Sheriffs protest fed drug-war fund cuts

[OneAngryDemocrat]

Source: Michigan Live

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — From Arizona to Oregon and east to Kentucky, county sheriffs are bracing for stiff cuts in a federal funding program that has helped them battle drug cartels.

The Bush administration has argued that the program should end because crime is down and the money is needed elsewhere. That assessment clashes with reports from many states of record hauls of drugs, especially methamphetamine and marijuana, and increased activity by drug gangs.

"If we don't get some funding back we'll be in deep trouble when it comes to drug enforcement," said Iowa drug enforcement chief Gary Kendall. He said 85 percent of the state's new cases last year were by county interagency drug teams that get Byrne grant money, but the funding cuts will reduce those agencies' employees from 59 to 20.



Read more: http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/national-100/1203789543153440.xml&storylist=national

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"The Bush administration has argued that the program should end because... the money is needed elsewhere."

Yeah... it's needed elsewhere: Iraq.

:(

Please visit my anti-war website, www.shockedandawful.com

[sasquatch]

1. Oh shit, those guys will have to get real jobs now

:D

[OneAngryDemocrat]

2. We are...

We are a nation of laws, sir. We are NOT barbarians.

If you advocate CHANGING some of our laws, do so by all means!!!

But please don't mock your neighbors who serve their community in law enforcement.

They are husbands, wives, daughters, and sons.

They are also tax payers, and citizens.

They protest the war, and they, as reservists, also fight in it.

They keep your family safe at night.

Please visit my anti-war website, www.shockedandawful.com

[sasquatch]

5. Who're you talking to?

:shrug:

[Warren Stupidity]

7. My guess was you. nt.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. The War On Some Drugs is complete bullshit and you know it.

Bad laws are bad laws. The Prison-Industrial-Complex funded by the WOSD is as much a problem to what remains of our republic of free citizens as the Military-Industrial-Complex funded by the bullshit GWOT is. The corruption and corrupt practices associated with the WOSD are legion. When our military is tasked with defending our borders and our police are tasked with maintaining public safety, they will get all the respect they deserve. Until then both the military and our militarized police forces are part of the problem.

I know, 'sport da troops' and all that crap.

[The Croquist]

14. My brilliant idea on legalizing drugs

Lets start with pot:
Smoking pot is legal but only in certain areas. Make it the same as alcohol combined with tobacco. You can drink booze in bars, on your property and in certain locations. You can't walk down the street and drink unless they (you know who they are) say it's OK. It's also like the lottery. Gambling is wrong unless the government makes money on it.
Growing your own pot is illegal. We will keep it illegal to protect minors. That and because we want to tax the crap out of it. Kind of like why we arrest moonshiners (I'm a moonshiner).
You can only buy pot in a government owned store by presenting ID to prove you are of age. If you get caught selling it you go to jail. This is to protect minors and because we want to tax the crap out of it.
The government grows pot on farms (possibly prison farms). That way we teach prisoners job skills, protect minors and because we want to tax the crap out of it.
We sell pot at the going rate that it is on the street now. This is to protect minors and because we want to tax the crap out of it.
Anybody caught growing their own, selling it or buying it from a non-government owned store goes to jail. This is to protect minors and because we want to tax the crap out of it.
If you get caught smoking and driving it is a crime just like booze.

We can argue about what to do with the revenue and whether or not the states should get a piece of the action (I mean revenue)

Bottom line:
Fewer drug dealers not paying income tax
More government revenue (100 billion a year more?)
Fewer people getting arrested for no good reason
Less money getting moved overseas
Fewer kids getting pot (I think)
Less people in jail
Less police expenses

[DiverDave]

18. TAX THE CRAP OUT OF IT...BRILLIANT!

Maken me laugh with the down low...it'll work, just tax the crap outta it...hmmm, bumper sticker?

[OKthatsIT]

28. Nahhh...the CIA need the money... to stay underground

Ask GHW Bush, Sr., the CIA Drug Lord of the 60's Flower Children, the cocaine traffic of the 70's, 80's, 90's, 2000's and the Afganistan heroin pipeline.

Drugs fund Black Ops. Black Op authorities(Banksters) control Congress, with money or gun to the head.

Tax it? GOOD LUCK!

[Mythsaje]

10. Mock, mock, mock, mock...

Jack-booted thugs DESERVE to be mocked.

I'll stop with the mocking when they learn to stand up for the PEOPLE rather than oppressive, regressive laws designed to lead them into war against the American populace. I OPENLY mock the drug laws, as I do the terror laws, because they're part of the same thing. An excuse for the powers to criminalize thought and speech.

I'll stop with my mocking when they stop their assault on the 4th Amendment, and stop stealing from the people by legal means by way of "asset forfeiture." When they stop depending on "confidential informants" and stop bursting into the homes of law-abiding citizens at 3 in the morning on the word of people just trying to save their OWN skins. When innocent people are no longer killed because of no-knock warrants and sudden assaults by armed intruders.

Don't lecture ME about the laws, and the cops. I wish for them to find enlightenment, but I know of those who wish on them a much worse fate.

The drug war is a farce, and racist in both inception and application. The prison industry is fed on the lives and deaths of innocent people as well as the guilty, and those who would change the laws are overrun by sleezy rhetoric and vast amounts of money spent to prop up a failed, fanatical, and foolish experiment.

No, I will NOT stop mocking. Will NOT. If anything deserves to be mocked, it's this.

On edit: My DOGS keep my family safe at night. The cops give my wife a ticket for not having a front license plate when none even came with the car. While it was PARKED in front of my house. I feel safer already.

[al bupp]

20. But, tell us how you really feel

Seriously though I, for one, 2nd your rant.

[ooglymoogly]

11. Oh the goody two shoes you have to stumble over, strewn on

the kaleidoscopic paths of DU. We need a branch of the democratic party just for the Luddites.

[Outraged As Usual]

3. It is a scam

These drug units get their money by stopping by profiling hundreds of cars on big highways and coercing the drivers into giving up their constitutional rights by giving the cop's consent to search without a warrant. it is epidemic. For every hundred cars stopped, they get a few busts, mostly for personal use amounts of weed and other drugs. They get an arrest, confiscate the car, and sell it and turn the money over to: themselves!!

many of the task forces have abused the public so badly that they become infamous, like the Texas units that have produced corrupt cop's stealing the funds and narcs lying and planting evidence to get more busts. New Jersey finally had to stop the cop's from coercing consent; now an supervisor must approve a request for consent because so many defendants were being mislead and lied to by the cop's that convictions were being tossed. Very very few major busts ever come from those task forces; the cops love the extra money. They get to buy machine guns and armored cars and surveillance equipment for future use on us.

Over 800,000 arrests were made last year for POT. That is more than all other categories combined. That gives great headlines and produces money in huge amounts for the courts and lawyers and' drug counselors', etc. it is an industry and the cop's hate for their industry to become as obsolete as our mills and plants have become. The entire drug prohibition is designed and engineered to provide control over our very bodies and minds, provide a steady and predictable stream of free labor for the prison industries, which are now so big that private business is griping about the competition, and allow the common cop to have incredible power and authority over all civilians, a heady experience for a high school grad just back from killing Iraqis with abandon.

Drug task forces are nothing more than a device to get us used to being harassed and searched despite our innocence and our rights, and a way for small town cop's to get more and more moolah. Never ever give consent for a search, never discuss or argue with a cop, and if the violate any right you have, sue them in Federal court for civil rights violations. That and physical force are the ONLY things that they respect any more, and the phony and failed drug war is responsible for the ruination of the image and respect that cop's used to get because they deserved it; now all they care about is if we fear them, and will obey. I am glad that they are losing funding: They should concentrate on rape, robbery, murder and respecting OUR rights while they do it, and leave people alone unless they harm another person.

A pox on the drug war and all warriors that keep the lie going . They are not friends of us, or of the law and due process.

[Speciesamused]

15. Thank you for saying what it is.

:yourock:

[Blue_Tires]

22. welcome to the site!

[bemildred]

4. The drug war has always been fake.

I know the effects are real, but as a war it's always been more a tool of social control and repression than something intended to help Americans. So that's all you are seeing, a propaganda tool that has lost the interest of the bandits in the beltway.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

8. oh please

"If we don't get some funding back we'll be in deep trouble when it comes to drug enforcement," said Iowa drug enforcement chief Gary Kendall.

When I was young teenagers could barely afford ditch weed, these days in my area kids are getting coked out of their fucking minds on their allowance with money to spare.

That is some accomplishment to show for thirty years of the blank check war on drugs.

[ooglymoogly]

9. You just never know when good news is going to fall on your head.

Think kids doing long hard time for Maryjane.

[Bilbo Heugan]

12. Crime would drop further if drug laws were reasonable.

[bemildred]

13. Now I think about it, defunding the drug war would bring crime down a lot. nt

[downindixie]

16. Sheriffs protest fed drug-war fund cuts

"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attemps to control a man's appetite by legislation,and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes"

Abraham Lincoln

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

17. Let's remember another things as well:

Tax revenue projections cannot be pretty, with all of the employment and financia turmoil out there.

That said, this "I don't play no craps with my brain" guy(I use nothing and I learned my lessons the hard way) will, nonetheless, be happy as a clam to see The War on (Some) Drugs and (Some) People die the foul death it has long deserved. Dear Leader can cement some modest good press in History by turning his budget axe to the DEA also. Biggest waste of money on the planet.

[tabasco]

19. "Battle drug cartels."

LMAO. More like harmless people with pot plants in their basement.

[mitchum]

21. Good...quit wasting my $$$$ on the colossal failure known as the war on drugs

[Robb]

23. Ask any sheriff

Hire more deputies, crime stats go up. Why? More people working. It's nothing new.

The biggest "crime drop" in my little town ever happened after one of the three deputies quit to go work the oil fields for a bigger paycheck.

The point: reduce funding and busts go down. Increase it, they go up. Conclusion: law enforcement isn't the rock upon which to set the lever on this issue.

[Thor_MN]

24. Gotta get a running start on accusing the next administration being "soft on crime"

defund programs now to deflate next year's stats... This is Rovian politics - they don't give a shit about the people, it's all just a game to find talking points to get power.

In four years, the repugs are going to be howling at the horrible state of the military and how the Democrats have ruined it.

[lonestarnot]

25. Cindy in need?

[dysfunctional press]

26. it's about time.

so i guess that the iraq war sucking up funding isn't ALL bad after all.

thanks for the heads up... :hi:

[High Plains]

27. There is an orchestrated campaign by the cop lobby to get this money back.

Democratic senators who want to look "tough on crime" are supporting it.

[OneAngryDemocrat]

29. May I remind you...

May I remind you that this money is now being used to fund the war in Iraq.

It makes more sense to me to keep the money here, in the states, for whatever reason, than to send it over and finance the occupation.

Just a thought from someone who works in the law enforcement community.

[bemildred]

30. Well, you do have a point.

But wasted money is still wasted money. The drug war is so pernicious in so many ways that it ought to be done aways with. The only people it benefits are the manufacturers and distributers of drugs (both legal and illegal) and the government agencies that make their livings off it. I'm all for finding other useful work for the cops now doing drug work, assuming they are honest, but the drug war, like the war in Iraq, needs to be ended.