Pubdate: Tues, 19 Dec 2006
Source: Folio Weekly (Jacksonville, FL)
Contact:  2007 Folio Weekly
Website: http://folioweekly.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4418
Author: Susan Cooper Eastman
Cited: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) http://www.leap.cc
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Jerry+Cameron

PUFF DADDY

A Former Police Chief Calls the Drug War a "Joke" and Believes Dime 
Bags Should Be Sold Like Cigarettes

When Jerry Cameron was chief of police in Fernandina Beach in 1988, 
he believed so strongly in the war on drugs he was willing to go to 
jail to fight it. Cameron was threatened with arrest after refusing 
to release a juvenile he'd arrested on felony cocaine possession 
charges. He wanted state child welfare authorities, who called the 
shots in juvenile justice matters, to take the boy to a detention 
center. The agency countered that since the youth wasn't a threat, he 
should be released to his parents. But Cameron believed letting the 
kid go would send the wrong message -- and cede a key battle in the 
drug war. He held fast until the agency backed down and took the 
juvenile into custody.

In an interview with the Fernandina Beach-News Leader about the 
incident, Cameron vented his frustration over the drug scourge. "If 
we can't turn this thing around, we might as well disband law 
enforcement agencies," he said. The money saved, he added, could be 
refunded to taxpayers "so they can buy bars for their windows and 
guns to protect themselves."

Cameron is still as blunt about the drug war as he was 20 years ago, 
but he's no longer fighting on the same side. Speaking before the 
Chamber of Commerce's Downtown Council last month, Cameron derided 
the War on Drugs as a colossal failure.

"I'm here to tell you that the emperor has no clothes," Cameron told 
the group of power suits. "This is such a bad policy it's almost a joke."

Cameron doesn't just believe the drug war has failed. He thinks it 
has damaged the nation's democracy, leading to an increasingly 
militarized police force prone to stomping on civil liberties. While 
this tactical fighting force is ostensibly trying to rid the nation 
of drugs, Cameron says the lure of money, power and crime-fighting 
gewgaws breeds its own addiction.

"The bureaucracy needs the dealers in order to justify its continued 
existence and growth," Cameron says. "And the dealers need the 
bureaucracy to keep the competition down and the prices up."

It's radical position for a former chief of police and self-described 
"drug warrior." But after drinking the Kool-Aid on drug interdiction 
during his 17 years in law enforcement, Cameron has concluded the 
drug war is worse than a failure. It's a fraud.

He's not alone in his observations. As a member of Law Enforcement 
Against Prohibition (LEAP), Cameron keeps company with more than 
5,000 current and former law enforcement officials, DEA agents, 
judges and corrections officers who have joined since the group was 
founded in 2002. LEAP's goal is nothing less than the legalization of 
all drugs - marijuana, LSD, crack, even heroin. The group doesn't 
claim that legalization will stop people from getting high, only that 
it will take the drug trade away from criminals. In turn, the group 
proposes taxing drug sales and using the money to fund treatment 
programs and drug abuse education.

LEAP maintains a roster of 150 speakers -- Cameron is one -- and 
recently hired a full-time Washington lobbyist to press for drug 
legalization. LEAP works internationally as well. In 2006, Cameron 
was invited to speak in Amsterdam at the annual conference of the 
libertarian Reason Foundation, as well as at a Dublin conference 
hosted by Ireland's largest drug treatment center.

Cameron admits that many people are initially shocked to see a former 
police chief advocate for legalization. But he says no one else is 
better equipped to make the argument - because no one else knows the 
story from the side of law enforcement.

"There are people a whole lot smarter than me who will figure out how 
to go about it, but the one thing I am convinced of is that 
prohibition is causing a lot of damage," says Cameron. "I'm not a 
supporter of drug use. I'm just a supporter of good public policy.

The "War on Drugs" dates back to the culture wars of 1971, when 
President Richard Nixon called drugs "public enemy number one" and 
vowed to wage an "all-out offensive against that deadly enemy." His 
offensive offered convenient cover for an administration known for 
retaliating against enemies. Many of the drug users Nixon went after 
smoked pot, and opposed him and the war in Vietnam.

Whether or not the drug war has ever deserved more credibility than 
it had during the Nixon administration, it has certainly had the 
sanction - and the financial support - of the federal government. 
Since 1971, state and federal law enforcement agencies have spent a 
trillion dollars fighting drugs. More than 9 million people have been 
arrested for non-violent drug offenses in the past five years. 
Prisons are full, courtrooms are clogged, and racial inequities are 
endemic. Yet the No. 1 cash crop in the United States is marijuana, 
with an estimated annual revenue of $32 billion. The percentage of 
drug abusers hasn't changed since war was declared. In 1971, 1.3 
percent of the population was addicted to drugs - the same as today. 
And even as costs associated with the drug war have soared, drug 
prices have plummeted, because supplies remain plentiful and drug 
purity has increased.

Despite Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, it remains easier for 
children to buy drugs than beer or cigarettes, says Cameron: "If you 
didn't know where to get marijuana and you wanted to get some 
tonight, who would you ask? The children."

Although calls for the outright legalization of drugs have remained 
on the fringes of policy debate, criticism of the drug war has come 
from some pretty high places. In 1993, two federal judges in New York 
City told the New York Times that "the emphasis on arrests and 
imprisonments, rather than prevention and treatment, has been a 
failure." They announced they were withdrawing from the effort. That 
same year, according to The Nation, 50 of the country's 680 federal 
judges refused to hear drug cases. Also in 1993, Surgeon General 
Jocelyn Elders commented that the crime rate would be reduced if 
drugs were legalized. Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger 
said the War on Drugs amounted to "a vague injunction to stop drug 
traffickers." And former Secretary of State George Shultz pointed out 
that "We're not really going to get anywhere until we take the 
criminality out of the drug business and the incentives for 
criminality out of it."

But there is no broad national consensus for legalizing drugs. There 
is little doubt that U.S. citizens ingest mind-altering substances at 
alarming rates -- spending some $60 billion a year on drugs -- or 
that addiction has wreaked havoc on lives and families. To many, the 
idea of legalization means opening the floodgates to a narco nation. 
There is also a fervent, almost ideological conviction in most law 
enforcement agencies that the drugs are the enemy. Having seen so 
many deaths - O.D.s and homicides - linked to the trade, most cops 
believe it is the illegal substances themselves, not the drug trade, 
that must be snuffed out.

LEAP contends, however, that the major crime associated with drug use 
would stop if drug cultivation and sales were taken out of the hands 
of criminals. If the government could control the purity and the 
product, and license dealers, it could use taxes to regulate it and 
divert part of the money to pay for drug treatment programs. From a 
purely economic standpoint, the theory makes some sense. Drug 
treatment programs cost a fraction of what drug enforcement costs, 
and there is almost no product that compares to illegal drugs in 
profitability. Processed cocaine available in Columbia for $1,500 a 
kilo is sold on the streets of the United States for $66,000 a kilo. 
Heroin that costs $2,600 a kilo in Pakistan is sold retail in the 
United States for $130,000. As a recent episode of PBS program 
"Frontline" observed, "No agricultural enterprise in the world 
operates with the same profit margins." For Cameron, keeping drugs 
illegal is tantamount to enriching lawbreakers.

"We are dealing with a business that creates $500 million a year in 
revenue, and we have turned it over to criminals," he says. "They 
decided when it is produced, how it is produced, what to [produce], 
when and how to transport it, who gets it, how much, how pure it is 
and how much it costs. We don't have a thing to say about it. And 
guess what? Every bit of it is tax-free. How would you like to have 
that kind of business?"

At 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, with gray hair and a slack face, Jerry 
Cameron has the easy authority of someone who is used to giving 
orders. His voice is deep and resonant, with the unhurried gait of a 
Southern storyteller. He seems more Mayberry than RoboCop, but he 
says at one time he believed in wholeheartedly in commando policing 
to combat drugs.

"I was one of the most enthusiastic drug warriors there was," he 
says. "For a long time, I fervently and deeply believed we could 
arrest our way out of this problem."

Cameron began his career in 1978 as a Richland County sheriff's 
deputy assigned to Irmo, S.C., before being hired away by the Irmo 
Town Council two years later to be chief of a new one-man police 
department. Although it was small-town police work, Cameron quickly 
distinguished himself as a leader unafraid to try new things. In one 
of his first newspaper interviews, Cameron vowed to tackle what he 
called "the youth problem" -- drugs, alcohol and vandalism. He noted 
that 75 percent of crime in the town was caused by juveniles. But 
Cameron didn't want to criminalize young people -- he wanted to turn 
them around. Working with parents, he handed out punishments to the 
youthful offenders. They worked off the damage they'd caused by 
picking up litter, washing the sole Irmo police car, or cutting the 
lawn outside the Town Hall.

Within three years, Cameron built the force to six officers. He 
purchased a radar device, which he had to set up on a portable table 
because radar equipment was still in its infancy. He bought a 
microcomputer and programmed it to hold the town's arrest records. He 
hired a karate expert to train the department in the use of nunchakus 
as an alternative to deadly force.

Ray Nash, sheriff of Dorchester County, S.C., for the past 10 years, 
worked for Cameron in the early '80s and replaced him when he took 
the job as chief in Fernandina Beach. He calls Cameron a "genius" and 
a "visionary," and says his unique leadership style was evident in 
his decision, in 1980, to buy a manual transmission Volkswagen Rabbit 
as the town patrol car. The first car was purchased in the midst of 
the gas crisis, but as Cameron added officers to the force, he 
purchased more Rabbits. Irmo became known nationally as the town that 
chased down criminals in VW Rabbits.

"Everyone thought it was funny," remembers Nash, "until we got out 
and deployed them. They were the fastest thing in the world. They 
were quick, fuel-efficient - That's why they called them Rabbits."

The University of North Florida invited Cameron and his Rabbit to the 
school to talk to other police officers about downsizing patrol cars 
to save on energy. School officials were so impressed that they 
invited Cameron back. When a police chief position opened in 
Fernandina Beach, UNF arranged for Cameron to interview. And the 
school told him that if the Fernandina job didn't work out, he could 
have a full-time teaching job.

In 1984, Cameron left Irmo to move to Fernandina Beach, a city twice 
as big with a police force of 28. The City Commission hired Cameron 
because they believed he would bring a compassionate, human touch to 
the job, he says. But a poll by the Fernandina Beach News-Leader 
showed a skeptical public. Some 99 percent of respondents to a 
newspaper poll said they thought the city should not have hired the 
new chief from outside the department. Cameron gradually won over 
most of his critics, but he also earned a reputation for his unusual 
law enforcement leadership style. He quoted Plato and Aristotle at 
morning meetings. He offered wisdom gleaned from the authors that 
filled his bookshelves: Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Descartes, Ayn 
Rand. He visited the local schools to address students. And he 
impressed both black and white leaders with his caring.

"He was real sincere about the problems that exist in our town, 
whether in the Afro-American community or any other part of our 
community," says former City Commissioner Charles Albert. "He was a 
very humane type of person. He was always a nice person to converse 
with, to talk to about problems."

Fernandina Beach Commissioner Ron Sapp agrees. "One of the things 
that made him so special was that he not only talked about putting 
people in jail, he also talked about ideas, about why crimes are 
committed," recalls Sapp. "He thought outside the normal realm of thinking."

Cameron also had a sense of humor. In October 1985, he took two 
Fernandina Beach police officers back to Irmo to compete in that 
city's okra-eating contest.

Having worked with Cameron, Sheriff Nash says he has learned early on 
to appreciate his difference. He also learned not to underestimate him.

"I would never compete with him to this day," says Nash. "I don't 
dare. If he is going to challenge me, he has done his homework. He 
has invested the time and effort for preparation -- and he knows he 
is going to come out on top." In 1985, though, the okra trophy stayed 
in South Carolina.

Cameron joined the Fernandina force in 1984, shortly after the onset 
of the crack cocaine epidemic. An open-air drug market took root in 
the predominately black neighborhood of Ninth Street in downtown 
Fernandina Beach. Cameron recalls lines of cars, driven by whites, 
cruising up and down Ninth as black dealers stood on the street 
hawking their wares.

Pressed to come up with a solution to the problem, Cameron devised 
"Operation Pressure Point." The approach was similar to the "Broken 
Window" theory of policing popularized by New York City's Mayor 
Rudolph Giuliani in the mid-1990s. The police in Fernandina Beach 
boosted their presence through aggressive interaction with citizens 
in problem areas. Dressed in full tactical gear -- black jumpsuits, 
flak vests, and firearms slung over their shoulders -- officers would 
pull over cars for minor traffic violations, then seek to escalate 
the encounter until there was probable cause for a search of the 
vehicle. While one officer checked the license, the other would 
eyeball the interior of the car looking for contraband. Then officers 
would snap a photograph of the motorist and keep the image on file 
for future reference.

Cameron trained his officers to read body language and sought to 
disrupt the trade by making buyers skittish. He also tried to make 
dealers suspicious through undercover drug buys, using officers from 
other jurisdictions. In June 1988, Cameron wrote an article for Law 
and Order magazine in which he described the city as one "hit hard by 
the crack epidemic."

"Street dealers took over one area of town, staking out their 
territories and offering curb service," he wrote. "Property crimes 
soared, burglaries increased 100 percent and violence became commonplace."

Cameron detailed his department's response. It was an optimistic, 
even self-congratulatory piece. Cameron said his policing program had 
made the streets safe again in Fernandina Beach. He explained he had 
secured $10,000 from the City Commission for overtime pay, and used 
seized drug monies for additional officers, protective vests, riot 
guns, Polaroid cameras and the distinctive black jumpsuits. He said 
that he'd told his officers to "use the blue lights as often as 
possible." And he said that the sight of cops in full tactical gear 
making traffic stops was enough to put a damper on the drug trade.

Cameron liked to put on the black jumpsuit himself occasionally and 
bust down doors in drug raids. He found it exciting. In a celebrated 
bust in July 1986, Cameron was there when Fernandina Beach police 
arrested three men at the Golden Isle Motel at the foot of Atlantic 
Avenue. The men had come from Miami and rented two motel rooms as a 
base to deliver drugs to local dealers. The police stopped the men as 
they left the motel for a minor traffic infraction. In the car, they 
found a vinyl bag stuffed with $7,000 cash, a .357 magnum revolver 
and a small vial of crack cocaine. A drug-sniffing dog combed the 
motel room looking for more. Meanwhile, Cameron noticed that a light 
fixture in the bathroom ceiling wasn't working. He pulled down the 
globe and discovered a cache of tiny bags of crack cocaine, a total 
of 371 grams.

Operation Pressure Point was so successful, Cameron likes to say, 
that he would bring a bus into the city on Fridays, fill it up with 
criminals and ship them off to prison. He cleared out a 10-block area 
of the city, "practically arresting everyone," he says. "You could 
walk down the street with your wife at 2 a.m. and nothing would 
happen." The reaction, initially at least, was enthusiastic.

"It was wonderful," he says. "People were just heaping praise on me. 
I was invited to speak at the Chamber of Commerce."

The euphoria didn't last long. After about six weeks, competitors in 
the drug trade noticed the vacuum in Fernandina Beach. "They realized 
I had created a golden opportunity for them," says Cameron. "Then I 
had the Miami Boys [gang] come up from Jacksonville and the Haitians 
come up from Vero Beach," he says. "And they were pretty aggressive 
in the marketing. They announced their presence by driving down Ninth 
Street shooting an Uzi out the window. They threatened people with 
assassination. They did all sorts of things. They kidnapped people. 
They were very violent. I was sitting in my office one day and I 
said, 'Gee, you know, I'd like to have my old drug dealers back. They 
were kinder and nicer and gentler than the ones I got now.'"

It remains a salient moment in the former police chief's career. "It 
started me on a path of thinkin'," he says. "The more you suppress 
the supply, the greater the profit margin. That was true during 
alcohol prohibition, and that is true today."

When Cameron participated in an FBI training program in 1988, a 
professor at the National Academy praised him as "the prototypical 
police chief of the future." Three years later, Cameron resigned.

Although he was starting to question the department's approach to 
combating drugs then, it didn't play a role in his decision to leave. 
He tendered his resignation in 1991 after a stint as interim city 
manager that he says soured him on the city's bureaucracy. After he 
left, he taught at the University of North Florida's police academy 
for a year, then spent two years in Grenada, teaching scuba diving at 
a dive resort. While there, he met and married his wife, Daphne, with 
whom he moved to St. Augustine in 1995.

Cameron didn't come to fully embrace the idea of drug legalization 
until the Libertarian Party convention in 2004. At the time, Cameron 
was a Libertarian candidate for state representative, and he got into 
an informal discussion with Libertarian presidential candidate Gary 
Nolan. When he expressed his cynical assessment of the War on Drugs, 
Nolan told him he knew someone Cameron should meet. A short time 
later, Cameron got a call from Jack Cole, one of LEAP's founders.

Politically, Cameron says, speaking out for legalizing drugs sets him 
up for his opponents. He was a fairly high-profile Republican before 
he left to join the Libertarian party, and remains active in local 
politics. When St. Johns County Commissioner Ben Rich hired him as a 
legislative aide in 2005, some opponents trotted out his views on 
drugs as a way to discredit both men.

"I'm not gaining anything from this," he says.

Cameron will likely seek public office again, and he wouldn't mind 
working as a county or city manager. (Coincidentally, newly-minted 
Commission Chair Rich led the effort to oust County Manager Ben Adams 
last month, so the county will be looking for a replacement. Cameron, 
however, says that job would not interest him.) In the meantime, 
Cameron has been making the rounds with LEAP. Whether he's making 
progress is another question. Folks at the chamber meeting - an 
admittedly conservative crowd -- seemed cautiously persuaded by his 
presentation. Several even filled out cards indicating their support. 
Of course, Cameron's vision of drug legalization - a free-market 
embrace of capitalism and profits - may not be a hard sell to chamber 
types. It is, in fact, standard Libertarian fare, a la radio 
talk-show host Neal Boortz.

But drug legalization remains a radical idea in the law enforcement 
community. Duval County Sheriff John Rutherford did not return calls 
for comment on the matter, and Nassau County Sheriff Tommy Seagraves 
declined to comment, saying it would probably not be in his interest 
to weigh in on the subject.

Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler agreed the war on drugs has not 
decreased drug use. "I'm sure there's frustration out there, but I 
don't know that LEAP has the answer either," he says. "My personal 
feeling is that you should work on the demand side. We've been 
working on the supply side for years."

Cameron acknowledges that most officials don't embrace LEAP's agenda. 
But he says that privately, many law enforcement agents are as 
convinced as he is that the drug war is a sorry enterprise - one that 
is doomed to fail, despite its ever-increasing price tag.

Dorchester County Sheriff Nash says that while he respects his old 
boss, he isn't ready to jump on legalization bandwagon yet. Then 
again, he says, he'd just as soon avoid talking about the issue with 
Cameron altogether. "I'm afraid," he admits. "If I sat down with him 
long enough, he would convince me."