Police scandals are an untallied cost of the drug war Essay

The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and even the Coast Guard acquire had to admit to corruption. The gravity of the police crimes is as disturbing as the volume. In New Orleans, a uniformed cop in league with a medicine dealer has been convicted of murdering her partner and shop owners during a robbery act while she was on patrol. In Washington, D. C. , and in Atlanta, cops in drug stings were arrested for take and taking bribes.New York State troopers falsified drug evidence that sent pot to prison. And it is not just the rank and file. The former police headspring of Detroit went to prison for stealing police drug-buy money. In a small New England town, the chief stole drugs from the evidence locker for his own use. And the DEA agent who arrested Panamas General Noriega is in jail for stealing laundered drug money. The drug warfargonf ar is as lethal as it is corrupting. And the police and drug execrables are not the only casualties.An innocent 75-year-old Africa n-American minister died of a heart try struggling with Boston cops who were mistakenly arresting him because an informant had given them the defective address. A rancher in Ventura County, California, was killed by a police SWAT group serving a search warrant in the mistaken vox populi that he was growing marijuana. In Los Angeles, a three-year-old girl died of gunshot wounds after(prenominal) her mother took a wrong turn into a street controlled by a drug-dealing gang. They fired on the car because it had invaded their marketplace.The violence comes from the competition for irregular profits among dealers, not from crazed drug users. Professor Milton Friedman has estimated that as some as 10,000 additional homicides a year are plausibly attributed to the drug war. Worse still, the drug war has become a race war in which non-whites are arrested and imprisoned at 4 to 5 clock the rate whites are, even though most drug crimes are attached by whites. The Sen 10cing Research Pr oject reports that one-third of black men are in jail or under penal supervision, largely because of drug arrests.The drug war has established thriving criminal enterprises which recruit teenagers into criminal careers. It was such issues that engaged law-enforcement leaders most of them police chiefs from fifty agencies during a two-day conference at the Hoover Institution in May 1995. Among the speakers was our fella in this symposium, Mayor Kurt Schmoke, who told the group that he had visited a high train and asked the students if the high dropout rate was due to kids being hooked on drugs.He was told that the kids were dropping out because they were hooked on drug money, not drugs. He also told us that when he went to community meetings he would ask the auditory modality three questions. 1) Have we won the drug war? People laughed. 2) be we winning the drug war? People shook their heads. 3) If we keep doing what we are doing will we have won the drug war in ten years? The answer was a resounding No.At the halt of the conference, the police participants completed an evaluation form. Ninety per cent voted no assurance in the war on drugs. They were unanimous in favoring more interference and education over more arrests and prisons. They were unanimous in recommending a presidential blue-ribbon commission to evaluate the drug war and to explore choice methods of drug control. In sum, the tough-minded law-enforcement officials took positions directly contrary to those of Congress and the President. cardinal hopes that politicians will realize that no one can accuse them of being soft on drugs if they vote for changes suggested by many thoughtful mountain in law enforcement. If the politicians tone down their rhetoric it will stomach police leaders to expose the costs of our present drug-control policies. Public prospect will then allow policy changes to decriminalize marijuana and carry the arrest of hundreds of thousands of people every year. The enormous savings can be used for what the public really wants the prevention of violent crime.