"He does what the governments doesn't do for us"

Jamaica is a rough place. 2.7 million people and 1,500 homicides. That's a higher homicide rate than Baltimore... but lower than Baltimore's Eastern District. It's also dangerous for police, with 5 official line-of-duty deaths per year (though I suspect many more police die in less official ways).

Jamaican police are known to kill a lot of people, probably between 150 and 300 each year. Now that's getting tough on crime! Too bad it doesn't work.

Now I've never been to Jamaica and don't know what I'm talking about. But here's my take: You got the drugs. They're illegal. So you got the drug lords. They got the money. And then you got the government. But they don't do much at all for the poor folk. So the drug lords hand out money and are pretty popular in certain parts. The drug lords are also linked to politics.

As Amnesty International puts it:

Gang leaders use the vacuum left by the absence of the state to control huge aspects of inner city people's lives -- including the collection of "taxes", allocation of jobs, distribution of food and the punishment of those who transgress gang rules.

Police? They're in the middle. They probably don't go into certain neighborhoods and many are bought off. But every now and then police do the right or wrong thing and get caught up in crime or trying to fight crime.

The latest is that police are trying to get a drug lord, Christopher "Dudus" Coke. He's wanted in the U.S. But this "don" isn't going down without a fight. The Harder They Come, baby (I just never get tired of Toots and the Maytals singing "Sweet and Dandy"): A police station torched. Gun battles. Barricades. A government offering to bus people to safety. A Prime Minister saying violence will not be tolerated.

Of course lot of the people will fight for Dudus. Or, as one woman said, "We haffi support all a man like that because him a do what the Government naa do fi wi."

[abrasive sound of scratching needle-on-record]

Say what?! As Professor Harriott, political sociologist at the University of the West Indies puts it:

The women would have enumerated those benefits, being safe from rapists, etc. Plus there are other traditional benefits like free light, etc, so there are tangible benefits. ... It is a communal thing and there is a common identity -- one benefits simply by being a member of the group.... There are privileges and obligations, one of which is to protect. If the don makes money and doesn't let off, then the contract is broken. As long as the don upholds his end, there will not be a problem.

Ah, that's my language. I just knew that ivy league education was good for something. But it's not as fun as my girlfriend:

Inna this area we feel safe, because man from outside and even dem whey live ya cyaan come in and rape we.... If any rape a gwaan, a when we go out a road and man try a thing. Up ya so nuh come een like a place like over Seaview [Gardens] where them don't have no don in charge and everybody do as them like. Up ya so we have a one man who run things and when anybody bruk the rules, we report him and the boss deal wid him.

Yesssss. Exactly. Does she know the money is drug money? Of course a little of that goes on... "Lickle a dat gwaan, but dem man dey nuh mek much money offa dem things dey." No they don't.

I want to go to Jamaica. I won't understand a word!

Cartoon from the Jamaica Observer

P.S. Jamaica is not going to win the war on drugs either.

In Memory of Marcellus Ward

Ward was killed 25 years ago. His assassination and last dying breaths were caught on tape and haunted the memory of many Baltimore police officers.

At a memorial, held where Ward was killed, Commissioner Bealefeld said that it is "not for us to judge the results of his sacrifice." And certainly a memorial to a slain officer is not the time and place for that.

But at some point we need to ask. Why are we risking our lives? What are we getting in return? If we don't ask these questions, more good men and women will die.

The block Ward give his life to protect has long since died. Like too much of Baltimore, it's vacant, boarded up, and abandoned. Here's the 1800 block of Frederick, odd side:


By risking his life to protect others, Ward died a hero. That I do not doubt or forget. But it's hard to imagine that Baltimore or Frederick Avenue would be any worse off today if Ward had simply called in sick that day. And the world would certainly be a better place if Ward and other officers killed in the drug war were still with us. I've said this before (to the consternation of some). I don't want to see any other officers killed for a war we are not and cannot win.

When I put my life on the line every night for the men and women of the Eastern, I would often think about the fallen officers pictured on the walls. Ward always stood out for some reason. (I'm not making it up that his picture hangs in the Eastern, am I?) From what I heard he was a good guy. And from his picture, he just seemed more human than most other cops pictured.

Police Commissioner Bealefeld is a good man and the best commissioner Baltimore City has seen in a long while, certainly better than the previous five commissioners (I'll only vouch for worse commissioners as far back to and including Frazier). Maybe Bealefeld even gets it when he talks about the war on drugs and the "seemingly impossible task" of winning it? Who knows. But the war isn't his to call off.

Here is Peter Hermann's take and his story in the Sun with the sad headline: "At memorial, a new vow to wage war on drugs."

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

No Vacancy

Perhaps if our prisons weren't so full with drug offenders, they would have room to hold armed robber, child rapist, messianic apocalypse believer, bad neighbor, and now cop killer Maurice Clemmons.

Just a thought.

From Amsterdam: Lessons on controlling drugs

Hot off the virtual presses, here's an article I wrote appearing in this coming Sunday's Washington Post. I talk about the difference in policy and police attitudes toward drugs in Amsterdam and in the U.S.:

In Amsterdam, the red-light district is the oldest and most notorious neighborhood. Two picturesque canals frame countless small pedestrian alleyways lined with legal prostitutes, bars, porn stores and coffee shops. In 2008, I visited the local police station and asked about the neighborhood's problems. I laughed when I heard that dealers of fake drugs were the biggest police issue -- but it's true. If fake-drug dealers are the worst problem in the red-light district, clearly somebody is doing something right.

and

History provides some lessons. The 21st Amendment ending Prohibition did not force anybody to drink or any city to license saloons. In 1933, after the failure to ban alcohol, the feds simply got out of the game. Today, they should do the same -- and last week the Justice Department took a very small step in the right direction.

Read all about it!

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

Mass. Decrim Has No Effect On Schools

So say some Massachusetts school officials--the same ones who say decriminalization "sends a terrible message to kids." The story by John Hilliard is here (via the Agitator).

This really is no surprise, but it's important for a few reasons. Prohibitionists seem to care more about "the message" than about actual drug use and drug harms. For too many, it's a moral issue and not a policy issue.

I like to ask those who support the war on drugs if they would support legalization if legalization and regulation decreased drug use. I'd say close to half say "no." Better, they tell me, to keep drugs illegal regardless of drug usage rates. Sometimes increased drug use and overdose deaths can be useful, some drug-warriors even say, for having people overdose in the ghetto sends a powerful “message” to others.

Hmmmmmmm. This sort of ends the debate. So it’s not about drugs. It’s about morals and the power and symbolism of the law.

Prohibition is about a conservative world view that sees drugs as evil. And evil needs to be outlawed. Prohibition is about big-government telling people what to do and how to live their lives.

Take Harry Asslinger (oops, honest typo but much too good to delete)--I mean Harry Anslinger. He was very happy, after failing to maintain alcohol Prohibition, to raise the false alarm about marijuana.


Perhaps Anslinger’s greatest accomplishment was to push marijuana from a fringe drug into the mainstream. That's what happens when you call it the evil weed and highlight the moral turpitude of minorities, immigrants, Catholics, liberals, and other city folk who, like Anslinger believed, were destroying the moral fiber of America.

Whatever. Good or bad, those cool cats sure knew how to party!

In my mind, the debate on drug decriminalization comes down to one main issue: in an era of legal and regulated drugs, would drug use increase or decrease? Of course we can't be sure because we haven't tried it. But the evidence strongly suggests the use would not go up and might go down.

System of liberalization and/or decriminalization result in no increase in drug use. Marijuana usage rates in the Netherlands (where it is publicly sold and legally consumed) are lower than in the U.S. Decriminalization in Portugal has also been a success.

How does this work? Lot's of reasons. Forbidden fruit. Distrust of authority. And consider what Diego Gambetta recently pointed out to me: there’s a lot more pressure in social situations to conform and partake in illegal activities than for comparably legal activities.

If a joint is being passed around, you’re expected, especially in young crowds, to smoke a little. This serves two functions beyond social bonding.

1) It shows you're not a cop.

2) You can’t blackmail anybody with your knowledge of illegal behavior since you're guilty too.

There’s a lot more pressure (especially for teenagers) to smoke a joint being passed around than to smoke an offered cigarette. These days cigarettes, regulated and taxed, aren’t even being offered much.

Marijuana decriminalization in Massachusetts has not resulted in a bunch of school kids suddenly discovering the drug and firing up. Hell, the first time I ever saw marijuana was in school, watching a drug deal go down in the bathroom (regulated drugs aren’t sold in school bathrooms). And the best anti-drug lesson I ever got was from the guy who sat behind me in first-period German class. He would also come in late, stoned, and reeking of (tobacco) cigarettes. He never learned any German. But then neither did I.

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

The Day the Police Came Crashing Through His Door

In the Washington Post, Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, MD, writes about his experience:

I remember thinking, as I kneeled at gunpoint with my hands bound on my living room floor, that there had been a terrible, terrible mistake.
...
In the words of Prince George's County Sheriff Michael Jackson, whose deputies carried out the assault, "the guys did what they were supposed to do" -- acknowledging, almost as an afterthought, that terrorizing innocent citizens in Prince George's is standard fare. The only difference this time seems to be that the victim was a clean-cut white mayor with community support, resources and a story to tell the media.

What confounds me is the unmitigated refusal of county leaders to challenge law enforcement and to demand better -- as if civil rights are somehow rendered secondary by the war on drugs.
...
As an imperfect elected official myself, I can understand a mistake -- even a terrible one. But a pattern and practice of police abuse treated with utter indifference rips at the fabric of our social compact and virtually guarantees more of the same.

You know what they say: a liberal is a conservative who's been raided (actually I just made that one up).

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]