People forget that the cops are there to protect the criminals from the rest of us. There was a time when there were no cops. It was quite peaceful because criminals knew that if they were caught, they would be dealt with by the citizenry directly. There was no "justice system" for them to escape into. The last lynching in my county happened in my home town. Two white brothers murdered an old man for the money he had saved up and kept hidden in a glass jar, under a rock under his porch. The two were well known to locals as repeat low-level scumbags. The two were quickly caught but there was no jail and the only secure place to keep them was in a locked storage room in the back of the local grocery store, until the county sheriff could travel down from the county courthouse by train, collect them and take them both to jail to await trial. Well, the train only ran east to west once a day, and the sheriff had already missed that one, and would have to wait until the next day. The townsfolk were well and truly fed up with this pair already and the murder was the last straw. So they took them out and hanged them. To this day, nobody will say who was in the hanging party, but everybody pretty much knows. And that was that. It was notable only for the rarity of it's requirement, because it worked. (My great-grandfather, on my mother's side, was the last man to kill another man in a gunfight, fair and justified, in the dirt main street of my hometown. But that's another story. Let's just say that I come by my proclivities honestly.) Hitler was right. \o (And no, I don't live in Florida, so fuck you Ron.)