Law & Justice: November 2006 Archives
If you can't send all the criminals to prison, bring the prison to the criminals.
The NYPD has installed a patrol tower in a Harlem neighborhood in an effort to cut crime in the high-risk neighborhood.The two-story booth tower, called Sky Watch, gives the officer sitting inside a better vantage point from which to monitor the area. Officers in the booth have access to a spotlight, sensors, and four cameras. The tower is portable and can be moved to the areas that need it most.
A little more money for razor wire and they'll be all set.
I waver between favoring legalization of most drugs and not, but there's no question that the current War on Drugs is horribly harmful to our country and our erstwhile allies in whose countries the drugs are manufactured. Mostly-harmless people are harassed by law enforcement agencies and often thrown in jail for longer terms than rapists, and for what? Are drugs less of a problem now than they were 100 years ago when they were legal?
The latest outrage touches the War on Drugs tangentially and also involves an issue Clayton Cramer and Randy Balko have taken the lead on vocally denouncing: no-knock SWAT raids on drug suspects that needlessly endanger everyone involved.
The set-up, from Mr. Balko: Cheryl Lynn Noel is gunned down in her home by police officers after marijuana seeds are found in her trash cans.
The facts of the case are awful: A Baltimore SWAT team conducted a 4:30am raid on the Noel family home after finding marijuana seeds and "trace" amounts of cocaine in the family's outdoor trash can. After battering down the door, they deployed a flashbang grenade, then rushed up the steps to the bedroom of Cheryl and Charles Noel.Cheryl Noel's stepdaughter had been murdered several years earlier, and her son had recently been jumped by thugs on his way home. So the family had a legal, registered handgun in the home, and Noel had reason to be frightened. When a SWAT officer kicked open the bedroom door, Noel sat up in bed with the gun, apparently pointed downward, not at the officer. The officer, who was wearing a helmet, mask, shield, and bulletproof vest, and who came in behind a bulletproof ballistic shield, fired twice. Noel slumped over, and the gun slipped out of her hand. The officer then walked over to her and ordered her to move further away from the gun. She couldn't, of course. When she didn't, he shot her a third time, essentially from point-blank range.
The punchline? The police officer who shot Noel has been given a Silver Star.
On January 21, 2005, Officer Carlos Artson saved himself and his fellow officers from being shot. Officer Artson was confronted by a woman pointed a loaded handgun at him, during the service of a high risk, "no knock" search warrant for an ongoing narcotics investigation.
It's quite possible that Noel was pointing the gun at the officer and not at the ground, but what the heck were the police doing in her home unannounced at all? I'm a huge supporter of the police, but it's utterly insane that they can burst into your home and kill you because they found some seeds while they were rooting through your trash. Even if the police in this case acted entirely properly according to their procedures, the laws need to be changed to prevent them from being put into this kind of position.
Other than most traffic enforcement, it's hard to imagine a bigger waste of time than setting up sting operations for prostitutes and their clients. The whole idea seems especially absurd to me considering that if the sex workers were paid to make pornographic movies they'd be completely ignored by law enforcement and protected by case law.
Rented furnishings and hidden cameras were among the props Seattle police vice detectives used to arrest 104 men who showed up at a ritzy downtown condo in the past two weeks expecting to pay for sex.Nearly three-fourths of the men who were arrested on suspicion of patronizing a prostitute responded to postings in the "erotic services" category on craigslist, the free online community where people can search for apartments, jobs, used cars, friends and dates. The rest answered escort ads found in the back pages of The Stranger and Seattle Weekly.
"We wanted to prove craigslist was in fact a vehicle for promoting prostitution," said Lt. Eric Sano, commander of the Seattle Police Department's vice unit.
Escorts and the agencies that represent them have long argued that clients pay only for the companionship of a beautiful woman, Sano said, "but for the most part, that's not how it works."
Duh. Anyway, as I noted before, if the prostitutes simply carried video cameras and claimed to be making pornos they'd be completely safe.
Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to die by hanging. If anyone deserves death, it's Saddam, so I hope there aren't too many tears shed by leftist "pacifists" who opposed the invasion and continue to share common cause with the fallen dictator.
A defiant Saddam Hussein shrugged off a possible death sentence, saying he would die without fear and the U.S. occupiers of his country would leave humiliated like they did in Vietnam, his lawyers said on Saturday.They said a jovial and highly spirited Saddam chatted with them for more than three hours about the violence in Iraq and mounting U.S. losses just hours before an expected death sentence on Sunday in his trial for crimes against humanity.
The prospect of the sentence appeared to be the least of his concerns, they said, his focus instead being on the insurgency and the rising U.S. death toll.
"He was totally unconcerned about the verdict. In fact there was derision about the court and this farce," Khalil al-Dulaimi, the defense team's chief lawyer told Reuters by telephone from Baghdad.
It's so strange that Saddam Hussein and American leftists seem to share the same hopes and dreams. I just can't figure it out.
Fortunately, it sounds like Saddam was a little more shaken after the sentence was handed down than he wanted to appear beforehand.
Angry, shaking and defiant, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death this morning by hanging for ordering the massacre of Iraqi civilians."Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest) and "Long live the nation!", he shouted, pointing defiantly at the judge as the verdict was delivered.
Looking away in disgust, and then staring angrily back at the judge he continued to shout "Long live the people and death to their enemies. Long live the glorious nation, and death to its enemies!"
He had refused to stand for the verdict and had to be lifted to his feet by two court bailiffs.
"Make him stand," the judge ordered as the former president stayed seated.
"Make him stand." Historical words. My wife, who is part Iraqi, says the world will be a better place once Saddam swings.
