Comments on: Democrats Pick Pork Over Police Accountability

By: chsw

chsw — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:54:48 +0000

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

By: Mike Schneider

Mike Schneider — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:45:00 +0000

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.)

By: Christopher Monnier

Christopher Monnier — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:07:12 +0000

Obama still has transparency going for him…right???

By: Zeb

Zeb — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:32:13 +0000

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.

By: kaptinemo

kaptinemo — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:26:59 +0000

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?

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:44:46 +0000

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?”

By: somewhat-hypothesis.com - more or less :: explanations for certain observations

somewhat-hypothesis.com - more or less :: explanations for certain observations — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:21:31 +0000

[...] clipped from http://www.theagitator.com [...]

By: Dave Krueger

Dave Krueger — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:19:35 +0000

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.

By: MikeT

MikeT — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:05:44 +0000

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.)

By: Bad

Bad — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:30:33 +0000

ahhhh. Literal HTML rendering. It burns!