Drugs often leave Mexico at the borders, cross the Rio Grande and head straight for the underground economies of American cities.
The Texas State Police Department of Public Safety is spending a total of $3.5 million in taxpayer dollars to outfit six high-speed riverboats with machine guns and armor plating.
The Texas border with Mexico is a busy drug smuggling corridor, the longest of any state at 1,241 miles and is entirely along a river.
But at a time when teachers are losing their jobs to budget cuts, this is a controversial purchase.
The State Police have also acquired a $4 million helicopter as aerial back-up, expressly to patrol the border river and the Gulf of Mexico to watch for drug smugglers and pirates.
But this is less controversial. It cost the taxpayers nothing because it was purchased with seized drug money.
The drug cartels have real firepower, but the new gunboats will boast an arsenal of six mounted machine guns which should level the playing field quite a bit.
The Rio Grande is also narrow and not very deep, so the small 34 foot length allows the boats to make sharp turns and operate in as little as 2 feet of water.
If you were thinking drug smuggling might be a good idea in this recession to temporarily tide you over, you might consider a different border, somewhere else.
They don’t say
for nothin’, y’know.
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