Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 4828 AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: OCTOBER 2016 Incarceration in the U.S. costs more than $1 trillion a year, Washington University study claims The price tag on being tough, not smart on crime H ot spots is a term used by law en- forcement offi- cials to indicate an area plagued with high rates of crime. That’s why Walmart fits the description. The numbers are shock- ing. Police reports about se- rious crimes at Walmarts number in the hundreds of thousands – and that’s just for the first two-thirds of this year. But Walmart doesn’t want to pay for any security, so local law enforcement has to provide it at tremendous cost to taxpayers – many of whom are, ironically, Walmart’s customers. “The constant calls from Walmart are just drain- ing,” Port Richey, Florida Captain Bill Ferguson told Bloomberg News. “They rec- ognize the problem and refuse to do anything about it.” Ferguson says crooks are a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. He says the local Walmart “seems like an easy target” compared to the Target store, where he always sees a security guard. And it’s the same all over the country. Tulsa, Oklahoma police told the news outlet its of- ficers received 2,000 calls to the city’s four Walmarts last year. There were just 300 to the city’s four Target stores in the same period. Needless to say, the term corporate welfare queen comes to mind. Tulsa police Sgt. Robert Rohloff says Walmart exec- utives have cleverly figured out not to pay for security by relying on police at the taxpayers’ expense. “It’s ridiculous — we are talking about the biggest retailer in the world,” Rohl- off told Bloomberg. “I may have half my squad there for hours.” Walmart is now mounting an all-hands-on-deck PR ef- fort to make it look like they care. “We absolutely under- stand how important this is. It is important for our associates, it is important for our customers and across the communities we serve,” Walmart’s U.S. chief operat- ing officer, Judith McKenna, told Bloomberg. “We can do better.” But let’s just say the Walmart family might not have the warmest feelings for law enforcement. The Walmart heirs and heiresses are worth more than $100 billion and have had a few run-ins with po- lice. Google “Alice Walton DWI” for more. Want to be rich? Just make others pay the damn bill! A ccording to infor- mation gleaned from Freedom of Information Act requests, we now know that the FBI allowed its criminal informants to break the law at least 5,939 times last year. That’s a 5 percent increase from the amount of crime the Bureau allowed its infor- mants to get away with the year prior. In a Jan. 14, 2013, letter to Justice Department officials, obtained by The Huffington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request, FBI officials said that its 56 field offices authorized informants to break the law at least 5,939 times during the 2012 calendar year. Unfortunately we’re not allowed to know how seri- ous many of the crimes were because the pages submit- ted to DOJ were heavily redacted. But it’s still more informa- tion than we have from the DEA, ATF and other federal agencies. They don’t keep track of the amount of crimes that paid criminal informants are allowed to commit. This all goes back to a devil’s deal made by the Boston FBI office and a se- rial-killing mob boss named James “Whitey” Bulger. The DOJ ordered the FBI to track crimes by infor- mants more than a decade ago after people became slightly alarmed by the fact that John Connelly and oth- ers at the FBI gave “Whitey” Bulger a get of jail free card that worked for 20 years. Still, the Bureau says that this is complicated stuff and that to fight crime you have to enable crimes and crimi- nals. “It sounds like a lot, but you have to keep it in con- text,” former top FBI of- ficial Shawn Henry told the newspaper. “This is not done in a vacuum. It’s not done randomly. It’s not taken lightly.” Right – no vacuums, not lightly. But don’t expect people to be OK with the feds letting crooks, who are getting paid with tax dollars, off the hook. FBI’s reliance on rats impacting crime rates