You have the sheer audacity to lump me in with criminals, not just rogue cops but criminals, all the while throwing out straw man arguments left and right to defend your stances that have come under perfectly logical and cogent attacks? That I'm replying at all shows that my temper and pride have gotten the better of my judgement because you are on face ridiculous and unworthy of a retort. But, as I'm in a foul mood after working a 70 week this week to take real drugs and thugs off the streets (Every hear of the Aryan Brotherhood?) I find myself replying to someone who hasn't the common decency or sense to differentiate difference of opinion from personal attacks. You bring up Deep Ellum as if it is the paragon of what a downtown area should be like. I actually patrol your utopia and let me tell you it aint as pretty as you'd like to make it out to be. The "artists" who inhabited it for your 20 year golden age simply did not have the capital (ooh, there's a dirty word) to sustain their bars and clubs while catering to local artists and charging "reasonable" cover at the door. Clubs that catered to a younger, more rambunctious, and sadly more criminal element could pack em in Mon-Sun so they thrived in the buildings abandoned by your champions of what socialism can do in America. Now could the city of Dallas have stepped in repeatedly to subsidize clubs like Trees, DaDa, etc? Sure, but why? Is it really a reasonable expectation that the city's tax rolls should perpetually bear the burden of funding a playground for a fringe element? Now I don't say fringe element as a derogatory term, only to say it was a miniscule population when compared to the greater population of Dallas...thought I'd save you the trouble of limiting your rebuttal to a single meaningless term in my post as you did the last time. More importantly, though, and I can't believe that in your 5 page long crusade for credibility on this topic you haven't realized this yet FRY STREET AND DEEP ELLUM WERE NEITHER DEMOGRAPHICALLY NOR FINANCIALLY SIMILIAR. Even if your argument weren't flawed your comparison is apples to oranges. Lest we get off on the wrong foot here realize that I don't dislike you or even know you for that matter. But I will, in all cases, take you to task when you have the unfettered gall to lump me in with the lesser of my compatriots.