Tylor Brand

Have you ever noticed what it says on the Tucson police squad car fenders?

Really, it's an interesting statement: "Ready to Protect, Proud to Serve" ÷ though I personally don't see what or how they protect a damn thing, and who they serve is anybody's guess.

A laughable myth circulating amongst us is that the job of the police is to prevent and solve crime, though this would almost be analogous to saying that a urinal causes people to pee.

Now, don't think I'm totally pinning this only on police; they're merely a major symptom of this phenomena. Blame also lies in the justice system for its prosecution of victimless crimes, but mostly the Legislature, for creating crime with such injustices as minimum sentences, the "Drug War" (ever notice we have a lot of war around here?) and destructive public policies.

"Tylor, why this brash accusation of our civil servants of total, irreconcilable uselessness?" Well, I'll tell you. Recently, I was greeted by two different sights while approaching my car: One, a $500 parking ticket for my front tire being over the line of a handicap access zone, not in the space itself; and two, my car window smashed, my CDs rummaged through and strewn across my car, and CD player mysteriously absent.

Guess which of these crimes the Tucson Police Department "solves" most frequently?

If you guessed the parking ticket, (1,040 last year) in which case they get to be police, judge and jury in my sentencing (of a mandated $500 fine for a victimless crime. If a crime has no victim, then how criminal is it?), which I was obviously forced to pay, then you'd be correct.

And the vandalism, breaking and entering, and theft? I called the TPD auto theft department and received NO answer, as though they were disposing of some of their confiscated narcotics in a novel new manner at the time.

Then, when I called to file a report, you would think they'd have an officer come out to look at my car or something. I was told I'd be mailed a report. Wait · I have to do this myself? Who exactly is being served here? Was I protected? Do they intend to solve this crime? No.

Of the 6,648 cars stolen in Tucson in 2001, 273 were recovered, and that doesn't count other related crime that wasn't solved.

All signs point to apathy, particularly since a large number of crimes "solved" involve plea deals to clear the databases of other unsolved (unsolvable) crimes, and thus boost enforcement statistics. So does the 14 percent of all theft solved include the petty thief who pled guilty to other minor crimes to get them off the police's back? Bingo.

We had 5,728 nonviolent drug-related offenses and 2,674 nonviolent alcohol -elated offenses last year ÷ 7,792 of which were victimless possession or consumption crimes. The majority of these were alcohol and marijuana-related (which are, ironically, the least likely to be prosecuted, though they are "lesser drugs").

Here are some additional stats you might find interesting: 75 percent of crime is property crime, 85 percent of burglaries are successful, 72 percent of car theft is successful, and rental housing had theft rates 79 percent higher than owned housing.

What does this say? Our system is not only predicated on enforcing profitable crimes (a handicap parking ticket costs double that of felonious speeding and roughly three times that of red light running), but also discriminates based on class.

How? Who steals? The rich (well, the very rich)? No, it's the poor who either have no job for varying reasons or are supporting a drug habit whose price has been grossly inflated by the Drug War. Subsequent drug smuggling that forces prices to be bumped to profit at least four separate stations of the trade (grower to cartel to smuggler to dealer to buyer) causes it not only to be profitable, but profitable enough to kill, bribe and commit a hell-of-a-lot of real crime to attain that profitability! How many bootleggers have killed people smuggling booze lately? Thought so.

Minimum sentences gut justice; drug wars cause death, theft, and poverty; the police don't enforce real crime; and the exclusionary system leads to destruction of the poor (evidence: high theft rate).

The system needs to be fixed or tossed ÷ it can't go on just protecting its ass and serving itself.