EDITORIAL: War On Us All
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http://www.stopthedurgwar.org/wol/131.html#editorial
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Adam J. Smith, Associate Director, ajsmith@drcnet.org
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Patrick Dorismond, a 26 year-old father of two,
was shot to death by an undercover New York City police officer last week
in Midtown Manhattan. Dorismond and a friend, who were unarmed and
doing nothing illegal, were apparently singled out for an attempted "buy
and bust" simply because they were two young black guys standing in front
of a bar.
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New York's mayor and Senatorial candidate Rudolph Giuliani
has received plenty of attention for his nearly incomprehensible handling
of the situation -- failing to express sympathy to the family, unsealing
Dorismond's juvenile records (one arrest at age 13) and generally blaming
the victim despite a total lack of evidence of any wrongdoing on Dorismond's
part. But the furor over the mayor's response, as well as the growing
sense of outrage at the New York City police in general has tended to overshadow
the fact that incidents like this are almost unavoidable as we attempt
to enforce an unenforceable prohibition.
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Protesters took to the streets in Denver recently
after a 65 year-old grandfather of nine was shot and killed in his home
during a "no-knock" drug raid on the wrong house. In Houston, Pedro
Oregon Navarro, age 22, was killed in a similar incident. 18 year-old
Esequiel Hernandez was shot and killed while herding his family's
goats on the US-Mexican border when he was mistaken for a smuggler by United
States Marines on a four-day surveillance mission.
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Corruption is another unavoidable cost of
prohibition. In Los Angeles, the city is putting off all new spending
priorities. Rather they are saving the money to pay civil damages to victims
of the biggest corruption scandal in the city's history. Other cities
and towns, including Philadelphia, Chicago and Denver have also recently
learned that lesson.
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And what is the upside? That's difficult
to say. Last week, upon the release of yet another annual "Drug Strategy"
seeking yet another increase in drug war funding, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey
told the nation that we are "winning the war." But the fine print
in that document revealed that today, illicit drugs on our streets are
less expensive, more pure and move available than they have ever been.
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Strict enforcement of the drug laws has forced
the trade indoors, or, in some instances, just further into the shadows.
If police are to continue to log arrests, they must increasingly rely on
no-knock warrants secured with information garnered from informants --
or resort to buy and bust operations -- or even sell and bust operations.
These practices are dangerous, and not only for innocent civilians like
Patrick Dorismond, but also for the police.
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But even these tactics, it seems, are having no
impact in making drugs less available on our streets and, the black market
being unregulated, to our kids.
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In the end, we can protest all we want. And
we can convene grand juries to hear evidence against police who, in the
line of this fruitless duty, make tragic errors. And we can keep
reading about police corruption scandals, and we can build bigger and better
internal affairs divisions. But we're only fooling ourselves.
Because unless and until we are willing to face reality, we will continue
to bury innocents, and we will continue to find corruption. And we
will continue to hear chipper bureaucrats like Barry McCaffrey talk about
"progress" while the drug trade rages on, out of control, within easy reach
of our kids.
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It is time to face that reality. It is time
to dispense with the rhetoric and to take a hard look at the very premise
of our "drug control" strategy. It is time for a responsible society
to take control of these substances and to bring them back under the rule
of law. Before the rule of law, through violence and corruption,
can no longer be distinguished. And before we bury the next Patrick
Dorismond, and the next, and the next...
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