{"id":8669,"date":"2015-03-21T02:21:44","date_gmt":"2015-03-21T02:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8669"},"modified":"2015-03-21T02:21:44","modified_gmt":"2015-03-21T02:21:44","slug":"drug-bust-stories-becoming-um-boring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8669","title":{"rendered":"Drug-bust stories becoming … um, boring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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“Police grab drugs in ‘traffic stop.'”<\/p>\n

You hear and read these headlines all the time. I almost always chuckle when I see these stories. Why? Because the traffic stop, such as it is, usually is something of a ruse. The police pull motorists over\u00a0expecting<\/em> to find contraband hidden away.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.newschannel10.com\/story\/28575346\/dps-finds-15-pounds-of-marijuana-on-i-40<\/p>\n

Texas Department of Public Safety troopers have gotten really good at this.<\/p>\n

The Interstate 40 corridor across the Texas Panhandle usually is among the most lucrative for DPS traffic troopers of any district within the state police network.<\/p>\n

How do these troopers do it? As I understand it, they “profile” motorists as they blaze their way along I-40. If the motorist or a passenger looks suspicious when they pass a DPS trooper, the officer will give chase. Then they just might find something in the trunk of the car, or stuffed under the seats, or duct-taped to the undercarriage a “controlled substance” of some sort.<\/p>\n

The War on Drugs, which has produced mixed results — and that’s the best thing I can say about it — has made law enforcement officers quite proficient at intercepting drugs on our major highway corridors.<\/p>\n

Have these “traffic stops” done anything to curb the manufacture, sale, distribution and use\/abuse of these drugs? Not one bit.<\/p>\n

However, I continue to marvel at how good the police have gotten at this endeavor.<\/p>\n

To be sure — as any cop on the beat will tell you —\u00a0none of these “traffic stops” ever can be called “routine.”<\/p>\n\n

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“Police grab drugs in ‘traffic stop.’” You hear and read these headlines all the time. I almost always chuckle when I see these stories. Why? Because the traffic stop, such as it is, usually is something of a ruse. The police pull motorists over\u00a0expecting to find contraband hidden away. http:\/\/www.newschannel10.com\/story\/28575346\/dps-finds-15-pounds-of-marijuana-on-i-40 Texas Department of Public Safety … Continue reading Drug-bust stories becoming … um, boring<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[21,1355,1470,2301,4668,5174],"class_list":["post-8669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-local-news","tag-routine-traffic-stops","tag-department-of-public-safety","tag-drugs","tag-interstate-40","tag-texas-panhandle","tag-war-on-drugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}