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The Drug War's Collateral Damage
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Freedom; Posted on: 2009-01-27 17:08:35 [ Printer friendly / Instant flyer ]
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Drug prohibition militarizes our police, enriches our enemies, undermines our laws, and condemns our sick to suffering. At around 6pm on January 27 of last year, 80-year-old Isaac Singletary
spotted a couple of drug dealers attempting to do business on his front
lawn. It wasn’t the first time. Singletary, described by relatives as
territorial and a bit crotchety, did what he’d done in the past. He
grabbed his gun, and walked out on to his lawn to scare them off.
Problem is, this time the men weren’t drug dealers. They were
undercover Jacksonville, Florida police posing as drug dealers.
They
had come on to Singletary’s property to bait possible drug offenders.
When he brandished his gun, the police shot Singletary four times, once
in the back. He died a short time later. A subsequent investigation by
Florida’s attorney general cleared the officers who shot Singletary of
any wrongdoing.
As many police officers internalize the mentality that they’re fighting
a “war,” police-community relations have soured, and many officers have
adopted the “us or them” mindset typically seen in soldiers. Here’s
former Kansas City and San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara, in a 2006 op-edWall Street Journal: Simply
put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on
"officer safety" and paramilitary training pervades today's policing,
in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn't shoot
until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities
formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays,
police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds,
shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT
teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower
in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to
an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime
and must be heavily armed.
The military’s task is to conquer and annihilate a foreign enemy (as former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it,
it’s “to vaporize, not Mirandize”). The police are charged with
protecting the public order, but without sacrificing the rights of the
citizenry. It’s dangerous to conflate the two. But that seems to be
where we’re headed. Our politicians have dressed our police like
soldiers, trained them in paramilitary tactics, given them military
weapons and armor, and told them they’re fighting a “war.” We shouldn’t
be surprised if and when some police officers take that message to
heart.
Continue...
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News Source: reason magazine
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