Quote:
Originally Posted by goofyballer
"Heroin and cocaine as misdemeanors?": I love how the author finds this to be such a self-evident argument against the proposition that they needn't elaborate. Come on, guys, being caught with some cocaine totally deserves a lifetime felony record, it's just common sense.
Article could have been written as a news article. It contains no argument that isn't just direct quotation from a police officer.
I do think Prop 47 might have bitten off more than it could chew by conflating drug possession and property crimes. (Edit: I see it passed, so wasn't a problem I guess). I'd probably be in favour of reduced penalties for both, but the two are in very different categories. Property crimes are nonserious crimes, drug possession is not a crime at all.
I was going to say I liked this bit of the article, but "liked" is the wrong word:
Quote:
“It also undermines the laws against sex crimes because it would reduce the penalty for possession of drugs used to facilitate date rape to just a simple misdemeanor.”
This instantly marks this "Shelley Zimmerman" as either ******ed or dishonest (or both). How the **** can anyone quote that as a persuasive argument? God it tilts me so hard. Like:
- "Date rape drugs" are not a thing. (Other than obviously alcohol). Why they keep being discussed like they are a thing is beyond me.
- Even if they were a thing, they would represent a tiny minority of drug possession arrests.
- Even if you insist that date rape drugs are a thing, the vast majority of the above tiny minority, if that makes sense, would nonetheless not be intending to use them to rape someone.
Is it actually even possible that Zimmerman doesn't know all this? Like I'm not sure which possibility is worse: that she does know this and is just lying because she likes imprisoning people for nonviolent drug offences, or that she has somehow managed to spend an entire career in the police force and not figure out basic facts about drug crimes.