CASUALTIES OF THE DRUG WAR

Bryan Ray Kazarian,the Orange County deputy district attorney charged as a
key player in a large-scale drug ring this week, is legally considered
innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and he may well be
innocent. The very fact that he has been arrested on such serious charges,
however, is sad almost beyond saying. However true it may be that most
people in law enforcement and the justice system are honest, decent and
law-abiding, a case like this inevitably undermines the credibility of law
enforcement at all levels.

Whatever the ultimate disposition of Mr. Kazarian's case, it is important to
remember that the kind of corruption alleged in this case is not an isolated
example. One of the side effects of the government's War on Drugs is an
increased level of police and law enforcement corruption.

The amount of money involved in illicit dealing of a broad range of drugs is
so enormous - and will continue to be so enormous as long as Americans
insist on dealing with drugs through prohibition - that some law enforcement
officials will succumb to the temptation to walk on the illicit side.

The point was well made by Joseph McNamara, formerly police chief in San
Jose and now a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, who spoke
of "a wave of scandals over the past five to 10 years that are quite
different than anything we've seen historically." (We found his speech at
http://drcnet.org/cops/macnamara.html)

He discussed police misconduct in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Denver,
Atlanta and New Orleans and sadly concluded that "it's not just the lower
ranking narcs -it goes up to the top. The police chief of Detroit, former
chief, is in prison for stealing drug funds. Police chiefs in little New
England towns stole drugs from their lockers. All kinds of sheriffs
throughout the country have been convicted of actually dealing in drugs."

Former police chief McNamara thins it's not just the money. "When we allowed
our politicians to push cops into a war they'll never win, they can't win,
and let them begin to think of themselves as soldiers, the mentality comes
that anything goes ... We can trace back this changing police behavior to a
kind of malaise, in which good cops and bad cops alike have been conditioned
to think they can do whatever they want, because after all, this is a
problem that can only be solved by a war."

As long as America insists confronting the subtle problems surrounding drugs
with the blunt instrument of the criminal law and the stirring rhetoric of
war, citizens can expect alarming levels of police corruption. Perhaps that
is a price some are willing to pay.

We believe it's too high.