Police, Prosecutors and Prisons

I had an interesting conversation yesterday at Thanksgiving. A family member was expressing extreme dissatisfaction with police. He was complaining about what he sees as an excessive amount of police interference in our daily lives. This covered everything from speeding tickets given to working stiffs and immigration enforcement destroying local farmers who rely on illegal aliens to do the work that Americans won't do. He said his father used to complain about how we lost so many of our rights in the 1960s and 1970s, and he sees that only having continued and getting worse under the so-called War on Terror. I've heard many others say we now live in a police state, and I have trouble disagreeing.

Then he said something that got me going. He said that police should focus on (and I'm paraphrasing) violent criminals, thieves and drug dealers. That last one is when I turned on him. Why drug dealers?

I expressed my view that the War on Drugs is responsible for much of his complaints. Some defense lawyers refer to the drug war exception to the Fourth Amendment or to the Bill of Rights. Check out this Google search for some examples.

This cousin also described his view that all police were mean and nasty. I do not agree with this, having quite a few friends in uniform.

The truth about policing, along with prosecution and prisons, is that it's all a nasty business. While most cops are now well paid (deputy sheriffs are often underpaid), the job itself is not pleasant. Their basic function is to deal with criminals, who tend to be less than friendly sometimes. At the same time police have to deal with difficult bureaucracy. The Albany Police Department is particularly notorious for how it treats the regular cop, but there are problems in many others.

While my cousin blames the police for their intrusions, they are really just following orders. Our orders. In the US, whenever a "problem" arises, the default answer is now to make the problem a crime. That means we need more police, more prosecutors, and more prisons. This is expensive, and the canary in the coal mine appears to be California cities, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks provoked an extreme surge in this respect. Now police are focused on our borders and on fears of terrorism. I talked to a federal prosecutor who said that these priorities were so great there are no resources to focus on some other crimes like mortgage fraud. So, in the end, Osama bin Laden really took down our country not through terrorism itself, but through our overreaction to it.

Memphis Police blog

Just ran across a really interesting blog about police in Memphis. Appears to be written by an anonymous officer in that department, and there are tons of comments. Many of the comments appear to be by other Memphis cops. Very interesting.

Some of the discussion reminds me of a topic I will discuss soon. Why do politicians talk about police and courts in revenue terms? This is a horrendous mindset. Police and courts should be about justice and public safety. More to come ...