Muscatine

How is locking up drug dealers by having a high conviction rate is a double edged sword. The DTF has made more arrest per capita than even Polk County. How can this possibly be bad?

Would this not make Muscatine the drug capital of Iowa? I don't look at this as a positive reflection of any law enforcement agency. Understand to have more arrest, there has to be enough crime.

Peace

Positive?  What an oof!  Muscatine County's record can only be a positive reflection of the success of the task force. For you to qualify your wrong assessment, you would have to know why other counties have less arrests. Is it because they are inferior to our task force? And remember...not every county of the 99 counties in Iowa even have a task force. Besides that, the Federal DEA have their own seizure and arrest records. Maybe other counties actually have more total arrests and quantities because the DEA worked the case and not a local task force. Who filed the charges? Hence, your statement is way off base and unfounded.

Record number of arrests means the LOCAL task force is bringing in more people than any other district. Drug arrests are commonly done in multiples, but there usually is only one crime or maybe two related crime occurences. Unlike murder, for instance. The rate of murder in Iowa is not determined by the number of arrests. It's a tangible. So you can't say the highest number of drug arrests implies the county is a drug capital of the state. That is something YOU cannot qualify with fact.

 If one arrest in Muscatine County for welfare fraud has the highest dollar value of rip-off occurring of any county in the state; and another county has ten fraud arrests for less money; does that then make Muscatine County the welfare fraud capital? Nope!

Other variables apply as well. Say an arrest for drugs is made in Jan, Feb, or March for an undercover buy that occurred the previous October or November. Commonly, undercover buys are done and documented, then the arrests made weeks and months later to obscure memories of who was sold to. This can carry over into other year's totals, further throwing the totals technically askew. Besides all that....selling, use, and abuse are three different things, totally.

How many people in Muscatine County are treated for drug abuse?  Get that answer and you can come closer to making a responsible statement on Muscatine's true status.

Just pray we can keep our local task force up and running!

Bigbrother - Would you like to reread what I wrote and get back to me? These "?" little things go at the end of questions. Keep that in mind as you reread. Also I never said more crime, but enough crime.

That's right, I said it.