04-13-2013, 07:07 PM
We had a guy do the same thing here in the Salt Lake Valley, only he walked into JC Penny's with an AR15 slung over his shoulder. Nobody called the cops, no issues or complaints. Just a cell phone pic and a news story about it.
Most of your local & rural LE agencies in the South have a time-honored reputation for corruption and complete ignorance of due process, the Constitution, civil rights, and so forth. In many areas, it has gotten a little better, but you still have the "authority-by-force" mentality in many departments.
One of my good friends went to work for a County Sheriff's department in North Carolina after he retired from the Army as an SF officer, with a very colorful and distinguished career. He was a narcotics investigator and enjoyed doing surveillance and informant network building, and soon learned that the Sheriff himself was involved in sanctioning and profiting from local marijuana growers. He confirmed this with video surveillance with one of the department's own federally-funded surveillance vans, and the sheriff caught wind that one of his investigators was a Boy Scout and wouldn't let go of the scent of crime, no matter where it led him.
They pulled him from the NARC unit, and placed him on regular patrol, issuing traffic tickets and such, so he quit and did contract work overseas, to include stints in Kosovo, Somalia, and Haiti. He was a very good dude, who was in Force Recon back in the early 1960's, went to college, and then got a commission in the Army. He passed away a few years ago in a VA hospital post-op.
Most of your local & rural LE agencies in the South have a time-honored reputation for corruption and complete ignorance of due process, the Constitution, civil rights, and so forth. In many areas, it has gotten a little better, but you still have the "authority-by-force" mentality in many departments.
One of my good friends went to work for a County Sheriff's department in North Carolina after he retired from the Army as an SF officer, with a very colorful and distinguished career. He was a narcotics investigator and enjoyed doing surveillance and informant network building, and soon learned that the Sheriff himself was involved in sanctioning and profiting from local marijuana growers. He confirmed this with video surveillance with one of the department's own federally-funded surveillance vans, and the sheriff caught wind that one of his investigators was a Boy Scout and wouldn't let go of the scent of crime, no matter where it led him.
They pulled him from the NARC unit, and placed him on regular patrol, issuing traffic tickets and such, so he quit and did contract work overseas, to include stints in Kosovo, Somalia, and Haiti. He was a very good dude, who was in Force Recon back in the early 1960's, went to college, and then got a commission in the Army. He passed away a few years ago in a VA hospital post-op.