I often argue with legalization proponents about the futility of legalization as a cure for gang related crime. I am of a mind that any large organization that makes money from criminal activity will not simply give up lucrative income streams when they become legal. Proponents of the “legalization will reduce crime” theory claim that once marijuana, for example, is legal that the gangs that make some of their a living selling pot will see the error of their ways, dissolve their membership and go on to lead productive lives. The mafia’s continued involvement with alcohol related industries (bars, nightclubs, liquor warehouses) well after prohibition was repealed seems to prove my point.

As does this case, where a gang enforcement unit with no clear chain of command was being funded partially through the confiscation of money and valuables from gang members. When their funding was drying up and gang members becoming more scarce, the inevitable happened:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) ― A special review panel said Thursday that it found “appalling and outrageous” misconduct within the defunct Minnesota Gang Task Force, including officers who took televisions and jewelry for their own use or interrogated people with no gang ties.

It also couldn’t account for $11,000 in missing cash.

Former federal prosecutor Andy Luger, who co-chaired the panel along with retired FBI agent John Engelhof, said they never expected to find such “egregious” activity by Minnesota law enforcement officers. The team included more than 30 officers from 13 law enforcement agencies.

“Perhaps 10 or more lost their way and engaged in conduct that never would have been tolerated at their home agencies,” Luger said. He said some officers considered themselves “money police,” seizing cash and property they believed would help make up for funding cuts.

Officers also are accused of targeting people who weren’t connected to gangs and often minorities, Luger said. In one case, $4,500 in cash was taken from a Hispanic man who legally had the money as a construction crew foreman.

[…]

The report released Thursday said that hours after the audit’s release, some task force officers shredded documents and several storage bins were filled with paper that would have been shredded by a professional disposal company had they not been discovered.

The strike force was permanently shut down last month after authorities said its problems — including missing cash and evidence, and poor record keeping — were too severe to fix.

Luger said he believes some task force members committed felonies, though he and Engelhof were unable to determine whether any of the nearly $11,000 in cash still missing was stolen by officers. An FBI investigation is ongoing.

No criminal charges have been filed, and the names of officers included in the report weren’t released. Luger said several refused to cooperate. He also said he didn’t believe the panel’s findings would jeopardize any criminal cases because the task force had a dismal record of turning its work into prosecutions.

The report said some strike force employees — including police officers — repeatedly took seized property for their personal use such as expensive TVs, jewelry, computer and electronic equipment, personal watercraft and even an ice auger. Many of those items were stolen by criminal suspects and could have been returned to their rightful owners, the report said.

In one investigation, task force members seized 70 new watches. The case file said 20 were given to a jeweler to sell and return profits to the task force — but the jeweler told investigators he had declined to take the watches.

The watches are still missing, and Luger said it’s reasonable to conclude they were taken by officers or employees.

There’s a video link at the report.

It should surprise no one that a group given the power to collect what gangs call “taxes” would continue to do so even from people not involved in gang activity. Just as gangs “tax” dealers who work their territory, they also extort money from businesses and innocent bystanders. Even police officers like the ones in this story can fall prey to the temptation to extort money from people when they are given the authority to collect part of their own funding.

Gangs are not full of people who started out their career looking to be a “good guy.” Legalize pot and gangs will still “tax” the now legal pot dealers, and when those dealers go to the police they will be handled like any other snitch on the streets. Drugs fund gangs, but they don’t fuel gangs. The only reduction in crime that will come from legalization would be the elimination of possession beefs. But most people charged with possession aren’t recreational users, so they will likely continue on their criminal way.

Gangs, and unfortunately the cops above began operating as a gang, will not disappear or change when financial realities change. They will continue to commit crimes to stay in business and legalization will not change that. So let’s have an honest debate about legalization without the canard that you being able to smoke pot legally will magically make crime disappear.

h/t Knight of Pan

The woman claims to have been on no medication so I’m going to go ahead an make an assumption here that drugs and/or alcohol were involved. After all how can you sleep through a dog eating your baby unless you are truly out of it? That and the fact that this mother was dog sitting a pit bull whose owner was in jail for a gun charge (meaning he was a felon I’m sure, since North Carolina has fairly libertarian gun laws) make me lean toward drug users doing what drug users do:

 JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (AP) – Authorities say they are charging a North Carolina woman who slept as a pit bull chewed the toes off her 4-month-old baby’s left foot.

The Onslow County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that the child’s mother, Robie Lynn Jenkins, and her boyfriend, Tremayne Spillman, will be charged with felony child abuse.

Deputies say the couple were dog-sitting the 1-year-old pit bull for a friend who had been arrested on gun charges.

Officials say Jenkins told investigators she was on medication and didn’t hear the child crying as the two slept in the same room Sunday night. She says she didn’t notice the injury until she changed the baby’s diaper Monday morning.

She was either high/drunk or semi-vegetative. Of course I assume some will tell me that if it is indeed a drug related story legalization would have altered the outcome of this story in some occult way.

Update: I misread, she admitted to being on some sort of medication. The point stands, how would legalizing drugs change this story? Let’s assume the woman was on a legally prescribed medication (which since this is North Carolina is not a sure bet) then isn’t this evidence of the harmful effects of even legal drug use?

Remember the two pot smokers who spent so much time high that they thought it was a good idea to deny a toddler they were caring for any liquids for a week because the 23-month-old wet the bed, actions which lead to the child’s torturous death? You may have been outraged when one of those drug addled degenerates got probation for his role in the child’s death. Now the second one of these fiends has been sentenced and has drawn a measly five years for torturing a helpless toddler to death:

New Haven (WTNH) – A Hamden woman has been sentenced to five years in prison and five years probation in the dehydration death of a toddler. The baby’s mother was so distraught during today’s sentencing, she had to be removed from the courtroom.

Sharon Patterson plead guilty to criminally negligent homicide in the death of 23 month old Amari Jackson. Prosecutors say Patterson didn’t give the baby anything to drink for more than a week because he wet the bed.

Cameras were not allowed inside the courtroom, but News Channel’s Annie Rourke says that when Patterson tried to apologize, Amari’s mother began screaming and tried to lunge across the barrier before she was forcibly removed. By the time she walked out of the New Haven court, Sara Hicks had collected herself and did not want to speak to reporters.

Amari was just one month shy of his second birthday when he died in February 2008. Sara Hicks says she was so ill that she left her son at Patterson’s Putnam Avenue apartment in Hamden. But Patterson denied the boy to drink any fluids for at least a week.

“Part of the deprivation was that Sharon Patterson laced drinking glasses throughout the house with some form of hot sauce so Amari wouldn’t drink,” said Capt. Ronald Smith, Hamden Police Department.

In court today, Patterson’s defense attorney said his client is not a monster, rather she has diminished mental capacity. At her trial, her charge was reduced from manslaughter to negligent homicide. Experts testified that she has the decision-making ability of a six-year old.

Gee, how does a grown woman who isn’t suffering from retardation of some kind end up with the decision making ability of a six-year-old? Drug use? Nah. That just can’t have been a factor, right legalization proponents?

From the same hellish state, here’s a man who took part in a vicious drug-fueled 14 hour gang-rape of a woman and was sentenced to just three years in jail:

Stamford (AP) – A 26-year-old Connecticut man has been sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the gang rape of a New Canaan woman that took place over 14 hours in two towns.

Wilkens Placide of Norwalk was sentenced Wednesday in Stamford Superior Court. He pleaded guilty in March to third-degree sexual assault and other crimes. Placide was the last of four defendants sentenced in the sexual assault of the 24-year-old woman.

Police say the assaults occurred at three different houses in Stamford and Norwalk during a night of drug use in July 2007.

A second man, Catragne Moresca of Stamford, is serving a four-year prison sentence, and the other two men got two years in jail.

All four defendants said the woman willingly exchanged sex for drugs.

Sure she did. More likely she wanted to get high with some drug users and got gang raped for her trouble. But what do these stories have in common?

Drug users committing vicious crimes are getting off easy because the authorities aren’t making them responsible for their actions. If drugs were legal these crimes would have still been committed, and the perpetrators still would have gotten off easy. The unspoken truth of legalization is that part of the proponents’ vision of society includes ignoring crime like this, coddling the perpetrators and allowing rapists and murderers to claim diminished capacity. This is because drug use requires people to not take responsibility for their own actions, which is why sobriety only works when people take responsibility for themselves, their actions and the pain they cause others. If we legalize (or like liberal Connecticut, wink and nod at) drug use we must accept the drug users’ reality. That reality is based on the assumption that they are never ultimately responsible for the actions they take.

If we agree that drug use diminishes capacity, why would we want to make it easier and legal for people to spend all day getting high?

When someone tells you legalization would stop crime, remember little Amari Jackson, and that poor woman who spent 14 hours getting gang raped. That’s what the drug culture really looks like, and only teaching people the truth about drug abuse will ever end drug related crime.

h/t reader Kim who emailed me this story.

This us why you don’t leave your child with a drunk:

JEFFERSON, Ore. – A man and toddler were hurt after they were thrown off an ATV on Sunday.

“It was a pretty violent roll,” said Glen Tilley, who witnessed the crash.

Marion County Sheriff’s Deputies said 36-year-old John Pollard drove while intoxicated with a child who was not even 2 years old.

Eyewitnesses and sheriff’s deputies said Pollard got on the ATV and took off down Jefferson-Scio Road with the 23-month-old toddler hanging on.

Pollard drove a couple hundred feet to Wall Lane when he turned and went down the road. Tilley said Pollard’s ATV began to fishtail, tumbling and rolling several times.

“Just rocks and dirt flying everywhere,” said Tilley.

By the time Tilley went to help, Pollard had picked up the toddler in his arms and was back on the ATV headed back to his home.

Authorities said Pollard violated a list of rules for riding ATVs including not wearing a helmet, having a child on board, driving on the street and driving while intoxicated.

The toddler is in serious condition at Legacy Emanuel Hospital.

Disgusting. h/t Trench

A Texas jury just convicted a woman who cut off the genitals of her five-week-old son during a drug binge:

HOUSTON —  A jury has convicted a Texas mother of mutilating her infant son by cutting off his genitals two years ago.

Jurors deliberated for about three hours on Friday before finding Katherine Nadal guilty of first-degree felony injury to a child.

The jury will now hear evidence in the punishment phase of the trial before deciding Nadal’s sentence. She faces up to life in prison.

Prosecutors told jurors the 28-year-old mother was high on drugs when she mutilated her then-5-week-old son, Holden Gothia, with an unknown sharp instrument in their suburban Houston apartment in March 2007.

Nadal’s defense attorneys blamed the attack on the family dog, a 6- to 7-pound dachshund.

Before any cretin claim she might have been telling the truth, her “my dog ate my baby’s penis” story was thoroughly debunked by the father of the baby and witnesses at the scene. This is another drug user getting high and hurting innocent people with their selfish immaturity. She should have given up her child if she wanted to maintain her drug habit.