DIGGING OUT THE DOPE FIENDS

A lot of people don't understand why nabbing narc offenders makes for a
rough day at the office for law enforcement. People break the law, folks
say, so just crack down; get tough.

Notice how well that tactic has worked thus far?

Most crimes are relatively controllable. We've got a lot of murders, but
cops get on the case and take care of business. Ditto for burglars and
embezzlers. Trouble is, drugs are different.

No matter how big the latest dope bust, police report another one, even
bigger, two weeks later. And far more drugs hit the street than get seized
by the men in striped pants, you can be sure. If anything, drug use has
risen immensely since the initial crackdown under President Nixon. This is
easily seen in the dropping street price of drugs, which if you didn't
sleep through Econ 101 should tell you the supply just might be getting
bigger and bigger -- not smaller, as the drug warriors would hope.

The reason tackling drug trafficking is different, and more difficult, than
tackling street-side muggers, bank robbers, litter bugs and j-walkers is
that there's no one to stand up and cry, "Foul!" Laws against consensual
crimes like drug use are ridiculously hard to enforce because none of the
parties involved will stand up to say they've been wronged. They haven't.
Theoretically, each gets what he wants -- one gets dope, the other gets money.

With something like mugging, it's a bit more one-sided; usually only the
mugger approves of billyclubbing wayward pedestrians. Thus, we have a real
victim -- the guy with the dented cranium.

While you may feel like you've been mugged if you've had a bad trip,
dealing or using drugs is fundamentally different than crime in which there
is a bona fide victim.

Take a two-party pot pitch. The hash broker approaches, or is approached
by, a jonesing junkie. The first party has drugs he wants to sell, and the
other party just wants to party. Now, of course, what they are about to do
- -- trading dope for dough -- is illegal. Neither of the two really care
about that, however; they want to do business.

Because both parties are willingly breaking the law, and probably don't
want to spend the wee hours sharing a cell with maladjusted purse
snatchers, wife beaters and mattress-tag tearers, there is no one -- except
perhaps nosy neighbors -- to go to the cops. This means that most drug
crimes go on day and night without the law ever knowing.

Due to the secrecy of the crime and lack of a victim to fink to the fuzz,
nabbing narcotics violators is an extra special challenge. It requires that
police take the initiative and smoke out the scofflaws, rather than respond
to complaints about them, as is usually done. Most policing is reactive:
officers investigate after someone reports a crime -- usually the victim.
With no victim, however, the police have to switch gears, go to proactive
policing. Here's where problems start.

Proactive policing means going out and finding lawbreaking rather than
responding to it. Since folks who break the law generally don't do it under
huge billboards announcing the fact, police are forced to go to
extraordinary lengths to find these narco-ne'er-do-wells.

They rely on anonymous snitches to rat on lawbreakers, some of whom are
less-than accurate, which results in police arresting innocent people,
searching and raiding the wrong homes.

They rely on dubious character profiling methods that are so broad and
ambiguous they bring regular citizens by the score under police scrutiny.

They rely on random traffic stops and detention, hoping to find wrongdoing
literally by accident and, in the process, violating the Fourth Amendment
rights of countless innocent citizens.

They rely on tactics that any Joe-on-the-street would consider entrapment,
leading -- sometimes pressuring -- people to buy drugs and then arresting
them for it.

They rely on roving wiretaps, which expand federal surveillance powers to
include not only tapping a particular person's phone but also any phone
used by, or "proximate" to, the target -- regardless of who actually owns
the phone.

They rely on no-knock raids, military-like attacks, which utilize
shoot-first-ask-questions-later tactics and endangering the innocent by
placing them literally in the line of fire.

In short, they rely on all sorts of things that actually treat the U.S.
Constitution like a reusable rifle target.

These sorts of abuses are inherent to the drug war because of the
victimless nature of drug-law violations. Without someone actually wronged
who can go to the police, the authorities are forced to dig up dope fiends
by using a wide array of unconstitutional practices, deemed kosher by
courts only to justify continued prosecution of the drug war and perhaps
assuage the guilty consciences of law enforcers who know their tactics have
given rise to the wholesale destruction of the Bill of Rights. Either we
face this inherent liberty-stifling element to the drug war and thrust a
stick in the spokes, or smile and abide the next batch of freedom-filching
innovations from the drug warriors with few complaints.