TheAgitator.com
Democrats Pick Pork Over Police Accountability
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008Last week, police in Kentucy went on a 24-hour drug raid blitz, where they…
…discovered 23 meth labs, seized more than 2,400 pounds of marijuana, identified 16 drug endangered children and arrested 565 individuals in connection with illegal drug use in a 24-hour period.
What inspired this sudden burst of drug war aggressiveness? Complaints from the citizenry? A vicious string of drug-related murders? A series of overdoses?
None of that. Seems they were concerned that the federal government is about to turn off the spigot.
During "Operation Byrne Blitz," which took place Wednesday, state police and highway patrol agencies, local police and sheriff’s departments, and drug task forces throughout the country conducted undercover investigations, marijuana eradication efforts and drug interdiction activities. The collaborative effort, named for the federal grant program which funds many of the anti-drug efforts, underscored the impact that cuts to this funding could have on local and statewide drug enforcement.
The Byrne Grant is problematic for a lot of reasons. But chief among them is the way it warps police priorities by tying drug arrests to the federal teat, reinforcing the disastrous numbers game Ed Burns spoke about in my interview with him last week. Byrne Grants exacerbate the militarization of the drug war, too. If you’ve got an expensive-to-maintain SWAT team, you can earn some easy federal money by sending them out to bust up a low-level drug offender a few times a week. Actually arresting the perpetrators of violent crimes that aren’t drug related doesn’t bring in the cash.
Byrne Grants have been blamed for a lot of drug war disasters, including the clusterfuck of wrongful arrests in Tulia, Texas, which were then followed by similar outrages across that state. It led to Texas eventually abolishing the multi-jurisdictional (and unaccountable) drug task forces largely funded with Byrne Grants.
In a rare case of passing some sensible crime policy, the GOP Congress started phasing out Byrne grants in the 1990s, a trend that has continued through the Bush administration. It’s a good idea. Even if you support the drug war, these grants do little to help fight it, and only serve to make local police departments less accountable and less transparent. Even the White House Office of Management and Budget has been sharply critical of the program.
Unfortunately, Congressional Democrats (and many Republicans) can’t resist the easy, positive publicity that comes with a press release announcing the procurement of federal crime-fighting pork for the local police department. They want to bring back Byrne grants in full force. One leading senate proponent of re-funding the grants is, unfortunately, Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama.
Back to the story in Kentucky:
"The impact of our drug task forces can be clearly seen in the success of this one-day blitz," said Justice and Public Safety Secretary J. Michael Brown. "While combining these efforts in a 24-hour period makes a statement, it’s important to remember that these types of activities go on every day, and are a critical tool in eradicating illegal use."
"Every year the Byrne grants are slashed, we run the risk of keeping more drugs and criminals on the street,"
But if police in Kentucky can go out and find 2,400 pounds of marijuana in 24-hours just to make a political statement, isn’t that a pretty good indication that the grants aren’t working?
ahhhh. Literal HTML rendering. It burns!
Yet another nail in the coffin to the argument that Obama is a “civil libertarian.” Other than a few words in favor of looking at criminal justice reform, what precisely gives him these overriding “civil libertarian credentials” that his defenders keep speaking of?
(I know all three front runners suck equally in their own way, I’m just tired of the unquestioning love that Obama gets.)
You clearly have a bad attitude. The drug war is a jobs program for macho bullies who might otherwise be on welfare. It helps build their self esteem and gives them a productive avenue to channel aggressive behaviors that are incompatible with careers requiring tolerance and tact. Reducing funding for the drug war would pull the rug out from under these unfortunate misfits, throwing them out on the street and possibly even requiring them to start from scratch in learning new marketable skills. Instead of whining about the inadvertent shooting of occasional innocent civilians and puppies, you should learn to be a bit more compassionate towards our American testosterone champions.
[...] clipped from http://www.theagitator.com [...]
Did the Kentucky police ease up on enforcement for a period leading up to these raids or was it done entirely on top of the normal enforcement? In other words, did they sit on the information about the drugs for a while or do all of the investigation legwork in a 24 hour period? How many mistakes did they make (wrong door, etc)? I didn’t see any of this information in the linked article.
On a different note, what percentage of the police force was occupied with these investigations and what is the message they are sending to the populace? “If our Byrne grants are threatened, don’t count on a swift response to emergencies because we’ll be undermanned while we throw a tantrum?”
Let’s say you have a guard dog. You paid a lot for his training, but you can only afford to feed him kibble. Your wealthy neighbor wants that dog to work for him, but you can’t/won’t sell it to him. (It’s your dog, after all, dammit!)
So, your wealthier neighbor starts calling the dog over to the fence and feeding him chopped porterhouse steak, stroking him and telling what a good dog he is. Pretty soon, that dog isn’t yours, it’s his. (Of course, the dog is as happy as a pig in scheisse; he’s getting fed twice as much as he’d normally be.)
Federal ‘grants’ (tax money being ‘given away’ to supplement the funding already paid through local taxes for law enforcement operations) tend to warp the loyalties of those police departments receiving them. Who are they? Are they local police? Or Fed agents? Which is it? To whom are they accountable? Where is the line drawn?
Ugh, MikeT, I am afraid you are right. Now the only thing Obama has going for him is that he makes my skin crawl slightly less than the other two.
Obama still has transparency going for him…right???
I wonder how many of those alleged hundreds of pounds of marijuana just went out the back door of the police evidence room and back in the front door before the cameras.
(It’s a lot easier than hasslin’ people for it when you need a major haul right quick.)
It isn’t an indication of how the Byrne Grants work or not. The examples show police forces which apparently have known about these illegal operations for some time and did nothing untl they had to justify why they are policemen. After the raids, it’s back to coffee and doughnuts and radar guns.
chsw