Deadly ‘swatting’ hoaxes and the dangerous conditioning of cops

"Sometimes a rifle really is just a pellet gun. Sometimes a hostage situation is a prank. Sometimes a dispatcher gets it wrong. And sometimes a man 'reaching for his waistband' is just trying to pull up his pants. But these stories also show that what the police claim to have seen isn’t what happened."

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Central Planning Ignores the Needs of Women

"An American visiting the Communist Bloc in the 1980s would be aghast to find most women still doing laundry the way they had in the United States 50 years prior, without washing machines. The communist system didn’t produce machines to make women’s lives easier for the same reason it neglected their other needs and wants. For all the complaints about the profit motive, markets incentivize people to satisfy each other’s preferences through voluntary exchange, while state-run economies provide no such incentive. There is no shortage of soaring communist rhetoric on gender equality, but that cannot make up for the pervasive and sexist shortages under central planning."

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A War On Opioids Is A War On Suffering People

"Appointing an Opioid Czar and strictly restricting access to said drugs is not the way to stop the 'opioid epidemic,' if I may use the term. People, good people, people with families and jobs and homes, people who just want to be able to do something that approximates functioning, are having serious issues getting medicine that they need. Because they’re having trouble getting medicine their doctor deemed they needed, more and more are finding themselves in pain crises and heading to their local emergency rooms for relief, clogging up an already-congested system and causing delays in care for people who are dealing with other critical emergencies."

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Pennsylvania Drug Warriors Turned A New York Man’s Life into a Living Hell

"Ramos remained in jail for 158 days until he was found not guilty in Lehigh County Court after blood tests showed no illegal substances or alcohol in his system. While Ramos was jailed, he was fired from his job and lost his home. He lost his car, too: The tow truck operator notified Ramos by mail about a deadline to retrieve his vehicle, but because Ramos was in jail, no one was at his residence to receive the letter. Ramos' lawsuit charged that Troopers Summa and Vanfleet conspired to falsely arrest him despite finding no evidence that he was impaired or had drugs in his car."

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K9 Attacking Mentally Ill Man for No Reason Is ‘Proper Procedure’

"Instead of applying a little bit of courage and walking into the cell with the two other officers to restrain a mentally ill man, the deputies sent in their dog to draw blood. Predictably, the sheriff’s department investigated themselves and not only did they find they did nothing wrong, but, according to Dickerson, it went exactly as it should have."

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