Pubdate: Fri, 21 Mar 2008
Source: Montgomery Advertiser (AL)
Copyright: 2008 The Advertiser Co.
Contact: http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/customerservice/letter.htm
Website: http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1088
Note: Letters from the newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority
Author: Loretta Nall

FUNDING POLICE ANTI-DRUG WORK NOT WISE POLICY

Letters Funding police anti-drug work not wise policy

In response to "Anti-drug effort must be funded" (March 12), I
completely disagree.

In January, Sgt. Jim Henderson, vice president of the Alabama
Narcotics Officers Association, began protesting the federal
government cuts to his budget on the editorial pages of many Alabama
newspapers. He claimed the cuts would make drug task forces
ineffective.

When have they ever been effective? Every year the number of drug
arrests and the amount of drugs seized rises. If the tactics employed
by Sgt. Henderson and other drug warriors were working, then shouldn't
those numbers be going down?

Should they be rewarded for repeated failure with more cash? In the
private sector they would be unemployed.

This article seemed to imply that execution of warrants was delayed in
order to create a big media scene. I guess the safety and well-being
of the public is only important when there is a government welfare
check involved and when there is a media camera nearby.

Drug task forces are equivalent to people who abuse the welfare
system. Instead of doing real police work on serious crimes like
murder, rape, child sexual assault, robbery and vehicle theft they
focus on rounding up low-level, non-violent drug users because it's
easy. And they get a government welfare check for doing so.

The Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center reports that crime
clearance rates for 2005 were 19 percent. The drug warrior welfare
cuts should be looked upon as a good thing.

Perhaps now police will get to work on solving real crimes.

Loretta Nall

Alexander City