Even the most important witnesses get betrayed when the powerful are threatened

The New York Times front page story by Ginger Thompson reports on the saga of Luis Octavio López Vega. For years, Lopez has been living underground in the U.S. He is former chief of police of Zapopan, a city of more than 1,000,000 near Guadalajara, and top aide to former Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebolllo (praised by ONDCP Director Barry McCaffrey for his bullet-proof integrity before he was arrested for his ties to a cartel).  Lopez was a key DEA informant. As the investigation of Gutierrez commenced, Lopez realized that he was a target for execution and went underground. The U.S. helped his family escape to the U.S.

For a dozen years, top Mexican officials have been trying to get the U.S. to arrest Lopez to turn him over to them, where it is likely, the Times suggests, that he will be tortured and killed. Yet the U.S. Marshals Service raided him -- but he spotted the surveillance and fled. He has been hiding out ever since.

This extensive report confirms our worst suspicions that considerations of justice are abandoned when powerful politicians and powerful criminals feel threatened, and when the trade and political interests of the U.S. may be affected. In this account, the decisions of the U.S. Attorney General and the Secretary of State about protecting a man who was offered protection by the U.S. for his life-endangering cooperation are swayed by political considerations. When does a government betray someone it has offered to protect?

Drug enforcement is such a peculiar species of law enforcement. No matter how zealously anti-drug agents, prosecutors or officials might be, they all recognize at some level, because the drug trade is so large and perpetual, that any individual load of drugs or any individual defendant is ultimately insignificant. Considerations of national security, national economics, and national politics -- if pressing -- will always trump any investigation.

Is this a form of corruption? Or is it a necessary exercise of discretion? Is letting a cartel leader go for reasons of state legally or morally different than letting a juvenile street dealer go for reasons of compassion and retaining the human capital of a community?

LEAP speakers write about gangs, violence, children and drugs

LEAP speakers have published a couple of op-ed pieces recently. First, Jim Gierach has a guest column in the Southtown Star:

Al Capone-style bootlegging, hijacking, gang-banging, shooting and corrupting have Americans, their neighborhoods, their children and their lives by the throats, and nothing short of another Wickersham Commission can save them. The Wickersham Commission was created amid the violence of Prohibition, and it astutely recommended an end to Prohibition to stop the violence.

Judge James Gray organized a top ten list of drug policy goals and published it in the Daily Pilot.

Also, I have an article titled "The Failure of Drug Prohibition - A Law Enforcement Perspective." It was published in the June / July 2009 edition of Blue Line, which is Canada's national law enforcement magazine. (Note that the graph looked OK in print but it's blurry in the online version.)

Brazil: Death in the favelas

Retired Brazilian Judge Maria Lucia Karam wrote this post about the favelas, or "shanty towns," in Brazil:

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Rio de Janeiro, September 16th, 2009: four people died in a drug-related police operation in the favela called Juramento.

Rio de Janeiro, September 18th, 2009: one more person died in another drug-related police operation in the favela called Mangueira.

In the news we cannot find the names of the five victims. They were poor people; they lived in slums; maybe they really worked in the illegal drug market. Most people in Brazil do not pay attention to this news. Deaths of favelas' inhabitants during police operations have become a routine. People killed there do not count. They are just the drug dealers; the “bad ones”; or the “enemies."

In Brazil, in the city of Rio de Janeiro alone in one year (2008), 2,757 homicides were registered. A report released on September 15th, 2008 by U.N. special envoy on extra-judicial killings, Philip Alston, referring to the year of 2007, showed that Brazilian police murdered three people a day on average in Rio de Janeiro, making them responsible for one in five killings in the city. In fact, at least in the last ten years, 20% of all murders in Rio de Janeiro have been summary executions that happen during police operations against drug dealers in the favelas.

This is Brazil's own war on drugs. This is one of the most tragic results of drug prohibition. To put an end to prohibition-related acts of violence in Rio de Janeiro, or in anywhere else, is one of the main reasons to urgently legalize the production, supply and consumption of all drugs.