Claiming to be the “world’s leading drug policy newsletter,” the Drug War Chronicle publishes a regular online feature called, “This Week’s Corrupt Cops Stories.” The typical Hawaii newspaper reader probably comes across these cops-gone-bad stories pretty rarely. But, when hundreds of reports compiled over the past year from around the nation are read at one sitting, they add up to a hidden cost of America’s ill-fated drug war -- widespread corruption inside local police departments, prisons and jails.
Each year American taxpayers spend tens of billions of dollars in a failed attempt to stop people from using illicit drugs. Courts, prisons and jails are filled with big time drug runners and small time marijuana users. All for what? According to the U.S. government’s annual survey of drug use among persons aged 12 and older, in 2005 there were 14.6 million marijuana users, up from 9.8 million in 1995. And cocaine users shot up from 1.5 million in 1995 to 2.4 million in 2005.
On top of that, the tax-funded drug war is corrupting our tax-funded drug warriors. Their code of silence, loyalty to other officers, and cynicism about the criminal justice system make police officers especially vulnerable to corruption. Rather than isolated individuals working alone, drug-related corruption is characterized by small groups of officers protecting and assisting one another in criminal activities.
Hawaii Stories. Last year’s corrupt cops stories included these from the Aloha State: A Honolulu police officer pleaded guilty to distributing methamphetamine, in uniform. An FBI secretary working in Honolulu was indicted on charges that she leaked information to drug dealers and a guard at the federal detention center in the city was accused of conspiring to smuggle marijuana into the jail.
Other Stories. Five Los Angeles, Calif. police officers were charged with belonging to a ring that committed armed robberies disguised as drug raids. The gang used police uniforms and sometimes LAPD patrol cars to raid houses suspected of drug dealing.
A St. Paul, Minn. police officer was charged with possessing 22 pounds of cocaine with the intent to distribute the drugs.
In Texas, an Elsa City police officer was indicted for allegedly taking a $5,000 bribe to protect a cocaine shipment.
An investigation uncovered that Baltimore, Md. police officers in the city’s special crime fighting squads had been planting drugs to make arrests.
Awash in drug money from asset forfeitures throughout the country, federal agents’ track records are hardly better than their state colleagues. Between 2003 and 2005 federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents made more than 16,000 cash seizures totaling nearly $616 million. Sloppy handling of cash was responsible for at least 12 instances where cash came up lost or stolen.
In Laredo, Tex., a U.S. Border Patrol agent got 20 years in prison for helping drug traffickers move cocaine through South Texas checkpoints.
As long as the demand for illicit drugs remains strong, attempts to cut off the supply will only make these drugs more valuable to the users, more profitable for the traffickers and an irresistible temptation for even more cops to cross over to the other side.
What to do? Joseph D. McNamara, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the former police chief of San Jose, Calif., frames the problem this way: “The sheer hopelessness of the task has led many officers to rationalize their own corruption. They say, ‘Why should the enemy get to keep all the profits?’ Guys with modest salaries are suddenly looking at $10,000 or more, and they go for it.”
In an article titled, “When Cops Become the Gangsters,” McNamara concludes, “Corruption will be a major problem as long as we cling to the present drug policies. The harm to good cops and society can be reduced if politicians abandon their demagogic calls for a police war against drugs.”
Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. Write him at: mailto:fraserr@erols.com
