Posted
1/09/2003 02:10:00 PM
by Douglas
What in the heck is
this shit all about? You can't get drunk in a bar anymore? Since when did a bar, which is private property, become a public place, anyway?
Police said the holiday raids, first reported in the Reston Times, were born of a community policing goal of discouraging crime before it occurs.
Does it make sense to arrest people
before they shoplift or
before they commit murder? I would say that this is rediciliously stupid, but I'm not so sure anymore.
One man who was arrested during one of the police raids acknowledged having several drinks during the course of the afternoon, but said he was not driving or acting unruly as he sat at a table with several work colleagues. He had just finished singing "Jingle Bell Rock" on the karaoke machine when an officer asked him to step outside. He failed a breath test and was taken in a van to jail.
OK, we can all see that sometimes drunk guys with the karaoke machine can be a menace to society, but if we start filling our jails with this kind of crap, they will be overflowing before we even lock up all the drunk guys doing Elvis songs.