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My turn | Constant useless actions | Opinion

My turn | Constant useless actions | Opinion

Albert Einstein is credited with defining insanity as “…doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

A recent look at the official Urbana Police Department Facebook page reveals more madness, despite good intentions.

FROM THE OFFICIAL PAGE OF THE CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT ON FACEBOOK DATED OCTOBER 24, 2024:

“Teamwork in action!

On October 23, 2024, Urbana officers were investigating a traffic collision when they found a 19-year-old Urbana resident with bullet holes in his vehicle and an active warrant on drug charges. With the assistance of K9 Archie, officers located over 930 grams of cannabis, 25 suspected fentanyl pills, 25 ecstasy pills, drug paraphernalia and cash.

This arrest highlights our ongoing fight against dangerous substances like fentanyl in our community.

The Urbana Police Department is committed to addressing this serious public health crisis, but we need your help. If you have any information about who may be distributing these substances in Urbana, please let us know. Your awareness and support is critical to making our community safer.

Thank you, K9 Archie, for your keen sense of smell and dedication.

Be careful, Urbana!

We have to applaud Urbana Officer of the Year Phillip Berry and his new colleague Archie for their excellent work in locating 25 fentanyl pills. We’d like Officer Berry and Archie to find all the fentanyl.

We could celebrate such captures by holding a large public bonfire (with sandwiches and milkshakes), with solemn testimonies from mothers who have lost their beloved children to this disgusting chemical, and allowing them to throw the confiscated fentanyl back where it came from, to inspire Our community is determined to protect others from the fentanyl monster.

In our constant focus on black men shooting other black men, what goes unnoticed and too unnoticed is the county’s deadliest disaster: drug overdose deaths.

According to the Champaign County Coroner, there have been 190 drug overdose deaths between 2021 and 2023, and 130 of those deaths involved fentanyl. The Urbana Police Department is right to want to intervene in this “public health crisis.”

“Fentanyl is killing us and it needs to stop,” Mr. Obvious said here.

But while we’re rightfully throwing water, what about the kid who somehow came into possession of a drug developed in China, shipped to drug labs in Mexico, and smuggled across the border by the Americans, only to end up in a car in Urbana? Illinois?

What to do with this 19 year old guy making money from this substance?

There is no doubt that the young man is making bad career moves. The intervention is legally justified.

The Urbana Police Department should be commended for not allowing this poison to be sold in our community.

The standard procedure for the last 50+ years has been arrest, prosecution and incarceration.

In the fifty-plus years of fighting the War on Drugs, drug overdose deaths have reached a record high of more than 110,000 a year nationwide.

Can someone explain this to make sense?

However, the police have a role to play.

Here’s what a forward-thinking/compassionate society could do in the future about this situation:

– Police: “Okay, Mr. 19-year-old, we’re going to confiscate your fentanyl because that shit ain’t no good for shit.

“We’re also seizing ecstasy because we’re not crazy about that product either and it hasn’t been tested enough to be delisted from Schedule 1 yet.

“We’re going to confiscate all your weed since you’re underage and give it to the dispensary down the street so we can claim some of the tax revenue from it later.

“Since you are only 19, we will clear you of tax evasion charges for your black market activities.

“You can keep your money, you will need it to repair your car.

“Now, what you’re really in trouble with is that you don’t appear to be enrolled in a marketing college or trade school. You don’t have a paid job either, so… what’s your plan, son?

“We are now calling an alternative response team and you and whoever your guardian or parents are, you will sit down and map out a better future than selling drugs on the street. Don’t you know you’re at high risk of getting robbed by guys with guns doing this?”

— Instead, what might happen: We are going to keep 19 year old Mr. in a jail cell to watch TV all day, eat honey buns at the store and cost the taxpayers $80 a day.

His family and girlfriend will pay $10 per day for a phone or video call. The State Attorney’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office will schedule preliminary hearings for a year or more.

In the end, the lawyers will finally release the child anyway with all possible conditions of release, with no plans, job prospects or education, other than a criminal conviction that fences him off from civilization and the economy.

And ultimately, no matter how good Archie’s sniff is, fentanyl, ecstasy and black market marijuana will be readily available within an hour of every single day if you have the money.

As with any pessimistic forecast, let’s hope it’s completely wrong, because insanity doesn’t work.