Pubdate: Mon, 25 Dec 2000
Source: Florida Times-Union (FL)
Copyright: 2000 The Florida Times-Union
Contact:  http://www.times-union.com/
Forum: http://www.times-union.com/tu-online/voices/
Author: Tonyaa Weathersbee
Related: Drug War Clock http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
Bookmarks: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm (Corruption)
http://www.mapinc.org/mcnamara.htm (McNamara, Joseph D.)

MONEY USED ON THE DRUG WAR COULD BE BETTER CHANNELED

John Grisham couldn't have come up with a sleazier twist.

It seems as if a trail of unsolved robberies, thefts, kidnappings and
even a murder may lead to some of Jacksonville's finest. A 26-count
indictment accuses two police officers, a former officer and two other
men of orchestrating a 4-year crime spree.

There's Karl Waldon, whose straightlaced ways earned him the nickname
"The Pope." He's accused of strangling convenience store owner Sami
Safar in 1998. Another officer, Aric Sinclair, and Waldon's
brother-in-law, James Swift Jr., are accused of robbing Safar of
$50,000. Officer Jason D. Pough and part-time bailiff Kenneth
McLaughlin are accused of kidnapping, pepper-spraying and robbing a
man. Accused of stealing crack cocaine from drug dealers -- the people
they are supposed to help put away -- to sell on the streets themselves.

Whew!

It's tough not to feel the pain of the police force. Tough not to
empathize as Sheriff Nat Glover, one of this city's most celebrated
leaders, goes around reassuring people about the veracity of the force
he has led for five years; that what they've been seeing in the news
for the past two weeks is an aberration, not endemic.

That's gotta hurt.

Integrity screening or heightened supervision would help stem
corruption. Glover has, in fact, begun an integrity unit that will
look at ways to weed out police who may be prone to abuse their badge.

What would also help is an end to the war on drugs.

I say this because three of the accused officers -- Sinclair, Pough
and Waldon -- were working in the narcotics unit when all the wilding
apparently began. Pough, in fact, was even a DARE officer. And the
crimes they are accused of mirror the drug-related corruption patterns
that are emerging in police departments throughout the country.

For example, information in a 1998 General Accounting Office report on
such corruption says that on average, half of all police officers
convicted as a result of FBI-led corruption cases between 1993 and
1997 were convicted for drug-related offenses.

Officers involved in drug-related corruption were more likely to be
involved in the commission of a variety of crimes, including stealing
drugs from dealers, selling drugs and lying under oath about illegal
searches.

The most commonly identified pattern of drug-related corruption
involved small groups of officers protecting and assisting each other.

Sounds familiar.

"When you're telling cops that they're soldiers in a drug war," said
Joseph McNamara, a veteran of the New York City Police Department and
former chief of the Kansas City and San Jose police departments,
"you're destroying the whole concept of citizen peace officer, a peace
officer whose fundamental duty is to protect life and be a community
servant ... when we allowed our politicians to push cops into a war
that they'll never win, that they can't win, and let them begin to
think of themselves as soldiers, the mentality comes that anything
goes."

Now, I don't pretend to make excuses for the accused officers. Not
saying that if they are found guilty of these crimes, the jury should
go easy on them because they were either too weak or too stupid to
just say no.

But think about it.

If the drug trade and its accompanying temptations are a heady test
for the kid trying to resist schoolyard peer pressure, or for the
corporate executive who takes a recreational toot of cocaine, how can
it not be for a police officer? Someone who has to fight the urge to
abuse his authority to get the luxuries that criminals flash around --
scumbags who, in his mind, don't deserve it?

Now, most officers, I'm sure, do resist. But others don't. And when
the rush gets out of hand, someone like Safar, a businessman who
simply trusted the wrong person and happened to be in the wrong place
at the wrong time, can wind up dead.

To me, the drug war isn't worth all that.

It's not worth it because each year, the federal government spends $17
billion on fighting drugs. State and local governments kick in another
$20 billion. But in spite of that, illegal drugs still cost this
country $67 billion a year in terms of accidents, violence, family
breakups and death.

Now, I'm not saying that drugs ought to be allowed to flow freely
throughout communities. But I'd rather see more of the money being
wasted to stem the supply of drugs used to stem the demand. To fund
programs like Head Start, so that poor children will grow up believing
so strongly in their own potential that they wouldn't dare gamble it
away by using drugs. To rebuild communities with jobs. Adequate
housing. Hope. All the things that can bankrupt drug dealers simply by
causing fewer people to look to drugs for an outlet or an occupation.

Once that happens, our police can go back to being peace officers. Not
soldiers.

Especially in a war in which too many of them are becoming casualties.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake