Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Most smuggling at checkpoints, through the air

At a meeting of the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee August 30 in McAllen, Sen. Kel Seliger asked DPS Criminal Intelligence Division Lt. Arnoldo Ramos whether it was still true that most smuggling occurred in vehicles crossing the border at regular, monitored checkpoints.

Ramos said that was still the case, but they'd also seen a tremendous increase in aircraft smuggling in recent months.

Hmmmmm. How was that fence going to help again?

Chairman Whitmire questioned Ramos whether he agreed authorities seize only a small percentage of drugs crossing the border. Despite large reported drug seizure amounts, he said, the price of drugs on the street in Texas has not increased, nor has availability been reduced.

Ramos conceded that was correct. The vast majority of drugs coming across the border are not presently being interdicted. (You can listen to the hearing here. Ramos and another DPS officer were the first speakers.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Drug War is a failure. Shocking!

Anonymous said...

The drug enforcement war is a failure. There's too much enforcement at the wrong levels because the measure of effectiveness is the number of arrests. That leads to funding initiatives that produce piles of large arrests which come from the user, addict, and re-offender pile.