My unit seizes about four times as many guns from marijuana dealers as from all other drug dealers combined. In my town, marijuana dealers are more prone to violence, and more likely to assault police or each other. The defense attorneys/money launderers would have you believe otherwise, but in fact only a tiny percentage of the wealth amassed by the drug dealers is recovered by forfeiture. But the myth of the harmless pot dealer persists.

A heroin dealer can get a significant sentence if we catch him with a hundred grams of heroin. To get a commensurate sentence for a marijuana dealer, we'd have to catch him with several hundred pounds. Still, there are lots of people out there like Willie-O, who pretend marijuana dealers are persecuted more than rapists and murderers.

It's the same people who spew out this garbage about a police state who vastly inflate "statistics" to prove how oppressed they are.

The only status quo here is if you don't like the status quo you have a peaceful mechanism to change it. It's slow and cumbersome, and you may not succeed in convincing enough of our boorish electorate to be as enlightened as you are. That's when you superior thinkers have to have your "non-violent protest." I've seen one non-violent protest in fifteen years of police work. All the rest were predicated on the philosophy that says, "If you don't let us do whatever we want we'll riot," with the addendum, "If you do let us do whatever we want we'll escalate." Such escalation is always defended by the ridiculous and ubiquitous claim that "if the police hadn't shown up there wouldn't have been a problem."

Maybe some day the police will quit showing up. Then the protesters can see how well the people referred to in Doug R's post can distinguish between the rock-throwing berserkers and the "peaceful" protesters who are there to provide a protective phalanx for the guerrillas.

In this thread some people have gone from demonizing all police in this "police state," to only demonizing the police in big cities and Casper. Chances are there are several police officers in big cities and Casper who have wives or husbands with the same concerns and anxieties as Sorcha. I doubt if there's even one of them who doesn't have to put up with regular abuse from self-indulgent snot-nosed know-it-all whelps who insist on portraying themselves as "oppressed."