Strapped U.S. Police Turn to Marijuana Busts for Cash
Jul 5, 2010 Online Issue
Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, his budget under pressure in a weak economy, has laid off staff, reduced patrols and even released jail inmates. But there’s one mission on which he’s spending more than in recent years: pot busts, The Wall Street Journal reported 
Saturday.
The reason is simple: If the California lawman steps up his pursuit of marijuana growers, his department is eligible for roughly half a million dollars a year in federal anti-drug funding, helping save some jobs. The majority of the funding would have to be used to fight pot. Marijuana may not be the county’s most pressing crime problem, the sheriff says, but “it’s where the money is.”
Washington has long allocated funds to help localities fight crime, influencing their priorities in the process. Today’s local budget squeezes are enhancing this effect, and the result is particularly striking in California, where many residents take a benign view of pot but federal dollars help keep law-enforcement focused on it.
To make sure his office gets the federal funds, Bosenko since last year has spent about $340,000 of his department’s shrinking resources, more than in past years, on a team that tramps through the woods looking for pot farms. Though the squad is mostly U.S.-funded, the federal grants don’t cover some of its needs, such as a team chief and certain equipment. So, Bosenko has to pay for those out of his regular budget.
He doesn’t doubt the value of pursuing pot farming, which he says is often the work of sophisticated Mexican gangs and leads to other crimes like assault. But other infractions, like drunken driving and robbery, may have a bigger direct impact on local residents than pot growing, he says.
The pot money is “$340,000 I could use somewhere else in my organization,” he says. “That could fund three officers’ salaries and benefits, and we could have them out on our streets doing patrol.” His overall budget this year is about $35 million.
The U.S. Justice Department is spending nearly $3.6 billion this year to augment budgets of state and local law enforcement agencies. In addition, the federal government last year set aside close to $4 billion of the economic stimulus package for law enforcement grants for state and local agencies. The White House also is spending about $239 million this year to fund local drug trafficking task forces.
Much of the federal money helps local agencies go after sophisticated criminal gangs and hard drugs like methamphetamine. Even staunch supporters of legal pot don’t dispute the value of that.
Source : foxnews.com
Tags: marijuana, marijuana bust
July 7th, 2010 at 4:12 am
RAMIFICATIONS FOR POT IN THE ARIZONA ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION LAW BATTLE: The Feds (D. O. J.) have omitted (left out) from their lawsuit against Arizona any mention of “race” issues or allegations that the law could lead to “racial profiling” of innocent people. They have omitted “racial profiling” for not better reason than to guard their own hind-quarters. The reason the Feds aren’t bringing that false notion up, is that the new Arizona law is an exact MIRROR of the long-existing FEDERAL law on illegal immigration. In short, if the Feds call Arizona’s law/policy in any way “racist” it would expose THEM (the FEDS) and the existing Fed law of being precisely the SAME! Then it would be asked why the Feds aren’t attacking THEIR OWN laws first, rather than Arizona’s! Pull the log out of YOUR OWN eye before you go after the splinter in someone ELSE’S eye. Therefore, not wanting THAT hypocrisy exposed, the Feds are only taking them to court with the claim that FEDERAL law “trumps” STATE law; that is, that policing of illegal immigrants is the privilege and domain of the Feds, and NOT of STATE law enforcement agencies. This is not only outrageous, it is just plain WEIRD! Let THIS message go VIRAL. Let it go out to everyone in the United States who would like to see MARIJUANA legalized. The pro-pot masses should rise up and immediately use this Federal case as PRECEDENT and PROOF that it is ILLEGAL for cities, counties, and states all across the U.S. to have any laws against marijuana or to enforce such laws. They assert that FEDERAL laws exist for those purposes, and that since there are FEDS engaged in the enforcement of those laws, and, as the Obama Department of Justice now proclaims, in such circumstances, “FEDERAL law trumps STATE law, and all lower laws and agencies.” By this they argue that the lower states and agencies CANNOT legally themselves enforce the Federal laws. The pro-pot people should announce nationwide, that Obama and the D. O. J. want all non-Fed law enforcement agencies to suspend “acting like Feds” in arresting people under Federal law or “mirrors” of such laws, and that from now on, no state, county or city is allowed to make laws that are duplicates or mirrors of any Federal laws. ALL of EVERYTHING that is encompassed in Federal laws is now to be “HANDS OFF” for states, counties and cities that used to mistakenly think it was a “good thing” to make and enforce laws that were modeled on FEDERAL laws. If Arizona law enforcement officials cannot arrest lawbreakers who break laws that exist at a Federal level, then ALL states, counties, parishes and cities must forthwith be given “halt and desist” orders, that they no longer arrest breakers of Federal laws. If it’s a Federal law, only Feds can enforce it. Thousands of state, county, parish and city laws across the nation, which have previously been seen as “mirroring” and reflecting and agreeing with Federal laws, must forthwith be abolished. If murder is against a FEDERAL law, no state, county, parish or city law enforcement personnel can be permitted to round up murderers, charge them with crimes, and hand them over to be tried. In every jurisdiction, it must be made clear whether any given law is Federal or local. It cannot be both. No state or lower power can mimic Federal law. If smuggling drugs into the United States across our national border is illegal under a FEDERAL law, every border state in the south, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and and in the north along the borders with Canada and the Great Lakes, Montana, Washington, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and, on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, Oregon, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, must all immediately cease and desist all law enforcement against drug smugglers entering by the shores or border of their states. If illegal activity at our national borders is now to be seen as solely the responsibility and domain of the Feds, then so be it. The above-mentioned twenty-six states (and all counties and parishes and cities and municipal jurisdictions within them) must take a “hands off” position regarding drugs being smuggled across their borders. Furthermore, after the twenty-six states withdraw all such operations, either the Federal Government must step up and “fill the gap” and keep drug crimes at the borders at least as low as it presently is, or, all twenty-six states, as well as the several hundred counties entailed, should form a UNITED CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT for its failure to enforce Federal laws. Instead of the Fed picking on and suing one solitary state with a low population (a big issue to politicians concerned with votes), it will be twenty-six States, and County Governments, uniting as one, to sue the Federal Government. – John Smith – Los Angeles