I believe it.  Rumor has it that this town is used as a safe point between Canada and Seattle for drug transit.  So, about a year back the police tried to serve a warrant on a guy and found an empty house and a stash of assault weapons.  Sounds like the police were doing their job, right?  Well one of the commenters was not convinced.  He found it very convenient that the police could parade a table full of very dangerous looking confiscated weapons without having made an arrest of any consequence, and he implied it was a deal with the drug gangs to allow the police to look like they are doing something.  That made me think: those police confiscated an arsenal that probably exceeded their own.  The drug gangs can lose more than the police have!  And I thought: public officials have no right to anonymity.  It would be a simple matter for the drug gangs to find out where the chief of police lives, where his wife works, where is kids go to school.  It has to be damned dangerous to be police out in the sticks here, with little or no back up from the Feds, faced with a bunch of drug gangs.  So then, one country north of here there's a town where a friend of mine lives and he said until recently it was like every other house was a meth lab; but a new sheriff was elected with a mandate to break all that up . . . and he did!  That takes some real courage.  Kudos to all the police officers out there who decide to make the difference.

Compare that with when I was teaching a course to some St. Louis police department employees.  One guy was a night beat patrol, and he said 'we' cruise around at night: the bad guys try to avoid us and we try to avoid them.

One of the biggest differences in rural America before and after my time abroad is the whole meth problem.  Every one I know who is from a rural area seems to be affected one way or another.