COUNTY SHOULD REPORT RAID EXPENDITURES

After reading about the Pozo Saloon fiasco ("What happened in Pozo?"
July 8) I don't know whether to laugh or cry: 50 undercover cops--and
all they got was a couple of DUIs, a drunk in public, four Vicodins,
and a very few minor marijuana possessions! An operation that was
such a bust the cops were desperately running around begging for a
joint and literally forcing these young kids to take money, which
they refused many times, and then took only to get the narcs who
pestered them to go away.

In the end most of the felony charges will be reduced to
misdemeanors. Most, if not all, of these "major" drug busts were the
result of pleading, cajoling, and outright entrapment. There was no
meth, no cocaine, just kids with marijuana; a flower. If there were
any serious drug dealers at the concert, the presence of 50 narcs
would have been obvious to them. Hard drug dealers as a rule don't
sell to someone they don't know. What kind of intelligence was the
NTF acting upon? It must be the equal in quality to the information
that led us into a war with Iraq in search of non-existent weapons of
mass destruction.

A county auditor should demand an immediate detailed accounting of
all expenditures of this operation, from beginning to end. And not
only those for the night of the operation, but from the planning
stages to courtroom. Every hour every officer logged, every gallon of
gas used, every damned dime that was spent in pursuit of these
dangerous marijuana crazed kids!

We are in the middle of a depression. Teachers are being laid off;
medical services to the poor and uninsured are being cut; public
transportation is being cut; potholes are going unfilled. I'm sure
the money spent for this operation and its aftermath could have paid
the salary of two teachers for a year. In this county, with its low
crime rate, what is more important: cops creating elaborate busy work
like this Pozo fiasco, or teachers?

If the county doesn't demand an accounting then the Grand Jury
should. This is taxpayer money and the public has a right to know how
and why it was spent. Heads should roll. The Pozo operation was a
failure by any standard. But nothing will happen because there is no
civilian oversight of law enforcement in this county, no Internal
Affairs, no one to police the police.

Morro Bay

J.L. Osborn