If someone said to me, ‘What is your product, earthling?’ I would say peace.”

Braudis preaches peace for Pitkin County
by Curtis Wackerle, Aspen Daily News Staff Writer
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/140214

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Sheriff Braudis reflects on 24 years in office as retirement nears

“If a voyager from Venus or Pluto landed on planet Earth, the first thing they’d say is ‘all earthlings deliver products,’” Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis said in his office a few days after he announced he will be retiring in January after 24 years at the helm of county law enforcement. “You know, farmers, manufacturers, steel workers, concrete workers, you name it. If someone said to me, ‘What is your product, earthling?’ I would say peace.”
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The way Braudis sees it, “the most important thing I do is decide who I am going to deputize.”
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It’s a delicate balance finding people who can both challenge authority and be that authority when the need arises, he said.

If a police executive takes a nap, the officers under his or her charge will inevitably drift to the right, Braudis said, becoming both power happy and paranoid. This is avoided through the attention and coaching of middle managers in the department, he said.
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Braudis believes that he will be remembered for “selecting and hiring the right people, and for not foisting a rogue cop on this community.”
Maybe so. But at least a footnote to the story will be Braudis’ outspoken belief that the war on drugs is a resource-wasting failure and that the criminal justice system shouldn’t concern itself with adults consuming drugs.

It’s not that Braudis won’t investigate drug crime. He said that if someone comes to the department with credible information about persons involved in the commerce of controlled substances, the department will open a case. But the department draws the line at conducting undercover investigations because “it erodes trust in peace officers.” Trust, after all, is a crucial component in nearly every aspect of a cop’s interaction with the community, Braudis said.
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Read the whole article at http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/140214

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It's too bad more people don't live under law enforcement with these values.

That is all I can really be sure I am creating. And unfortunately, my intake, to sustain such production, is based on war and greed. My entire life comes at a costs of others that I would no doubt offer "peace" to, but ultimately I contribute to market forces that lead to their demise.

But I see what you are saying.

And at the end of the meeting, the only thing keeping me from acknowledging the human need for utter extermination by a more evolved space-faring race would be our odd tendency for self-preservation despite any and all surrounding conditions. Of course, who knows if their ability to travel would indicate much about their social evolution; their technology could have evolved out of need in wartime.