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Gunmen killed 16 people,including a police chief,in a spate of separate shootings across Mexico,which is grappling with a spike in drug violence,local officials said Thursday.This article appeared in

Radley Balko points out that police in Flint, MI have started going after people whose pants sag below their boxer shorts:



Leaving aside the absurdity of telling people how to wear their pants, just contemplate the ironic path that brought us here. The style itself is an artifact of prison culture, where inmates' belts and shoelaces are confiscated and the standard-issue clothes never fit right. The style made its way back onto the streets where it entered popular culture. Now, in 2008, you can go to jail for 93 days to a year just for dressing like an inmate.

In an urban landscape already ravaged by decades of racial profiling and drug war demolition tactics, police have codified their own authority to stop and frisk people whose style of dress is already stigmatized by presumed criminality. The number of things young people in America can't get arrested for approaches zero at an exponential rate.

 

check this out another opportunity missed this type of 'probable cause' was used in my case also http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/07/11/troopers_marijuana_test.html

evidence: 10# commercial Mexican in vehicle confiscated during 'failure' to dim' traffic stop priors: none investigation: none legal counsel: yellow pages, paid

Drenched in tequila, the brave men who fight the war on drugs will be the first to tell you that our asset forfeiture laws are a vital resource for law-enforcement:

IN 2005 the Montgomery County district attorney’s office held a party at the county fair in east Texas. They had beer, liquor and a margarita machine. The district attorney, Mike McDougal, at first denied that this had been paid for by drug money. He acknowledged that his office had a margarita machine at the fair. In fact, he said, they won first prize for best margarita. But he insisted they came by it fair and square. In any case, he pointed out, the county’s drug fund was at his discretion. Under Texas forfeiture law, counties can keep most of the money and property they rustle up.
…

Mr. McDougal…fessed up in the end about the margarita machine. [Economist]

It really more or less speaks for itself. They spent confiscated drug proceeds on booze, won an award for their awesome margaritas, and then lied about it. These are the people that will put you behind bars for smoking marijuana. They are the champions in the fight against drug abuse and they are as good at putting people in jail for drugs as they are at mixing alcoholic beverages.

Literally drunk on their own power, the hypocrites on the front lines of our war on drugs ought to arrest themselves if they ever sober up.