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I think a good test of whether this cop is any good is if the townpeople turn out to support him. Not just his relatives and the other cop's families, but the whole town with their dogs. If that happens then I would be inclined to believe he's a decent cop who made a mistake.

Good point. By the way...many, many "Halls" live in Putnam County. Some of them are VERY LARGE landowners and probably VERY wealthy. I'm sure officer Hall is related to some of them and will have their support. All of this ranting and raving against him is pointless with local support. Perhaps we could see about solving some OTHER problems?

Oops. Made a mistake...this should have been posted to "palmer" not to myself. Okay, ready, shoot me.

We could start by addressing the underlying problems. Hall is not a real problem as I now argue, he made a mistake and it should be noted and dealt with locally. I'll have to stop posting on that thread since it's going nowhere anyway.

But the issue of police militarization triggered by the WoD and soon by the WoT is serious and only going to get worse. How long until we have road blocks in the name of the War on Terror?

Legalization won't solve the drug problem but neither will the War on Drugs. In fact the only way government seems to tackle problems is either throwing money at it or by shooting at it. Sometimes both as in Afghanistan. But those tactics don't work in the long run.

The underlying problems are obvious (immorality, nonaccountable government, etc) but the solutions are very difficult and controversial, and we should aim these discussions at moving towards solutions.