Saturday, May 24, 2014

Working the Beat

Is that a nightstick in your pocket, or...

Nah, the joke is too easy. The reality is disturbing: a police officer in New Jersey was caught masturbating at a Starbucks restaurant. To protect and (self) serve, indeed.

Once again, in case you're keeping score: not on any registry. Meanwhile, let's harass people for not living where they're supposed to, and let's haul out tape measures to find out that someone was living 18 feet closer to a school than they allowed.

Someone please explain to me how being 18 feet closer than 1000 feet puts children at risk. You can't, because it doesn't make sense. Meanwhile, you've got cops distributing child porn and masturbating at restaurants. Tell me, where does the real risk lie?

Wake up.

"Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.
What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on."
— Robert Kennedy

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

A Joke

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

Two police officers, a rabbi, a registered nurse, a nanny and a Boy Scout den leader walk in to a bar get arrested for producing and distributing child porn.

Wait, what?

Yep. In what is being described as one of the largest roundups of its kind in New York City, 71 people were arrested and charged with child pornography. The punchline for this joke, though, is that of all those arrested only one - yes, one - has previously been convicted of raping a child. Another was on bail at the time of his arrest.

Remember, folks: sex offender laws keep children safe.

Many of those arrested are in positions that directly require their backgrounds be checked: A police chief and a police officer, a registered nurse, a nanny, a Boy Scout leader. All of them victimizing children. None of them on any registry.

(Edit: add a paramedic and a little league coach to the list.)

The distribution of previous offenders in this case bears out something that's been repeated often, both here and in countless blogs and studies on the topic: Sex offenders (as a whole) have the lowest recidivism rate of any class of criminal. In this case, 2 out of 71 arrested is 2.8%. But politicians and fear-mongers would have you believe otherwise, and call for even more laws that "get tough" on sex offenders. It's classic misdirection.

The joke here is that all of your tax dollars are going to fund a system of more laws, more restrictions, and more monitoring that does absolutely nothing to make children the slightest bit safer. Are you laughing, yet?