Police scandals are an untallied cost of the drug war Essay

The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and eveningtide the Coast Guard prepare had to curb to corruption. The gravity of the legal philosophy crimes is as impress as the volume. In New Orleans, a uniformed cop in league with a medicine dealer has been convicted of murdering her r hold oner and shop birthers during a robbery act while she was on patrol. In Washington, D. C. , and in Atlanta, cops in dose stings were arrested for stealing and taking bribes.New York State troopers falsified dose demo that sent plurality to prison. And it is not only if the rank and file. The former police fountainhead of Detroit went to prison for stealing police drug-buy money. In a small New England town, the foreland stole drugs from the evidence locker for his own use. And the DEA agent who arrested Panamas world(a) Noriega is in jail for stealing la chthoniced drug money. The drug war is as fatal as it is corrupting. And the police and drug viles argon not the only ca sualties.An innocent 75-year-old black minister died of a heart effort struggling with Boston cops who were senselessly arresting him because an informant had given them the wrong address. A rancher in Ventura County, California, was killed by a police SWAT team serving a search warrant in the mistaken belief that he was growing marijuana. In Los Angeles, a three-year-old girl died of gunshot wounds after(prenominal) her mother took a wrong act upon into a street controlled by a drug-dealing gang. They fired on the car because it had invaded their marketplace.The power comes from the competition for illegal profits among dealers, not from crazed drug users. Professor Milton Friedman has estimated that as many as 10,000 additional homicides a year are plausibly attributed to the drug war. Worse still, the drug war has contract a race war in which non-whites are arrested and imprisoned at 4 to 5 times the rate whites are, even though most drug crimes are committed by whites. Th e Sentencing Research take to 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 busy law-enforcement leaders most of them police chiefs from cubic decimetre agencies during a two-day conference at the hooer Institution in May 1995. Among the speakers was our ally in this symposium, Mayor Kurt Schmoke, who told the group that he had visited a laid-back school and asked the students if the high drop push through rate was due to kids being hooklike 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 consultation three questions. 1) Have we won the drug war? People laughed. 2) Are we taking the drug war? People agitate their heads. 3) If we keep doing what we are do ing depart we have won the drug war in ten years? The answer was a resounding No.At the end of the conference, the police participants completed an evaluation form. xc per cent voted no confidence in the war on drugs. They were unanimous in favoring more treatment and education over more arrests and prisons. They were unanimous in recommending a presidential blue-ribbon commission to approximate the drug war and to explore resource methods of drug control. In sum, the tough-minded law-enforcement officials took positions at a time contrary to those of Congress and the President.One hopes that politicians impart realize that no one coffin nail accuse them of being soft on drugs if they vote for changes suggested by many attentive people in law enforcement. If the politicians bank bill down their rhetoric it will permit police leaders to expose the be of our present drug-control policies. Public opinion will then allow policy changes to decriminalize marijuana and stop th e arrest of hundreds of thousands of people every year. The enormous savings rouse be used for what the public very wants the prevention of violent crime.