WAR ON DRUGS CAN'T HELP BUT RUN AMOK

Another black man has fallen victim to the war on drugs. He was Patrick
Dorismond, 26, father of two and an off-duty security guard who was trying
to hail a cab outside a midtown Manhattan bar last week.

Dorismond and a co-worker, Kevin Kaiser, were approached by an undercover
police officer who wanted to buy marijuana. Kaiser has told the media that
Dorismond brushed him off. Angry words were exchanged, a scuffle ensued,
and the undercover detective, Anderson Moran, spoke the code words calling
for backup.

Detective Anthony Vasquez appeared with his gun drawn. Kaiser yelled, "Get
the gun!" During the scuffle, the gun went off, mortally wounding
Dorismond. In the police version of events, Dorismond threw the first
punch. Kaiser says Vasquez threw the first punch at Dorismond. A senior
police investigator has told the New York Times that several witnesses have
corroborated Kaiser's version.

Before the body had grown cold, the police commissioner, Howard Safir, had
released Dorismond's juvenile and adult record and branded him an
aggressor. Dorismond's record, unfortunately for Safir and his principal
defender, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, hardly bespeaks a violent criminal.
According to a New York Post report, which cited records and sources,
Dorismond was arrested at 15, the charge was dropped and sealed; he pleaded
guilty to disorderly conduct twice as an adult, and there was an arrest,
allegedly for a small amount of marijuana, which was expunged from his
record. Giuliani, however, was busy painting the dead man as someone with
an "extensive record," that included robbery, and said he had a "propensity
for violence."

The attempted drug buy that led to Dorismond's death was part of Giuliani's
latest scheme to reduce the rising homicide rate in the city by going after
low-level drug dealers. The plan, named Operation Condor, went into effect
Jan. 17, and according to police, it has resulted in a stunning 21,445
arrests, most for misdemeanors. It is costing $24 million in police
overtime, as Safir fields 500 additional undercover officers every night.

The attempt to portray Dorismond as the bad guy has exploded in Giuliani's
face, as has his ringing defense of the officers involved, a pattern that
also held in the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo, shot 19 times by four
plainclothes officers while he reached for his wallet, and of Malcolm
Ferguson, killed March 1 during a similar buy-and-bust confrontation.

So far, Operation Condor has resulted in two deaths without putting a dent
in the homicide rate, which is 22.6 percent higher than at this time last
year. It has loosed Gestapo-style tactics on New Yorkers, in which cops set
people up for criminal behavior. Dorismond, who wanted to become a police
officer, was clearly offended by someone thinking he looked like a drug
dealer. Who wouldn't be? He had no way of knowing that Moran was an
undercover cop, and Moran had no way of knowing whether Dorismond was
armed. He could have been killed as well.

"When you have police engaging in these type of tactics, it's almost
inevitable these incidents would occur," said Deborah Small, a lawyer who
directs public policy at the Lindesmith Center, an institute focusing on
drug policies, which is funded by financier George Soros.

Suspects caught up in Operation Condor are all taken to police precincts,
fingerprinted, booked and placed in holding cells, according to Small, all
of which costs money. The vast majority of cases are being dismissed, Small
said.

"People are angry not just because another unarmed man is killed, but the
circumstances seem to be that when a civilian is approached, anything other
than obedience or acquiescence seems to be a license for the cops to do
what they want," Small said. "Given the diversity and backgrounds of people
in New York City that is not a presumption they should operate from at all.
. . . There seems to be this presumption by police that they expect to be
obeyed irrespective of whether they've identified themselves, and anything
other than obedience is perceived as aggressive by them."

So civil liberties have been another casualty of the war on drugs. Although
some people would view Operation Condor's methods as entrapment, the courts
have upheld such police practices, Small said. "How else are you going to
find out if people have drugs, if not by stopping them, searching their
cars, their body cavities," she said. "This is what we've resorted to. We
have this war mentality, and civil liberties are suspended in a war effort."

The Lindesmith Center is advocating the only sensible approach to drug use,
which is to stop treating it as a criminal matter. "You are trying to
legislate what is basically private behavior and that doesn't work in a
free society," Small said. "Most other Western societies have started
realizing that substance abuse is a public health problem and should be
approached that way."

The model Lindesmith is promoting is one of harm reduction. Instead of
locking people up for 10 years, give them help to overcome addiction, job
training, counseling, education and whatever support they need to lead
productive lives. Get rid of paraphernalia laws, so that those who cannot
overcome addiction can purchase needles from their pharmacist and reduce
their risks of getting HIV-AIDS from contaminated needles.

The war on drugs has failed. What we're getting out of it is a record 2
million people in prison, the erosion of basic civil rights, and the
killings of men by undercover cops. We're pouring tens of billions down the
toilet because we can't bring ourselves to understand that substance abuse
is a health problem and to treat it that way. We are paying a terrible
price for being so pigheaded.