Who’s Hustling Who?

by Shawn Harris


Can you imagine what would happen if you stopped selling drugs? The funding for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Alcohol Tobacco Firearm unit (ATF) would be cut substantially.  Most of those agents would be reassigned or laid off.  State, county, and local police task force & special drug enforcement units would also suffer financially. They wouldn’t profit anymore from their shady seizures, or civil asset forfeitures & foreclosures. Their federal aid or grant money would dry up. Maybe you didn’t know, but the government provides military style weapons (flash grenades, automatic assault rifles and pistols), helicopters, and tanks to local law enforcement agencies to help them wage war on you. The feds also encourage and allow them to take your houses, cars, and jewelry if they find even extremely small amounts of drugs or drug paraphernalia on you or your property.  Then they sell your shit at an auction.  They’re allowed to keep a high percentage of all they’ve confiscated and sold.  That degree of power has turned some police into pirates and legalized wolf packs who are out to basically rob you.  But all of that would stop if you would just quit selling dope. Courthouse traffic, jail, and prison population would all slow down.  Bailiffs, sheriffs, and correctional officers would all be reassigned. Attorneys and prosecutors would lose a tremendous amount of income if you would just stop selling drugs.  All those officers, agents, employees, supervisors, sergeants, and commanders are getting paid off locking you down.They’re getting paid to go to war against you. That’s their hustle, to catch you, take your possessions, break up your family and send you to prison. Without you they wouldn’t have these jobs. Without you, some of these jobs wouldn’t even exist. There would be no DEA or A.T.F. They need you to break the law so they can justify their existence. You are a necessary evil. But you don’t have to be. Why don’t you become something else? Stop letting these people get paid off you. Because while you’re out there pushing poison to your own kind, dodging informants, and ducking federal agents, bailing and bonding out of jail, fighting criminal charges; the police are confiscating your property. As you stand in the crowd at that auction, trying to buy back your shit, ask yourself, who’s hustling who?