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Welcome Neighbor!

At the end of your block sits a house. Its state of disrepair and unkempt nature drives down the property values of your neighborhood. What’s worse? The home is occupied by a nefarious gang of outlaws to terrorize you and your neighbors. You stay inside; you don’t dare leave your home unoccupied for any length of time, as it will assuredly be robbed.

While the police are at the house once a week to check into some form of problem, they seem unable to get at the issue or to actually change anything. While there are individual arrests, the gang itself continues to occupy the house as a whole. Individual players come and go but the terror remains. You and your neighbors go to the city council to complain, only to be told that there’s nothing that can be done. They take a vote and decide to start a “neighborhood watch program” and to implement a “drug free zone”. Funds are drawn from the coffers for city workers to erect the signs on light posts in the neighborhoods.

Within weeks, each of the signs has been vandalized.

You are losing money in the investment of your home; your family lives in trauma of the violence that may occur at any moment. You cannot take the law into your own hands, or the very forces that should be taking out the criminal gang, will instead take find it very easy to persecute you.

You and your fellow citizens decide to take action. At the next election, a new Sheriff is elected. He goes to the City council and asks, “ Is there any new business?” to which you and your neighbors take the podium to make clear the situation with the house at the end of your street. You make your case as such:

It is a notorious crack house. Crime in the neighborhood is at an all time high, you are in fear of your life. At all hours, newly paroled criminals take up residence in the home and begin robbing and extorting from their neighbors.

While this is being done, the Chairman of the City Council promises to “look into the matter”. The Sheriff, newly elected and without any political baggage asks:

“Why hasn’t this been taken care of?”
“Who is responsible for this?”

The City Council responds that while complaints have been received, the matter has been looked into and the hands of the police have been tied by the DA’s legal and with individual cases against the gang pending, they could not comment further.

After the meeting, the Sheriff, over cups of late night coffee with many of the older hands of the police force, he begins to form an opinion of the real situation at hand:

“The police force has been bought off by the gang. It may go as high as the DA. The entire city organization may be bribed or compromised by these people”.

He visits the neighborhood. He sees the situation. He goes through old police reports to see the level of violence in the neighborhood. After talking to many of the people who live in the neighborhood, he begins to form a plan.

The sheriff asks for a special meeting of the city council. All city council meetings are open to the public for participation. The sheriff asks the people of the neighborhood to attend the meeting and to be prepared with specific dates and details of the crimes and give public testimony at the city council meeting.

He also invites his friend from the Federal DEA to attend the meeting, but says nothing to the police force or the other members of the council.

As the meeting convenes, the city council tries to slip around the Sheriff and his agenda, but it wont work. The sheriff asks for public comment, and by doing so neighbor after neighbor steps to the podium to relate with specific dates and times stories of crimes committed.

The DEA agent begins to take notes. At one point, one neighbor relates a tale of machine guns being fired. Another tells of seeing boxes of ammunition taken inside. The agent reaches for his cellphone and walks into the hallway. As the meetings beings to disburse, other agents of the DEA arrive to begin taking depositions from the neighbors.

After 24 hours, a federal weapons warrant has been sworn out after testimony before a federal judge. The Sheriff is asked to assist with the serving of the warrant. The Sheriff neglects to tell the police or the city council of the issuance of the warrants, which he will excuse later as simply being “new to the job”.

Federal agents surround the home and with lightning speed take it over and arrest the members of the gang. During the arrest, two members of the gang shoot it out with the federal officers and are killed.

Children are found in the home in an abused state and turned over to Child Protection Services. Many women are found in the home being used as prostitutes having been addicted to drugs. Cell phones and other phones found at the home are confiscated and their phone records are found to lead to a number of other gangs that are also distributing Meth and Crack cocaine. Individual members of the gang are interrogated for information and in return for lighter sentencing being to give it to the federal agents, who continue breaking the back of the gang. Members of the police force and the city council are found to have received favors from the gang and are removed from their positions.

After a few months, the home is sold to pay back property taxes and fines. The new homeowner is a young couple, who proceed take the distressed property and begin to turn it back into a home from a crack house. Within a year, the home is a spectacular example of homes in the neighborhood.

Oddly, While, a great deal of methamphetamine producing chemicals was found in the house while the gang was there, no more than a trace of “Meth” is ever found on site. There were also no signs of the “Machine guns” found in the house as was stated on the initial warrant.

Epilogue: When the law begins to act as a shield for criminal activity, it is not a crime to use the law against itself. I do not care if we found a single WMD in Iraq. I would have called for the invasion of Iraq for no other reason than it has supported terrorists and has a long border with Iran and Syria. It was the Tikriti Clan in control of Iraq that was the danger, not what they had in the paint locker.

It is always a fetish for the left to concentrate on the weapon, rather than the criminal. Usually you see this portrayed in its obsession against private ownership of pistols but in this case its WMDs; but the situation is the same.

We’ve removed a criminal element from the neck of the people of Iraq, and it was our duty as fellow of the world citizens to do it. If you needed the threat of WMD to go and stop that nightmare, then it served its purpose. But it should have taken much less, and shame on you that it didn’t, and shame on us all for waiting so long to stop it, but there is no shame that we didn't find the weapons.

Posted @ January 15, 2005 01:51 PM | Current Events