AN UPSIDE-DOWN WORLD

Aug. 25 - Sometimes, even when you are standing firmly on two feet staring
at the horizon - which is perfectly horizontal - the world seems upside down.

Like today.

We've just read the news that several police agencies in Colorado -
including the sheriff's office in Jefferson County, where the Columbine
High School massacre occurred - have sold or traded about 300 firearms to
gun dealers in recent years.

The gun-selling cops include the Colorado State Patrol, the Denver Police
Department's SWAT team, the police departments in Littleton and Lakewood
and the Jeffco sheriff's department. Jeffco even put assault weapons, as
horrific as those used at Columbine, into the hands of gun dealers in 1995.

The weapons were used police weapons or guns that had been donated to the
police agencies.

Why does this seem like an upside-down view of the world?

Cops, for the most part, would like to see fewer guns on the streets that
might eventually be aimed back at them. So why take guns off the streets,
at great effort and expense, only to replace in the market place?

I don't know what world you live in, but that seems upside-down to me.

Then there was the great police raid last weekend at the so-called 25th
Annual Invitational Colorado Bong-A-Thon - a loosely organized music
festival and drug and booze party.

Nearly 150 police and sheriff's officers, traveling Saturday morning in a
caravan of about 50 squad cars from 10 counties, surrounded a mountain
ranch outside Fort Collins and arrested 18 suspected felons and 24 petty
criminals.

The unusual raid made big news, but it hardly seemed like an efficient use
of police resources - an average of three cops to make one arrest, most of
them for misdemeanors.

The estimated 2,000 partygoers at the private ranch had been restricted to
adults over 21 years of age, they had sanitary facilities, the gates were
locked at 7 p.m. Friday so that no was allowed to drive home, and everyone
seemed to be well-behaved.

But in this age of photo-radar traffic enforcement, when there seems to be
a surplus of cops hanging around the station with little to do, why not
send your unoccupied officers into Larimer County to help bust three or
four dozen pot heads and couple of drunks?

After all, that's a lot easier than disrupting the music concerts at Red
Rocks Amphitheater (owned by the City of Denver) or at the Colorado State
Fair (operated by a state agency), where drug-using music lovers are
sitting in the open and the government taxes the tickets and the sale of
alcohol.

But then, if the cops raided a concert at Red Rocks, they might catch
someone who was more important than your average cocaine-snorting carpenter
or pot-smoking plumber. They might snag a doobie-puffing corporate CEO or a
drunken city councilman - or maybe even a future presidential candidate.

Politically speaking, the cops are better off devoting their resources to
busting up the annual gathering of dope-heads at the Bong-A-Thon.

See how the world makes sense - even upside down?