checks, it's "people selling untaxed marijuana"
Yeahhhh, we have radically different ideas about what constitutes "they're terrorizing my city".
Casual use of heavy-handed law enforcement makes things much, much worse, not better.
This wasn't a thing 10 years ago and we weren't in a police state
Curious then that you are arguing in favor of a police state with mass surveillance to solve these issues...
I don't think you need to arrest someone because they're selling an untaxed legal substance, no. (And: weed should be legal, if we're talking about a place where it's not).
You can manage this situation better by getting their info and issuing a ticket. On its face, it doesn't warrant an escalation of force, the extra paperwork, or choking up the jails -- all of which represent very real costs to us, the taxpayers.
> This wasn't a thing 10 years ago and we weren't in a police state
Buddy, I have some news for you about the history of the US. Ten years ago, which country/countries had the highest incarceration rate in the world?
And fear, whether real or induced by manipulation, has precipitated a -lot- of atrocities in the world.