Proposed Reductions include almost 80 percent cut of $380 million to Community Oriented Police Services (COPS) for this year alone.

O, Joy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that we are in deep doo-doo if the COPS funds of $380M is axed for this year. For those of you who are not familiar with the COPS program let me just say it's one of ex-President Bill Clinton’s pet programs put in place by Congress and was responsible for cutting crime from 1993 to 2000. When President W came into office, he began cutting funds for this successful program. But that’s not all. The Byrne Justice Assistance Grants (JAG) program which supports local governments in a wide range of crime prevention and crime control initiatives, received over $400 million in 2005, is now slated for elimination. –oo-That’s right. Your eyes are fine.

Alriiiighty, then. Some of you know where I’m going with this (cue arched eyebrow). There’s numerous studies to indicate some of the reasons for crime – poverty, social environment and family structure. These can be broken down into the following areas, for: poverty - lack of education, unemployment, poor housing, prejudice and lack of hope; social environment – inequality, not sharing power, lack of support to families and neighborhoods, lack or inaccessibility to social services, lack of leadership, low value placed on children and health, too much television; family structures - not putting children first, dysfunctional family conditions, inadequate parenting, conflict between parents, parents involved in criminal activity, lack of communication, respect and responsibility, abuse and neglect of children, violence.

Now for the big questions: How many of the above elements would play out in illegal immigration? Can we fairly say that, in general, illegal aliens face a fair number of the known causes for crime? How can our Illustrious Leaders not see the connection between crime and illegal immigration?

If our .government plans on letting more illegal people into our country, but drastically curtails funding for COPS and Byrne grants, isn’t the .government setting us up for running amok at some point? What happens when the majority of the population runs amok?

Hmm?