Cannabis Trail News :
If you want to come into our county were going to have enough firepower to react to any assault to our deputy's. stated sheriff Joe . He unveiled the latest gadget roof top attachment to his armored vehicle. ... It's a 50 caliber machine gun. Rommel coming to breakfast on the cannabis trail.
The Arizona Republic:
In a stretch of barren desert alongside Interstate 8 near Gila Bend that has become a corridor for human and drug smuggling, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and about 100 men staged a crime-suppression operation Thursday.
Arpaio brought with him a belt-fed .50-caliber machine gun that can shoot accurately up to a mile as a display of the kind of force he would use if anyone hurts a deputy.
“I am trying to send a message to Mexico,” he said. “We will not take anyone hurting our deputies. We will fight back.”
No word if Arpaio also brought his armored personnel carrier, which has been known to careen out of control and smash into lowly citizen automobiles.
Arpaio isn’t the only sheriff sporting a .50-caliber machine gun. As i wrote in 2008, Richland County, South Carolina Sheriff Leon Lott has one too, mounted to Lott’s own APC. He calls it “The Peacemaker.” I consulted an expert on the appropriateness of the weapon:
Charles Earl Barnett, a U.S. Marines veteran and retired police major who has served on several United Nations and NATO military and peacekeeping missions, says a .50-caliber machine gun is “completely inappropriate” for domestic police work. It “causes mass death and destruction,” Barnett says. “It’s indiscriminate. I can’t think of a possible scenario where it would be appropriate.”
I didn’t specifically ask him at the time, but I’m guessing Barnett would not be inclined to make an exception for “shooting at Mexicans.” end.
and
Sheriff Joe and many other sheriffs have little funnel areas in their county's. This is where the rubber meets the road. A place you do not want to be in . Joe's corridor has the chicken foot trail heads. Phoenix ,California, Nevada/Utah. This is the cannabis trail hub. 200 miles from the border. If you have ever had some Mexican bud in your life it probably went through here. On sheriff Joe's web site he describes his tent city.
Tent City: “Vacancy Sign Is Always On”
When I took office back on January 1, 1993, the jails were already overcrowded. We had about 4800 inmates back then and many were double bunked. No new jail builds were on the horizon and some of the jails like the original First Avenue Jail was in such disrepair that it would have to be closed to inmates. I needed a quick solution as to how to house what I knew would be an ever increasing number of inmates.
After all, the county was growing by leaps and bounds and police agencies were hiring more officers who would be arresting more criminals. And though other Sheriffs in the United States were doing it, releasing criminals to the streets for lack of jail space wasn't going to happen in Maricopa County, not on my watch at least.
The answer, of course, was and is Tent City. Yes, there were a handful of correctional facilities around the country that had a few tents up to house a small number of inmates.
But my idea was to build something big…a Tent City that could house literally hundreds and eventually thousands of lawbreakers. We had plenty of desert plus free inmate labor so building Tent City was a snap.
It opened in 1993 on August 3rd when temperatures were about 110 degrees. Naysayers said it wouldn’t last. Yet here we are, nearly 15 years later, and Tent City is going strong.
I cannot tell you how many police officials, sheriffs, politicians including four (4) presidential candidates, news organizations, leadership groups, and citizens committees from virtually all over the world have come to see Tent City to examine how it works.
It is a model program for a cost effective method of housing inmates. We should be proud of what we have accomplished with this Tent City.
And to put it right back in the critics faces, I had a huge pink neon vacancy sign erected on the security tower overlooking the entire facility. Every night after dark, it shines bright to remind police and the public that here’s always room at “Arpaio’s Inn.”
Today, there are about 2000 men and women living in Korean War tents that we received for free from the U.S. military. Inmates sleep in bunk beds, twenty to a tent. They have full access to showers and port-a-johns.
We supply fans and ice water in the summer because temperatures inside the tents can reach as high as 140 degrees. In the winter, when it’s cold, inmates are issued an extra blanket. end
This is real really happening folks right here in America. Can you imagine your sheriff declaring war.
Oh well, life on the cannabis trail !
Cannabis Trail News ! ,by me, only on cbis, only on weekends
