Cops Catch Crooks, Right?

It was recently pointed out to me that I seldom blog about local issues. Well, here’s one I feel strongly about. According to today’s Journal Sentinel, the heroin dealers known as the Big Money Addicts have been on trial. They testified that one thing that really helped their business was former Police Chief Ed Flynn’s “no chase” policy.

For those who don’t know what that’s about, let me recap: Police chases have often been deadly in Milwaukee’s past. A series of deadly crashes in 2010 after high-speed police pursuits, killed four innocent bystanders. This led to Ed Flynn imposing a “no chase” rule. Unless cops felt there was a deadly crime involved, they didn’t chase the crooks down. This, Flynn felt, would decrease the number of innocent deaths.

Well, it was a controversial move, and it didn’t work. The Big Money Addicts had a heroin business which was essentially mobile. They used stolen vehicles to drive around town and deal drugs directly to customers instead of operating a drug house which could be more easily found and raided. And they didn’t carry guns, because if they got pulled over, they could face both a drug and a gun charge. But in 2014, they realized that the cops weren’t chasing them anymore. Suddenly, it made more sense to carry guns all the time because they wouldn’t be caught and charged! And not only did they carry guns, they carried semi-automatic rifles with high-capacity magazines. I mean, why not if you know your mobile operation is safe?!

As a direct result, innocent bystanders weren’t run down, but they ended up being gunned down instead.

How many were gunned down vs. run over or crashed into is tricky accounting work. Few numbers are available, and the Milwaukee Police Department has been less than forthcoming with all the statistics. Yet I think it’s fair to say that the “no chase” policy has made Milwaukee’s streets less safe in the long run. Only four deaths led to the police stopping high-speed chases. I’m quite certain that the Big Money Addicts and other gangs have killed far more than that, thanks in large part to cops simply letting crooks get away with it.

Don’t get me wrong, Ed Flynn has had his triumphs. He buried the glaring failures of former Chief Art Jones. He modernized the police force. He installed well-trained and well-disciplined officers. He brought in more minorities into the police force. But he may well be best remembered for this one, glaring failure above all others. It’s tragic, but when you make a mistake that big, people remember it.

Cops don’t let crooks go! Period! It is fundamental to their job as police officers. Some of the “no chase” rules have been lifted, but not entirely, and I for one am sick of inner city drivers blowing through traffic lights and ruthlessly using the parking shoulder as a fast-lane because they know cops don’t give a shit.

And if that behavior doesn’t kill even more innocent bystanders, I don’t know what will!

Eric

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Fiscal Apocalypse Now.

So, this is how it ends.

War with North Korea and China? That’s a real worry, but no. Cyber-attacks by Russia? Also a worry, but not that one, either. No, the real manifest destiny of America’s destruction under Trump will be the national debt.

The national debt stands right now at 20.567 trillion dollars. How much is that? A lot. Imagine a million bucks. Easy, right? Now multiply that by a thousand. Now multiply that by a thousand. Now multiply that by 21. Damn! Yeah, pretty big, right? But we have no idea how to comprehend that much. So try this: If every dollar we owed were a single grain of rice, the pile of rice would weigh 200 million pounds! In fact, if every American paid $100 towards the national debt every single day starting today until it was all paid off, it would take nearly two years to do it!

Yeah. That’s how deep in the hole we are!

And that’s if we stopped spending more than we are taking in immediately. But not only are we not doing that, Trump just proposed a budget for 2019 that could add 7 trillion more to the debt. We’re speeding towards the cliff, and Trump just hit the accelerator instead of the brake!

And remember, Trump has gone bankrupt more often than he’s fathered children! He’s not exactly good at getting out of these sort of holes.

Remember when it was such a tragedy that Obama wasn’t reducing the deficit fast enough? Remember when the 10 trillion dollar debt he inherited from Bush 43 was the worst crisis in the Western Hemisphere according to Fox News and Dinesh D’Sousa? Remember when he was projected to let the national debt hit 17 trillion by 2011, and that landmark was considered too much debt to come back from? Well, none of that happened, and meanwhile, the national debt has somehow become "no big deal," even as it threatens to swallow us whole.

Under Obama, the deficit went down. He was unable to eliminate the deficit and draw a surplus because Republicans blocked him. In fact, they blocked anything Obama wanted, no matter how conservative. No matter how sensible. In fact, they blocked everything Obama wanted simply because he was Obama.

Why isn’t Trump’s opposition willing to do that?

But now, the efforts Republicans did to increase deficit spending in order to try and dislodge Obama in 2012 are coming home to roost for Republicans. And they don’t care. They’ve forgotten how we got here.

Let’s be clear: If the U.S. Dollar goes, there goes most of the world’s economy with it. That, in turn, hits our own economy twice as hard. When Trump supporters say they’d rather “see it burn down” than let liberals run things, that’s what they want. A future with not only no jobs, but without any means to live, no way to survive, no way to feed one’s family, no hope. 

It isn't worth all that just to win a debate with Liberals on Facebook.

Our population is too dense to go back to scratching a living off the bark of trees in the dead of winter. Like it or not, it's either sustain the cracked government we have, or die.

I hope it doesn't take the weeping over the graves of our children to wake Trump voters up. But if it does, I hope they remember through their tears that we warned them every step of the way to their own demise.

Even neophytes to the conservative movement should remember that deficit spending was considered horrible under Clinton, it was really horrible under Obama, and it wasn't cool under Bush, but there was a war on, so that was the only reason he got a pass. So Trump deciding he wants to max out our nation's millionth credit card is stupid. Really stupid.

Fox news taught me that.

Eric

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