FORMER COP NOW PROMOTES DRUG LEGALIZATION

Sunday's crowd at the Westcott Street Cultural Fair included
old-timers in headbands with shoulder-length gray hair and a guy with
bells and shreds of cloth covering his body.

Howard Wooldridge, a former detective, managed to attract attention
of his own. He wore a cowboy hat and spurs. He allowed visitors to
pet Misty, his one-eyed horse. He also made a point of showing off
his T-shirt slogan: "Cops say legalize drugs. Ask me why."

For the past six months, Wooldridge - who retired 11 years ago from
the Bath Township Police Department in Michigan - has journeyed
across the country on horseback to win attention for LEAP, or Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Wooldridge is a founding member of the group, which consists
primarily of retired police officers and administrators. He said the
original members turned for a model to ReconsiDer, a Syracuse-based
forum on drug policy reform, which is why he decided to stop here for
a few days.

"They gave us our blueprint," said Wooldridge, who now lives in
Texas. "You take your message right to the unconverted, right to
groups like the Rotary or the Kiwanis."

His long ride is expected to climax next month, when he reaches Times
Square in New York City. Wooldridge said his message is "about
liberty, property rights and personal responsibility. You can't get
any farther to the right than me on this one."

He laid out that reasoning Sunday when Joe DeGennaro, a guy in the
crowd, looked at the slogan and asked the question:

"Why?"

Wooldridge responded that he began questioning American drug laws
because most of his felony arrests, as a detective, involved
narcotics. He said he either spent his time busting drug dealers or
locking up crack cocaine addicts who were so desperate for money they
committed burglaries.

It led him to what he maintains is a logical conclusion: There ought
to be government-regulated clinics or stores that provide low-cost
drugs to users, always combined with a powerful community emphasis on
education, prevention and treatment.

"You sell this stuff from a state-regulated store, and it would be
harder (for kids) to get than it is for them right now,"
said Wooldridge, who said it can be as easy for a teenager today to
obtain marijuana as it is to get a beer.

"Once you start doing that, the people from (police agencies) can
focus on child molesters and drunk drivers and people who are flying
airplanes into buildings," Wooldridge said.

To Wooldridge, existing enforcement policies often don't make sense.
If you want to really focus on the biggest danger to everyday,
law-abiding Americans, he said, you wouldn't start with dealers of
crack cocaine.

"The greatest threat to you, right now, is from a drunk driver
running into you on your way home," he said. "The drunk driver will
hurt someone like you long before a drug dealer will."

Yet you'll see far more television advertisements about the dangers
of marijuana, Wooldridge said, than ads about the criminality of
people who get loaded and drive. While he expressed admiration for
the courage of many officers involved in the drug war, he said that
courage could be used in better ways - a position he said many cops
tell him they share.

Other officers are eager for debate, contending that legalization of
marijuana or cocaine would quickly create a culture of addicts.
Wooldridge responds by pointing to cigarettes, a legal yet lethally
addictive product whose use declined because of strict controls and education.

Sunday, more people stopped to pay attention to Misty than to discuss
drug policy with Misty's owner. But a quiet shift in attitudes was
symbolized by visits from Howie Hawkins, a Green Party candidate for
mayor, and Van Robinson, a member of the Syracuse Common Council.

Hawkins said drug law reform would profoundly diminish the level of
violence in Syracuse and other cities. As for Robinson, he recalled
his childhood in the Bronx. He hated drug dealers and "junkies," he
said, blaming them for the disintegration of his neighborhood.

Over the years, Robinson said, he began to realize that tough
enforcement didn't seem to make the streets any safer. Instead, he
watched as hundreds of thousands of young men from the core of
American cities ended up in prison for drug-related crimes.

"If you have children without adequate education or skills who are
desperate on the corner, and a profit is there to be made by selling
drugs, what are they going to do?" Robinson said. "The only way to
solve the problem is to come up with new answers, to think outside the box."

Even on Westcott Street, Howard Wooldridge - a retired cop in spurs,
standing with his one-eyed horse - was definitely not inside anyone's box.