large numbers to save money by reducing prison sentences, handing a rare bipartisan victory to President Trump.

The First Step Act passed on a vote of 87 to 12, with dozens of Republicans, including longtime holdout Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), joining all 49 members of the Democratic caucus to approve legislation that even some GOP supporters fear could leave them vulnerable to charges of being soft on crime.

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“This will keep our communities safer, and provide hope and a second chance, to those who earn it,” he wrote on Twitter. “In addition to everything else, billions of dollars will be saved. I look forward to signing this into law!”

The product of years of negotiations, the legislation represents a major pivot for the GOP, which decades ago embraced a law-and-order rallying cry and war on drugs campaign as crucial to winning votes. But as crime rates have dropped and states have pursued cost-effective ways to cut the prison population, Congress has favored changes to the system, with GOP lawmakers arguing for rehabilitating some offenders rather than longtime incarceration.

The bill would revise several sentencing laws, such as reducing the “three strikes” penalty for drug felonies from life behind bars to 25 years and retroactively limiting the disparity in sentencing guidelines between crack and powder cocaine offenses. The latter would affect about 2,000 current federal inmates.

It also overhauls the federal prison system to help inmates earn reduced sentences and lower recidivism rates. A different version passed the House this year, so the House would have to pass the latest draft before it can be sent to Trump for his signature. The House is expected to endorse that bill when it comes up for a likely vote later this week, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has expressed support for the legislation.

The bill, which does not cover state jails and prisons, would through reductions in sentencing do the equivalent of shaving a collective 53,000 years off the sentences of federal inmates over the next 10 years , according to the Congressional Budget Office — though some advocacy groups dispute this figure. There were about 181,000 federal inmates as of Dec. 13, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

The bill received a major boost last month when Trump endorsed it as “reasonable sentencing reforms while keeping dangerous and violent criminals off our streets.” His thinking was heavily influenced by his son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, who has long advocated sentencing restructuring and marshaled endorsements of the bill from a diverse coalition including law enforcement, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

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Dr. Dre TV Series Rejected

Dr. Dre

Dr. Dre's TV plans hit a bump in the road. On Saturday (Sept. 22), the Wall Street Journal reported that Vital Signs, which is a semi-autobiographical drama Dre produced for Apple, was rejected by Apple CEO Tim Cook for being too violent.

Apparently Cook saw the six-episode series himself before telling Interscope Cofounder and current Apple exec Jimmy Iovine that the show featured too much violent content. In addition to gun violence, the show also includes scenes with cocaine use and at least one orgy. Neither Dre nor Cook have spoken about the show's apparent rejection.

Vital Signs was originally announced back in the winter of 2016 and it's been revealed that Michael K. Williams, Sam Rockwell and Ian McShane were stars on the show. At the time, it was reported that each episode of the series was supposed to be "focusing on a different emotion and how Dre's character deals with it."

We may not be getting to see Vital Signs, but at least more of Dre's handy work will make its way into the world soon.

Offset Talks Kim Kardashian Being President

Kim Kardashian's flirtation with political activism has Offset's support. In an interview today (Sept. 6) with TMZ, the Migos member praised the reality television star's advocacy for criminal justice reform.

"Hell yeah, I fuck with that shit. I've been through that shit," Offset said in response to a question about Kardashian's work. "To be able to have a second chance? That's one hunnid."

The rapper, currently touring on Drake's Aubrey and the Three Migos Tour, faces charges in Georgia for an improper lane change, possession of marijuana, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon and possession of a weapon after being pulled over in a traffic stop that his attorney has called "racially motivated."

TMZ's inquiry seems to be inspired by Kardashian's recent meetings with Donald Trump, whom she's now lobbied to free two people in prison, including Alice Marie Johnson, whose sentence for cocaine distribution and money laundering was commuted by the president in June after the 63-year-old woman spent 23 years in federal prison.

Kardashian reportedly returned to the White House yesterday (Sept. 5) to seek a pardon for Chris Young, whose 2010 arrest for marijuana and cocaine possession led to a life sentence in maximum-security prison. Young is one of around 3,800 individuals currently serving life sentences in the United States for drug offenses, according to the Buried Alive Project.

"He’s had to have a few surgeries and he’s been in a medical facility for a few years, and he goes back into the maximum-security prison where lifers have to go. And he’s had a perfect record," Kardashian told Jason Flom’s Wrongful Conviction podcast.

Major Drug Tunnel Discovered

A tunnel was discovered on August 13, after the owner of the former KFC, Ivan Lopez, was pulled over by the San Luis Police Department. A canine unit alerted officers to two toolboxes in Lopez' truck. Inside the boxes, authorities say they found 118 kilograms of methamphetamine, six grams of cocaine, three kilograms of fentanyl, 13 kilograms of white heroin, and six kilograms of brown heroin.

A tunnel that stretches from a former Kentucky Fried Chicken in Arizona all the way to a home in Mexico was discovered last week by investigators, who believe the secret passageway was used for drug smuggling, KSWT reports.

Earlier that day, Lopez was seen removing toolboxes from the old KFC. He is the owner of the building that once served as the fast food restaurant.

Agents executed a search warrant at the former restaurant and Lopez's residence. When investigating the old KFC, agents found the entrance of the tunnel in the kitchen area. It is eight inches in diameter, 22 feet deep and extended 590 feet long, HSI officials said. It ends at a residence in San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, Mexico.

At the Mexican side, the tunnel exited through a trap door underneath a bed. Authorities believe the narcotics being smuggled through the tunnel were being pulled up with a rope.

Honey C Drops Off New Album - 'Wildfire' @QueenHoneyC

Toronto's own Honey C, an artist formerly known as Honey Cocaine, is finally back. We haven't heard from Honey since she last released 'Curveball'. The release comes as a relief for the artist as well. Honey opened up to XXL about the struggle she rose above to complete the project.

For the past 3 months, fans have been bumping to her music video for empowering anthem called "No Time" and are primed to welcome her EP with open arms.

DMX Placed On House Arrest

DMX

TMZ reports that the multi-platinum rapper, real name Earl Simmons, got an earful when he showed up for his bond hearing on Friday, August 11, 30 minutes late. DMX is out on bond in his tax evasion case, but isn't making it easy for the judge not to throw him in jail.

He's allegedly failed four drug tests for cocaine and marijuana. In addition, X violated another condition of his bond by leaving New York City to take care of some family matters in St. Louis, without getting court permission first.

DMX is currently facing 14 counts of evading more than $1 million in federal taxes. If convicted he could be sentenced to 44 years in federal prison.

French Navy Seize $322M In Cocaine

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission worked closely with French Authorities to foil the plot. They believe this was organized by the South American crime syndicate. The ACIC had this to say.

"Congratulations to the Marine Francaise and Gendarmerie Nationale for their efforts in relation to this record seizure of cocaine." A record breaking 1.464 tons of cocaine was seized near New Caledonia on July 27 along with a crew of four who are believed to be Lithuanian and Latvian.

Drug Dealer's House Gets Raided Live On Facebook

Breon Hollings is currently behind bars on numerous drug-related charges stemming from the Thursday [June 1] bust. Followers of the 22-year-old dealer got to witness the moment drama unfolded for him, as he smiled in celebration of his earnings. 

Young Thug - Free Blac Youngsta

Young Thug releases a new track for Blac Youngsta. He was probably high off cocaine sitting on his throne as a boss. Blac Youngsta turned himself in this Tuesday.

Middle School Teacher Busted

In one of the larger drug busts in Hall county's history, Georgia Police raided the home of Karla Alvarez earlier this week and seized over $6 million worth of cocaine and heroin, along with multiple firearms. Alvarez, who is a Spanish teacher at Chestatee Middle School Academy in Gainesville, lived in the home with Monica Pascual Brito and her brother Ricardo Pascual Brito.

Georgia authorities seized one kilogram of heroin, 61 kilograms of cocaine, and two semi-automatic assault rifles from Alvarez's home. Worth an estimated at $6.2 million, the raid came at a heavy price for the two women after being charged with trafficking and possessing with the intent to distribute cocaine and heroin. Both women are also facing two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. The third suspect, Ricardo, is facing the same charges and is currently on the run.

Is Rapper Zed Zilla Still With CMG?

The Rapper/Native from Memphis, Tenn name Zed Zilla as a known rapper with Yo Gotti's label Cocaine Music Group. Even though recently the fans been wondering is he still making hits or mixapes the last that he put out was Rent Due 3 and Time To Eat 2. An exclusive interview on Noise In Memphis speaks on the updates of Zeds status. Noise In Memphis exclusive speaks on the facts.

TWUM Talks Lima, Ohio

The Wrap-Up Magazine is a family residence at 742 West Wayne Street in Lima, Ohio. The website brings your worldwide entertainment, new, event, celebrity, news, and more. It is home and music hub to Lima, Ohio producer Gansta Marcus who goes by the stage name of Nieman Marcus. Take a look at news, music, and more out of the city of Lima.

The new Lima, Ohio football stadium will be receiving a new name. The newly renovated Lima Stadium will also be getting a new name, Board of Education members decided. The board members chose the name Spartan Stadium, a name they feel will create even more school pride...More (CLICK HERE)

Gang Member Enters Police Station Armed

Baltimore police officers are on heightened alert after they disarmed a man who took a loaded handgun into a police station. Police said Jason Armstrong, 29, told them he was acting on orders of the Black Guerrilla Family gang.

They said he walked into the Northeastern District station on Argonne Drive near Morgan State University shortly before 9 a.m. smelling of marijuana. Officers searched him and found a .22-caliber handgun with a bullet in the chamber, marijuana and cocaine.

Police said he told officers he had been ordered by BGF leaders to walk into a police district station with the gun and drugs to test police security. Armstrong was taken into custody and faces narcotics and gun charges, police said. His charging documents had not yet been posted to the state’s online database Tuesday night, and neither he nor an attorney could be reached for comment.

Batts said he plans to convene a meeting with “federal partners” including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to discuss the Black Guerrilla Family. Baltimore FBI spokeswoman Amy J. Thoreson said the agency has offered Baltimore police any assistance it can provide.

In early December, police union officials in New York circulated information they said they received from a Maryland police department that the gang would target its officers. Batts, asked about the warning during a Twitter chat with residents at the time, called it an “anonymous hoax.”

The Baltimore FBI office later issued a memo saying the gang was targeting “white cops” in Maryland. The memo said a gang contact claimed that BGF members linked to the corruption scandal at the Baltimore City Detention Center wanted to “send a message” by attacking white officers.

Bobby Shmurda Pleads Not Guilty

Up-and-coming rapper Bobby Shmurda appeared in a New York City court on Thursday (Dec. 18) to face charges he moonlighted as a gun-toting member of a street gang that was behind several shootings, one fatal, during turf wars over drug trafficking.

Shmurda (real name: Ackquille Pollard) pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $2 million bail at a hearing in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Bobby Shmurda Arrested After Long-Term NYPD Investigation

The Brooklyn-born Pollard is best known for the hit song “Hot Boy.” He also put out a music video that popularized a dance craze called the “Shmoney dance,” and reportedly signed a lucrative record deal.

His attorney, Howard Greenberg, said his client had been falsely accused.

“Does it make sense that he would resort to committing crimes when he has the world in the palm of his hand?” the lawyer said outside court. “It’s ridiculous.”

Police arrested Pollard on conspiracy, reckless endangerment and gun possession on Wednesday after he left a recording studio near Radio City Music Hall in midtown Manhattan. Police found two handguns and a small amount of crack cocaine in a car in which he was riding, authorities said.

Anatomy of a Hit: How Bobby Shmurda’s ‘Hot Boy’ Came to Life

An indictment naming Pollard charges more than 15 defendants with a variety of crimes including murder, attempted murder, assault and drug dealing. Police seized 21 guns during the investigation, 10 of them while making arrests on Wednesday.

The court papers allege that Pollard fired a gun toward a crowd of people outside a barber shop in Brooklyn earlier this year. They also say he was present last year during a confrontation between rival drug gangs outside a Brooklyn courthouse where shots were fired.

The evidence includes several recorded phone conversations, including some between Pollard and gang members serving time on Rikers Island, the indictment says. The gang used code words, referring to firearms as “tone” and “socks,” narcotics as “crills,” and shootings as “sun tan,” it says.

During a conversation on April 28, Pollard bragged, “I am two socks Bobby right now,” the indictment says.

A “Hot Boy” video posted on YouTube in August has been viewed tens of millions of times, and Pollard performed the song for a national television audience this month on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

“My music is straight facts,” Pollard recently told New York magazine. “There are a lot of gangsters in my ‘hood.”

Pollard’s criminal history included two arrests for gun and drug possession, authorities said.

Cocaine And Money

Cocaine comes from a natural plant grown deep in the jungles of South America. To bear fruit, farmers plant the plant that make cocaine; then the plant is picked and processed for distribution. The shimmering white colored powder cross over transnational borders and eventually find its way around the world where hordes of users sniffed it up into someone's sniffing nose or shot into a user's veins. Cocaine can either make you poor and weak, make you do the unimaginable, make you wealthy--or it can even take your mind on weird trips. As Rock Star singer Rick James once said, "Cocaine is one helluva drug."

But it is no secret that selling cocaine on a grand scale can bring filthy riches to a player in the dope game. Cocaine prices vary but profits are enormous for a heavy hitter depending where the dope is sold. Narcotic analysts explains that illegal drugs like and cocaine and heroin cost much less where it is produced. Worldwide, prices can range from $2 a gram in Panama to over $300 per gram in New Zealand.

According to U.S. law enforcement, Colombian national police, and Foreign narcotic experts, a wholesaler can buy a kilo of cocaine straight from the jungle in Colombia for approximately $2200.00. At Colombian ports, wholesale prices for a kilo of cocaine average between $5,500.oo, and $7,000.00. DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) officials has reported over the years that cocaine prices increased exponentially once it leaves production and transferred to markets in the United States and foreign markets. Actually, as the report points out, the farther away, and the more isolated the drugs are from different countries the higher the cost for dealers and users.

 For example, Central America cocaine cost $10,000.00 per kilogram, and in Southern Mexico that same kilo sells for $12,000,00, unless a broker make an agreement to reduce the price based on multiple kilos of cocaine. Notice the much higher price between Central America and Mexico. After cocaine is transported into Mexico City area, a kilo is worth approximately $16,000.00 near the border town of Northern Mexico. Depending on the location in the U.S., wholesale on the streets average between $24,000.00, and $27,000.00.

Coca (a substance made from leaves that actually make cocaine) is one of the oldest, potent, most dangerous stimulants of natural origins. Australian world renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who once used cocaine himself became the first to publicly promote cocaine as a tonic to cure depression and sexual impotence.

Around 1886, the popularity of the drug got a higher boost when maverick John Pemberton mixed coca leaves as an ingredient in his new soft drink now known today as "Coca Cola". Effects from consumers sipping coke only skyrocketed Coca-Cola popularity during the 1900s.

Back during the 1600s, people chewed coca like tobacco. In the 1800s, cocaine earned the distinction as a popular mind altering substance to get high on among the upper-class people in Europe. If history correct, Pope Leo XIII gave papal endorsement to a coca-treated Bordeaux wine. During 1850s' an Italian neurologist named Paolo Manteganza, became so addicted to gnawing on coca leaves until he wrote excitedly about the effects.

Leader Of Gulf Cartel Arrested

Gulf Cartel leader Juan Francisco Saenz-Tamez was arrested on October 9, 2014, while shopping in Edinburg, Texas, authorities announced yesterday, when Saenz-Tamez made an appearance in a Texas court on drug trafficking charges. His ascend to the top is further proof that the Gulf Cartel is in a steady decline after the imprisonment of many of its leaders.

Cop Busted Cocaine Trafficking

A Queens police officer who once won his precinct’s “Cop of the Year’’ award has been busted on cocaine-trafficking charges. Officer Philip LeRoy, who works in the 114th Precinct, was nabbed just before midnight Monday in Sunrise City, Fla., with two other men while allegedly buying 10 kilos of cocaine.

LeRoy — the son of a retired detective — allegedly drove from New York with the intent to buy drugs in the Sunshine State and had his off-duty weapon on him at the time. LeRoy, 28, was charged with felony weapons possession, cocaine trafficking and conspiracy to traffic cocaine, according to court records. His bail was set at $250,000. He is in jail awaiting formal charges to be brought by state prosecutors, which could take up to 21 days.

18 Pounds Of Liquid Cocaine Bust

A man tried to dupe JFK Airport security into thinking he was only bringing in a few bottles of South American booze after arriving in New York from Guyana — but it was actually liquid cocaine he was carrying. Atlanta resident Wilton Sinclair, 35, thought he had officials completely fooled when he arrived in New York on Nov. 17 with four big bottles of purported “El Dorado” rum in two duty-free bags.

Before to boarding his flight to New York from Georgetown, Sinclair had allegedly secretly filled the 1.75 liter glass containers with nearly 18 pounds of liquidized cocaine, which officials later estimated to be worth more than $300,000. But his scheme fell apart when he presented the bags for inspection to US Customs and Border Protection agents.

Customs officers noticed that the liquid in the bottles had an unusual chemical odor and that it was a “thick syrup-like substance inconsistent with rum. The substance tested positive for cocaine — what amounted to 8 kilos, or 17.6 pounds, with a street value of approximately $310,000, officials said. Sinclair was arrested and charged with federal narcotics smuggling.

Honey Cocaine - Curveball

Honey Cocaine decides to drop her brand new visual for Curveball directed by Elliot Clancy-Osberg. This track will be featured on Honey Cocaine upcoming mixtape titled  Like A Drug, which is due out a few days from now.

Ty Ft Chelsea Davis "These Voices"

Chelsea Davis releases new music featuring Lima, Ohio rappers TY, and Nieman Marcus titled "Voices." Dmkrecords of Russells Point, Ohio made the beat.

Chelsea chorus kicks off "I cover my eyes, I cover my ears, I don't want to hear these voices. Im fighting these demon."

Ty jumps in and "I'm constantly, battling thoughts off in my brain. To maintain, it makes me go insane. Pull the strap out, let it bang. Everyday its the same thang, Hoes be screaming my fucking name. Phone be blowing up from the cocaine.

Nieman Marcus finished the track with "Tell the devil get up off of me. Money coming in like its pose to be. Brod giving head while she on her knees, got me crew strapped up like a clover G. I got the demons in my ear, but aint seeing me. I got the haters talking down, aint worried B.