Death of consul's daughter spurs Venezuela outcry

[DFW]

72. Yeah, I wish I could say otherwise.

A company I know got a million euros of sensitive stuff stolen in Belgium when a fake police brigade stopped
the FedEx truck that was carrying their stuff to the airport, manhandled the driver, and knew exactly which
packages to take out of the FedEx truck. These gangs are VERY well organized, and they have their own people
on the inside of security agencies, the Post, and the transport agencies (FedEx, DHL, etc.). There are so many
legit immigrants from Eastern Europe here now, that it is impossible to know who the bad eggs are.

In southern France, a couple of years ago, a fake police gang stopped a Brinks armored car delivering cash
to banks and blew it open with a bazooka, killed a couple of the Brinks guys. The cops do nothing because
the justice system is often very lenient (in the name of "tolerance" for the poor disadvantaged Eastern Europeans,
which only provides fuel to xenophobic rightist extremists, predictably and unfortunately), and the bad guys,
even if they are caught, are usually released with a warning. This is not an exaggeration. About 3 years ago,
I helped catch the head of a group of professional thieves from Croatia that was operating in Germany. The
local cops asked for his ID, and he produced a German passport with a Croatian entry stamp but no exit stamp.
The guy was asked a few questions, and he said he didn't understand German, even though his birthplace
and place of residence, according to his passport, said he was a German living in Germany. He had obviously
obtained a passport stolen from a German vacationing in Croatia. The cops hauled him off. Within 3 days, he was
taken before a judge, who decided it was "only a minor passport violation," and freed the guy with no further
action to be taken. This demoralizes the local European cops, and emboldens the bad guys. One of the
forseeable bad effects of this is that it will fuel a demand for overly harsh police action and looser firearms
restrictions in countries that have been considered fairly safe due to tough firearms laws. The radical right will
eat this stuff up, and Western Europe will have its own teabaggers (minus the religion) within ten years if they
don't start doing something about it.