Cure worse than disease
ATF solving crimes by committing them:
Undercover ATF agents in Virginia have funneled more than 250 million cigarettes onto the nation’s streets in the past three years through black market sales targeting smugglers, an Associated Press review has found.
Authorities say the flood of government-provided smokes – a pack and a half for every man, woman and child in New York City, the smugglers’ main destination – leads them to organized crime rings and can even cut off financing for terrorists.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:20 am
BATFE is now “Big Tobacco”. If we stopped giving them a billion dollars a year, maybe they’d act better, or at least they’d act less, which would be an improvement.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:46 am
or we could, you know, have reasonable taxes for legal products instead of letting New York City support terrorism by creating an attractive smuggling zone.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:20 am
Sounds just another day at the batfu office.
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:33 pm
“250 million cigarettes” “a pack and a half for every man, woman and child in New York City”
So, about a 3 or 4 day supply for NYC, total.
Or we could just drop sin taxes altogether.
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Is the BATF responsible for paying state taxes on those smuggled smokes? This sounds Iran/Contra-like, a way for an enterprising federal agency to build slush funds for off-the-books projects.
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:03 pm
isn’t that the whole point of undercover agents though, to get in close with their suspects?
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Cute heading, but is there a scrap of evidence that ATF is actually committing any crimes here?
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:14 pm
other than creating crime by facilitating the black market?
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:23 pm
If “facilitating” crime were itself a crime, all criminal laws would be crimes, by definition.
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:28 pm
I’m not a lawyer but isn’t that the whole purpose of ‘conspiracy’ charges?
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:01 pm
No. Conspiracy means two or more people plotting to commit a crime together, and at least one of them taking an overt act in furtherance of that cause. Sting operations are a completely different matter.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:02 pm
BTW did you know your WP is still on daylight savings time? The good news is that once you fix it and upgrade to the current version, this issue will be handled automagically from now on.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:45 pm
I could think of better ways to spend between $35million and $70million.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Plotting to commit v. facilitating?
Also, the actual crime is importing cigarettes into NY. That is a crime. They do, however, have a defense in that it was as part of their duty to, err, I guess arrest people for the crimes they wouldn’t have committed had ATF not smuggles cigarettes in.
I need to upgrade wp again.
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:24 am
My guess is that the feds are immune to any law against importing into NY. If not, the fact that they are doing it to nab someone else is irrelevant. Cf. Bloomberg. And saying they wouldn’t have committed the crime if ATF hadn’t smuggled them in is a bit like Marion Barry saying he wouldn’t have smoked crack if that bitch hadn’t set him up. Which is true for the particular time and place where he got caught doing it. True in general, not so much.
The good news is that one more WP upgrade, and the rest will take care of themselves. Modern versions of WP just tell you there’s a newer version out there, and prompt you to upgrade themselves.
January 25th, 2010 at 2:07 am
I think what you are referring to is Criminal facilitation. Which from what I understand about ny law to mean is the act of facilitation as a means for another individual to commit a class A felony. Which means you would be entitled to a a class B felony charge for every act.