From Stark
I got a call this morning from Blaine resident Mike Lucas, responding to the Feb. 3, 2011 story about some border residents who have complaints about Border Patrol vehicles and Customs and Border Protection helicopter operations in and around their homes and farms.
Lucas has lived on West 99th Street inside the Blaine city limits for four years. His back property line is on the border, and he had nothing but compliments for the Border Patrol and its officers. He said many of his neighbors feel the same.
“We just feel that these Border Patrol guys are getting a bad rap,” Lucas said.
He’s not bothered by high-speed Border Patrol vehicles on his street, or by the surveillance camera near his home. “These guys have protected us for four years and I think they’ve done a great job … I have never ever encountered a rude Border Patrol guy. They are always polite.”
About two years ago, Lucas said he called the patrol to report suspicious activity on his street, and officers arrived in a minute or two to apprehend men carrying sacks of cash into the U.S.
Lucas is so close to Canada that he can chat across the border with his Canadian neighbor on Zero Avenue. When he does that, a nearby surveillance camera on a pole may be trained on them, but Lucas said he has no problem with it.
He added that when he goes in his back yard to do some weed-whacking, he calls the patrol to tell them what he’s doing.
“Living on the border is unique,” he said. “I love it.”
Now, there’s a guy who “gets it”.
Thank youfor standing up and supporting those that protect us!
A fearful population will more readily accept the privacy intrusions of a surveillance state. This citizen feels safer knowing the cops are only a phone call away, and he feels protected being monitored 24/7.
He even notifies the authorities, before he does yard work! How comforting.
Yah Todd, it is funny which people are pro Patriot Act, but anti-government, but pro police cameras, but anti tax, but pro constitution, but not concerned about routine searches and monitoring.
“Why vood you need privacy, if you are doink nossing wrong?”
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Rhetoric aside, it is a federal border, and they really do have to watch it. Sometimes it’s bags of money or drugs, but it could just as easily be explosives. I chose to live in Blaine, just a few block from the border, in part because I know that nobody will break into my house when I’m away, since 6 different types of law are driving down my street almost constantly.
Fear is alive and well and flousrishing in America. I really don’t think you can really know if anything you hear from a federal agency is true or not. Wiki leaks has certainly shone a light on that. On the border and in the drug war it’s been all about making work for ex military for decades and yet every horrendous thing that has happened has, like 9/11 had at it’s core a failure of the so called protections of fedeeral agencies we all have accepted in our delusion and fear.