Pubdate: Sun, 25 Jun 2000
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2000 St. Petersburg Times
Contact:  http://www.sptimes.com/
Forum: http://www.sptimes.com/Interact.html
Section: Letters
Author: Frank Clarke, Oldsmar
Note: Headline By Newshawk

POWER CORRUPTS

Re: Crime, in the name of the law.

We mustn't be surprised over local police being found to be corrupt. We 
mustn't be surprised that it isn't limited to the Los Angeles Police 
Department's Rampart Division.

My stepfather was a "revenooer" during Prohibition, and he would later tell 
marvelous stories about how he skirted the law and twisted the legal 
process to "get the job done." Being children, we didn't understand (yet) 
that such things were immoral; all we knew was "good guys and bad guys."

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely, according to Lord 
Acton, and he has never been proved wrong. Now we have the example of 
Manatee County deputies planting evidence, tampering with witnesses and 
generally acting like thugs, because they're allowed and encouraged to do 
so to get drugs off our streets. It now looks as though there might be a 
worse problem than drugs on our streets.

We must soon address the fundamental issue of the morality of the war on 
drugs, or we must soon lose all that we hold dear.

Frank Clarke, Oldsmar 
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