PRIOR DRUG USE FORGIVEN FOR DENVER POLICE HIRES

DENVER -- Nobody expects police departments to hire saints. The job is
tough, and recruits with street smarts often edge out those with
unblemished resumes. Even so, the confessions of Ellis "Max" Johnson II,
one of Denver's newest officers, were startling in their candor.

Under questioning from background investigators, Johnson admitted he had
used drugs on approximately 150 occasions -- not just marijuana but also
crack, LSD, speed, PCP, mescaline, Darvon and Valium.

Although personnel files are among the most closely guarded of police
secrets, a copy of Johnson's was leaked to the media after he entered the
academy last fall, sparking a debate over the city's hiring practices.

Some officers called him an embarrassment to the badge, even a threat to
public safety. But Denver's Civil Service Commission, which sets the
criteria for police hiring, insisted that the 40-year-old former karate
instructor had been clean since 1987 and deserved a second chance.

The commission then disclosed an even bigger secret about police
recruitment, one that is true for many metropolitan departments rushing to
expand: Among new hires, previous drug use is the rule, not the exception.
The pharmacopeia Johnson sampled may have been extreme, but with their
candor coaxed by a polygraph, 84 percent of Denver's police applicants --
and at least 65 percent of recent hires -- have acknowledged past
experimentation, civil service records indicated.

"Let's wake up," said Paul Torres, the commission's former executive
director. "The days of Mayberry are long gone."

Such forgiveness can come back to haunt a city, as Los Angeles is learning
from its current police scandal, which has exposed serious breakdowns in
the Los Angeles Police Department's hiring process. Yet even if every
recruit who had ever smoked dope turned out to be a model officer, still it
would underscore one of the great contradictions of the drug war:

How can a substance be so pernicious that thousands of Americans are
arrested every day for using it, yet so acceptable that a user can still
grow up to be a cop?

"The way this country looks at drugs, you're a criminal only if you get
caught," said Joseph McNamara, a research fellow at Stanford University's
Hoover Institution and former police chief of San Jose, Calif., and Kansas
City, Mo. "It's such an incredible hypocrisy."

To gauge the limits of Denver's forbearance -- and, by extension, the
degree to which those who enforce U.S. drug laws also have broken them --
the Los Angeles Times reviewed the employment applications of every officer
hired in Denver in 1999.

The files, made available under Colorado's Open Records Act, were heavily
censored, with most identifying information redacted. But in the "Drug Use"
section, the responses were consistent: Of the city's 80 recruits last
year, 52 admitted partaking.

Most of it was marijuana, usually small amounts, long ago. A puff in high
school. Three to five times with a college roommate. Although a majority
stopped at marijuana, 10 of the pot smokers went further. One dropped acid.
One ate psilocybin mushrooms. One tripped on ecstasy. A former Army soldier
admitted to smoking hashish oil in his barracks; he also took amphetamines
while on field exercises at Fort Bragg.

Then there were a few, such as Johnson.

One officer, who had smoked pot "about 25 times," admitted to buying
quarter-ounce baggies of weed on three occasions. "This is a mistake I
deeply regret making," he wrote. Another, who was released to his parents
after police stopped him with a small amount of marijuana, chronicled about
75 drug experiences over two decades -- including speed, cocaine, LSD and
Librium.

With privacy laws varying from state to state, comparable data from other
law enforcement agencies could not be obtained. But interviews with more
than two dozen police officials and criminal justice experts indicate that
Denver's experience is repeated across the nation.

John Cannon, a spokesman for the Houston Police Department, told the
Houston Chronicle on Sunday that an explanation of the department's policy
regarding police applicants would have to come from higher-ups who would
not be available until today.

"You'll have to contact the captain of recruiting and find out what the
policy states," Cannon said.

Another spokesman told the Times earlier that they did not discuss the
department's policy. "If we advertise that information," said John Leggio,
"they'll go right up to the maximum."

Other agencies have precise, and often complex, formulas, a testament to
how often such questions arise.

In Dallas, recruits who have smoked marijuana up to 10 times must wait a
year before they are eligible; for each additional set of 10 usages, they
must wait another year (11 to 20 times would mean two years, 21 to 30 times
would mean three years, and so on) up to a limit of 75 times.

In Tempe, Ariz., age is the crucial factor: Marijuana can be smoked up to
20 times but only five times after the applicant turns 21 and none within
the last three years; the rule on hard drugs is five times but not within
seven years and none over 21.

Denver's rules about a police recruit's history of drug use, now being
reviewed by a mayoral commission, had been among the most lenient -- the
only requirement being a one-year wait, no matter the substance. Seattle is
nearly identical, except that it insists on a 10-year buffer for
hallucinogens. Austin is a mix of strict and forgiving: three years for
marijuana and five for narcotics, but applicants also can have sold pot --
a disqualifier almost everywhere else -- just as long as they did it at
least 10 years ago and never were arrested.

Police recruitment in many large cities is complicated by
affirmative-action decrees. Some critics complain that these preferences
result in even lower standards, an allegation that hovered over Johnson; he
is black and had applied unsuccessfully to 20 Colorado law enforcement
agencies -- including three attempts to join the Denver Police Department
- -- before finally being accepted last year.

Denver's employment records, however, dispute that conclusion. Of the 52
recruits with a history of experimentation, 37 were white. So were seven of
the 10 who had done harder drugs. Johnson, who began patrol duties in
March, declined to be interviewed for this story.

The fact is, with the city's applicant pool dropping from about 10,000 in
the early 1990s to fewer than 2,500 today, drug use is not the only crime
Denver police are forced to forgive. Among last year's recruits, four had
been convicted of drunken driving, three of vandalism, two of shoplifting
and one of recklessly firing a BB gun.

A U.S. Marine had been fined $400 and stripped of his rank for a "physical
altercation" while stationed in Italy. A Columbine High School graduate had
been arrested for "hitting a girl" and was given a six-month deferred judgment.

Many police management experts believe that recruits who have smoked pot
can just as easily turn out to be more effective officers -- kinder,
gentler, savvier -- or at least less likely to violate a drug suspect's
civil rights. Experimentation is never encouraged, but an otherwise
talented applicant with a history of drug use often gets the nod over a
mediocre candidate, even one who has never broken the law.

"What you really want is somebody who represents the norms of the
community," said Tony Narr, director of management education at the
Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum.

"I am not condoning drug use, nor am I suggesting that a drug user might
make a better cop," he added. "But if everyone you looked at was so squeaky
clean that they had never bent a rule or done anything questionable, that
person probably wouldn't be typical of middle-of-the-road America and
probably wouldn't make the best officer."