Baton Rouge Drug Enforcement Has Plummeted Since Police Killed Alton Sterling

[yallerdawg]

Murders rose in other cities under similar circumstances — will Baton Rouge be next?

Another "Things that make you go hmm..."

Source: FiveThirtyEight, by Jeff Asher

Outside the headlines, something else has been happening since Sterling was shot: The Baton Rouge Police Department has substantially reduced enforcement of narcotics offenses. That may sound like a small change, but narcotics enforcement can be an important glimpse into how often officers are going out of their way to engage in police work. Police officers do both reactive work (responding to 911 calls, for example) and proactive work (such as traffic stops that lead to drug arrests). In a moment of heightened tension between the police and a city’s residents, the trends in proactive policing can tell us whether officers are engaging with residents more or less often than they once did.

And a reduction in proactive policing could have a broader effect on Baton Rouge as a whole. Higher levels of violence have followed a reduction in narcotics enforcement in some cities whose police departments have been involved in high-profile deaths or the protests that followed. Will the same thing occur in Baton Rouge?

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/baton-rouge-drug-enforcement-has-plummeted-since-police-killed-alton-sterling/

[msongs]

1. the problem is making drugs illegal to justify the existence of the police state

prohibition does not work. humans will seek out stimulation whether from real substances or religion. we are better to spend our cash on education and prevention instead of the gestapo like tactics of the prohibition crowd.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. Exactly.

And it's no coincidence that many of the worst authoritarian excesses happen under the umbrella of the "war on drugs", like the Texas woman subjected to a cavity search at a gas station because a cop "smelled weed"

[yallerdawg]

4. Just like Prohibition gave us gang violence...

illegal drugs gives us gang violence.

People want what they want, and there is money to be made.

[NaturalHigh]

6. Exactly. We should have learned the first time.

[Warpy]

5. Honest education would be a step in the right direction

instead of the stupid DARE program that most kids tell me is a joke. Pair that with inpatient rehab centers for people who run into trouble and we might be able to affect the drug use that becomes problematic.

The rest of us are grownups and no longer need a nanny to tell us which things are no nos. Most of us would rather have our brains working right, thanks, so we'd only use medication to treat our pain.

Of course, the bluenosed moralists won't see it that way and continue to agitate for laws against the rest of us, but I think we can say one thing for certain: drug prohibition doesn't work any better than alcohol prohibition did.

[B2G]

2. Sounds like Baltimore. nt

[yallerdawg]

7. But ponder this.

We have a "law and order" opposition candidate.

We have "the left" saying we lock up too many people, and our candidate and her husband were responsible for it.

Oldtimers!

Is this starting to sound familiar?

[winstars]

8. WTF? i would think arrests for selling CD's would go down? Isn't that what he was doing?

So THEY KILL A GUY FOR SELLING CD'S, get caught, and now are not making drug arrests?

I don't get it?

[yallerdawg]

9. They got bad press, so now it's time for payback.

They know there is a direct, proven correlation between reduced proactive policing and increase in violent crime.

They are swinging the pendulum back, the politicians will follow - and, at some point, the people will, too.

[winstars]

10. "Oh shit, we can't just kill people anymore, that blows: COPS!!!!

[yallerdawg]

13. Violent crime rising in US cities, study finds

Yeah, they know what they are doing...

Violent crime is on the rise so far this year in major cities across the US compared to the number of homicides, rapes, robberies, assaults and shootings that occurred in the same cities by this point in 2015, a new report has found.

The midyear violent crime survey released Monday by the Major Cities Chiefs Association shows 307 more homicides so far in 2016, according to data from 51 law enforcement agencies from some of the largest US cities.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/25/politics/violent-crime-report-us-cities-homicides-rapes/index.html

[uponit7771]

11. Some of these depts have vile gutless leadership !!

[uponit7771]

12. This is Chicago right now, the LEO's there could care less about what's happening in that citcy...

... they'd sooner let it burn down