Tag Archives: ineffective police

Oakland Citizens Renting Their Own Cops

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With rising crime, downsized police forces, and no help in sight, some neighborhoods are dipping into their own pocketbooks to hire private security firms. The guard’s job: pick up where the police cant.

Oakland California is a community that has tried to remake itself several times over the past century. Currently, it is in the middle of a perfect storm. Since 2009, the city of 400,000 has seen its full-time police force drop from more than 830 sworn officers to just 615. In the same time, not surprisingly, the crime rate has soared. In fact, since 2012, robberies in Oakland are up 24% and burglaries have increased a whopping 45%. This led to the disquieting fact that law-abiding citizens in residential areas were liable to be robbed while out and return home afterward to a burglarized home. Police response times lagged. The average response time for a burglary of a dwelling in progress last year was 17 minutes.

So the citizens have started renting their cops…

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Mexican Militias Take War to Drug Dealers

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In Old Mexico, there has been a very long and bloody war on drugs. This campaign has spilled over the US border in recent years and the US has replied by sending arms and assistance to the Mexican government. Well the fact is that most of this effort is spent in Mexico City and along the US border, with little left for other parts of the country. The citizens of several of these forgotten states have taken matters into their own hands.

Certain parts of the Republic have always had a tenuous relationship with the central government in Mexico City. To say that Michoacan is one of them is an understatement. With the exception of the Yucatan and Chihuahua, Michoacan has always been the most anti-Federal part of the country. The state and several of its residents played a major role in the Mexican War of Independence. Then twice in the 20th Century, during the Mexican Revolution (1911-1918) and the anti-Catholic Cristero War (1926-29), the state was a battleground.

The thing is, Michoacan, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast and far from the US border, has a beautiful port at Lzaro Crdenas. While trade of all sorts should make the state rich, its trade in illegal drugs from South America, just to the south, that has the narco-trafficers fighting for control. This had led to a turf battle between numerous large drug gangs for control of the region. Currently, the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templars), formed in 2011 from remnants of the defunct La Familia Michoacana drug cartel, is the big hitter in the state. But they are being pushed out by the local…

Citizen’s militia..

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Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com