If you’re looking to balance the city’s budget on the back of the City’s police officers, why don’t you take a look at your narcotics division and start looking to make cuts there. I have no patience for this kind of crap. Nothing undermines the rule of law more than when police pretend they are not subject to it themselves.
It’s equally outrageous that the city is taking the position that small ziplock bags are drug paraphernalia. That the city’s narcotics unit is even wasting time on this small time crap is nuts, to say the least. But hey, I suppose shop owners don’t shoot at the police, unlike the real bad guys.
If the state has any sense at all it’ll change its drug paraphenelia laws to deal with this. Selling plastic bags should not, in any sane system of justice, be a crime.
I don’t fundamentally disagree wiith the attempts to stop drug trafficking. But the baggie bans are a sign that it is safer the police to go after incidents of the drug trade (which have legitimate purposes as well) rather than to go after drug dealers, who tend to shoot back.
Small ziploc bags are drug paraphernalia now??? So what does that make a spoon? Or a razor blade? That means all the little ziploc baggies in my archery tool box (that my field points and nocks came in makes me a drug dealer now?? Maybe Mayor Nutso should stop trying to make something out of nothing.
Googling the name “Jeffery Cujdic” brings up years of alleged abuse by this guy. He has been put on desk duty and relieved of his weapon.
http://www.workers.org/2009/us/philadelphia_cops_0226/
I personally think a cut in the police force would be a good thing anyway. They obviously have too much time on their hands if they can wastefully pursue plastic bag retailers.
Besides, it’s not as if the criminals they lock up
The “small” plastic bags are the first step. After all, the larger ones are used by the more challenged types, who spray gold paint into them and inhale the fumes [metallic paints often have chemicals not in other paints to prevent the metals settling out or agglutinating) – like the ones who decades ago did it wih the glues used for plastic models resulting in the banning of those weld-establishing glues.
small plastic bags. Never been into an arts and crafts store have they? MANY items in those stores come in small bags. A friend makes jewelry and gives me all the bags Anyone who bought a hard drive is a criminal (jumpers come in them) Fishermen.
It’s the same “logic” that has the keystone kops chasing guns instead of violent criminals.
Idiots.
Back in the day, I used to have plenty of family in Northeast Philadelphia – a grandmother, aunts, great aunts, and so forth. They all were into sewing and other types of crafts with the sequins and beads and such. Since they all had a whole bunch of small ziplock bags spread around their houses, then I guess they would all be at risk for getting arrested by the city’s narcoticsif they were still around nowadays.
Oops – that last sentence of mine should have read as:
“Since they all had a whole bunch of small ziplock bags spread around their houses, then I guess they would all be at risk for getting arrested by the city’s narcotics squad if they were still around nowadays.”
There is this one line from the “Drug Raids Gone Bad” article, which is linked above here, that stood out for me:
Most store owners interviewed for this report said that when the plainclothes cops barged through their doors, they believed they were being robbed at gunpoint.
So, what’s going to happen when one of these store owners or their employees legally has a firearm of their own, and perhaps is also a LTCF permit holder – a deadly shootout perhaps? There must be at least some business owners in Philadelphia who fit into this “armed citizen” category. Can these corrupt cops always be so sure that they will only target the unarmed stores?
Philadelphia has already had enough cops dying from gunfire in the official line of legitimate duty in recent times. This is unacceptable of course, and will likely continue for as long as the Philadelphia judges remain as soft on the hardened criminals as they have been for so long, but if a Philadelphia cop gets killed while engaging in police corruption by an armed citizen, that will be a whole other matter entirely, and hopefully it will not just get covered up by other corrupt cops, either.