re: Protests blowing up in Downtown Birmingham

quote:

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Mostly because intervening in these types of transactions takes expensive undercover work that simply doesn't return the kind of convictions that would justify such expenditures.

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Pretty much. Busting some dude slinging crack or meth on a street corner only requires them to be at the right place at the right time, thus the increased police presence in areas where those transactions are commonplace.

There's also the fact that a ton of the drug use in suburbia is prescription drugs, which can legally be obtained from the local Dr. Feelgood. The police can't do much about that unless the doctor starts getting sloppy and allowing his or her staff to write the prescriptions for expediency purposes. Even then they'd have to go to a lot of trouble to actually investigate it.