FALLEN ATLANTA OFFICER: WAR ON DRUGS NOT WORTH COST IN LIVES

Atlanta police Detective Sherry Lyons-Williams was laid to rest
Tuesday after a three-hour funeral that spoke of joy and the
afterlife but could not overcome the sadness at the center of the
event. Shot four times by a suspected drug dealer a week ago,
Lyons-Williams became, at age 39, Atlanta's first female police
officer killed in the line of duty.

Thousands of police officers came from near and far to pay their
respects to a dedicated detective whose life ended too soon. Those
who knew her best --- family, friends and fellow cops --- described a
woman nearly larger than life: brave, funny, brash, warm, generous
and, most of all, dedicated to her job.

Perhaps the sense of tragedy is deepened by the nagging feeling that
Lyons-Williams, a member of the narcotics squad, gave her life in a
lost cause: the so-called war on drugs. She and her partner, Thaddeus
Chambers, who was wounded in the shootout, were part of a team
conducting a raid on a house in southeast Atlanta, where undercover
officers had purchased drugs earlier in the day. As Lyons-Williams
and Chambers searched a basement area, a man threw open a door and
opened fire. The gunman, Michael Thompson, was killed.

Ironically, say police and prosecutors, Thompson probably would not
have faced stiff penalties for a drug rap in Fulton County --- where
the courts are overwhelmed with more serious offenses, such as
murders and rapes --- if he had submitted peacefully to arrest.

"He'd never been arrested before," said Atlanta police Detective Dick
Rose. "He was probably facing six months' probation."

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Long noted that lenient
treatment of penny-ante dealers is common.

"We don't try them; they plead (guilty) or the state drops the
charges," she said. A guilty plea usually leads to a light sentence
or probation.

There is nothing unusual about Fulton County's routine. In urban
jurisdictions around the country, small-time street dealers are given
lenient sentences unless they commit a violent crime: killing a
competitor or an addict who owes them money, or committing armed
robbery to support their own habits.

Nevertheless, around the country, men and women in blue are placed in
the line of fire by an irrational law-enforcement culture that
insists on fighting drugs by locking up low-level street dealers,
even though it is clearly a failed strategy. On the same day
Lyons-Williams was shot, a Detroit police officer, Neil Wells, was
killed in eerily similar fashion --- shot dead in a drug raid when a
bullet slipped past his protective vest.

How many courageous officers are we willing to lose to a "war" we cannot win?

Why not change tactics? Why not try a strategy that works?

The house where Lyons-Williams was shot, for example, could have been
shut down with a strategy of civil penalties, including citations for
code violations and civil suits. Neighborhoods around the country are
becoming increasingly adept at using civil suits to close down crack
houses and other dens of lawlessness.

Such tactics wouldn't bring police officers the adrenaline rush that
is craved by members of daredevil units like Atlanta's Red Dog squad.
Nor would it bring out the TV news crews, who sometimes get invited
along on raids just so local police departments can win PR points
with the taxpayers. But a low-key strategy would be just as effective
in ridding down-at-the-heels neighborhoods of the drug dens, while
also protecting the lives of police officers.

Lyons-Williams died a hero. She did the job her superiors told her to
do as they told her to do it, cleaning out drug dens the best way she
knew how. But her superiors owe it to her memory to reconsider a
dangerous strategy that accomplishes very little in the long run.

This war on drugs is proving far more deadly than the drugs themselves.

Cynthia Tucker's column appears Wednesdays and Sundays.