MELTON WANTS TO BE COP AND JUDGE TOO

Narcotics Head Seems to Long for Police State.

Frank Melton, the cocky former TV executive who is now running
Mississippi's narcotics agency, seems to pride himself on ignoring the law
when it gets in the way of what he thinks is best.

Melton, in recent interviews with the Associated Press, has gone out of his
way to say that he's writing the rules as he goes, due process and the
judicial branch be damned.

Melton got in hot water soon after his appointment for illegally conducting
roadblocks near the Capitol. Rather than be chastened by the experience, he
has bragged about the unorthodox methods he has used, taking pride in
willfully overstepping the bounds of his authority.

Under Melton's so-called "Plan B," for instance, he gives young drug users
a chance to straighten out their lives rather than face drug charges.
Melton says he tells the teenagers that if they don't finish high school
and go on to college, he will pull their cases out of the files and
prosecute them.

In the case of suspected operators of methamphetamine labs, Melton said he
bans them from living in their former neighborhoods, even while out on bail
awaiting trial.

Melton's intentions may be good. His tough-love approach with young drug
users is consistent with the way he has personally turned street kids in
the Jackson area away from a life of drugs and crime. And meth labs,
because of the chemically unstable nature of their enterprise, can pose a
public hazard to those who innocently live nearby.

Nevertheless, these are the calls for the courts to make, not law
enforcement agencies.

Our system of government is intentionally designed with checks and balances
to keep any one branch from overreaching.

Melton's job is to catch the bad guys within the guidelines of state law
and the U.S. Constitution. It's someone else's to decide what happens to
them after they're caught.

Melton wants to play cop and judge both. He considers the U.S. Supreme
Court ban on drug-searching roadblocks to be an impediment to his agency.
He says he could stop a lot more of the trafficking in illegal narcotics if
his agents could randomly stop and check vehicles out.

Making it easier for narcotics officers to do their job, however, is not
worth the sacrifice in civil liberties.

If stopping drug-trafficking was the overriding objective of public policy,
everyone's privacy could be compromised. Our homes could be subject to
being searched on a whim. Our medical histories could be open to lawmen's
snooping. We could be forced to take drug tests whenever the government
said so.

We could make this country virtually drug-free, provided we were willing to
subject ourselves to living in a police state. In America, though, personal
freedoms take precedence over efficient policing.