THEY ALWAYS GET THEIR CUT

To find the Mounties laundering drug money across international borders is
like finding the high school valedictorian slumped in the gutter drinking
rotgut from a paper bag. What happened to the red-clad heroes celebrated in
story and song because "They always get their man"? Should we change that
to "They always get their cut"?

At first glimpse, the drug money operation has a kind of French Connection
feel: Police officers who have torn loose of any supervision, ignoring the
law, deceiving our allies, concealing things from cabinet, disregarding
court orders, making a profit laundering drug money internationally.

But in the end, it is Jacques Clouseau who predominates. Normally, when
vice squad members slip over the line, it is for personal, illicit gain.
They break the law and deceive their superiors in order to enrich
themselves and sometimes their friends as well. In this case, whatever laws
may have been bent, the entire operation was conducted without a hint of
personal corruption. The RCMP set out to launder drug money as a means to
the end of catching big-time dealers, and then through bureaucratic inertia
wound up laundering the money as an end in itself. None of the proceeds
were pocketed. Still, in a larger sense, this sorry episode perfectly
illustrates the corruption inherent in the War on Drugs.

All undercover work is perilous, not just in the immediately obvious sense
that the operative might be discovered and killed. Too often the reverse
happens: The cover becomes the reality, and those who began by pretending
to sell or use drugs end up doing so for real.

It is no accident that this kind of police work tends to cluster around
victimless crimes. The normal job of the police is to protect honest
co-operators from those who use force and fraud. When it comes to vice, the
exact opposite is true.

Neo-Puritans may claim that drug use, or prostitution, is not "victimless,"
that all participants, and even their families, are "victims." That may be
true in the sense that neither prostitute nor client should engage in that
transaction. But from a philosophical point of view, to call them "victims"
when their actions are voluntary is to use the Leninist definition of
freedom: The right to do what we say you should, rather than what you
believe you should. Whatever one may say about drug use, no one's rights
have been violated by it, neither their abstract nor their legal ones.

For some, including this editorial board, that is reason enough to repeal
vice crime laws. For others, perhaps the growing evidence of
insurmountable, practical problems will persuade. Enforcing laws against
victimless crimes is very difficult because there is no aggrieved party. In
a murder, others must press for action on behalf of the victim. But in most
normal crimes there is an aggrieved party whose rights have been violated
and who wants redress. When it comes to drugs, or prostitution or gambling,
the buyer and seller are usually equally unwilling to complain to or assist
the police. "All right! I scored!" is the junkie's normal reaction, not
"Aaaargh, I've been cocained!"

The police, therefore, are compelled to enter into these transactions,
posing as co-operators in order to defeat co-operative action. That is the
opposite of their normal task of pursuing, on behalf of decent folks, those
who use unco-operative means. Policemen do not imitate rapists to fight
rape, nor burglars to fight burglary. But they regularly do, and must,
imitate prostitutes or their clients to fight prostitution, and dealers or
buyers to fight drugs. That not only puts individual officers at risk, it
turns the police into enemies of the populace. The cop on the beat is
hoping you won't break the law. The cop undercover is hoping you will. The
result is a demoralizing loss of the ability to fight any kind of crime,
and of citizens' trust.

In this particular caper, Jacques Clouseau seems to have triumphed over the
French Connection, in the sense that there was no individual corruption and
no sinister purpose involved, only monumental stupidity. But there is a
missing person: Dudley Do-Right. And as one attempts to imagine him
laundering Columbian cocaine money, it is hard to avoid the idea that the
war on drugs is helping to ruin the image, and the reality, of our police
forces.

No one can say what we've gained from the War on Drugs, but if the cost is
the ruin of the Mounties, it's too high a price.

Copyright 1998 The Ottawa Citizen

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski