EDITORIAL: Cops, Drug Use, Symbolism
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http://www.drcnet.org/wol/142.html#editorial
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David Borden, Executive Director, borden@drcnet.org
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The meager symbolism of our nation's drug laws is illustrated by the
fact that police departments across the country have chosen, out of the
most practical necessity, to tolerate past violations of drug laws by job
applicants.
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Meager, because the laws and their enforcement have
been the most dramatic of failures -- so much so, that even police
departments must resort to hiring confessed former drug law violators.
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Symbolic, because
only those who get caught suffer the hard hand of the US criminal justice
system, often, these years, for horrifically lengthy,
unjust sentences. Those who don't
get caught -- such a vast majority that our police
forces can't function without hiring some of them -- may go on to enforce
the very same laws.
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Perhaps one strategy for the drug policy reform
movement would be to advocate that police agencies apply the "zero
tolerance" philosophy, of which drug warriors are so fond,
to all their policies across the board, including hiring. That is,
consider any previous use of any illegal drug to be an automatic disqualifier
for the job of police officer, period.
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Then, since police departments have already admitted they can't
find enough cops without hiring some admitted past drug users, police forces
would be left shorthanded. Faced with the need to manage limited
resources, politicians would then have to decide what kind of law
enforcement is truly important, and would deprioritize drug law enforcement
in favor of focusing on crimes of violence.
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Actually, I don't recommend
such a strategy; zero tolerance is too dangerous a movement and concept
to support, even when wielded against the enforcers of these most
destructive of laws. But isn't it ironic that the very
laws requiring massive expansion of police forces, also force those agencies
to hire confessed, former violators of those laws?
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Now that's symbolism.