POLICE ACTIONS BREED CYNICISM AMONG PUBLIC

The War on Drugs has become a war on police credibility. Millions of
middle- and upper-class Americans laugh at and ignore drug laws, just like
they did Prohibition. Thousands of other Americans -- usually young, poor
and black -- pay with their freedom or their lives.

The cops aren't really to blame. They're just enforcing laws hypocritically
promoted by the likes of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. I ingest
dangerous, mind-altering substances, but mine are legal: alcohol, caffeine,
Big Macs. I don't do them because Al Gore gives them the thumbs up,
however, but because I like them.

If the government suddenly reinstituted Prohibition or banned all-beef
patties, I'd assume "the law is a ass'' and seek illicit sources of ale or
special sauce.

I'd fear getting caught, but I'd have no moral qualms.

Millions of productive, rational adults feel the same way about marijuana
or cocaine. Who am I to say a reefer or two on weekends is more dangerous
than drinking a six-pack, driving fast or voting Republican?

Almost every citizen can agree on laws against fraud, theft, assault,
murder or driving while looped. But when millions of citizens believe a law
is idiotic, it is.

To enforce laws so widely derided, cops -- all over the country --
routinely cross the line from public service to public nuisance.

Every time police detain a young black guy for being young and black, every
time 100 cars are stopped and searched to find one joint, every time
so-called suspicious property is seized just because -- under our bizarre
drug laws -- it can be, cynicism grows and respect for law enforcement
crumbles, said David Harris, professor of law at the University of Toledo.

Harris wrote the widely quoted study "Driving While Black,'' which
documents the practice of cops stopping drivers based on race.

"A large part of what is going on with these stops is an effort to
interdict and find drugs,'' Harris said.

The phenomenon is based on the false notion that a greater percentage of
blacks do illegal drugs, Harris said.

Yet a cop looking to rack up some quick arrests has a rational basis for
concentrating on low-income areas, he said.

"If I can drive down to an open-air drug market and make 10 arrests, I'm
more likely to do that than in some middle-class neighborhood where drug
use is going on behind closed doors, where it's more difficult to root out.

"What's driving all of this is what's driving policing in general. How does
an officer get ahead? By making arrests. Career advancement and financial
rewards depend on this kind of activity.''

Although whites make up 81 percent of the population in Franklin County,
they accounted for just half of the traffic charges filed in 1997,
according to numbers obtained by Harris.

A Dispatch analysis of Columbus police crime reports shows that blacks
comprised nearly 78 percent of those charged with drug possession or sales
from 1993 through 1998.

But Columbus police seem no better or worse than police in any other city.
The Justice Department's federal lawsuit is especially ludicrous in light
of the abuses perpetrated by federal law-enforcement officers.

Harris also notes and criticizes such practices as asset forfeiture.

"They take the stuff, and they don't have to get a conviction or even make
an arrest, for God's sake,'' he said.

The abuses have brought together such strange bedfellows as the American
Civil Liberties Union and conservative Constitution-thumpers, who are
decrying out-of-control law enforcement.

"The fact that the police are taking it from all sides would make anyone
defensive,'' Harris said.

He has tried to persuade cops that ending the drug war, or at least the
worst aspects of it, will help them as much as anyone.

"Police hold the key to this problem in so many ways,'' he said. "They have
a lot to gain and a lot to lose in this issue.

"Are there bad guys out there who need to be in jail? You bet. And we
depend on police, God bless 'em, to get those bad guys off the street and
put them in jail,'' Harris said.

"We've got to stop this wave of cynicism and disrespect.

"But if we ignore this problem the disrespect will keep growing.''