An interesting article was in the sun a few weeks ago with a gang expert from Boston or Chicago on what they did during their big run up in gang killings.
They gist of the article was that adding cops does very little to help the situation. When someone gets shot no one will testify so more investigating doesn't help that much.
What they did was sat down with known gang members and told them that every time a shot was fired or some one was stabbed every single known gang member would be brought in on some kind of warrent. Unpaid parking tickets, speeding tickets, minor posession, littering. They would charge a few hundred people with minor offenses. The effect this had was it didn't reduce gang activity but it reduced gang violence. Gangs began to police themselves in terms of reducing violence because the harassment by the police hinders their oppurtunity to due buisness.
I am also for full scale legalization of every drug. I would say regulate through perscriptions and ween people off. It would turn it closer to the oxycotin problem rather than the crack problem
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