I was listening to a local radio talk show where they were discussing illegal gambling in Los Angeles.  One of the guests was a guy who has been street gambling in LA for years and had never been arrested until recently.  He was referring to pick up crap games where the word would get around on the street that there was going to be a crap game in an alley somewhere in about half an hour.  The word traveled quickly and usually enough people showed up to start a game.  The game would usually last until the cops came.  The cops would usually start down the alley in a marked police car with the red lights on and the siren blasting. They would drive slow enough so that almost everyone could get away.  They didn’t block the other end of the alley because that was the escape route for the players.  Once in a while someone would be stupid enough to stand there and wait for the cops.  In that case the cops would cite the idiot for gambling and send him on his way.  

The last game this guest was involved in was completely different.  They were shooting in an alcove off an alley when three of the players stood between the game and the opening of the alcove.  All of a sudden several uniformed cops appeared in the alley which made it impossible to run.  The three players who stood up were undercover cops.  They cited everyone who had identification and took anyone who didn’t have ID to the police station.  The guest didn’t have identification so he was handcuffed and taken to the police station where he was fingerprinted and booked.  Once he was identified by his fingerprints he was given a citation to appear in court and released.

He said the car they placed him in to take him to the police station appeared to be a car he had traded in on a newer car about a month or so ago. He mentioned to the cops that he was sure he used to own the car they were driving.  The cops said it probably was the car he had traded in because they get their undercover cars from car dealers.  They use the older cars the dealers are going to wholesale.  They keep a car for a week or so and then switch it for another car.

He asked the cops why they changed their raiding tactics and went undercover instead of using the uniform cops to scare everyone away.  The cops said church groups complained to the police commission that the police weren’t doing anything to curtail the street gambling.  These church folks appeared before the police commission with videos of black and white police cars going so slow that anyone could get away.  The video clearly showed that the police didn’t make any attempt to detain the gamblers. Police Commission President John Mack, formerly the director of the Urban League, was shocked that the police would do such a thing.  He promised the church folks that he would ensure the police would be more vigilant in the pursuit of criminals and not look the other way when crimes were being committed.  The cops told this guy the heat was going to be on until they were told to back off.

It was an interesting program.  They had other guests including a retired cop.  The retired cop said most people don’t have a clue when it comes to policing a community.  The public has discovered that they can appear before the police commission and complain about anything.  The police commission is made up of members of the community who are appointed by the mayor.  In many cases they don’t have a clue either.  He said a couple of uniformed cops in a marked police car can do more to stem the problem than an army of undercover vice cops.  The people who get caught and have ID are cited and released.  The problem is that some of the players don’t have ID which requires they be booked and fingerprinted.  That process is very time consuming.  Uniformed cops could break up a dozen games while the vice cops are wasting time processing the arrestees from one game.  Meanwhile while they are in the station, other games flourish in the neighborhood.  He went on to say that uniformed police in marked cars do more to deter all types of crime in a neighborhood than an army of undercover cops.  

Another guest was a black preacher who said the police were recalcitrant by not going after these criminals with the full force of the police department.  He even suggested the cops who would rather warn than arrest should be prosecuted but he wasn’t sure if they were breaking the law.

The hobby wasn’t discussed but there has been a lot pressure put on the police commission to do something about internet escorts by the Traditional Values Coalition.  
Hopefully, the police commission won’t succumb to the religious zealots.

When you say "Religion" is detrimental to a society, I agree with you, however, Christianity in it's purest form is of no detrement to society or anyone. There's no mandate from Christ to act an ass and involke his name in every zelous attempt to assert values via the law. Christ himself might have been in the company of "alley-gamblers and prostitutes" in his day... People are to be feared, not religion, because it's the zelotry of a MAN that brings the tristing of any law into a wepon formed against humanity...

How do you figure that religion exists apart from man?   You figure the Hairy Thunderer is gonna practice all by himself, a religious whackoff, so to speak, and he's letting man fuck it up because he likes shitting on us?

Exactly WTF *is* "christianity in its purest form"?   Maybe your idea of what the bible is?

No, what's wrong here is the delusional thinking you're using.   There absolutely is a Christian mandate to act like an ass and zealot, and every preacher and pope starting with John the Baptist has insisted on demonstrating that.

knowing something without reference to an objective world, that is, when you think you know something without objective evidence, you're operating on faith.

It's not that it doesn't work so well (which it doesn't) as that it cuts off any means of dealing with the fellow who doesn't think the sky is the same color as you do, so it pretty much guarantees fights.

So why does it last?  Because it tends to help groups identify, and small groups aren't so survivable any more.

Now in the case you cite, both the commission and the churchers had an even more immediate problem, and that is lack of common sense, ie, asking the cops why they did things that way before deciding if it was good or bad.  That particular stupidity isn't limited to religion, though religion certainly encourages people to believe they know things they don't know shit about.

Where in the fuck do you come up with things like "The HAiry Thunderer"?

""""How do you figure that religion exists apart from man?   You figure the Hairy Thunderer is gonna practice all by himself, a religious whackoff, so to speak, and he's letting man fuck it up because he likes shitting on us?""""

And:

do you laugh as hard when you wrtite this as i do when i read it?

"Hairy Thunderer" isn't even original.

Religious whack-jobs are incredibly entertaining, so I like to fuck with them.    But it's way too much effort to actually laugh anymore.

If they didn't wield so much fucking power. It kindof takes the humor out of the equation.Their belief in fairy tales is amusing, their ability to start wars and kill countless millions of people is not.

you been hanging with zin too long...

or maybe you've got some tabernacal shit going on in your neighborhood so your door takes an extrordinary pounding.

Is that it?

Do you have a training center in your neighborhood?

You got Pat Robertson, a televangelist who comes on TV talking amazing shit, who can actually run for President and seriously throw his weight around, as a single example of bat-shit crazy religion.  And he is NOT alone - Tim delaHaye is another fella who sells the "Left Behind" series, who sells MORE books than the New York Times book reviews ever could.  No shit, he has sold over 65 million copies, and that means a lot of people coughing up a lot of real money.

The difference between this asshole and bin Laden is their bank balances, the fact that the Bushes will talk to televangelists in public, and oh yes, the beards.   I.e., the difference between the televangelists and the ayatollahs is that the televangelists have the American military behind them, only because they grew up in the same country - so there's no sense in blowing up buildings and hiding in caves, and so all they do is assassinate the occasional doctor or fairy, only because they don't need to act on their trash talk.

The televangelist mob is strong enough to pants ANYBODY who forgets to kiss their ass every Sunday - like McCain - these fuckers have the chutzpah to set up a draft-dodger to attack ANYBODY who actually served, AND THEN talk about supporting the troops whom they abandoned in the fucking desert until they come home to fucking Walter fucking Reed.

Now I will grant these guys are good population control, BUT I really think that we have pills for that sort of thing, and I am not satisfied with ONE piece of ass, I want it pretty regularly, so why the fuck aren't we drafting these assholes to fight the religious wars they want so much?!

Get a clue, BK, hobbyists are a MINORITY, an endangered species trying to live in a lumberyard.

-- Modified on 1/29/2008 1:12:53 AM

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