While more cities are using surveillance cameras as a crime-fighting measure, bound to fail in my opinion, some police chiefs actually have a clue...check out LA Police Chief Bill Bratton's latest program, instituted last week:

Police academy graduates hired by the force will begin their careers walking the beat in 8 hour shifts, getting to know the community, the residents, the business owners. This gets the police out of their patrol cars, and away from responding to emergencies 24/7.

Crime is already down in these districts, and the residents are happy to see police who aren't just out to bust.

Nancy Goldstein has a new article on the forgotten and left behind children of the incarcerated - undeserving casualites of the War on Drugs.

The surge in the US prison population has nothing to do with an increase in violent crime: homicide, rape, robbery, and assault have all declined steadily since 1993. Its source is the so-called “war on drugs,” which cost taxpayers a cool 12 billion in 2004 alone, and has done nothing to reduce illegal drug use or availability.

....the number of women incarcerated in state facilities for drug-related offenses rose by 888% between 1986 and 1999, far outpacing the number of men imprisoned for similar crimes.

Goldstein's article is a review of journalist Nell Bernstein’s new book, All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated.

The Rocky Mountain News has a fascinating article today on Colorado's first marijuana case.

In 1937, a man named Samuel Caldwell was the first person to be charged with a marijuana crime when he was busted after selling two joints to Moses Baca. He was arrested on the date that the Marijuana Stamp Act became effective.

by TChris

Denver residents voted to legalize the adult possession of up to an ounce of marijuana. Mayor John Hickenlooper, who opposed the measure, calls the voters’ desire for a rational drug policy “symbolic” since state law still criminalizes pot possession. It’s true that Denver can’t override state law, but nothing requires Denver police to arrest individuals for personal use possession, and it’s clear that Denver residents would prefer law enforcement to have more sensible priorities.

The legalization campaign stressed that marijuana is a safer alternative to alcohol, and argued that permitting adults to make a responsible choice to smoke pot could reduce the evils associated with drinking. It’s a strategy rooted in common sense that may appeal to voters elsewhere.

"A Denver victory clearly means that the drive to end marijuana prohibition has become a mainstream issue," said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. "For a city of Denver's size in a red state to endorse something like this is really quite remarkable."

This is America? I realize that the 24/7 cable news industry has turned sex offenders into the latest pariahs, but this is over-the-top:

Child-welfare authorities seized a newborn from a hospital Friday and placed the baby in a foster home because his father is a convicted sex offender. A judge granted the mother supervised visitation rights but prohibited visits from the father.

The baby was born Tuesday and the agency obtained an emergency court order Wednesday authorizing it to take the infant after arguing that his safety is in jeopardy because the father pleaded guilty to rape and sodomy two decades ago in New York. The agency also cited concerns about the mother's alleged history of drug abuse, the mother's lawyer said.

The parents did not live together. Where is the evidence that he is a repeat offender or a risk to his child? How old was the victim in his first offense? What's next? A parent with a marijuana conviction stands to lose their kids because authorities think he or she might still be using in the home?

The FBI released its report on annual crime statistics today. While the MSM is touting the number of murders and other violent crimes, there's another story.

The Marijuana Policy Project, having reviewed the report, writes (received by e-mail):

Marijuana arrests set a new record in 2004, totaling 771,605. Eighty-nine percent of these arrests were for marijuana possession, not sale or manufacture. In contrast, arrests for all violent crimes combined totalled 590,258—a decline from 2003.

USA Today takes an in-depth look at the booming marijuana growing business in Northern California and the efforts of CAMP, a group of state drug agents to fight it. It's a losing proposition for CAMP, which they blame on Mexican cartels.

These numbers are pretty astonishing.

A June report for Taxpayers for Common Sense by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron found that despite billions of dollars spent on marijuana suppression — nearly $4 billion by the federal government in 2004 alone — usage is about the same as 30 years ago.

It's a waste of money. Demand is not going to go down.

by TChris

Zero tolerance is an excuse for zero thinking. In Washington, D.C., it also seems to be an excuse to harass drivers who haven’t broken any law.

D.C. police pulled over Debra Bolton for driving without headlights. Fair enough; she deserved the warning she received for that infraction. But the officer smelled alcohol on Bolton’s breath, so he made her do field sobriety tests. Bolton thinks she aced the tests. The officer claims he told her to recite the alphabet from D to X, while Bolton thought he said D to S. He also claimed she lost her balance during balance tests, which Bolton disputes. And the officer made the improbable claim that he saw “jittering” in her eyes when he administered the horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN) test, a test that supposedly reveals whether a driver’s blood alcohol content exceeds .10.

The officer arrested Bolton, and the results of a breath test revealed that Bolton was telling him the truth: she’d had a glass of wine with dinner, but that was all. She tested .03, well under the legal limit of .08. Yet Bolton’s ordeal had only begun.

I can't think of any other way than outrageous to describe this:

An Army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for growing marijuana to treat his chronic pain was yanked from a hospital by Canadian authorities, driven to the border with a catheter still attached, and turned over to U.S. officials, his lawyer says. He then went five days with no medical treatment and only ibuprofen for the pain, attorney Douglas Hiatt said.

Steven W. Tuck, 38, was still fitted with the urinary catheter when he shuffled into federal court for a detention hearing Wednesday, Hiatt said. "This is totally inhumane. He's been tortured for days for no reason," Hiatt said.

It gets worse: The judge ordered him released to a hospital, but instead, he got sent to another jail:

The FBI is considering relaxing its pot-smoking policy. Don't get excited though, its not a policy aimed at current smokers or the general public, but one of its hiring policies. Apparently, some really good candidates have been disqualified from working for the agency due to smoking pot in college.

The change would ease limits about how often - and how many years ago - applicants for jobs such as intelligence analysts, linguists, computer specialists, accountants and others had used illegal drugs.

The change wouldn't apply to actual FBI agents.

by TChris

The FBI has said since 9/11 that it's shifting its priorities from routine federal law enforcement to terrorist prevention. Statistics show that the FBI has indeed sharply reduced the number of criminal investigations it initiates.

The FBI opened 62,782 criminal investigations in 2000 and 34,451 last year, a drop of 45 percent, [Justice Department inspector general Glenn] Fine said. Drug cases declined by 70 percent, he said.

The unhappy news: although civil rights, health care fraud, corporate fraud, and public corruption investigations have all decreased, obscenity investigations increased. That statistic reflects the Justice Department's misplaced priorities.

by TChris

A few centuries ago, banishment was a popular alternative to death as a punishment imposed by English judges. Colonial America received its share of banished horse thieves and other offenders, as did Australia.

Modern American judges typically lack the power of banishment in their arsenal of punishments, but legislative bodies have taken to telling sex offenders "you can't live here" with the hope of making them some other jurisdiction's problem. The resulting dilemma: where can they live? And how can society expect to achieve rehabilitation if banishment, rather than treatment and supervision, is perceived as the cure?