Breaking Rank Read online

  Tulia, Texas, offers another example of a cop—and a system—gone bad. Tom Coleman, an ex-police officer, was hired by the federally-funded Texas Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Taskforce to conduct undercover narcotics operations in Tulia in 1998. In 1999 Coleman arrested 46 people, 39 of them black. He put dozens of “drug peddlers” behind bars—for 60, 90, 434 years (we’re talking Texas, here). The only problem? Coleman made up the charges. He manufactured evidence. Working alone, he never wore a wire, never taped a conversation, never dusted the plastic bags he “scored” for fingerprints. He testified in court that he wrote his notes of drug transactions on his leg. Who was this Tom Coleman?

  A 1997 background investigation revealed that he’d been disciplined in a previous law enforcement job, that he had “disciplinary” and “possible mental problems,” that he “needed constant supervision, had a bad temper and would tend to run to his mother for help.” According to New York Times reporter Adam Liptak, Coleman had “run up bad debts in another law enforcement job before leaving town abruptly in the middle of a shift. . . . Eight months into the undercover investigation, Coleman’s supervisors received a warrant calling for his arrest for stealing gasoline. They arrested him, let him out on bond and allowed him to make restitution for the gas and other debts of $7,000. The undercover investigation then continued.”

  In August 2003, Governor Rick Perry pardoned thirty-five of the people Coleman sent to prison, thirty-one of them black.

  Thousands of drug cases have been dismissed throughout the country in just the past few years because of similar police malfeasance. Spurred on by federal financial incentives, departments exert tremendous pressure on narcotics units and individual narcs to make a lot of busts, impound a lot of dope, and seize as much of a drug trafficker’s assets as possible.

  On June 17, 1971, President Nixon declared drugs “public enemy number one in the United States.” Just how prevalent is drug use in America? In 1975, according to the Monitoring the Future survey, 87 percent of high school seniors reported that it was “easy” or “fairly easy” to buy marijuana. At the dawn of the new century, and millions of arrests later, the figure is at 90.4 percent. The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse reported in 1998 that high school students found it a lot easier to score pot than to purchase beer. In 1988 Congress set a goal of a “drug-free America by 1995.” Yet, according to research of the Drug Policy Foundation in Washington, D.C. (which in 2000 merged with the George Soros–funded Lindesmith/Drug Policy Research Institute to form the widely respected Drug Policy Institute), the number of Americans who have used illegal drugs stands at 77 million and counting. That’s a lot of enemies.

  Not that the war on drugs hasn’t taken prisoners. The Department of Justice reports that of the huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the eighties and nineties (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 476 per 100,000 in 2002), the vast majority are for drug convictions. The FBI reports that 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges in 1980. By 1999 that annual figure had ballooned to 1,532,200. Today there are more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, and aggravated assault combined.

  Nowhere is this misguided campaign waged more mindlessly than in New York. The “Rockefeller Drug Laws” call for life in prison for first-time offenders convicted of possessing four ounces, or selling two ounces, of a controlled substance. The result? The state’s prison system is filled to the gills, with drug offenders, most of them convicted of minor offenses, most of them nonviolent, taking up 18,300 of its beds.

  By any standard, the United States has lost its war on drugs. Criminalizing drug use—for which there is, was, and always will be an insatiable appetite—has been a colossal mistake, wasting vast sums of money, and adding to the misery of millions of Americans.

  The solution? Regulated legalization. “Decriminalization,” the controlled legalization of drugs, means you take the crime out of the use of drugs but preserve government’s right—and responsibility—to regulate the field.

  How would it work? If I were the new (and literal) Drug Czar I would have private companies compete for licenses to cultivate, harvest, manufacture, package, and peddle drugs. I’d create a new federal regulatory agency (with no apologies to libertarians and neo-cons) to: (1) set and enforce standards of sanitation, potency, and purity; (2) ban advertising; (3) impose taxes, fees, and fines to be used for drug abuse prevention and treatment, and to cover the costs of administering the new regulatory agency; and (4) police the industry much as alcoholic beverage control agencies operate in the states.

  But I wouldn’t stop there. I would put all those truly frightening, explosion-prone, toxic meth labs out of business—today; make sure that no one was deprived of methadone or other medical treatment for addiction or abuse; establish free needle exchange programs and permit pharmacy sales of sterile, nonprescription needles in every city; and require random, mandatory drug testing (of the type that would have nailed me) for those workers whose judgment and mental alertness are essential to public safety—cops, firefighters, soldiers, airline pilots, bus drivers, ferry boat operators, train engineers, et al. (Not part of the et al. are brain surgeons, mental health counselors, and countless others whose sensitive work, if botched, would generally not jeopardize public safety.)

  And, in my spare time, I’d mandate effective drug prevention education in all elementary, middle, and secondary schools. But what about DARE, you say? All those black and red bumper stickers, T-shirts, coffee mugs, dump trucks—surely it’s the best “drug abuse resistance and education” going? Not according to the Triangle Research Institute out of North Carolina. Their comprehensive mid-1990s study, commissioned by the Department of Justice (which then refused to publish the damning results, showing that DARE grads were just as likely as non-grads to use drugs), convinced me to get rid of the popular program in Seattle. I replaced it with—nothing. We were fortunate in that city to have a public school system teaching a comprehensive “healthy living” curriculum in the elementary grades, which included a superb drug prevention/education component. Based on the work of J. David Hawkins and Richard F. Catalano at the University of Washington, it remains a model for the nation.

  I would insist on the enforcement of existing criminal laws and policies against street dealing, furnishing to minors, driving under the influence, or invoking drug influence as a criminal defense. Consequently, if someone chose to take a drug, anything they did under its effects would be 100 percent their responsibility, which would make them 100 percent accountable for any and all results. If they rob a bank, drive high (or low), furnish drugs (including alcohol) to a minor, smack their neighbor upside the head, slip Ecstasy into their date’s drink, they should be arrested, charged, and prosecuted. If convicted, they should be forced to pay a fair but painful price for their criminal irresponsibility. Moreover, if they’ve injured or killed someone in the process, they should be slapped with civil damages. I’ve never understood defense attorneys who argue, “Gee, your honor, my client was so loaded she didn’t know what she was doing.”

  But what of the undeniable harm caused by drugs? Wouldn’t legalization make things worse? Who knows? We’re too scared to approach the subject in a calm, open, levelheaded manner. But, I’ll tell you what I think would happen: there would be a slight increase in drug use, and no measurable increase in drug abuse. Experiences in Portugal and the Netherlands suggest that decriminalization does not unleash a mad rush for drugs among the currently abstemious.

  In the 1970s, at the time New York governor Nelson Rockefeller was crafting his eponymous drug laws, Amsterdam, not unlike New York City, was witnessing huge increases in heroin use. And in socially upsetting, often violent incidents as hypes fought to obtain and keep their dope. Unlike New York’s officials, however, the Dutch set about a rational, compassionate civic dialogue on what to do about the country’s drug problem.

  Recently, I met in Seattle with about
a dozen police and prosecutorial officials from The Hague. They told me that while Dutch law enforcement continues to zealously pursue drug-related organized crime, it treats all drug-dependency as an illness, not a criminal offense. Today, marijuana may be cultivated, sold in cafes (in small quantities), and used (responsibly). Methadone is available on demand, heroin by prescription. Bottom line, according to both my foreign colleagues and the research of this nation’s Drug Policy Alliance? Drug use, in every single category, is lower in the Netherlands than in the U.S.

  Handled properly, legalization would improve the overall health—physical, emotional, and financial—of our society and our neighborhoods.

  How? For starters, it would put illicit traffickers out of business, and their obscene, untaxed profits would evaporate overnight. Dealers and runners and mules and nine-year-old lookouts would be off street corners, and out of the line of fire. It would take much of the fun out of being a gang member (gang-banging being synonymous these days with drug dealing, “markets” synonymous with “turf”). Firearms, big, rapid-fire firearms, employed in the expansion and protection of drug markets would go quiet—a welcome change for peace-loving citizens, and the nation’s cops. Drug raids on the wrong house would be a thing of the past.*

  And since most junkies finance their addiction by breaking into your home, stealing or prowling your car, or mugging you on the street, crimes like burglary, robbery, auto theft, and car prowl would drop. A lot. Justice Department studies linking patterns of property crime and drug use suggest a reduction of 35 to 50 percent in those crimes alone.

  Legalization would arguably wipe out at least one variety of structural racism, as well as class discrimination. A sad but safe generalization: poor blacks smoke cheap crack, upscale whites snort the spendy powdered version of cocaine. And who goes to jail? For longer periods of time? Blacks, of course. Nowhere is this more evident than in Texas where, according to the Justice Policy Institute, blacks are incarcerated at a rate 63 percent higher than the national rate . . . for blacks! (Nationally, according to the Bureau of Justice statistics, 12 percent of all African-American men between the ages of 20 and 34 are in prison versus 1.6 percent of white men). More than half of these African-Americans are in prison for nonviolent offenses, mostly drug-related. Needless to say, this same group is grossly underrepresented in drug treatment programs.

  Before I became a cop I didn’t think about any of this. I’d seen Reefer Madness, and a detective once brought marijuana to school to show us what it looked like—so we wouldn’t accidentally smoke it and rot the membranes of our noses. (Pot, he’d said, would do that.) But, except for underage alcohol bingeing, I wasn’t interested in illegal drugs so the scare tactics were wasted on me.

  Then I became a cop. In my first year I kicked in a dozen or so doors, charged into people’s homes, scooped up their weeds, seeds, and pot pipes, and carted these “felons” off to jail in handcuffs. It was fun for a while. But it got old.

  Patrolman “Mike Jones,” who worked a beat near mine, lived to pinch druggies. He wasn’t a narc, just a uniformed patrolman like me. But for some reason he had a hard-on for anyone holding. He’d twist and bend the U.S. Constitution left and right to get a “consent” search on everything from traffic stops to loud-party calls. Then he’d rip out back seats, rifle through drawers, and stuff his hands into people’s pockets until he’d come up with half a baggie, or a seed. A seed! Since Jones drove the police ambulance, I usually wound up transporting his prisoners—older teens and young adults mostly, not likely to make anyone’s “most wanted” list. They’d sit in the back seat of my cage car, mumbling, “Oh wow, man. Oh wow.” Or, “This cage is weird, man.” Or, “Hey, you got any Fritos?” I had plenty of other things I could—and should—have been doing. Like arresting wife beaters and child abusers, giving rides to real criminals.

  By then I was convinced that drug abuse was a medical problem. I found myself debating fellow cops, arguing that society ought to help abusers get off drugs. I won few converts. Most of my colleagues thought drug users should rot in hell and traffickers lined up and shot. But a few showed compassion, and some actually tried to get medical assistance for the strung-out junkies on their beats. The best we could do for them was to haul them to County Hospital for a stomach pump, or attempt to sneak them into the East Wing, known in those days as the “psycho ward.”

  Today, in these more “enlightened” times, the most caring cop would still be hard-pressed to find adequate services for those in need. Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Institute, says he does not favor broad legalization of drugs. But he does advocate, forcefully, “harm-reduction.” Writing in the January/February 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs, he defines the strategy:

  Harm-reduction innovations include efforts to stem the spread of HIV by making sterile syringes readily available and collecting used syringes; allowing doctors to prescribe oral methadone for heroin addiction treatment, as well as heroin and other drugs for addicts who would otherwise buy them on the black market; establishing “safe injection rooms” so addicts do not congregate in public places or dangerous “shooting galleries”; employing drug analysis units at the large dance parties called raves to test the quality and potency of MDMA, known as Ecstasy, and other drugs that patrons buy and consume there; decriminalizing (but not legalizing) possession and retail sale of cannabis and, in some cases, possession of small amounts of “hard” drugs; and integrating harm-reduction policies and principles into community policing strategies.

  Sound sensible? Of course it does, at least to those not under the influence of shortsightedness. Yet many cities refuse to adopt or even allow needle exchanges. They’re thinking, among other things, “There goes the neighborhood.” Doctors and other professionals have been known to use heroin, but more often the user resembles your worst stereotype of a drug fiend. Moreover, many communities cannot afford to staff an exchange—particularly late at night when an IV user is searching for a clean needle. Still, it’s in everyone’s best interest, for public health reasons alone, to have sufficient numbers of needle exchange programs, or better (as California has done), to allow nonprescription sales of clean needles in every city in the country. Thirty-five percent of all AIDS patients have been infected by contaminated needles, or through sex with an IV user.

  Methadone clinics, in those few communities willing to tolerate them, have long waiting lists—and that’s for people who want to wean themselves off heroin, who are willing to work at it.

  Where do we find the money to treat addiction and other drug abuse problems when tens of millions of Americans can’t even get basic health insurance, or insulin or heart meds or cancer drugs at affordable prices? Law enforcement officials at every level—federal, state, and local—know the answer, and it scares them to death: take it from them, the cops.

  Use the money now being squandered on drug enforcement, domestically and internationally, to finance a fresh, new public policy that educates, regulates, medicates, and rehabilitates.

  But shouldn’t certain drugs, certain really dangerous drugs be outlawed? Possibly, but only one comes to mind: the animal tranquilizer, PCP (see sidebar).

  PHENCYCLIDINE (PCP)

  Phencyclidine, a synthetic drug manufactured originally as a human anesthetic (and quickly abandoned when people under its influence turned violent or suicidal), wasn’t around—or at least being used by humans—when I was a beat cop. Along about the time I became a lieutenant it started showing up under its various colorful street names: Angel Dust, Hog, Peace Pills, Rocket Fuel, Wack, Ozone, and, my personal favorites, DOA and Embalming Fluid. PCP wasn’t pretty, and it took us a good while to learn how to handle it on the streets.

  Let me illustrate with a hypothetical, drawn from experiences both in San Diego and Seattle, replete with the obligatory racial and political overtones.

  You’re a white cop. You get a call about a young black man acting strange at a grocery store. You show up, find him sweeping item
s off the shelves. He’s incoherent but unambiguously threatening. He’s got a wild look in his eyes, he’s sweating buckets. You try to calm him, speaking softly, murmuring soothing words. He acts like you’re not there. You know that you need reinforcements, at least three, preferably twice that many additional cops. You understand that you and your colleagues will be criticized for “ganging up” on the young, black, unarmed man, but you’ve been here before. This is not your first PCP case. You know that the best way to get him into custody and into a secure medical facility (the jail won’t, and shouldn’t, take him in that condition) is to swarm him, literally overwhelm him. No guns, no sticks, no fists, no feet. Just a good old-fashioned eight-arm bearhug. It’s what they taught you in the academy.

  As your backup units stream into the parking lot, your suspect starts flinging canned comestibles your way. You and your fellow officers keep your guns holstered, likewise your mace and batons—an act of remarkable (and legally unnecessary) restraint. Slowly, no sudden movements, you inch toward him. As a tin of green beans sails past your head you and your mates lunge, grab the guy, take him to the floor. Even with all that weight on him he puts up a hell of fight, flailing savagely and kicking you in the cojones. Through your pain, you attempt to wrestle a pair of plastic flexcuffs on him. The fight lasts three minutes which seems like three hours. Finally, he’s subdued.

  As you start to lift him you notice he’s not breathing. Nobody’s choked him, nobody’s hit him. But, there he lies, limp, motionless, his eyeballs rolled up into his head, drool running down his chin. You immediately cut the flexcuffs off, and you and a second cop begin CPR. Another gets on the radio and summons an aid car, Code 3. You lay him out on the gurney, get him into the ambulance. You follow the medics to the ER. But your man’s DOA.