That is the nature of most laws.
In a perfect world, there would be only one law: "Do the right thing".
Correct. I was however referencing the OPs comment(which came from the article) that scanners have been considered a "thorn" in these law officers sides, as if passing this law would remove that thorn in any way. Now, it could be useful after the fact for an officer, but that is moot when the premise of the article is predicated on this law alleviating the use of scanners by criminals(felons) in evading the police or following police movements to engage in their illegal activities before an arrest takes place. While this may indeed be obvious to you and others, we are still reading media articles that state otherwise, of which it is a high probability that people who don't see this as obvious as you do, can form the opinion that we can pass laws that will change peoples behavior.
The article did not say how many busts did not happen, or were not successful, or were not as successful as they could have been, so your comment is really sort of a " :roll: "
No, it did not state any of those things. Of course, if a bust did not happen, it's hard to consider it within the context of the statement I quoted(much less implying the fact the bust didn't happen because of successful implementation of a scanner :roll: ). While it'd be short sighted to say that nobody has evaded the law using a scanner in that town, it's relevance here as an understood assumption vs quantifiable fact(not through the article but obtainable through police records) does not concede my point. How many terrorist attacks on our country fell apart without any doing by the US, or how many attacks have the US prevented but not publicized? The only answer to that is speculation, and if we were discussing a recent terrorist attack attempt in the tavern I were to engage in this use of these unknowns to defend attacks on the white house's(who are wildly unpopular in the political forum) job of tackling this issue, I would rightly and roundly be criticized for it. I think that applies here as well.
Now, for the other point, as far as not being successful or as successful, I can see where you're coming from, but successful or not, those officers coordinated their activities to gain entrance to a place that was suspected of being involved in narcotics activity. Whether they found drugs or not, if we are to take the officer at his word and ability to recall with significant enough accuracy, the scanners were conspicuously present at a majority(if not all) of these "busts." I will give you that yes, maybe some of these not successful or not as successful busts may have been the result of forewarning by listening to the scanner, letting them flush the dope or get rid of it somehow. What the scanners did
not prevent was the police from showing up to these places in the first place, or allowing the targets to remain below the radar as obviously the police had a warrant or enough evidence of illegal activities to proceed with a "bust", successful or not, to begin with. It's akin to people buying scanners thinking they'll be able to know where the police are running the speed traps, and it betrays a certain level of naivete to think that way. In fact, it reminds me of the "Did Motorola Digital Radio Equipment Lead to Cincinnati Firefighter's Death" thread in this forum, where it came out of all the back and forth of best radio usage that if a firefighter is solely relying on the radio as his lifeline, then he's going to have trouble. A successful criminal is going to have well developed tradecraft of which monitoring law enforcement is one component, not the component, which to me is the lesson that can be derived from officer Breeden's statement. Therefore, I think my :roll: was warranted.