Is the Washington State Supreme Court on drugs?

[Aidokea]

Arresting criminals for illegal drug possession is unconstitutional?

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/sea...FGQ3YOYTYJFUI/

What a great time to be retired...

[CCCSD]

Bwahahahaha! Just legalized EVERY drug and dealer operation.

The dead bodies are gonna stack, kids getting into drugs, $$$ spent on services, and destructor any and all law and order.

AWESOME! Let it and OR burn to the ground. At least the dopers will leave other states for a new haven.

If I was a cop in WA, I wouldn’t lift a finger to assist anyone.

[Aidokea]

...and California too...

[scotty_appleton814]

I've never caught crack off a crackhead that didn't know they had it. Or shouldn't have known they'd had it. Now with prescriptions, I've had a couple real mistaken but unknowingly possession of control substances. But IL is a knowingly state.

[BNWS]

Invest in narcan. You heard it here first.

[angeredmgmt]

Since we are charged with playing by the rules, and they want us to follow those absurd rules, then those rules rule. We are all troops here so let's be troops about this.

As I have said from the beginning in reference to this assault on law and order - just play their game. If they REALLY don't want anyone coming through the criminal justice system which they owe their existence to, then let that system crumble to the ground by not feeding it. Limit arrests to only the ones mandated, and only do enough self initiated arrests so you don't get in trouble with supervisors.

Not enough criminals going through the system = out of work criminal justice system employees! Out of work judges, DAs, defense attorneys, etc will start crying eventually when their cash flow ends or is greatly diminished.

[Ratatatat]

I spent the last 10 years of my career working in a large, drug addicted city.

On warm summer days, I'd see suburban teenagers sitting against stop signs in the 'hood, doing the heroin nod, half out of it after scoring dope, no idea of the perils they were embracing.

Down the street was the Thunderbird Motel, where rooms cost $30 for three hours. Traffic was constant all day and night as men arrived with (drug addicted) prostitutes.

Further down the street were several strip bars. Around noon everyday the prostitutes would start walking the blocks between the strip bars. They'd get in cars of random men and perform oral sex as the johns drove around. It wasn't uncommon to be on the nearby freeway and see a head bobbing up and down in the car next to you, in full rush hour traffic. Addiction has no shame.

The city has 80,000 abandoned buildings. Entire neighborhoods look like something out of a science fiction movie where the zombies had killed all the residents. Not just the houses were empty shells; the stores, schools, restaurants, even former police stations were scrapped and burned.

In some areas- once heavily populated but now mostly forlorn- Mother Nature had returned. Ring-necked pheasants roamed the tall grass as wild-haired crack addicts shouted at the clouds. Coyotes yelped as shots and sirens pierced the night. Once I even saw a snowy owl, or the remains of one, on the side of a freeway onramp.

Packs of ghetto dogs, mostly rotts and pits, roamed freely. They were bred as fighting dogs and beaten frequently to be fierce. When they no longer were champions, their owners released them to the streets. When they'd find the decomposing body of an addict in an empty home, they'd tear it apart and cart arm and leg parts down the street like a dog fixing to bury a rawhide bone.

Fentanyl quadrupled the number of overdoses. One was the twenty year old son of a co-worker. I went to the funeral; not sure I can accurately describe what it's like to see a twenty year old kid laying in a coffin, while his doper friends laugh about it in the hallway.

I've seen the world where dope is everywhere and impacts nearly everyone. This is our future if it's permitted to take control....

[Aidokea]

Yup.

And unless the uninformed were to actually leave their sanitized suburbs and go downtown and wade through the poop and needles and prostitution and dead bodies the way that we have had to do, they will never realize the enslavement and death they are bringing upon their own cities by choosing to vote the way that they do...

[Ratatatat]

I forgot about the poop and needles.

Addicts shat everywhere. In parking garages, in alleys, in every cubbie hole they could find. They would even lean up against walls and cement barriers and blow mud all over. Human feces takes forever to break down so it would sit for weeks and weeks, just sweating and stinking. And you only have to step in it once to learn to look at your path.

It used to break my heart to go to a park and a mom and kids were playing on the slide and in the dirt below see the needles. Not just one or two but piles of bloody needles. The mom was evidently numb to the situation. That's what made it heartbreaking.

[hangman]

Sounds like you were living in a liberal utopia....

[Aidokea]

Hangman, this is "The Squad Room". If you're not a cop or a retired cop, you should not be posting here...

[BNWS]

Unfortunately, it's going to have to get to early 90's levels of crime before anything starts to be done about it.

[Aidokea]

Territorial gang gun battles in broad daylight, gut-shot crack whores bleeding out the sidewalk while the medics stage and wait for the police to clear the scene, drug dealers taking over houses and reinforcing them against police entry, AK-47 armed gangs on rooftops setting ambushes for police with bogus 9-1-1 calls...been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and burned it...

[CCCSD]

#Me Too.
Still wear the T shirts...

[CCCSD]

Satchel Charges.
Yeah!

[towncop]

Not enough criminals going through the system = out of work criminal justice system employees! Out of work judges, DAs, defense attorneys, etc will start crying eventually when their cash flow ends or is greatly diminished.

Criminal justice system employees: you forgot to add cops. Activity and such start going way down, you're going to be out of a job. Long before a judge. Believe that.

[Iowa #1603]

Not enough criminals going through the system = out of work criminal justice system employees! Out of work judges, DAs, defense attorneys, etc will start crying eventually when their cash flow ends or is greatly diminished.

If there is one thing I have observed over the last 43 yrs in the Criminal Justice system, it is that we ALL have rock solid job security.

The job outlook hasn't changed since I first put on a uniform in 1976 because :
#1 People are basically stupid (or are idiots)
#2 Many people are too lazy to work so they steal
#3 Crime really does pay & getting caught & put into the system is just a cost of doing business

[westside popo]

Sooner or later you'll see more departments in crisis management mode. Constantly hiring warm bodies to fill the rosters to the bare minimum staffing standards.

[Bing_Oh]

If there is one thing I have observed over the last 43 yrs in the Criminal Justice system, it is that we ALL have rock solid job security.

The job outlook hasn't changed since I first put on a uniform in 1976 because :
#1 People are basically stupid (or are idiots)
#2 Many people are too lazy to work so they steal
#3 Crime really does pay & getting caught & put into the system is just a cost of doing business

Once upon a time, I would have agreed with you. Then, in 2010, I and several other officers on my department faced layoffs. It turned out relatively ok, with us only having to absorb furlough days and the city passing an income tax levy to support safety services, but that one incident taught me that LE isn't the guaranteed-security job that it once was. Considering I have my job today by the grace of the taxpayer, the changes in attitudes toward LE in many major metropolitan areas contribute ever more to that opinion.

That we will always NEED cops doesn't mean that those in power will always FUND us. There are plenty of politicians and activist groups who would happily cut LE to the bone (and keep hacking till they hit marrow) and let those of us on the street deal with the consequences.

[Aidokea]

In 2010, as in every other year, I was being ordered to work overtime...

[Iowa #1603]

Once upon a time, I would have agreed with you. Then, in 2010, I and several other officers on my department faced layoffs. It turned out relatively ok, with us only having to absorb furlough days and the city passing an income tax levy to support safety services, but that one incident taught me that LE isn't the guaranteed-security job that it once was. Considering I have my job today by the grace of the taxpayer, the changes in attitudes toward LE in many major metropolitan areas contribute ever more to that opinion.

That we will always NEED cops doesn't mean that those in power will always FUND us. There are plenty of politicians and activist groups who would happily cut LE to the bone (and keep hacking till they hit marrow) and let those of us on the street deal with the consequences.

In the late 70's/early 80's NYPD laid off a lot of cops. They either found other jobs or moved. I worked with 3 in Eastern Iowa that came here & had good careers. Several yrs ago many agencies were laying off cops or not filling openings. Today MANY vacancies are not filled nationwide.

But we are still hiring cops all over the country.

For Decades Dallas Pd actively recruited at CJ colleges in Iowa (the deputy chief was from Des Moines)

Today , this week there are a multitude of openings and recruitment going on in Iowa............yea it's not big city policing but it is being a cop. With a little work or moving if you want to police you will find a job

Most of the unfilled vacancies in Iowa is because the agencies are NOT lowering their standards

[angeredmgmt]

Criminal justice system employees: you forgot to add cops. Activity and such start going way down, you're going to be out of a job. Long before a judge. Believe that.

Yep, there were more on that etcetera list like cop and probation officer.

Let us not continue to feed this machine - a machine that's supposedly systemically racist anyway. Let's do our progressive part in this new world and just say no to proactive arrests because we all know that the person being 'hastled' will most likely be un-white or be white but a certain protected class. Just waste gas, fill up on donuts, surf the internet or better yet, go look for conservatives or responsible people to arrest in an attempt to right the ills of the past.

In all seriousness, I don't want anyone to jeopardize their career by lowering their stats which would cause negative consequences with their employer, but if it is at all possible without personal repercussions, I say GO FOR IT!!!

[Bing_Oh]

You'll see just this (as well as a mass exodus from LE) if the George Floyd Act passes. The section that guts qualified immunity alone will be enough for most LEO's with any alternative career prospects and half a brain to run for the hills. The rest of us will take calls over the phone from a desk, send all cases to a prosecutor who has prosecutorial immunity, and watch our handcuffs slowly rust solid for disuse as we count our days till retirement.

[Winter_Patriot]

Prior to this crazy court ruling, drug possession and distribution were basically legal in Seattle. I worked for the King County prosecutor and their policy did not allow us to prosecute simple possession under one gram or five pills. We could not charge distribution for any amount less than three grams or 20 pills. The dealers knew this and they'd just carry under that amount, it was an open-air drug market a block from the courthouse.

In reality though, there were tons of distribution referrals involving 20-40 grams that I had to pass on, because our filing standards were so strict. You have a drug dealer with a plausible excuse? Can't charge it. Such as the dealer being in a messy car and not being able to show he knew the drugs were inside the vehicle. Stuff like that is one reason I left.

Last I heard, those charging minimums were probably going to go up to three grams for simple possession and something like ten grams for distribution.