It has been well established that Bush's 'conservatism' is anything but. From unilateral foreign policy blunders to record deficits, the Bush administration has garotted the former ideals of past conservative politics.
Gone are the days of Gulf War I and the mulilateral conservative, and gone are the days of fiscal conservatism.
I have a new one to add to the list. The law-and-order conservative. For the past two years I have worked as a narcotics prosecutor for the local district attorney. A typical district attorney's office is already underfunded and overworked. However, most young assistant district attorneys feel that the accelerated learning curve and prestige compensate for the lower-end salaries.
My position as a narcotics prosecutor is 100% funded by the HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area )grant (as are all the other narcotic prosecutor positions in the office and about 15 police officers in the district.) This grant is given to border states in order to fund local law enforcement narcotics investigations and prosecutions. The HIDTA grant pervades all levels of law enforcement, from training to the funding of confidential informants to the salaries of prosecutors like myself.
Regardless of what one's opinions of the overall wisdom or success of the so-called 'war on drugs' is, it is important to note that the federal funding of local narcotics prosecutors and police officers in turn frees up local law enforcement budgets for others priorities. For example, my DA (being a democrat) has created a large domestic violence unit complete with victims advocates, prosecutors and perpetrator case supervisors (quasi probation officers). Also, it is important to note that I don't waste my time prosecuting local dorm kids caught with a bag of marijuana. Almost 100% of our time is spent dealing with mid-level cocaine and heroin traffickers (the feds take the upper level traffickers) who sell for profit and are blight on the community.
If one peruses the long list of programs that Bush wants to reduce or kill in order to fund his tax give aways to the richest 1% of Americans and the war in Iraq.
Somewhere in between building schools on Indian reservations and after school programs you'll find a litany of law enforcement programs that Bush also has on the chopping block.
And in typical Rovian spin, John Walters is attemping to give the appearance of 'getting tough on crime' while eviserating the law enforcement infrastructure. Walters is promoting the expansion of drug courts. A wonderful idea, most drug crimes and low level trafficking (not too mention property crimes, violent crimes and theft) involves various levels of substance abuse and addictions. However, drug courts are only part of the solution. How does Walters expect people to be sentenced to drug court if most of the local narcotics agents and prosecutors lost their funding and moved on to other careers? Does Walters expect traffickers to just volunteer for drug court?
Narcotics is just my little corner of the law enforcement universe. Here are two other examples of Bush's war on law enforcement.
The Bush budget also cuts 100% of the funding for the deliquency program that funds the prosecutor across the hall from me. This a program that our local DA has announced he will not resign once the federal funding is gone.
Meanwhile, many successful inpatient rehab centers are also seeing their federal funding diminish while these new worthless 'faith-based' rehab clinics spring up.
So the next time your car stereo gets stolen in the middle of the day, or your home gets burglarized by an addict in need of a fix. Just remember that is it Bush's tax cuts and Iraq war coming home to roost. Law enforcement is systematic. On a macro scale it depends on societal shifts in values such as increased education budgets and decreased poverty, but also within the universe of law enforcement itself, a loss in funding in one area stresses the rest of the system. The other prosecutors in my office already work 50-60 hour weeks prosecuting rapes and homicides, now they will have to plea these cases out to lower sentences in order to accomodate their new trafficking caseloads. The narcotics agents will move off to other jobs leaving the narcotics investigations to the already overworked detectives that investigate burglaries and sex crimes. In the end, it is the communities who suffer. No one is immune to crime, not even the rich cats who saved $75,000 on taxes last year thanks to Bush tax cuts.
You can read more here: www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/02/21/100loc_copscut001.cfm