DRUG WAR IMPACTS ATTITUDE OF POLICE

A couple of our Houston police officers e-mailed harsh criticisms following
the recent account here of a woman who was found by a jury to be mentally
incompetent to stand trial.

Background: That jury was not informed of the charges the woman faced, but
her lawyer told me she was accused of trying to split the cost of $10 worth
of crack with a man who turned out to be an undercover cop. In comparing the
high costs of the criminal-justice system to the alleged crime, I used the
phrase "pretty darned piddling" to describe the nonviolent offense.

The woman was found incompetent to stand trial, but was taken to jail and
held for three weeks until the prosecutor got around to filing paperwork for
a criminal commitment to the state hospital, where she was held for about a
month. The woman's lawyer said that a supervisor in the district attorney's
office has since agreed that criminal commitment was a mistake.

"I fail to see how the purchase of $5 worth of crack cocaine is a 'pretty
darned piddling' crime," one officer said in his e-mail. "It is in fact a
felony -- as it should be -- and a major problem for those of us charged
with keeping our streets safe. Who needs protecting from the 'nonviolent'
crime of trying to buy five bucks of crack, you ask? Everybody."

He went on to describe the crimes he responds to on Houston's near north
side -- "brutal assaults, robberies, burglaries, cuttings and the occasional
shooting because someone wanted $5 to buy a crack rock. ... It's not about
some mental patient buying a rock; it's about where and how she got ahold of
the five bucks. Somebody else paid for that rock, she didn't."

The other officer wrote that in 28 years on the job he has "experienced the
world you characterize as 'nonviolent' up close and personal. Nothing
creates, encourages and promotes violence like drug dealing. Where do you
think the $5 rock came from? There is no crack fairy that distributes these
little pearls for harmless little people to use in the comfort of their
home."

He urged me to visit the Houston Police Memorial, read the names in the
granite, and then ask myself "how 'nonviolent' is a substance that can
produce such carnage."

'Innocent Until Proven Guilty'

On one of Harris County's Web sites I found a page titled Basic Legal
Concepts of the Criminal Justice System, listing several rights and
privileges guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights to anyone
accused of a crime.

First on the list: "The defendant is innocent until proven guilty. This
concept is the foundation of the criminal justice system and influences
every other legal principle."

The first police officer obviously assumed guilt, and much of it, when he
said: "It's not about some mental patient buying a rock; it's about where
and how she got ahold of the five bucks."

She is accused of trying to buy half a rock, not of committing an unknown
crime to obtain any money she may have had. She also was not accused of
killing a police officer or of committing any other violent act.

Yet the second officer's obvious contention is that anyone who buys any
amount of crack should be considered guilty by extension of all crimes
committed by all drug dealers.

It is a war on drugs. In war, a soldier identifies everyone as enemy or
friend. He does not divide the enemies into categories; he does his utmost
to defeat them all.

'Gangster Cops'

Joseph McNamara knows a great deal about the effects the drug war has had on
police. He progressed through the ranks from beat cop in Harlem to police
chief in Kansas City, Mo., (1973-1976), and San Jose, Calif., (1976-199l),
and he has spent the past 10 years researching and writing about the drug
war and police in cities throughout the nation.

At a citizens' commission on U.S. drug policy, McNamara testified: "We have
created a kind of culture within American police departments with the war on
drugs that has produced not only gangster cops in thousands of cases across
America, but we have also corrupted the rank-and-file cops. They have
forgotten what their mission is.

"They are not soldiers in a war; they're peace officers with a fundamental
duty to protect human life."