At 2:00PM EST and for at least the past fifteen minutes I have been observing an Albany Police Helicopter run lateral scans over my neighborhood. While the possibility exists that there is some ongoing manhunt, I have seen no police vehicles and heard no sirens. The timing gives me pause. Medical Marijuana users of the Hudson/Mohawk region often take advantage of our temperate climate and this season was no exception, however recent and ongoing harassment has made self-reliance an extreme security risk.
Albany's Finest has once again proven its ability to prioritize, overlooking the minor distractions of murder, rape, spousal abuse, to focus on the real threat to our region: Drugs. Not the soft, sissy kind like meth, or crack or herion, but the insidious weed that shadows all other excess and vice, Marijuana.
This backyard fly over comes just as a med user's crop, or their caretaker's, is coming into flower. This means most home-growers will be forced to abandon ship, or take their needed meds indoors, creating even more security risks. Albany Police Department has good reason to do these overhead searches. Anyone who knows Albany knows that all the gang-grows are indoors, so no one caught via this raid will put up a struggle. The flybys are nothing more than the result of incentivizing quantity of arrests, versus focusing spending on true evils. Instead of catching true criminals, Albany's Finest will net many harmless, and otherwise law abiding, New York citizens, and be praised for a record number of arrests.