quote:
Originally posted by Bullwinkle
yes - the writing of the ordinance was poor....
Truth be told, not sure they could have worded it any other way. They can direct the police to make enforcement of a law a priority (as they did with directing resources to other than adult personal use), but they can’t tell them to not enforce a State law. So the best they were able to do was ask them to just make it a low priority.
Unfortunately, due to the constitutional issues that were raised, this will ultimately have to be decided by the State Supreme Court.
quote:
Originally posted by Bullwinkle
yes - a reasonable man would assume the populace is not in favor of supporting dea helicopter borne search and destroy missions
True, but the DEA is federal and was not covered by this ordinance so they are free to do what they want. The initative never imposed anything on them, the State or other Counties. Only Hawaii County government resources are under the ordinance.
The bigger issue is, if it comes down to a court battle, will the judge accept that people thought it really meant something else and should be changed to somthing that wasn't voted on, or will the judge say, that is the wording and thats what you approved. Too bad if it's not what you thought it was. Historically they rule that what was written stands as there is no way to say if people would have voted for it if it was written another way.
quote:
Originally posted by Bullwinkle
I will leave it to the reader to muddle through this awkward piece of language to determine whether laws were violated... The spirit certainly was - imho.
If you read the police follow-up on these actions, they didn’t do anything against anyone who fell under the adult personal use (even though they could). So the letter and Spirit of the law was not violated. It looks like they not only followed the ordinance but also went further in curtailing their actions when they had the right to take action.
Now, I would question the technical aspects of deputizing other County law enforcement, but that is not prohibited in the law so they didn’t do anything wrong. Also, it’s a bit of Madoff economics in the argument of this years versus last year funds, but again, the imitative prevented accepting money which they didn’t do because that money was given to them before the imitative was passed by the voters, so they already had it.
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One item that does confuse me is this:
Based on all available reports, the actions were targeted at large commerical criminal operations. The police did not release the suspected targets. They could be Joe and Jane who are making some money growing and distributing marijuana locally, it could have been Fred and Wanda who supplies the children of the community, it could be Julio and Jose who are part of a mexican drug cartel. What we know is a very large amount, (no way this was for personal use or even friendly social gatherings, this was commercial criminal operations) was seized including off public lands. So what I'm confused about is, was it the fact that the pot supply was reduced and crap gotta find another supplier, or was it the noise of helicopters and people would have complained anyway even if it was a raid on terrorist about to launch an attack? Basically was it the pot or the noise?
