POWER CORRUPTS

Re: Crime, in the name of the law.

We mustn't be surprised over local police being found to be corrupt. We
mustn't be surprised that it isn't limited to the Los Angeles Police
Department's Rampart Division.

My stepfather was a "revenooer" during Prohibition, and he would later tell
marvelous stories about how he skirted the law and twisted the legal
process to "get the job done." Being children, we didn't understand (yet)
that such things were immoral; all we knew was "good guys and bad guys."

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely, according to Lord
Acton, and he has never been proved wrong. Now we have the example of
Manatee County deputies planting evidence, tampering with witnesses and
generally acting like thugs, because they're allowed and encouraged to do
so to get drugs off our streets. It now looks as though there might be a
worse problem than drugs on our streets.

We must soon address the fundamental issue of the morality of the war on
drugs, or we must soon lose all that we hold dear.

Frank Clarke, Oldsmar