Posted on 06/19/2018 1:21:57 PM PDT by Mr.Unique
Narcotics Detective Kyle Willett made the 10-minute drive to a McDonald's drive-thru for sweet tea and cheeseburgers before returning to work — and doing something no one expected.
Alone in his white Chevrolet Tahoe — outside the UPS global shipping hub where he worked with an elite task force to intercept drug shipments — Willett tore the packing tape off a box, pried open a metal safe and stole piles of cash totaling about $40,000.
But the Louisville Metro Police veteran, well trained in exposing criminals' missteps, made an elementary mistake of his own.
He used his credit card for the $4.76 McDonald's meal and then forgot to remove the receipt from the fast-food bag he crumpled and stuffed inside the box before sending the package on its path to Oakland, California.
Willett didn't know that a West Coast drug interdiction task force anxiously awaited its delivery. A judge had already signed a search warrant to allow investigators to open the package, as it was expected to contain valuable evidence.
The box should have helped investigators snag a drug trafficker. Instead, it netted a cop. It also exposed questionable practices by two other detectives and for 19 months sidelined a task force charged with interrupting a major drug pipeline during the nation's worst drug crisis — blamed for more than 400 deaths in Louisville last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbs8.com ...
We just accepted it.
Switch elite to corrupt.
You are way off. I bet a full 13% are decent people.
I’m tired of living in a police state too but if drugs are free, one will not be able to walk from their car to the store without tripping over the drugged “homeless” because you know their numbers will skyrocket...
Accidental overdoses claimed 364 in 2016 in Louisville. It was 415 in 2017. That was about 3% of all metro Louisville deaths, tied with diabetes, septicitis, and Alzheimer's as causes of death. Stroke (6%), heart disease (21%) and cancer (23%) combined took 50%, of course.
If you actually read the post you replied to you would have your answer.
On the other hand, you have the moral argument, is it the government’s job to prevent us from committing crimes? Should the government outlaw alcohol because somebody might drive drunk? Fast cars because they might speed? Guns because they might use them in crimes?
The government has to give freedom to do stupid things and fuck up, and then punish if you do that. Once the government begins assuming you will do things wrong, and acts to pre-empt the wrong by stopping you from doing anything, even what you might do right, then you have problems.
If a druggie could do drugs, and stay home, I don’t think banning that is a good step for freedom, and it opens the door to a lot of other things.
Agree 100%. Most people have no idea how bad government is intruding on everyone, using drugs and terrorism as pretexts. And those who do, end up suffering far more than the druggies and the terrorists.
....hmmmm. Something very familiar about that! With such a ratio, one has to realize that everyone in that environment would come into contact with the related criminal practices and attitudes regularly. They would, no doubt, be able to see "which way the wind blows" and to what degree the bad guys were able to get away with their dirty deeds.
The calculation of "does crime pay" would be extremely persuasive, as it is almost everywhere and with almost everyone. There might a obvious bandwagon on which to jump.
To wit, the upper echelons of the FBI.
“one will not be able to walk from their car to the store without tripping over the drugged “homeless””
I don’t think so. Vagrancy and loitering laws would still apply, so they can be driven into designated areas where they can ruin their lives without bothering the rest of us. Also, we will save a ton of money on law enforcement, so we could afford to offer them some sort of treatment. My concern is what to do with the violent, militarized police who would lose their jobs. Deprived of their outlet, they could become a real problem.
“Most people have no idea how bad government is intruding on everyone”
Man, you got that right. The worst ones are the “What do you have to hide?” crowd. They make me want to fleck some donut frosting in their car and tell a cop I think they’re on meth. They’ll find out right quick what they got to hide.
No, his logic is not faulty. Legalized drugs would cost a lot less, and could be run by world class companies. The profit margins on illicit drugs today run in 95%+ (ie 20x+ markup). No legal item has that kind of markup. It’s the same reason you had gangs form during alcohol prohibition. Additional, legalized drugs would reduce crime as there would be no profit for gangs as they could never beat “Budweiser” selling pot at the ABC store or whatever. We’d also save over $50 billion a year in taxes, plus collect probably $25-50 billion a year in taxes.
Exactly
There is one area of surveillance that I agree with and to my knowledge is not being implemented and that is in prisons. I do not think there should be anywhere that an inmate can be where they are not recorded, preferably from multiple angles. I realize that it would produce a torrent of data, but they way AI is going it would be just a matter of time before any activity could be analyzed and understood by machine. Prisons would be far safer and illicit activities reduced to the minimum possible level.
Personally, I think these small seizures (and theft) of cash are to keep law enforcement salivating about the next bust.
Meanwhile, the real movement of payments is happening across crypto.
Did you know there are couple new crypto’s specifically created for the marijuana business? Since dispensaries cannot use banks to hold all their cash some are moving to crypto as a store of wealth and payment transaction while Federal laws get ironed out. They become less of a target because they don’t have to store all the greenbacks themselves.
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