Archive for the 'Law Enforcement' Category

Strategypage reports that someone was caught trying to sell nuclear material….

“Ukrainian police arrested three men trying to sell eight pounds of plutonium, for $10 million. It turned out that they did not have plutonium, but the less radioactive (and not suitable for nuclear weapons) Americium (which could be used for a dirty bomb). The three arrested (a politician and two businessmen from Western Ukraine) had obtained the radioactive material (which was originally produced inside Russia) from someone outside Ukraine.”

Seems this happens on a fairly regular basis.

The essay goes on to discuss how much nuclear material is floating around out there. It is unlikely that terrorists could cobble together a nuclear bomb, but a dirty bomb is certainly something within their capabilities.

Just thought I’d brighten up your Monday.

see more pwn and owned pictures

Wonder if this slogan is related to this statistic?

Federal law expressly bans people convicted of felonies, or who have been the subject of a Dishonorable Discharge from the military, from owning, possessing, or seeking to gain possession of firearms. If they are found guilty of any of the listed offenses, then it is another felony.

It can get even worse, though. I have heard of cases where a convicted felon has been charged with possession even though they are simply living with someone who legally owns a firearm. I’ve never bothered to look up any specific cases, so take this assertion with a grain of salt, but it does point up the very real concern that exists when felons have access to guns.

This desire to keep weapons out of the hands of felons in many states extends to less lethal defense tools as well. Felons are often banned from possessing stun guns and defensive sprays. Eugene Volokh thinks this is something that needs to be changed.

“Yet felons need self-defense tools, too. They may need self-defense tools more than the average nonfelon does: Being a felon dramatically hurts your career prospects, which means you’ll likely have to live in a poorer and therefore on average more crime-ridden part of town. And the legal bar on felons’ possessing firearms makes stun guns even more valuable to them.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Some of the best read bloggers have been outraged by this news item. The headline reads…

“Fire kills child, 3, and parents as police prevent neighbours from trying to rescue them”

If anything is going to produce outrage, it would be an account of how young and innocent lives were lost when they could have been saved. And all through a pig-headed application of the rules, to boot.

But my buddy knirirr has pointed out one or two things that have been missed.

Firstly, the report says that the neighbours were “beaten back by flames” which suggests to me that the fire was so intense that they would not have been able to get in and save anyone anyway. If this was a fire at night and there were no alarms installed then it could well have been burning for some time before anyone noticed.

Secondly, if the police really did quote H&S then they might not necessarily have meant it in the bureaucratic jobsworth sense that the Samizdata article seems to imply. I wonder if they meant “it’s too late, you can’t save them, you’ll only get killed if you try” but stated that the rules said so out of some misplaced belief that people will be impressed by being told that It’s The Law and are more likely to obey. We cannot know, but if so it clearly failed to make an impression in this case.

I find it very difficult to believe that five British police officers would stand by and let young children burn if they thought there was a chance for unequipped and untrained hands to help. Oh, there might be one or two here or there who would not care to make an attempt if it might mean their job. But five??? It seems likely that at least one, and probably more, of the officers were a parent themselves. For some reason, I don’t think sociopaths alone choose the police as a career.

It seems to me that there are a fair number of areas where Great Britain might improve. It also seems fair to me when someone points them out. But I don’t think this news article is fair.

(Hat tip to Glenn.)

So called “gunmen” have attacked a police academy in Pakistan. Eleven innocent people, eight police and three civilians, have been killed.

Think this is India getting some revenge for the Mumbai attacks last year? That is too thriller-of-the-week for me to take seriously unless there is some evidence. Besides, there are enough Islamic terrorist groups wandering around inside Pakistan that you don’t need to go looking outside the country for someone pissed off enough to pull a stunt like this.

Strategypage has posted a pretty good essay concerning how the ISI, which is Pakistan’s intelligence services, has a very close working relationship with several terrorist groups. Seems the ISI political section was disbanded last year. It could be that this is some scheme put together by the spooks to prove to the new civilian government that they really need to give ISI a longer leash. But that is pretty thriller-of-the-week as well.

Some of the “gunmen” have been captured. I doubt they will keep any secrets for long.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

WASHINGTON, DC - Flanked by the embattled President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon and the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, a weary looking President Barack Obama used a press conference to angrily denounce as “Alarmist and inflammatory” a recent report issued by the conservative Heritage Foundation that declared the massive chain of UN administered Mexican Refugee camps in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas as “a bottomless well for narco-insurgency” and “a threat to the territorial integrity of the United States”. The camps, home to at least 2.5 million Mexican nationals, are dominated by the “Zetas Confederales”, a loose and ultraviolent umbrella militia aligned with the feuding Mexican drug cartels that now control upwards of 80 % of Mexico.

President Obama’s political fortunes have been reeling recently in the wake of high profile incidents that include the kidnapping of his Special Envoy for Transborder Issues, former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and the car bombing assassination of popular California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that killed 353 people in Sacramento last month. Both events have been tied directly to factions of Zetas “hardliners” who operate with impunity on both sides of the US-Mexican border. President Obama used the conference to point to the “clear and hold” COIN strategy that has recently restored order and even a degree of tourism to Las Vegas, once the scene of bloody street battles between Zetas, local street gangs and right-wing American paramilitary groups, as a sign of the success for his administration. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill remain skeptical and say that it is likely that President Obama will face a primary challenge next year from Senator Jim Webb (D- Va), a former Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, who called the president’s COIN strategy “The right course of action” but ” Two years too late”….

That fictional scenario above is offered as a thought experiment.
Read the rest of this entry »

Venturing out to sea on boats during the bad old days of Viking culture was tantamount to suicide.

Their longboats were marvels of engineering. Shallow draft so they could travel up rivers, yet also able to operate in the open ocean, they were the perfect craft for lightning commando raids. They were also fast enough that they could catch any ship the Vikings could see, using oars for propulsion while larger ships were at the mercy of the wind.

If a band of Vikings set their sights on taking a ship, there wasn’t anything the merchant skippers of the day could do to prevent a screaming group of northmen from swarming aboard.

But then some nameless genius, or more likely a group of geniuses, came up with a brilliant idea. If it was impossible to prevent the Vikings from boarding, why not build ships where the crew could fight them after the pirates were on deck?

This simple concept led to a ship known as the Cog, or cog-built ships.

Ironically, the general design was adapted from the Vikings own merchant vessels, but there were two changes that proved to make all the difference. The European ship builders constructed little wooden forts in the front and rear of the ship. They called these wooden castles the “stern castle” for the one in back, and the “forward castle”, or “fo’c’sle”. Quaint names that echo with past blood and terror.

The idea was to let the Vikings come aboard if they so chose, while the crew retreated to their forts. The pirates would be out in the open, vulnerable to any sort of attack, while the crew fought from relative safety.
Read the rest of this entry »

A recent post at Strategypage.com tells a sordid tale of double dealing.

“Russian police caught a group of naval officers (including at least two admirals) trying to smuggle 30 anti-submarine missiles and 200 bombs to China.”

The idea was to mislabel currently used weapons as obsolete, and then sell them to China so Beijing could reverse-engineer the technology. This news article gives us some more details.

It would seem that the Russians have been uncovering various criminal plots in their military with astonishing regularity over the past few years. While they have always struggled with corruption and graft, it would appear that things have really taken off.

“Over 400 Russian military officers were convicted of criminal offenses in 2008, army prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky reports in an interview with the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper (Rus). The offending officers included 76 base commanders, and around 300 were senior staff, including 20 generals.”

The Russian military took it on the chin after the fall of the USSR in the early 1990’s. The economy was in turmoil, and funding for the troops was pretty much non-existent. Stories of how the armed forces were crumbling, such as how army bases would go dark because the electric bill wasn’t paid, were legion.

But that was supposed to be all in the past, as Russian oil and natural gas sales to an energy starved Europe revitalized the ruble and brought the good times back. Those who think that the recent US economic turmoil is forcing Russian generals to turn to crime as a desperate measure to stave off starvation should consider that the internal investigations to root out corruption started well before our own recession. And, as this op-ed from the UK Telegraph explains, Russia certainly had so much cash as late as October of 2008 that they offered a huge bailout loan to Iceland. A recent post at Strategypage.com reinforces the impression that the Russian government is going to keep spending money on the military, no matter how bad the global economic downturn.

This is probably the barely visible signs of a massive bureaucratic conflict that is raging between entrenched officers in the military, and the government at large. This essay mentions in passing that Putin has been trying to forcibly retire officers who are left over from an antiquated mobilization system, but the generals are refusing to go.

“The Army officer corps has stalemated the massive Defense Ministry reforms. This has delayed the forced retirement of thousands of senior officers. The officer corps wants to retain the 19th century “mobilization army” system. This requires conscription of most of the male population, and maintaining those men in reserve units (which are commanded by thousands of well paid senior officers). Russian leader Vladimir Putin sees this system as unworkable. Too many young men evade the draft and the country cannot afford to equip up to a hundred reserve divisions. Moreover, Russian nuclear weapons protect the country from invasion, and what the country needs is a smaller armed forces manned by professionals. But the officer corps is having none of it, and are digging in their heels, and calling in political favors.”

It seems to me that this is a case of “Use it or lose it”. The officers facing forced retirement, looking at their remaining decades spent as poor pensioners clipping coupons for dog food, realize that they only have a limited time to use their positions to cash in. Sell military technology to the Chinese and become a traitor to The Motherland? As long as a big pile of cash is on the table, then sign them up!

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

What would happen if the police chief of a major city in the United States was kidnapped, tortured, and executed by criminals?

I’m asking because something like that occurred in Mexico over the weekend.

The operations against the Mexican drug cartels is entering the third year. They are calling it The Cartel War.

Anyone planning on a vacation in Cancun this year? I hear accommodations are cheap and spring break is only a few months away.

(Hat tip to Murdoc.)

Daniel J. Solove wrote a short essay titled “Why the Innocent Are Punished More Harshly Than the Guilty”. His position is that wrongly accused innocent people will, at least sometimes, refuse plea bargains and reduced sentence deals. Instead they will simply insist on their innocence, which will lead to harsher sentences than if they played ball and admitted guilt.

Jonathan wrote a cut-and-paste post of his own, agreeing that our criminal justice system is terribly outdated, woefully inaccurate, and completely unreliable. (Paraphrased for dramatic effect, of course.)

This set off a little back and forth in the comments. Since law enforcement is an interest of mine, I decided to chime in. My remarks soon became too large for a simple comment, so I decided it might be more useful to write a post of my own.

The first comment I want to discuss is by Shannon Love. He runs the numbers an concludes that our justice system works pretty well most of the time, but might be improved if judges were allowed to empower panels of experts to ensure that only reliable scientific testimony is admitted.

This is actually something I come across fairly regularly when someone finds out that I used to work in law enforcement. “Why don’t the cops have this piece of equipment, why doesn’t the courts do things this way?” As Lexington Green points out in his own comment, there just isn’t enough money to do everything. And there never is going to be, since expectations rise as technology increases capabilities. As the system can accomplish more, the public will demand more. And the media isn’t helping any.

Take the popular television drama CSI, where a PhD and a group of others with advanced degrees work the night shift. Just how much money does it take to lure such a dream team away from their studies, anyway? And this is just the graveyard shift! Is Stephen Hawking working the daylight hours?

Forget adding to the burden on the budget by advocating new programs. We can’t afford what is on our plate’s now.

Ginny points out that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, but she is not too crazy about living in a world that encourages us not to believe our “lying eyes.” She also thinks it might be a bad idea to get rid of it. Jonathan says “Eyewitness testimony is not reliable. Everyone knows this except, it appears, lawyers.”

It just so happens that I’ve recently discussed that very thing on my own blog. Bottom line is that the vagaries of eyewitness testimony is extremely frustrating to the professionals who choose a career in law enforcement, but it really is something the system can’t do without. The reason why is that juries always want to to listen to someone who was there, even if it is some flight of fancy. Get a criminal dead to rights, with a non-existent alibi and fingerprints all over the corpse, and you can still have a shaky case unless you can get someone to say that they saw them do the deed.

Harsh reality dictates that no one on the enforcement side of the law cares if the witness really saw what they say they saw, it only matters if the jury will believe. Educating lawyers on basic science would be pointless since their job is only to convince the jury that the science is correct if it bolsters their case, or to convince them that it is suspect if it harms their defense.

Educating juries, now. That might do something.

On that same comment, Jonathan also says “…there is a non-trivial percentage of convictions of innocent people, about which prosecutors profess unbelief even in the face of incontravertible DNA evidence.”

I’m not really sure what he means by that. If Shannon Love’s figures are correct, then only a tiny percentage of death penalty cases are overturned by re-examining the DNA evidence. Is anything less than a 100% confidence rate unacceptable?

If so, I’m afraid that Jonathan is not being very realistic. It is an imperfect world, and violent crime is usually a chaotic and frenzied act that the guilty will desperately try to deny any responsibility for. The standard of “beyond reasonable doubt” recognizes this basic flaw in the fabric of the world, and it is really the best we can do.

(I can’t say for sure how many capital cases are overturned by DNA evidence, or even how many cases have seen the evidence re-examined, because there doesn’t seem to be any statistics on this issue. Groups in favor of abolishing the death penalty claim that no one should be executed because some cases are overturned, which isn’t an argument I find particularly compelling because they like to lump in instances where someone was freed on procedural grounds. This muddies the water further, and I really can’t see any clear picture here.)

In terms of solutions, I would advocate getting rid of acceptance of responsibility benefits. I would also advocate reforming the plea deal system so that there can’t be enormous disparities between punishments offered in a plea deal and possible punishments if a defendant chooses to exercise his or her right to go to trial.
 
I would also dramatically reform the trial process, which is not a particularly good truth-finding mechanism. The rules of evidence, for example, are based on false and long-disproven empirical and psychological assumptions. A big step forward would be reforming the rules regarding eyewitness testimony, which studies consistently show to be extremely unreliable. Certainly the studies that demonstrate its unreliability should be allowed at trial — they’re currently not. And perhaps eyewitness testimony should be excluded from trial if it is so unreliable — at least under certain circumstances.
 
We’re in the 21st Century and the law still uses slightly-updated medieval methods for determining truth. As all the DNA exonerations are showing, our criminal justice system is woefully inaccurate. It’s time we thought about how to reform and modernize it.

-Daniel J. Solove, responding to a commenter on his post, Why the Innocent Are Punished More Harshly Than the Guilty

He’s right.

The headline reads “Police tackle Internet knife gangs“, but it is completely false.

It seems that the cops in the UK are looking at profiles in Facebook and other popular Internet sites. If they see a picture of someone posing with a knife, a picture taken in a public place, then they go arrest the miscreant. It would appear that simply having a knife in public is enough to have the full weight and power of the law come down on your head. The police can arrest you, and the courts will convict you, even if there isn’t any reason for them to suspect you are up to no good with that knife.

It is legal to own knives as long as you keep them at home, but that doesn’t stop the cops. Even though no law has been broken, they still will lecture the poor knife owning bastard and confiscate his legally bought and held possession.

Notice, if you will, that there is no hint that a gang is involved. The cops are targeting people who want to look tough in a picture on a social networking site, not criminals. What gang? Where are the gangs? There aren’t even any “Internet gangs”, just some isolated kids!

Let us consider this as yet another reason why I thank God every day that I was born an American.

(Hat tip to Milo, who seems to have morphed into my go-to info source for British government overreach.)

Did you guys see this?

Seems the European Union is attempting to establish a “European Criminal Records Information System”. The idea is to share information concerning criminal convictions between the member states, and the lack of a program to do this was first noted in the European Council Declaration on Combating Terrorism of 25 and 26 March 2004.

A criminal database is something I heartily approve of, particularly when dealing with all of those little bitty countries that make up the EU. Far too many hardened criminals would slip through the cracks if the police and courts don’t know their past history. In fact, I’m wondering why it took the member nations five years to get off their collective backsides and get around to actually taking action.

But I was taken aback when I looked over the categories of offenses that would make up the data entered into the database. The sheer number of offenses is staggering, taking up at least half of the PDF file I linked to above. And some of them are not anything that I would consider a crime.

For example, number 0200-00 is “Knowingly taking part in the non-criminal activities of a criminal organization”. So that means lawyers who defend gangsters in court are considered criminals?

I was also intrigued by the way that the listed crimes illuminated, if not the actual conditions in the EU, then at least the fears of the people who live there. Section 0400 concerns “trafficking in human beings”, which should most certainly be a crime. But there are eight separate crimes listed! Simply trafficking in humans isn’t enough, they have to break it down.

Take a look at 0403-00, which is “Trafficking in human beings for the purposes of organ or human tissue removal”. That is certainly scary enough, but 0407-00 is reserved for those who kidnap children to remove their organs! What the hell, is Europe turning into one big horror movie? A horror movie where, thanks to draconian gun control laws (section 0500), all of the victims are unarmed? Consider this the next time you plan a vacation overseas.

It isn’t until section 8 where we see violent crimes against individuals crop up. 0807-00 is all about “Offences related to committing suicide”. Take my word for it, if they manage to break this particular law then punishing them is a waste of time.

If you want to see just where the EU is going, then take a look at sections 1205-00 and 1206-00. Both of them say that it is a crime to “insult” the State, the Nation, the symbols of the State or Nation, or representatives of the State/Nation. Does this mean that it is considered a crime if someone writes an op-ed that is disparaging of a politician? Sure sounds like it.

I could go on for awhile, but you get the idea. Click on this link and take a look for yourself.

Keep in mind that this is simply a list of offenses where someone has already been found guilty. It is not a list of new laws, nor is it a sentencing guideline. But if this is an accurate snapshot of what the EU considers to be crimes, then it is probably too late for them.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket. Hat tips go to Milo and the Libertarians.)

I have been writing for years about the illegal immigration situation in the United States.

It seems that drug gangs based in the north of Mexico have grown enormously wealthy and powerful by using the same routes illegal aliens use to enter the US to smuggle their product. They were so flush with cash, in fact, that they were even able to bribe troops in the Mexican Army to act as bodyguards for some of the smugglers.

The government in Mexico decided to do something about this situation, and they went to war with the drug cartels two years ago. So far, things have not been going very well for the good guys. Assassinations and murder on a scale that boggles the mind.

Now, it would seem, things have taken a turn for the worse. The headline reads “US Military Report Warns ‘Sudden Collapse’ of Mexico Possible”. (Hat tip to Glenn.)

I’m wondering if the US is going to finally do something to help the democratically elected government of our southern neighbor. A good start would be to reduce the profits the drug gangs use to kill all those innocent people. We could do that simply by enforcing our own laws and secure our borders.

Something tells me that won’t happen.

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

Many years ago, before the charity course kicked into high gear, I asked my friend Kathryn if I intimidated her. After all, I was a guy who had a lot of guns, I went to the range frequently, and I was always thinking about self defense options. This put a lot of people off, but not her. Why?

“Don’t be silly!” she said, laughing at my idiocy. “You are a protector!”

That is the best compliment I have ever received.

This op-ed discusses how a male in Great Britain cannot stop to talk to a child in public without facing arrest. London Mayor Boris Johnson claims that this is due to the “pedophile plague”.

So the incidence of pedophilia in the UK is so great that it is considered a scourge on society? I can’t seem to find any statistics concerning this, and even the author of the op-ed uses US statistics on page 2 of her article to make a point. But, if it isn’t a problem, then why would a male who is seen to be conversing with an unattended child be snatched up by the police and bundled down to the precinct house for some hard questions? Maybe it is a case of public perception run amok, seeing monsters where few actually exist.

One thing is for sure. The threat of arrest, of having my good reputation smeared by suspicion even if no criminal charges are ever brought before a court, would cause even me to pause before helping a child in distress. And that means actual stranger pedophiles, those who snatch children from public areas, are given an open field. The greatest protection a child could have in those circumstances, that a passer by would intervene, is much reduced.

What the hell is going on over there in the UK?

(Hat tip to Glenn. I cross posted this at Hell in a Handbasket because the readers over there are more involved in self defense and crime prevention.)

Mark Steyn gave all of us a heads up a few days ago to a new public safety scheme in Great Britain. The police will distribute gaily colored flip flops to drunk women as they exit pubs and attempt to wend their boozy way home. Without high heels to trip them up, the poor girls will avoid twisting their ankles. Or, horror of horrors, have to walk home barefoot with the fashionable footware dangling from one nail varnished paw!

Now Milo has sent me news of yet another police program to keep the streets safe. This time they are passing out free pens to drunk people in Manchester. Pens that double as bubble blowers.

The idea is that violence, assaults, property damage, and excessive late night noise will be abated if the drunk people are distracted by these little toys on the stagger back to the ol’ homestead. They used to pass out free lollipops, but that wasn’t doing the trick. It was decided that the big guns in the form of bubble blowing pens was necessary.

My admittedly limited background in law enforcement leads me to think that arresting drunk hell raisers and tossing them in a cell for 12 hours or so is the best way to reduce all that violence, noise, and torn up private property. There must be something about the conditions in England that makes this a losing strategy, like maybe their drunks are so dangerous that they have to be placated by toys and free giveaways so they don’t tear up the town like Godzilla. Lollipops, bubbles, and flip-flops are the way to go over there when dealing with these pub-crawling menaces!

I had no idea that the police in Britain were overwhelmed by hordes of drunk people, swarming the streets every night at closing time. It must resemble some sort of zombie movie every evening.

It would also seem that their medical facilities are swamped by miniskirt-clad doxies, demanding treatment for twisted ankles and stubbed toes. I would discuss how this was predictable considering how England has socialized medicine, but then I realized that would steal some thunder from our readers.

Like most people, I was shocked and saddened to hear of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India last week. Close to 200 people dead so far, with untold numbers more injured. It is a tragedy of terrible scope.

Speaking as someone who works with violent crime survivors, I can attest that there is a hidden cost that very few of us will ever see. Thousands upon thousands of people were involved with the victims, from family members and close friends to coworkers and casual acquaintances. Most of those people will find their lives have been changed, and rarely for the better.

Although hardly an expert on terrorism, I have been paying attention to the issue over the years. I thought I’d share a few thoughts.

Read the rest of this entry »

From a comment by UK libertarian Ian Parker-Joseph, in response to this post by James Rummel on the UK government’s DNA database:

In isolation, it may be argued that DNA retention would be useful to the Police in their work. However, put it against the background of everything else going on in the UK, and it becomes impossible to ignore the more sinister overtones of dictatorship.
 
It is very easy to formulate an argument for single items, for things that only affect a very small proportion of the population, which is how the salami slicing works.
 
However, when we put it all together, 26,000 new laws, 3000 new criminal offences, then the laws are not for the good of the people, or for their protection but for the good of the state.
 
That is the balance that needs to be redressed.

Read the whole discussion.

Most of our readers here at The Chicago Boyz not only hail from the United States, but also identify themselves as Libertarians. You guys don’t know how good you’ve got it.

Why do I say that? Libertarians, big “L” or otherwise, seem to be concerned with keeping civil liberties intact. Vigilance must be eternal in order to keep the government from overreaching and trampling on our freedoms. For example, if the FBI insisted on taking and filing the fingerprints of everyone, including newborns, it would be seen as an infringement of privacy. There is just no reasonable justification for the expense and trouble of compiling a database of average law abiding citizens.

All well and good in the good ol’ US of A, but there is a rather alarming development in Old Blighty that has caused me to sit up and take notice.

It seems that the Home Office in Great Britain has compiled the largest DNA database in the entire world, not only in raw numbers but also in the percentage of population which has been included. According to the official figures found on the government webpage linked to above, “By the end of 2005 over 3.4 million DNA profiles were held on the database…” This dwarfs the approximately 1.5 million profiles that are to be found in all the DNA databases in the United States, even though we have about five times the population. The Home Office proudly claims that 5.2% of the entire population of England now has a copy of their DNA filed away in their database, and it might well be over 8% by now.

Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t have much of an opinion about illegal drugs back when I started to work for the police.

Oh, I had heard the arguments in favor of legalizing all drugs. This was back in the early 1990s, and our prisons were beginning to fill due to the so-called “War on Drugs”. Legalization advocates would point out that the economic cost of illegal drugs would be extremely low if they were suddenly acceptable. All the crime, violence, and social costs that came from addiction would disappear if the price wasn’t artificially inflated. Remove the drug laws and remove the profit incentive for gang bangers and pushers to do war in the streets. Make drugs cheap and there wouldn’t be any reason for junkies to commit crimes to feed their habit.

Like I said, I had heard the arguments in favor of legalization but had yet to form an opinion. Then I started to meet junkies up close and personal.

Read the rest of this entry »