Thursday, January 02, 2014
The Patients
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2 Comments:
From article:
"Several months earlier at a local bar, Fairfax County, Virginia, detective David Baucum overheard the thirty-eight-year-old optometrist and some friends wagering on a college football game. 'To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends,' a friend of Culosi’s told me shortly after his death. 'None of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting fifty bucks or so on the Virginia–Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation.' Baucum apparently did. After overhearing the men wagering, Baucum befriended Culosi as a cover to begin investigating him. During the next several months, he talked Culosi into raising the stakes of what Culosi thought were just more fun wagers between friends to make watching sports more interesting. Eventually Culosi and Baucum bet more than $2,000 in a single day. Under Virginia law, that was enough for police to charge Culosi with running a gambling operation.
Okay, I'm just a dumb salesman, so could somebody please explain to me how that is not entrapment? Because it sure as fuck looks like entrapment to me...
I have seen a disturbing trend in Police work in the past few years. The militarization I attribute to Grant money. There are numerous grants and Federal money out there to be had for equipment. Not pay, but stuff. Cars, computers, and radios are not included in this. A department can only buy so many belts and handcuff holders, and you can't let that money get away now can you. Some other department might get the cool toys. So they buy armored vehicles and swat gear and MP-5s and AR-15's and shields and vests and all the cool stuff in the catalog. Well you can't let that stuff go to waste now can you? So they go out and serve warrants and kick in doors to justify having this gear. "See, it is a dangerous world out there, we need this stuff"
I have also seen a trend away from being problem solvers and officers have become enforcers. PPIJ (Put People In Jail) is the new mantra. No longer focusing on what would solve the issue long term, but what would solve the issue now. Years ago the officer tried to solve the issue on scene and prevent it from going to court, now I hear too many of them saying "let the court figure it out, I need to get to the next call"
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