`No jeopardy' tactics could wipe out drug dealing profits

By Porcher L. Taylor

Last year retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's national drug
policy director, chillingly reported that the ``menace of illegal drugs has
killed 100,000 people and cost taxpayers $300 billion in health and crime
costs during the past decade.''

In light of such stark statistics, there is a growing uneasiness and tacit
admission in this country that we have lost the ``war on drugs.''

Indeed, violent crime and drug trafficking are inseparable. Unfortunately,
fearless drug lords are simply replaceable characters like widgets. Arrest,
prosecute and imprison 50 of them, and within weeks eager, readytokill new
recruits replace them in this quick and astronomically highprofit
generating business.

According to various media reports, there are more than 400,000 drug law
violators behind bars. Hence, the assembly line of aspiring drug barons
seems to be inexhaustible. Incarceration alone cannot bring down the drug
cartels. Moreover, current drug interdiction methods have yet to sizably
dent the cocaine and growing heroin supply pipelines.

The demand side of the drug trafficking equation is likewise heavily skewed
in favor of the drug cartels. Last year, for example, conservative columnist
William Buckley wrote that the 10 millionth American has been arrested on
drug charges. Short of a fundamental cultural change in attitudes about
casual drug use, demand will not come down. In sum, unless runaway profits
or demand can be substantially reduced, the drug menace will continue to
hang like a life threatening Sword of Damocles over America.

But a hidden ``silver bullet'' might just hold out the promise of winning
the war on drugs.'' I am proposing a novel drug interdiction system that
might decimate drug profits in a short period. It's called ``no jeopardy''
searches and seizures. This idea calls for a shortterm shift in the
enforcement of federal drug laws.

Under this idea, Congress would suspend the enforcement of drug laws for one
year but authorize the confiscation of drug contraband based upon the
current constitutional probable cause standard under the Fourth Amendment.
Using a special search warrant and procedure, elite federal strike teams
would use this economic weapon to attack drug profits directly by seizing
and destroying large drug shipments and caches, but without arrests and
prosecutions. This procedure would be in a similar vein to the innovative
police tactics used by Elliot Ness and the ``Untouchables'' to help smash Al
Capone's illegal bootlegging kingdom in Chicago seven decades ago.

Here's how ``no jeopardy'' would work. Upon obtaining a property search
warrant, the FBI/DEA strike team would approach a suspected drug lab a
warehouse, for example. Using a megaphone some distance from the warehouse,
the team would make the ``no jeopardy search and seizure'' announcement,
telling the occupants that they will not be arrested or prosecuted.
Furthermore, the team would encourage the suspects to either open the door
or flee without police pursuit.

If, after a reasonable period of time passes and the suspects do not
respond, the police could retreat to a safe distance and wait it out. On the
other hand, if the occupants either open the door or flee, the police would
then carefully conduct the search and seize only drug contraband. A police
chemist with the team would quickly determine if any given substance was
illegal. Shortly thereafter, at a special holding facility, the drugs would
be destroyed.

As it would be unlikely that lawabiding citizens would flee their homes in
the face of a peaceable ``no jeopardy'' announcement, the police would not
search the wrong home. Other advantages of ``no jeopardy'' over the current
system would be that many police lives would be saved, no further burden on
a criminal justice system nearing total collapse and the reduction of drug
profits and drugrelated crime. In addition, with more police freed to
conduct searches, drug supply would substantially diminish.

At no additional cost to taxpayers, this system might just break the
economic back of the drug cartels.

Porcher L. Taylor is a lawyer and an adjunct professor of law and leadership
at the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies. This
article was distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.