Hamm: "Drug dealers in Baltimore are finally getting the message..."

So Baltimore police arrested 7 men involved with what we are told is a "large" heroin operation. Thats all well and good I suppose, despite the fact that every junkie in the city will still get high tonight and by now another crew has probably already taken over the territory vacated by these men.

Let me cut right to the bullshit, as it were. Commissioner Hamm had this to say:

Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm said he hoped “that drug dealers in Baltimore are finally getting the message that if they continue plying their deadly trade, they will be caught and severely punished.”

Is anyone else horribly disturbed at how delusional this man is? Finally getting the message? Hamm, and all those who follow his drug control strategy are ignoring reality. If Hamm and his department seriously think for a second that they have taught anyone in the drug game a "lesson" with these arrests, they are more than delusional, they should be up for retirement.

For those dead set on getting a piece of that $20,000 a day, jail is an afterthought, or even a necessary consequence. Its a poisonous mindset, one that combines the worst elements of criminality and capitalism. Its not to say that introducing government oversight and regulation and creating a legal market would remove all of the corruption, but would certainly remove the criminality, and violence and blight that comes with it.

This is why Hamm's comments are so disturbing. At best, he is trumpeting bullshit knowingly, at the behest of the Mayor. At worst, he lacks an understanding of the very people that make up the criminal element in the city he is sworn to protect.