THE DRUG WAR'S DAILY GRIND

One Month in One Police District in Washington, DC

Washington, DC's 4th Police District lies in the shadows of federal
Washington, beginning about one mile north of the White House on the
edge of downtown and cutting a four-mile long swath through northwest
Washington between Rock Creek Park on the west and North Capitol
Street on the east. Home to more than 100,000 of the District's
residents, the 4th Police District encompasses block after endless
block of tightly packed row houses and a pair of commercial corridors
- - 14th Street NW and Georgia Avenue NW - that are only now beginning
to rise up from the ravages of the urban riots that swept the area in
1968. One of the more racially integrated sections of the city, the
4th Police District is home to an ever-increasing Hispanic population,
as well as a black working class majority, a significant
Vietnamese-American population, and a number of mostly young whites
adventurous enough to live on the "wrong side" of 16th Street NW, the
city's de facto dividing line between Upper Caucasia and Calcutta on
the Potomac.

It is also a favorite police stomping ground in the war on drugs.

Along with sections of predominantly black southeast and northeast
Washington, the 14th St. corridor has for the past thirty years been
the scene of endless street arrests, special police operations, and
drives against open air drug markets.

While crime in the 4th district and the city as a whole dropped from
abysmal levels through most of the 1990s, it is on the increase again.

But a sort of inertia seems to have set in with police and
prosecutors. Day after day, month after month, year after year, the
police respond with a steady drumbeat of drug arrests and prosecutors
run them through the system as if on auto-pilot.

The month between June 15 and July 15 this year was nothing special,
and that is what makes arrest and prosecution figures for the 4th
District that month interesting. The "United States Attorney's Office
Papered Community Prosecution" report is a snapshot of police and
prosecution practices in a major US city in the midst of the
never-ending war on drugs. (In Washington, DC, all prosecutions are
handled through the US Attorney's office, which decides if cases will
be charged under city law or under federal law.)

Prosecutors in the 4th police district filed 196 criminal charges
between June 15 and July 15, 40 for crimes of violence and 32 for
property crimes. The majority of the violent crimes were simple
assault (23), followed by assault with a deadly weapon (9), and
threatening bodily harm (4). Prosecutors also charged two persons with
armed robbery, one with carjacking while armed, and one with felony
murder.

Leading property crimes were unlawful entry (14), destruction of
property (7), and burglary (2), along with a smattering of fraud,
forgery, and arson charges.

Other offenses charged during the period included prostitution (14),
weapons offenses (9), and drunk driving (9).

But a full 36% of all charges filed -- 72, equal to the number of
violent and property crimes combined -- were for drug law violations.
Leading the way was cocaine possession (20 charges), followed by
marijuana possession (15), heroin possession (9), possession of drug
paraphernalia (8), drug distribution (7), violation of a drug free
zone (4), PCP possession (2), and marijuana distribution (2). By
themselves, marijuana prosecutions constituted 9% of all prosecutions
that month in a police district that averages a rape every two weeks,
a murder every two weeks, two burglaries a day and two assaults a day,
and a hundred stolen cars each month, according to Metropolitan Police
records.

"It's nothing unusual, is it?" said Keith Stroup, executive director
of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
(http://www.norml.org). "You can take a snapshot at any time in any
state and you'll see we're wasting an enormous amount of resources and
ruining a large number of lives, and almost all of these people are
nonviolent offenders," he told DRCNet. "It seems that the public
debate on marijuana has advanced far enough to acknowledge the
downside of enforcement, but no one has the courage to do anything
about it."

Fourth Police District resident and journalist-photographer Jeremy
Bigwood, who has worked for years on drug reform issues in Latin
America, was more blunt. "This sucks," he told DRCNet. "It's a waste
of my money, it's a waste of police time, it's a complete waste when
we have serious issues to deal with in this city. Marijuana smokers
should not be getting arrested. Maybe if someone is smoking in the
street, you should give them a citation, but not an arrest. That's just silly."

But it's business as usual in the retail drug war in the nation's
capital, or more precisely, it's business as usual in the war on drug
users.

Only seven arrests out of 72 were for distribution of hard drugs.