We waist so many law enforcement resources fighting drugs, from outside our borders; we donât have the resources to extradite wanted criminals within our borders.
You see, when law enforcement agencies receive a felony arrest warrant from a judge, they enter the information into N.C.I.C., the National Crime Information Center.
One of the questions N.C.I.C. asks is how far the agency is will go to pickup the prisoner, if an officer runs the suspects name and find they're wanted. Some of the choices are within their own county or state, surrounding counties or states, and nation wide. All too often, officers stop wanted felons, only to release them due to limited extradition when a wants and warrants check is run..
In my opinion the agencies are happy the bad guys out of their jurisdiction. Why would they bring a wanted burglar or robber back to their town? So the courts can released him/her on bond, so he can commit more crimes in their jurisdiction.
Many criminals figure this out pretty quick, and simply move from state to state committing crimes they know agencies wonât extradite for, if they are across state lines, or multiple state lines. I know from my experience, other officers, and police radio traffic that officers release everything from drug offenses, to burglars, and people wanted for assault, but many states do extradite for back child support.
Whatâs the point in spending the time and resources to investigate and arrest these bad guys, if they donât follow through and bring them to trial to be sentenced? Itâs time we stop arresting drug users, and concentrate on real criminals. After all, with 40,000,000 people using drugs in the last year, and over 12,000,000 in the last month, letâs be truthful, itâs not hard to make drug arrests.
Many times you hear law enforcement compare drug users to bank robbers, or other criminal activity when talking about legalization. Letâs be serious, if we had 12,000,000 bank robberies last month, we would have a serious crime problem,12,000,000 pot smokers, not so much.
Permission to Reprint: This content is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license. Content of a purely educational nature in Drug War Chronicle appear courtesy of DRCNet Foundation, unless otherwise noted.
Add new comment