BATTLEFIELD CONVERSIONS

Like any war, the War on Drugs has its good soldiers. They include eager
volunteers, from the drug czars at the top of the command chain to the beat
cops, Drug Enforcement Administration and Customs Service agents out in the
field. The war also has reluctant conscripts, such as state and federal
judges compelled by mandatory minimum sentencing rules to enforce laws that
many see as counterproductive and unjust.

Increasingly, the War on Drugs also has what its partisans might consider
traitors -- former soldiers who have become convinced that U.S. drug policy
is ineffective, immoral, or some combination of the two. Michael W. Lynch
recently spoke with three such figures.

The Cop: Joseph D. McNamara

McNamara started out as a grunt in America's battle against drugs, as a
beat cop in Harlem. In 1969, he spent a year as a criminal justice fellow
at Harvard Law School. Eventually, he ended up earning a Ph.D. in public
administration. "I wrote my dissertation in 1973 and predicted the
escalation and failure of the drug war -- and the vast corruption and
violence that would follow," recalls McNamara. "I never published it
because I wanted a police career and not an academic career."

That's exactly what he got. He served as chief of police in Kansas City
from 1973 to 1976. He then moved on to become the top cop in San Jose,
California, a post he held until he retired in 1991. He currently hangs his
hat at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where he conducts seminars on
the War on Drugs for law enforcement officials.

ML: How did you get involved in what is now called the War on Drugs?

McNamara: I got involved as a foot patrolman in Harlem way back in 1957. A
few years later the heroin epidemic swept through Harlem and was
devastating. And so the police did what the police do: We arrested everyone
in sight. It soon became apparent that it wasn't reducing drug use or drug
selling. My eyes were really opened one day when my partner and I arrested
a heroin addict. The addicts gathered on the top floor landings of
buildings, which we referred to as shooting galleries. We used to routinely
bust them for possession of hypodermic needles and also for the big crime
of having cookers with residues of heroin.

One day an addict asked if we could give him a break. He said, "I'll give
you a pusher if you let me go." We followed him down Lenox Avenue in
uniform and in a marked police car. As he talked to one man after another,
it struck me how little impact the police had on the drug problem. If we
hadn't known what he was talking about, we would've thought they were just
two men talking sports or the weather or whatever.

ML: Is this why police rely on informants and sting operations?

McNamara: Since the police can't do their job the way they do it with other
crimes, they resort to informants and to illegal searches. This is a major
problem underlying police integrity throughout the United States.

Last year, state and local police made somewhere around 1.4 million drug
arrests. Almost none of those arrests had search warrants. Sometimes the
guy says, "Sure, officer, go ahead and open the trunk of my car. I have a
kilo of cocaine back there but I don't want you to think I don't cooperate
with the local police." Or the suspect conveniently leaves the dope on the
desk or throws it at the feet of the police officer as he approaches. But
often nothing like that happens.

The fact is that sometimes the officer reaches inside the suspect's pocket
for the drugs and testifies that the suspect "dropped" it as the officer
approached. It's so common that it's called "dropsy testimony." The lying
is called "white perjury." Otherwise honest cops think it's legitimate to
commit these illegal searches and to perjure themselves because they are
fighting an evil. In New York it's called "testilying," and in Los Angeles
it's called joining the "Liar's Club." It has led some people to say
L.A.P.D. stands for Los Angeles Perjury Department. It has undermined one
of the most precious cornerstones of the whole criminal justice process:
the integrity of the police officer on the witness stand.

ML: What role do institutional interests play in the drug war?

McNamara: One year when I was police chief in San Jose, the city manager
sent me a budget that contained no money for equipment. I politely told him
that when you have a police department, you have to buy police cars,
uniforms, and other equipment for the cops. He laughed, waved his hand, and
said, "Last year you guys seized $4 million. I expect you to do even better
this year. In fact, you will be evaluated on that and you can use that
money for equipment." So law enforcement becomes a revenue-raising agency
and that takes, in too many cases, precedence over law enforcement.

ML: From the perspective of the working police officer, how has the War on
Drugs changed over the years?

McNamara: It has become the priority of police agencies. It's bizarre. We
make 700,000 arrests for marijuana a year. The public is not terrified of
marijuana. People are terrified of molesters, school shootings, and people
stalking women and children. The police are not putting the resources into
those crimes where they could be effective if they gave them top priority.

ML: What role does race play in the War on Drugs?

McNamara: The drug war is an assault on the African-American community. Any
police chief that used the tactics used in the inner city against
minorities in a white middle-class neighborhood would be fired within a
couple of weeks.

It was a very radical change in public policy for the federal government to
criminalize drugs in the early 20th century. Congress was reluctant to pass
it because you had a very small federal government in 1914 and to interfere
with the state police powers was a big deal. They couldn't get this
legislation passed until they played the race card: They introduced letters
and testimony that blacks were murdering white families; the police in the
South were having trouble with "Negroes" because of these drugs; there were
white women in "yellow" opium dens. The same prejudice popped up in 1937
when they outlawed marijuana.

If anyone tried to pass laws on those same bases today, they'd be condemned.