My Turn | The constant acts of futility | Opinion

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

A recent glance at the official Urbana Police Department’s Facebook page finds more insanity despite the good intentions.

FROM THE OFFICIAL URBANA POLICE DEPARTMENT FACEBOOK PAGE FROM OCTOBER 24, 2024:

”Teamwork in Action!

On October 23, 2024, Urbana officers were investigating a traffic crash when they encountered a 19-year-old Urbana resident with bullet holes in his vehicle and an active warrant related to a drug charge. With the help of K9 Archie, officers discovered 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 tackling this serious public health crisis, but we need your help. If you have any information about who might be distributing these substances in Urbana, please let us know. Your awareness and support are crucial in making our community safer.

Thank you, K9 Archie, for your keen nose and dedication.

Stay vigilant, Urbana!”

We have to applaud Urbana Officer of the Year Phillip Berrie and his new co-worker, Archie, for their fine work finding the 25 pills of fentanyl. We wish Officer Berrie and Archie could find all the fentanyl.

We could celebrate such captures by having a great community bonfire (sandwiches and milkshakes provided), with solemn testimony from the mothers who have lost their beloved children to this heinous chemical and let them throw the seized fentanyl back where it came from — to inspire our community resolve to protect others from the fentanyl monster.

In our constant focus on Black males with guns shooting other Black males, what gets under the glove and too unnoticed is the most deadly disaster in the county: drug overdose deaths.

According to the Champaign County Coroner’s Office, there have been 190 drug overdose deaths between the years 2021-23, and 130 of those deaths involve fentanyl. The Urbana Police Department is well right to want to intervene on this “public health crisis.”

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

But while we’re rightfully throwing the water out, what about the baby that somehow came into possession of a drug developed in China, shipped to drug labs in Mexico and brought across the border by Americans to eventually wind up in a car in Urbana, Illinois?

What to do with this 19-year-old making money off this substance?

There’s no question the young man is making some bad career moves. An intervention is legitimately warranted.

The Urbana Police Department is to be thanked for not allowing that poison to be sold in our community.

Standard procedure for the last 50-plus years has been to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate.

Fifty-plus years of fighting the Drug War and drug overdose deaths are at record highs with over 110,000 a year nationwide.

Somebody make it make sense.

The police do have a role to play, however.

Here would be what a forward-thinking/compassionate society might do in the future in this situation:

—Police: “OK, Mr. 19-Year-Old, we’re going to seize your fentanyl because that crap is no damn good.

“We’re seizing the ecstasy too because we’re not thrilled with that product either and that hasn’t been tested enough to be taken off the Schedule 1 list.

“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 tax revenue off it later.

“Since you’re only 19, we’ll give you a pass on tax evasion charges for your black-market ways.

“You can keep your cash, you’re going to need it fixing your car.

“Now, what are you really in trouble for is you don’t seem to be enrolled in a junior college for marketing, or a trade school. You haven’t gainful employment either, so … just what is the plan, son?

“We’re calling in the Alternative Response Team now and you and whoever your guardian might be or parents are going to have a sit down and map out a better future than selling drugs on the street. Don’t you know you stand a high risk of getting robbed by guys with guns doing that?”

— Instead, what’s likely to happen: We are going to keep Mr. 19-Year-Old in a jail pod to watch television all day, honey eating buns at commissary, and costing the taxpayers $80 a day.

His family and girlfriend will pay $10 a day to make a phone or video call to him. The state’s attorney’s office and public defender’s office will play calendar-schedule-tag for a year or more of pretrial hearings.

At long last, the attorneys will finally just let the kid out anyway with all kinds of release conditions while still having no plan, job or education prospects other than a felony conviction that bars him from civilization and the economy.

And ultimately, no matter how good Archie’s nose is, fentanyl, ecstasy and black-market marijuana will remain readily available within the hour every single day if you got the money.

As with any pessimistic prediction, let’s hope this is completely wrong because the insanity is not working.