I started this little mini rant in answer to a post by a friend about how he had seen the Coast Guard seriously damage or sink US registered boats in the USVI and Puerto Rico in search of drugs etc on the boats of innocent people that had nothing to do with drugs or anything illegal.
This happens but most of the time you are not going to get hammered like this by the coast guard.. it’s not so endemic that it happens all the time. Unfortunately the coast guard is made up of human beings and they are given missions that require a lot of judgment to carry out appropriately. As Ben said you get some young 18 to 24 year olds sometimes that their enthusiasm overrides their common sense. In their defense though… up till the current wars around the world the coast guard saw more action than any other military branch in the US and still do see a lot of action. We don’t hear about it a lot but they are never sure when they pull up to someone on the water if they are going to end up in a shoot out with drug runners out of south America etc… I think that with some of them it leaves them more viewing everyone as a potential danger to themselves when they pull them over than as a routine check etc… It lends itself to overreaction on the side of the Coast Guard in some situations. To be honest we see this in most of our myriad law enforcement agency’s. I would recommend that anyone that this happens to do their best to obtain legal representation and pursue it. It needs to be addressed so that it happens less in the future.
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