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ATF Puts Up Surveillance Cameras Around Seattle ... To Catch Illegal Grease Dump (muckrock.com)
v3rgEz writes: Last summer, Seattleites noticed that utility poles around town were showing some odd growths: A raft of surveillance cameras that, under Seattle's strict surveillance equipment laws, shouldn't have been there without disclosure and monitoring. But Seattle Police said that they weren't theirs, and one enterprising citizen followed up with a series of public records requests, only to discover that they were actually the ATF's cameras — on the watch for grease dumpers. Now the requester is fighting for the full list of federal surveillance watching over Seattle, and answers to how often federal agencies pursue what appear to be purely local crimes.
Why is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms interested in illegal grease dumping? Illicit grease disposal is a potential environmental, water quality, and combustion hazard issue; but that's more the EPA's thing, perhaps local authorities, maybe FBI if it's a interstate conspiracy.
Does somebody think that Tyler Durden is skimming off the grease to manufacture nitroglycerin for Project Mayhem and his anarcho-primitivist insurgency?
We'll just get the feds to do all the monitoring and share their information because they don't have to listen to the local ordinance. It's like the local departments that use the federal civil forfeiture rules when their city or state tells them they can't steal from their citizens anymore. I wish federal courts would start smacking departments that do this hard, both collectively and individual officers and higher.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
WTF does the ATF have to do with illegal grease dumping? What's that? Nothing at all?
They have neither the jurisdiction nor the interest in these crimes. If they're claiming it's for policing this kind of stuff, it's a big fucking lie.
This is just making shit up to allow them to put up cameras, against local laws, and then refuse to explain what the hell they're doing.
Yet more evidence that law enforcement doesn't give a crap about the law.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Grease can also be used as an animal feed supplement. My chickens love bacon grease, or used frying oil mixed with their feed. I don't understand why anyone would just dump perfectly good grease. It should be easy to find someone to take it, and possibly even pay for it.
My guess is that the grease is just a cover story, and the real purpose of the cameras is something else entirely.
Ask yourself why the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is hunting down grease dumping instead of, say, the EPA?