Editor's note: Joel Miller's new book, "Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America," is available now in ShopNetDaily. Says Larry Elder, "Miller nails it. He powerfully and persuasively articulates the folly, the harm and the unconstitutionality of our government's War against Drugs." And Judge Andrew P. Napolitano of Fox News rules, "Read this book and send a copy to every lawmaker and judge you know." Get "Bad Trip," today in ShopNetDaily.
Residents of Middletown, R.I., were perhaps a little alarmed over the weekend when they found out officials arrested a decade-long veteran of the local police for stealing marijuana from the evidence locker.
No doubt the same goes for residents of Washington County, Ore., when it turned out a sheriff's deputy – a member of the countywide drug team – filched crank taken as evidence in a case.
"In early April, [William] James and his partner confiscated methamphetamine from an undercover buy. The partner thought James had logged the drug as evidence, but James kept a small amount for personal use," reported the June 10 Portland Oregonian. "Another time, James smoked meth after seizing it in a search. He also arranged two personal drug buys through an informant."
Cops are charged with the impossible: effectively enforcing the myriad laws that constitute America's war on drugs. As I explain in my new book, "Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America," not only is prohibition a losing proposition, but it has the singular ability to suck its enforcers into a mire of corruption that twists them into the very thing they are charged with fighting.
The specimens above are hardly alone. These lawmen are just two clippings from last week's news; this stuff – and far worse – goes on every day in most every city, in every state in America, threatening the very legitimacy of the law. I dedicate an entire chapter to the problem of drug corruption in "Bad Trip." I could have written a whole book.
Deputy Teddy Willis, for instance, missed his 2003 retirement ceremony from the Caswell County, N.C., sheriff's department. Just hours before the shindig, Willis was arrested for allegedly buying 15 pounds of pot in a nearby county.
Five deputies in the Sarasota County, Fla., sheriff's department – part of an elite drug-fighting group called the Delta Task Force – framed Sarah Louise Smith by planting drugs in her home. They then lied to jurors, which resulted in her 1997 conviction and loss of custody of her baby daughter for a year and a half. Eventually, the truth came out and Smith settled with the sheriff's office for $275,000, but it turned out that the team had been doing much the same to others from 1995 to 1999 – according to prosecutors, they planted drugs, stole money from suspects and lied to cover it all up.
In March 2002, a pair of narcotics detectives in Jefferson County, Ky., were slapped with a 472-count indictment that included charges of tampering with drug evidence, stealing money from informants, burglary and forging judges' signatures on warrants. The amazing total of alleged offenses came from just 24 of the pair's cases. When the dust settled in February 2003, the worst of the two agreed to fink on his partner for a mitigated sentence. Mark Watson pled guilty to 299 felony counts in exchange for testifying against Christie Richardson, who was found guilty of 20 felonies and a misdemeanor.
One officer nicknamed "the Abuser" not only ripped off dealers on the streets, according to New York's Mollen Commission, he also concocted a protection racket in which the dealers would pay him to look out for their interests. If they failed to fork over the loot, he just robbed them. In one instance, while in uniform, he gunned a dealer, pinched his drugs and enlisted the help of fellow officers to cover up for the deed.
The problem of police corruption is pernicious and pervasive – and it all goes back to drug prohibition.
"The illicit drug market is probably the most lucrative source of police corruption that has ever existed in the United States," explain economists David W. Rasmussen and Bruce L. Benson in their book, "The Economic Anatomy of a Drug War."
Being close to the trade, the vast sums of money and having easy access to all manner of drugs is simply too much for many in law enforcement. They can shelter criminals from arrest and prosecution; shake down dealers for money; confiscate and then sell drugs; help one group of dealers by arresting members of rival drug gangs. Once coaxed into the very world of crime they are charged with opposing, they can do all these things, and much, much more.
As the result of a 1998 FBI sting in Cleveland, some 51 officers were busted on charges of protecting coke dealers moving large amounts of the drug.
L.A. Sheriff Sherman Block led an investigation from 1988 to 1994 that nailed 26 deputies on narc duty for stealing drug money.
In July 2002, four North Carolina officers were sentenced to prison on federal drug-trafficking charges – three of them worked vice for the Davidson County sheriff's office. One officer, David Scott Woodall, sold steroids and cocaine, planned on doing the same with pot and ecstasy, and stole a $160,000 in cash from codefendant Wyatt Kepley, one of two civilian accomplices in the case. Another officer, Douglas Westmorland, helped Woodall filch the money from Kepley, helped fabricate a search warrant for his house, supplied a fellow officer with pot, and stole more than four pounds of coke and some 60 pounds of grass from the evidence room.
Similarly, Darnyl Parker and three other Buffalo, N.Y., narcotics detectives were indicted in 2002 for stealing $36,000 from an undercover FBI agent who they thought was a drug dealer. Parker and another two were convicted. Another Buffalo detective, Rene Gil, admitted to dealing coke while working a year-and-a-half stint on the narc squad. According to the Buffalo News, by his confession, "he shook down drug dealers and split the proceeds with fellow detectives."
These cases are by no means isolated.
According to a 1998 General Accounting Office report, "several studies and investigations of drug-related police corruption found on-duty police officers engaged in serious criminal activities such as (1) conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures; (2) stealing money and/or drugs from drug dealers; (3) selling stolen drugs; (4) protecting drug operations; (5) providing false testimony; and (6) submitting false crime reports."
And remember, these numbers only reflect the guys that get busted. Cops often get away with it. The district attorney in the James case specifically said, "Had he not confessed his crimes, he probably never would have been found out."
Cops rarely rat on each other. There's often shame associated with turning informant. And worse, finks are sometimes rewarded with severe punishment from fellow officers. Just think Frank Serpico. Said one police chief who spent five years working internal affairs in Washington, D.C., "I never encountered an officer willing to talk about the conduct of another officer, even if he was videotaped committing a crime."
Corruption is and will always be a problem. Police are no more angels than the rest of us. But for reasons I detail in "Bad Trip," the drug war exacerbates and inflames the problem of corruption, turning public servants to scoundrels and enemies of their own communities.
Says Hoover Institution scholar and former San Jose, Calif., Police Chief Joseph McNamara, "[T]hanks to the climate created by our drug laws, we have ... small gangs of cops who are the gangsters. They've committed murders, kidnapping and armed robberies – sometimes for, and sometimes against, drug dealers."
Mixing money, power, drugs and the ability to operate above and behind the law is the worst of possible worlds. But that's precisely what the war on drugs has done, and it'll only get worse until we rethink the role we want the police to play in dealing with America's drug problem.
Get Joel Miller's new book, "Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America," today in ShopNetDaily.