Torture on tape

Last year a group of police raided a suspected drug dealer apparently on their own time and tried to force him to sign a consent to search form. What they didn't know was that his wife had started a tape recorder just before the came in.

That tape was released last month and is linked at the following page as well as a transcript and more detail on what happened. Be warned, the tape is about 40 minutes long and not easy to listen to at times.

http://www.theagitator.com/archives/026505.php#026505

I don't hate police in general for this, what I hate is the damned drug war. It empowers people who never should have worn a badge in the first place, and risks corrupting some who may otherwise have been decent people. When you convince them they are in a fight for the lives of their kids, they can do about anything and feel justified.

The hysteria is costing us, and how many of these didn't have a tape running?

$65 billion a year, (just to arrest them, that doesn't include incarceration)

It's a failed policy.

The costs are a lot higher in any case when it's all taken into account. A lot of those people had jobs, now rather than them paying taxes we pay to lock them up. We lose the tax base and the productivity and trade it for having to pay for their upkeep. Many have spouses and/or kids, they get tossed into poverty or at least closer to it than they were before, that costs us. The census count is shifted to move prisoners to the jail, that strips funding from schools the inmates kids go to and rewards their jailers. The poor educations that result carry costs of their own, both direct and for the next generation. We create a lot of new criminals behind bars, and the costs keep climbing.

I think it does include keeping them behind bars, but it still doesn't come even close to the true cost. I've no idea what it really is, and I'm not sure you can even put a financial value on some of it. It's a hell of a lot more than regulation would be though.