Mark Steyn on Contemporary Policing

By An Old Friend

Steyn, in 1999: When Vice President Gore suggested amalgamating these warring, inefficient, acronymic agencies into one slimmed-down ultra-efficient DEATFBI, the president ruled against it on the grounds that it would send ( all together now ) the "wrong signal": having lots of agencies, no matter how useless, sends the right signal. So, across the country, undercover DEA agents are staking out undercover FBI agents who are selling drugs to undercover DEA agents who are staking out undercover ATF agents.

Steyn, 2017: I thought of that line when I read this story:

The encounter started when two special operations officers from the department's 12th Precinct were working on a drug bust on Andover, a notoriously drug-heavy area of the city.

The officers were pretending to be dealing narcotics in hopes that eager customers would approach before being arrested and having their vehicles seized.

But problems started when another group of undercover special operations officers from the 11th Precinct approached, posing as buyers.

Steyn again, in 2017: So a group of undercover officers pretending to be drug dealers confronts another group of undercover officers pretending to be drug buyers, at which point they all start brawling with each other: "No, I'm staking you out!" "Screw you. I was staking you out first," etc.