Privatizing Law Enforcement in Southern Oregon
Replacing local law enforcement with private gun owners. It is completely unreasonable to completely eliminate police protection. That said, it has long been true in a large number of rural counties that there is not 24 hour police protection, and even when there is protection it can take very long periods of time before police are able to arrive at the crime scene. Still, citizens shouldn't be expected to have to provide their entire police services themselves.
Brian O'Connor wrote me that:
Interesting things happening here in Josephine County in lovely southern Oregon. It looks like the county budget's going to take a huge hit because federal funds are drying up. In particular, the Sheriff is saying he's going to have to eliminate all patrols for the county -- which is pretty big -- unless voters vote in favor of a levy to support law enforcement. It's highly unlikely that the levy will pass, and everyone knows it.
The upshot is that handguns are flying off the shelves of the local gun shops (I confirmed this with the people at Bradbury's Gun-N-Tackle Thursday) and the Sheriff has scheduled 4 seminars to teach people how to fend for themselves. (We have a fairly large Meth problem in the county.)
I've included a clipping from today's Grants Pass Courier, 4/28/07. (The paper is not available online.)
UPDATE: A lot of counties are apparently facing the same problems.
Other counties in Southern Oregon would fare even worse than Jackson County, which closed all of its 15 library branches April 6 and laid off the equivalent of 80 full-time workers. Curry County officials have spoken of declaring bankruptcy, and Josephine County, which also intends to close its libraries, plans to cut back on law enforcement, making arrests only for major crimes.
If a one-year extension is ultimately approved, Walker said it makes no sense to talk about reopening libraries, only to shut them down again.
“One year would not change anything,” he said.
Besides the library layoffs, Jackson County’s budget for next year calls for eliminating an additional 92 positions in public safety, roads, law enforcement and community justice. . . .
Brian O'Connor wrote me that:
The upshot is that handguns are flying off the shelves of the local gun shops (I confirmed this with the people at Bradbury's Gun-N-Tackle Thursday) and the Sheriff has scheduled 4 seminars to teach people how to fend for themselves. (We have a fairly large Meth problem in the county.)
I've included a clipping from today's Grants Pass Courier, 4/28/07. (The paper is not available online.)
UPDATE: A lot of counties are apparently facing the same problems.
If a one-year extension is ultimately approved, Walker said it makes no sense to talk about reopening libraries, only to shut them down again.
“One year would not change anything,” he said.
Besides the library layoffs, Jackson County’s budget for next year calls for eliminating an additional 92 positions in public safety, roads, law enforcement and community justice. . . .
posted by John Lott at 11:02 PM
5 Comments:
I've just checked the Daily Courier's web page at http://www.thedailycourier.com/, and they've updated it since I last visited it. I think you can now access its articles, but you do have to subscribe.
Brian
I guess it takes something drastic for people to admit the obvious. (1) The police never have had any legal obligation to protect anybody. (2) Police are almost never there when a crime takes place, only several minutes (or hours) after. So nothing has really changed, except that they've been forced to accept the fact that private citizens, as they've always been, are the real front line against crime.
Hmm. Under these conditions, the legislature has two options: pony up the funding, or rewrite the laws, immediately, to provide appropriate legal protections to citizens forced to act as the police.
What is not said in the news is why the counties are not able to provide even the most basic 'services', even to the point of essentially shutting down 'police protection'. Is it because the politicians are piddling away all the tax monies that they must surely still be collecting (property, excise, etc), or is it the insane influx of illegal immigrants nationwide that are causing government expenses to soar through the roof? Or is it that in order to fund their socialist workers' utopia, politicians decided to mortgage away the future with too many bond issues, each successive generation of politicians continuing the insane habits of the past while deferring the payment of the piper, and finally at last the you-know-what has finally come home to roost? Take your pick. Oregonians are so lucky to have government as we know it come to a screeching halt. Now only if the rest of the nation could follow suit, we would be free; especially the federal government, the hands-down epitome of tyranny in our time. Shutting them down would make it like 1776 all over again! (Not to mention putting an end to all the gun-grab schemes we endure year in and year out.)
I was wondering to, but figured Osama bin Laden was just taking some more win out of 9-11. Those billions going into Iraq have to be causing cuts somewhere...
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