“This is the way I see it from the ground level, and I’m tired of arresting people over and over again.”
The war on drugs has been raging for decades now in our country. As a result, the United States now imprisons more of its own citizens than any other country by far. That factoid would be all fine and good if the “good guys” were actually winning the Great Drug War – but I don’t see any evidence of a victory on the horizon. Do you?
Despite what some refer to as the “Prison Industrial Complex” running as efficiently as ever with its catch and release – wash, rinse, and repeat – modus operandi, drug sales on the black market are as strong as ever. Time and time again, drug charges for drug dealers get low bonds and reduced sentences within legal systems all across the nation – especially in the most populous cities. Regardless of that, anyone with eyes can see how the drug epidemic has infiltrated not only the worst urban ghettoes, but also the richest suburban WASP nests. If we’re going to call it a war, then the drugs are winning, and it’s not even close.
I don’t share these opinions because I want to be the “cop with a heart of gold” or the “liberal cop that gets it.” If you’ve read me long enough, you should have a pretty good idea of the center-right stance I take on most issues. This is the way I see it from the ground level, and I’m tired of arresting people over and over again. Essentially, police are playing the role of the IRS for illicit drug trade. Every now and then we tax dealers with an arrest, bond amount, and legal fees – but we don’t really make any progress in the overall scheme of things.
In my experience with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in Atlanta, these people would rather prosecute crack users than crack dealers even when the case presented by the investigator is air-tight. This is a lesson you learn when you’re paid to hide in the bushes with binoculars, send in confidential informants to buy crack, and call in the boys to shut down the trap house once the deal goes down. When you run a criminal history and you’re not shocked that the arrestee in your recent case was still allowed to be working a street corner or conducting business as usual out of a trap house despite having over ten drug convictions, you realize the system is lacking in one way or another.
Why the weak stance on behalf of the state against those doing the most damage to society? In all honesty, I will never know. It just seems like the soldiers on the front line – the police – are the only ones still taking the drug problem seriously. Many areas throughout the country are already treating drug charges lightly regardless of their felony status, and it has police officers everywhere asking, “why risk my life making buys and kicking doors when the perp will walk and be back in business in a week?” For many of us with families and much to lose, the nectar doesn’t seem to be worth the squeeze.
When you think about it, it’s funny how we decide what drugs are ok and which ones aren’t in the first place. My ten-year old doesn’t even like me having a beer every now and then. “Beer is a drug too, daddy,” he tells me. What can I even say in response to that? There was a time when I’d be thrown in jail for having that pint of Guinness or that Jack & Ginger. She’s right, my beer is a drug – and my lame retort of, “So is caffeine, baby,” as I take a sip in between flipping burgers on the grill during my off day, isn’t the best way to make sense of it for her. Like anyone else, I’m a work in progress, and I’m looking for better ways to teach my kids the complexities of life.
Alcohol prohibition came and went, and The Mafia made huge gains during that time. Meanwhile, we’re now living through the possible end of the prohibition era of marijuana. Since I’m at the point in life where I don’t care whether people smoke a joint, have a beer, smoke a tobacco rolled cigarette or cigar, or eat a mushroom to figure out the meaning of life, I guess the only way to characterize myself is by saying that I’m more of a Libertarian than anything else. If people want to smoke weed, then so be it. Let’s choke out the black market and create some jobs in the process.
So many places around the country are already treating possession of marijuana as a citable offense with no trip to a jail cell in silver bracelets – and that’s in cases where the drug hasn’t already been decriminalized or legalized for adult recreational use altogether. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times. When I pull your car over and smell weed, you’ll get a mere ticket for being in possession of it so long as it’s under an ounce, packaged for personal use, and you’re honest about it after I give you my spiel about how the fact that you smoke weed doesn’t make you a criminal, but that we’re both on camera, and it’s still against the law in the state of Georgia in 2017; implying that I’m legally obligated to do something.
According to the Brookings Institute, nearly one-fifth of all Americans now reside in states where marijuana has been legalized for adult use. Before I even saw that statistic, as a police officer in the Deep South, my mentality was that I’m not wasting my time driving pot-smokers to jail when people are getting robbed, burglarized, beaten, stabbed, shot, and raped on my beat. It’s enough of a waste of time as it is to have to put that few grams of weed into property for destruction when I’d save everyone the time and resources by grinding it into the pavement with my boot instead. Does this not accomplish the same goal at the end of the day?
In a perfect world, the body camera that I am now forced to wear would prove that the “property for destruction” practice is no longer necessary. When I can prove that I’m not appropriating confiscated weed for my own personal use or profit with a camera worn on my body at all times, then why am I out there going through the unnecessary motions of creating a middleman whose job is to come to work, sign a bunch of paperwork that I’ve already spent time away from dealing with real police work to file, open a safe, retrieve an evidence bag containing some weed wrapped inside of a second evidence bag, incinerate said weed, and then file their own report on everything that they did? This insanity would never fly in the private sector because it is an obvious waste of resources, time, energy, the bottom line, and a spit in the face of common sense – yet we still do it.
I hope that one day body cams will be utilized as a way to make the job easier for good and honest cops, rather than to serve as a defensive political tool to get cops off the hook for every evil the media has erroneously attributed to us all in the name of a few bad apples who have nothing to do with the vast majority of cops working their beats ethically and to a high standard. I don’t want anyone’s pot. I tried it a few times both in high school and college. It made me either paranoid or lazy. As far as money goes, I’ve passed polygraphs and voice-stress analyzer lie detector tests just to land this career. If I thought having the ability to sell confiscated drugs of any kind back out onto the market was a job perk, then I’m sure my heart rate, breathing patterns, or sweaty palms would have thrown my polygrapher the red flag when he asked me those kinds of questions in the first place.
Author’s Note: This piece was originally supposed to be about the heroin epidemic sweeping the nation and one Ohio Sheriff’s bold stance that he would not be purchasing Narcan to save the lives of people overdosing on ‘H”. This article just took on a mind of its own. Look for my next one on two recent Narcan stories and what we are doing right and wrong as police officers in the field. Stay tuned…
