Posted on 11/22/2006 7:35:17 AM PST by Dick Bachert
Atlanta police went to a home on Neal Street in Atlanta last evening to execute a search warrant. When they kicked the door in the only occupant of the home, a 92-year-old woman, started shooting. She hit all three police officers. One in the thigh, one in the arm and another in the shoulder. All police officers will be OK. The woman will not. She was shot and killed by the police.
I'm not blaming the cops here. Not at all. They had a valid search warrant, and they say they were at the right address. Shots were fired, three cops hit, and they returned fire. A 92-year-old woman who was so afraid of crime in her neighborhood that she had burglar bars on every door and window, is now dead.
The blame lies on this idiotic drug war we're waging. We have all the studies we need, all of the comprehensive data is in. We can do a much more effective job of reducing drug use in this country if we'll just take a portion of this money we spend for law enforcement and spend it on treatment programs. A Rand study showed that we can reduce illicit drug usage in this country a specified amount through treatment programs at about 10% of the cost of reducing drug usage by that same amount through criminalization and law enforcement.
There's just something in the American psyche that demands that drug users be punished instead of treated and rehabilitated. We think they're stupid and ignorant for getting mixed up with those drugs in the first place. And you know what? We're right? But look at the messages we send to our children every single day with cigarettes, alcohol, and an endless stream of drug ads on television and in magazines. Drug culture? You bet we have.
I don;t disagree with you, Dead.
The problem with these unsuccessful (and many of them, unfortunately are tragic) raids, is that the police do not engage in due dilligence before hand and verify their information, not that they have been empowered to do so. A little shoeleather expended beforehand would probably go a long weay to saving lives and resources.
However, the police are only responding to the demands of society, which wanted stricter enforcement regimes for drug crime and it's associated maladies (robbery, prostitution, etc). If you want to blame someone for this state of affairs, don't blame the police (except for when they REALLY screw up); start looking at your fellow citizens who abrogated their responsibility to the elected idiots who wrote these laws.
As for what you put in your body, it's none of my business, and I don't really care. I do care, however, when my kids can't play outside because they might get caught in the corssfire over drug turf, or when my insurance rates rise because crack addicts keep showing up at rehab centers and hospitals to use services they cannot pay for. This is what your "victimless crime" does to the rest of society, making it more un-civil, dangerous and expensive for the rest of us.
So while you exercise your right to put whatever you want into your body, please allow me my right to live in a peaceful, affordable, and safer society. Or am I not entitled to that if it means you can't smoke a joint?
Boy Ayn Rand sure got up your a$$ at some point in your life. But thank you I am an avid reader, one of the marks of a educated soul, and one that doesn't resort to ad hominem attacks to further their arguments.
What's on your state approved reading list???
".... you malodorous, toffee nosed, pervert...."
Shut your festering gob, you tit!
Now it's Dueling Python, is it? LOL
Just casualities of an idiotic war I guess. Can't make a perfect drug free utopia without killing a few thousand innocent people...
They were beaten as children.
Fighting a war on drugs isn't going to get you there.
As I said, it's silly. ;-)
"The king is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: in him there is no folly or weakness." -- Blackstone
BLACKSTONE IN AMERICA - The Early America Review, Spring 1997
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/spring97/blackstone.html
Can't make an omellette without breaking a few eggs.
You make some good points there.
"Having unrestrained RKBA would take of crime quite handily."
Yeah, look at Somalia.
You kids are so hilarious. But if you ever leave your basement, you will see that the world is more complicated.
The country you imagine never existed anywhere -- least of all during the time of the founders.
They would have hanged you.
We can all sleep a bit sounder tonight knowing this menacing narco-granny has been killed and her customers forced to go next door to buy their drugs.
I'd rather live with the problems attending too much individual liberty rather than those with too little. I guess that's just me though...
"Just casualities of an idiotic war I guess. Can't make a perfect drug free utopia without killing a few thousand innocent people..."
And all for nothing, no advantage whatsoever. Drugs are still available everywhere, what ever you want, to whomever wants it.
It's difficult to swallow the fact that these instances, like this old lady, are just the drug war machine simply spinning it's wheels and getting nowhere.
It's unpalatable.
Where only the commie back, Islamic warlords have guns?
Stop smoking crack Noobie.
But fighting a "War on Drugs" (why is it we declare war on every goddamned social issue?) is a byproduct of that econmomic boom; there probably wouldn't be a drug problem if people didn't have scads of disposable income to begin with. So, simply increasing prosperity would not necessarily decrease drug use; that argument (Crime exists because poverty does") is a tried-and-true loser. Crime (especially drug crimes) exists specifically because there's so much excess income and because human nature being what it is, people lack discipline.
Then tell us about the real world, pops. Your presumptions on this thread are bordering on the hillarious. Not everyone who's against the War on Drugs is a teen-age pothead posting from his parents' basement.
And a whole lot more factors than that. More wealth and more freedom don't transalte into more crime. Nor can it be justification for throwing our the Constitution.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.