I am somewhat alarmed by the naivete of our police force. We take 'em fresh out of high school, put them through police school and fill their heads with a thousand different laws to enforce, then spit them out to enforce them- unaware of how the other half lives. Reminds me of several COPS episodes where they're busting the car that's pulling away from the known crack house not bothering to raid the crack house itself! I have believed for a long time that if you're caught by the police for anything, the beef is between you and the court- the policeman is just the middle man connecting A to B. Are we institutionalizing a police force of elitist, ignorant individuals? I believe to go from beat cop to say, detective, you need "street time"... you need time to see how the world really works... that every detective has his share of ghosts in the closet from the job. One time many years ago I saw a policeman in the street navigating his way through street traffic. I stop my car and kept it stopped, waiting for the cop to "do what he has to do" to get out of harm's way. The cop turns around and sees I have an expired inspection and pulls me over! The gall! I could have simply been another driver passing by, instead I stop and get stopped as a result. Luckily at that time I had several officer friends and was quickly able to talk my way out of it, but it always stuck with me- the cop was missing the point. Am I being too Ron Paulish? Am I expecting too much from an institutionalized service such as the police force? Or are the cops robocops patrolling the street looking for infractions? How about another level of police force like a reserve force full of rookies, with detectives doing the actual policing?? Are you happy with your local police force or do you expect more (or less)?
You mean even more taxes to be collected to pay even more money to put more people into prisons that cost even more money to build and operate? How much do you want to spend to get the bad guy off the streets? I'd say make sentences longer with no parole or time off for good behavior would do a better job of keeping those bad guys off the streets and cost less money. Today we have a revolvoving door policy, the bad guys serve little time then get sent back out to do what they did before. That , to me, is the tracvesty of justice that we have not needing more police but tougher sentences and longer jail times. As an example a child molester can get from 10 to life but if they were to get 25 minium to life without any parole that would help reduce the numbers of child molesters allot without spending more money.
I didn't imply that at all. Just that the same bad guys end up back on the streets within months usually when they should have been away years. By just slapping the bad guys wrists when they do wrong they don't learn anything but keep then in prison for years then they at least won't bother society for a much longer time and let the cops fight others that impede society not just booking the same ones over and over.
Yeah- anyway... my point is: what if we had a higher level of policing to where the murderers and rapists are caught and everyone else gets a free ride? What if the police actually did their job! Course you want everyone with a roach in their ashtray to be tried, right? Yet you don't want to add anything to the deficit, right? Riiight! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! HEY- have you gone here recently? http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=104937
Planning - like finding out the the legitimacy, optimal time, coordinating man force etc. Police do bust crack-houses, but you can't just walk into one and go rambo. You are right, that is terribly wrong. You should have pulled him over first and confessed.
I've already commented about that by saying that any pot found under an ounce should be treated as a misdemeanor and a fine only imposed but anything greater than an ounce then that would be a much higher fine and jail time depending upon the amount over an ounce. Like a kilo of pot you'd be facing a max of 5 years and a fine as an example.
I say bring back the Rubber hose and the feild trips that the police used to take criminals on. And the way I see it if you dont break the law in any way then you do not have a problem. As far as pot or anything illegal goes if you have it no matter if it is a single leave or a semi trailer full the penalty should be the same. There is too much gray area today this is why criminals get away with what they do.
...and if they keep jailing potheads at current rates, by 2020 1/2 of Americans will be in prison and the other 1/2 will be guarding them. What is fun is that every one of us in the US breaks some law somehow pretty much every day. If we all got busted for that right now and sent up, we could reach the above 50/50 Police State by 2012. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I'm of libertarian bent on drugs...we have lost the drug war, we should surrender, standardize, and tax. Locking people up is not effective or financially tenable. I advocate using the drug tax for the purpose of creating rehab clinics instead of locking up people for drug offenses. Then maybe the police would have time to stop people from burglarizing my house? ...And I want to make heroin/cocaine dispensaries as much like county medical clinics as possible, the shots only to be taken on premises, only to be administered by nurses...I can attest that county medical clinics are as about as depressing and unromantic a place as anyone can imagine. Hard drugs would have the romance taken right out of them, I tell you.
Pity you never had the chance to observe drug usage back when you could go to any chemist to pick up some opium. The laws changed because some weak willed people got to the point of spending every penny they had on their next hit, this meant they would sit on street corners begging, suffer various ailments and diseases due to their poor diet and health and otherwise be seen to degrade society as a whole. That was the basis of change, obviously in American history you had prohibition that stemmed from these fears of a decadent society. To make drug usage legal and to just place taxes on it would just place people back onto the streets, since there would be no laws to clean them up.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but those folks are already out there on those streets, many due to the closure of state mental institutions. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! No, around here they do that to the wrong address in the middle of the night...blew away a young fellow in his bed next to his new bride when he reached for his bedside pistol after they busted in the door and charged into his bedroom on his wedding night. They do seem to miss out on the crack houses though....and they don't seem to notice those groups of young fellows hanging around on the corners either.
Ah but there is attempting to find aid when you are in dire need and then there is being institutionalised because it's easier to hide you away an not have people observe the burden that failures in society are to blame. After all this thread is on the subject of Cops and they can often have a lot of complaints launched at them for not being nice, for being fascist, for abusing the position of law enforcement. In the days of state mental institutions it would only take one phone call to have men turn up in a van with nets to drag you away, and that phone call might not actually be based on sanity it might be due to a disagreement, it might be to undermine a potential inheritance, it might even be to undermine your political clout. As you might be dragged screaming obscenities and kicking, it would just confer the violent and insane nature of your disposition and likely make sure you wouldn't see the light of day for many years. (You could probably refer this to a westernised "Gulag" or Non-labouring labour camp, obviously to "not labour" doesn't imply that a person isn't used as a guinea pig for any number of sadistic medical experiments. While assign the Non compos mentis label and presiding doctor can sign off with the legal right as a Guardian would a child because you aren't in a fit state of mind to make decisions for yourself etc.) My point of the streets being littered with what is termed by those of self-imposed hierarchy as being "undesirables" is that with the absence of law making the decision of when enough is enough, people are left with just their own moral reasoning and willpower. Drug's undermine willpower, so there is never enough which would cause a greater degrade in the situation.(Moral reasoning goes through the floor too, after all people steal and murder to just get a hit) So the law remains and remains needing to be enforced if only due to "The needs of the many, out weighing the needs of a few".
The Detroit Free Press and News, also on all of the local tv stations when it went down. They got the right house number but the wrong street. Not the only time it happened either. Same Detroit PD beat a friend of mine into $13,500 hospital bill because he ran his big mouth at them and they had the power. He was accused of cheering too loud in the bleachers at a Tigers baseball game. 5 big Detroit cops vs 1 small unarmed guy, took him onto a room and closed the door. When they asked him if he knew what they were going to do to him, he replied that there were 5 of them and they were all big black guys, there was 1 of him and he was a little white guy who was handcuffed, he figured he was getting dry - gulched. He was right. They beat him with night sticks then kicked him while he was on the floor, still handcuffed. Then they dragged him to the stadium gate and threw him into the street. Sometime later a passerby found him unconscious and bleeding, called 911. He sued, they stalled with court games for many years, he got reimbursed for the hospital bill. No action was ever taken against the cops. None of our crowd ever went to another Tigers game either. I have a former 'friend' who was a local cop. He took great pride in busting local residents for doing 26 mph in a 25 mph zone - bragged on this to me on several occasions. When a road - rager passed another motorist in a no passing zone, cut him off, stopped his vehicle by blocking the road, hauled him out and beat him up in the middle of the street in front of about 20 witnesses, that same cop just let him go because he didn't want to bother with the paper work. I saw him do that myself, he told me that. The folks who called the cops on that incident couldn't believe he did that either. Now, that same jerk cop is on the town council. Since he was the police union negotiator our police dept has really got it made in contract issues, pay and perks. No, he does not recluse himself nor does the rest of the council make him. They are all just as dishonest and unethical as he. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 67% of cops who are involved in drug cases or related issues end up as participants in the illicit drug trade. (Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It, Gray, Temple Press 2001) I myself have had a cop 'run up' my highway speed by roaring up behind me at a high speed as I passed another vehicle - a favorite trick of our state police. You see them coming at high speed behind you in an unmarked car so you speed up to get out of their way...and get a ticket for your trouble. Now, I slap on the brakes for that crap, give them something to think about. I have a bunch of similar incidents as well - a bogus ticket in Ohio for having Michigan plates Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! one in Wawa Ontario for having American plates. Both were issued for speeding despite that I wasn't. When I was young a local cop began ticketing me for "speeding" whenever he saw me despite that I wasn't. The last ticket he gave me, he was real pleased, said this time you are going to lose your license. He was wrong, I had had enough of his crap and took it to court. He never even showed, never even looked at me again.... Yeah, there are many reasons to become a cop, some of them are not so virtuous. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
