Crime & Violence

I'm now down in the Lower Rio Grande Valley on the border between the US and Mexico. I've been staying in a hotel on the US side in McAllen, Texas, because, somewhat surprisingly, a hotel with an internet connection in the room is cheaper on this side. But I've been crossing the river every day to scout out Reynosa, the city of about half a million, on the other side, and to talk to informed observers, as well as common folks, there, about the recent wave of drug prohibtion-related violence and what can or should be done to reduce the toll. One thing I'm finding is that people are very nervous, whether its the man in the street, human rights observers, businessmen, or even the US enforcers on the north side of the river. The human rights advocate I spoke with didn't want his picture taken ("there are several narco families on my block"), the Reynosa businessmen absolutely refuse to say anything on the record (although they complain bitterly of local corruption), people on the street look around nervously when I ask about the drug trade and the violence, and when I tried to take photos of the border crossing here, ICE agents ran up and demanded I stop. While the violence here has subsided from the violent spasms of a few weeks ago, it continues, with my human rights observer reporting that another narco killing had occurred in the city Sunday night. That makes 14 so far this year in Reynosa, out of 23 total homicides. I'll be getting into some more of the numbers in a feature article on the situation here that will appear on Friday. The poverty in Reynosa is striking. There are guys trying to sell calendars on the streets, there are guys quite eager to show me the way to "Boys Town," and there are other guys quite eager to peddle whatever drug I desire. I haven't taken them up on that, though. Meanwhile, my schedule in Mexico City next week appears to be filling nicely. I'm set to meet with Congresswoman Elsa Conde, the author of the marijuana decriminalization bill, early in the week, as well as with a bunch of Mexican reform activists. I'll also be talking to various Mexican academic experts and people working with drug users in the city. And I take advantage of being in Mexico. Yesterday, I stuck my head in the door of one of the numerous dental clinics just across from the bridge in Reynosa that cater mainly to American visitors. Before I knew it, I was in the chair and getting that crown I had long needed but could never afford. It cost $125, no appointment necessary, in and out quickly, and now I can drink cold drinks again. I'll be trying to talk to as many people as possible here between now and Friday, so stay tuned.

As the calendar flips over to a new year, law enforcement and the mass media have been trumpeting an increase in law enforcement line of duty deaths, which will doubtless be used to seek more funding for more, better-armed cops. Last year, 187 law enforcement personnel died in the line of duty, up from 145 the year before. Of those, nearly half (82) died in traffic accidents, while another 61 were shot and killed (including at least two accidentally shot by fellow officers). Another seven armed forces law enforcement personnel died in bomb attacks in Iraq, two law enforcement personnel fell to their deaths, at least two died of heart attacks during training exercises, and one died of a wasp sting. The police repeatedly warn that they face grave danger from drug dealers, necessitating the resort to SWAT-style policing on routine drug raids. But according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, the most comprehensive listing of police fatalities we know of, a grand total of five police officers died enforcing the drug laws last year: a Tennessee highway patrolman killed when he pulled over some Texas teens with a carload of marijuana; a Toledo, Ohio, detective killed when he attempted to break up a street drug deal; a Dallas cop killed in a confrontation with a suspect in a murder at a drug house; a Puerto Rico cop killed trying to make a drug arrest; and a Rialto, California, cop killed while executing a drug search warrant. Given an estimated 1.8 million drug arrests last year (that figure is actually from 2006; expect it to go slightly for 2007 as it does every year), that comes out to one police officer killed in every 360,000 drug arrests. I'll be writing a feature article this week on the dangers of drug law enforcement. Look for more details on these deaths, as well as an examination of the need for SWAT-style policing on routine drug raids.

A week ago, the Drug Czar's blog announced what it calls "Another Sign of Progress in Colombia." The exciting news was that no journalists were killed in that country this year:

Now, via the Committee to Protect Journalists, comes another sign of progress. The Committee has released their annual report stating that despite a global increase in the number of reporters killed this year, there were no journalists reported killed in Colombia for the first time in more than 15 years.

My initial reaction was that the Drug Czar is setting the bar very low in his desperate quest to bring good news from the front lines of the drug war. Merely celebrating the recent lack of journalist killings in Colombia demonstrates how prevalent that phenomenon generally is, and does not really make me want to walk around Bogota with a press badge.

Then, yesterday, The Washington Post reported that pop musicians in Mexico are being killed right and left by drug cartels. It's a horrible story of murder and corruption that you won't read about at the Drug Czar's blog. As this nightmare in Mexico continues to unfold, the Drug Czar could scarcely look sillier than by boasting about the survival of Colombian journalists. It just shows once again how selective and therefore useless his statements always are.

Hopefully, once the Drug Czar is finished listing people who haven’t been killed by drug war violence, he'll get around to acknowledging how many people are dying everyday.

Prohibition-generated violence tragically took the life of a medical marijuana user's immediate family member. According to AP News, Rex Farrance, a 59-year-old senior editor at PC World magazine, was killed last January by burglars attempting to steal marijuana that his son had grown at their home in Pittsburg, California, for medical use. Charged against three men were filed in the case yesterday. February also saw a prohibition-related murder in a medical marijuana situation, when Colorado activist Ken Gorman, who provided marijuana to patients under that state's MedMj law, was also killed in what appears to have been a similarly-motivated robbery. We need legalization NOW, so people won't get killed anymore over drug money or drugs that can be sold for money, and not just of medical use and not just of marijuana. In the meanwhile, if we can help this problem by making medical marijuana legal while we continue to work for full legalization, that's worth doing too. But all of this needless killing caused by drug prohibition is a real shame.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon told Deutsche Press-Agentur this weekend that America's drug habit is the cause of Mexico's drug prohibition-related violence. In Mexican President Blames US for Drugs War, Calderon said:

"Our problem is the demand for narcotics in the US market, which significantly affects Mexico," the Mexican president said. Calderon stressed that no strategy from the Mexican government against drug cartels will be sufficient unless demand is reduced. "It is evident that as long as there is a market, as long as there is drug consumption in the United States, this problem will persist in Mexico," he said.

Calderon is, of course, absolutely correct on that score. I've often noted that the prohibition-related violence plaguing our southern neighbor--there have been 1,046 killed in Mexico's drug wars so far this year--is Mexico paying the price for our war on the drugs we love to consume. Where he is wrong is his implicit assumption that the US government can meaningfully reduce demand and that the war on drugs could somehow succeed if--gosh darnit!--we Americans only tried harder. We spend about $40 billion and arrest nearly 2 million people a year in the drug war, and the drug use numbers fluctuate at the margins. The US drug market will never go away. If Calderon wants to see an end to the prohibition-related violence in Mexico, he would be much better off calling for the regulation and normalization of the illicit drug business than waiting for Americans to quit using drugs. The only thing less likely than the US government ending drug prohibition is that Americans are going to change their ways.

Mark Kleiman is one of a relatively small number of US academics who thinks and writes about drug policy. I don't always agree with him—especially his proposals for licensing drug users, higher alcohol taxes, and "coerced abstinence"—but his work is thoughtful, and, after listening to what passes for drug policy discourse among the political class, a veritable breath of fresh air. Kleiman is at it again this week, with a lengthy article, "Dopey, Boozy, Smoky—And Stupid," in the magazine The American Interest. After noting that 35 years into the war on drugs, the country still has a massive drug problem, as well as a massive police and prison apparatus aimed at drug users and sellers, Kleiman observes that no policy is going to eradicate drug use and what is needed is "radical reform." But real reform requires a better understanding of drugs and drug use, and that is where reality confronts mythology. As Kleiman notes, "most drug use is harmless," but drug abuse is not. That's quite different from "just say no." Similarly, he goes up against another drug policy mantra, this one popular with some reformers, that "drug abuse is a chronic, relapsing condition." That is true for only a minority of a minority of drug users, he correctly notes. After discussing some of the basics, Kleiman gets to the fun and thought-provoking part of his article—general policy recommendations:

These facts having now been set out, five principles might reasonably guide our policy choices. First, the overarching goal of policy should be to minimize the damage done to drug users and to others from the risks of the drugs themselves (toxicity, intoxicated behavior and addiction) and from control measures and efforts to evade them. That implies a second principle: No harm, no foul. Mere use of an abusable drug does not constitute a problem demanding public intervention. “Drug users” are not the enemy, and a achieving a “drug-free society” is not only impossible but unnecessary to achieve the purposes for which the drug laws were enacted. Third, one size does not fit all: Drugs, users, markets and dealers all differ, and policies need to be as differentiated as the situations they address. Fourth, all drug control policies, including enforcement, should be subjected to cost-benefit tests: We should act only when we can do more good than harm, not merely to express our righteousness. Since lawbreakers and their families are human beings, their suffering counts, too: Arrests and prison terms are costs, not benefits, of policy. Policymakers should learn from their mistakes and abandon unsuccessful efforts, which means that organizational learning must be built into organizational design. In drug policy as in most other policy arenas, feedback is the breakfast of champions. Fifth, in discussing programmatic innovations we should focus on programs that can be scaled up sufficiently to put a substantial dent in major problems. With drug abusers numbered in the millions, programs that affect only thousands are barely worth thinking about unless they show growth potential.

Hmmm, sounds pretty reasonable. Now, here is where Kleiman gets creative. Below are his general policy recommendations. I will leave the comments for others, but there is plenty to chew on here:

At the end of a Michigan murder case in which the victim was a marijuana dealer gunned down during a home invasion robbery, the judge railed against the "urban myth" that marijuana is harmless. Here is some of what Muskegon County 14th Circuit Judge Timothy Hicks had to say (read the article about the trial's conclusion here):

Before sentencing Weissert [the convicted murderer], Hicks addressed what he called a series of "urban myths." "Urban myth number one" is that "drug use is a victimless crime," Hicks said from the bench. "Here we have orphaned children, devastated families." Myth number two: " 'It's only marijuana,' " Hicks said. "Marijuana is as evil as the rest of this stuff. ... Marijuana indirectly caused all the carnage." The third myth is that drugs are only a "downtown" problem. "It's a problem everywhere -- in the suburbs, in rural areas," the judge said. And fourth: "The urban myth that you can stay in control of this." Although Sibson never intended it, his drug dealing "exposed his family to danger," Hicks said.

Let's take these one by one. Judge Hicks claims that this murder disproves the notion that "drug use is a victimless crime." Of course, it does nothing of the sort. The murder had nothing to do with drug use, but was the result of an attempted armed robbery, plain and simple. The robbers went after the marijuana dealer because there were valuable items they could take. Would the judge have railed against alcohol if someone had been murdered in a liquor store robbery? Next, Judge Hicks derides the notion that marijuana is a soft drug, not as dangerous as other drugs like cocaine, speed, or heroin. Marijuana is "as evil" as those other drugs and "indirectly caused all that carnage." Sorry, judge, pot is not "evil," nor are other drugs. Evilness does not inhere to plants or chemical compounds, but to human behavior. What is evil is breaking into someone's home and killing them because they have something valuable you want. I wonder if the judge would call cold, hard cash "evil" because someone robbed an armored car to steal some. Next, Judge Hicks decries the myth that drugs are only a "downtown" (read: black) problem, saying that "it's a problem everywhere." Well, yes, drug use knows no geographic boundaries, and the problems associated with drug use don't, either. But I suspect that the judge is thinking about the crime and violence associated with drug use and sales under prohibition, like, for instance, the murder case in front of him. To blame that killing on drugs in general and marijuana in particular is just plain stupid. The judge might want to get his head out of his ass and look around at what drug prohibition—not drugs—has wrought. He doubtless sees it every day in his courtroom. Finally, Judge Hicks attacks the victim. The dead man "exposed his family to danger" because he dealt in valuable marijuana. If I'm out riding in my new Cadillac with my family and we get carjacked by some envious punk, does that mean I exposed my family to danger by having something valuable that some criminal wants? It was not the murder victim but the prohibition laws routinely applied by Judge Hicks and his criminal justice system colleagues that created the situation where a bunch of dead plant material is assigned so much value that people are willing to rob and kill for it. It must be nice for armed robbers to know their victims are unlikely to seek protection from the police. Justice may be blind, but judges shouldn't be. Judge Hicks has clearly shown that he has an extreme case of tunnel vision. This guy doesn’t deserve to sit on the bench.

A Reuters article this afternoon reported that Mexico's new president, Felipe Calderon, is sending over 3,000 troops to Tijuana in a crackdown aimed at stemming the ongoing violence that has wracked the border city in recent years. The first 500 arrived today and are investigating charges of corruption in the local police force:

As two helicopters circled overhead, dozens of troops with assault rifles and riot shields converged on a police headquarters to inspect weapons, a first step in probing alleged drug gang links and corruption inside the local force.

The move comes only three weeks since Calderon sent 7,000 troops to his own home state of Michoacan. 2,000 people were killed in drug trade violence in Mexico last year. One of the guests at DRCNet's 2003 conference in Mexico, "Out from the Shadows, Ending Drug Prohibition in the 21st Century" ("Saliendo de las Sombras: Terminando de le Prohibición de las Drogas en el Siglo XXI" en Español) was Gregorio Urias German, a Mexican congressman from Sinaloa, another part of the country that has suffered in the drug wars. Urias blames drug prohibition for this violence, but he fears that "If we can't even discuss the alternatives, if we can't even admit the drug war is a failure, then we will never solve the problem." He said that existing forums, such as the UN and the Organization of American States, are not fruitful places for discussion, "because only the repressive policies of the United States are discussed at these forums." While it is not the job of media outlets like Reuters to take a position favoring legalization in their news reporting, they will be doing a better job when they start to include leaders like Urias in their articles who hold that point of view. This Google News link will pull up a list of hundreds of appearances of this news story that are currently active in the mainstream media (many though not all the Reuters story or another by the AP). We encourage you to follow the links and submit some letters to the editor. Post them back here along with the letter-writing info for others.

An Associated Press article today reports that the homicide rate in the US is going up again:

After many years of decline, the number of murders climbed in 2006 in New York and many other U.S. cities, including Rocky Mount, reaching their highest levels in a decade in some places. (Rocky Mount is a North Carolina community whose local paper drew on the AP story to produce this article. Among the reasons given: gangs, drugs, the easy availability of illegal guns, a disturbing tendency among young people to pull guns when they do not get the respect they demand and, in Houston at least, an influx of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

While drug warriors like former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani credited the "broken windows" theory of policing and tough sentences in general for the crime drop, criminologists pointed instead to a range of factors -- a decrease in the number of youth in the population figured prominently. (With my elementary school -- Roosevelt -- having been converted into a condominium -- The Roosevelt -- because of demographics, I was aware that fewer kids were growing up for awhile.) A corollary is that with youth numbers expected to go up again, crime would eventually go up again too. And now it has (yes, in New York too). The AP story did not go into the role of drug prohibition in all of this. Basically, it is prohibition of drugs that causes the vast majority of the drug-related violence -- pharmacologically-induced violence, acts committed because of being under the influence of drugs -- makes up only a small portion of the total. Drug-related violence is first and foremost the violence of the drug trade -- gangs and other sellers fighting it out over turf. The illegal drug trade exists solely because the drugs are illegal. The second most important cause of drug-related violence is economic crimes committed to get the money needed to buy drugs. This would mostly go away if drugs were legal because the price of the drugs would drop to normal market levels and addicts would not need to commit crimes to afford them. It's impossible to have a serious discussion of the causes of violence without discussing -- without even mentioning -- the consequences of prohibition. This must be stated over and over and over until the people leading the discussion take note. Click here to submit a letter to the editor to the Telegram, and here for info on their letter standards. Please make a post here with a link or letter to the editor information for any other papers where you see the AP story or articles based on it.

A featured post today on the Huffington Post blog by Josh Sugarmann ask Crime is Back -- How Long Can We Avoid Talking About It? The author, referring to an article in yesterday's Washington Post predicts that crime will make it to back to the front burner in the nation's political agenda. One of the causes is the rise, after a lengthy drop in the number of young males in the population. The Plank, a blog published by The New Republic magazine, also predicts today that crime will figure more prominently in 2008 than in other recent political campaign seasons. That scares me. When crime becomes a political issue, reason and creativity tend to go out the window in favor of tough talk and slogans. The heinous mandatory minimums -- the laws that got Weldon Angelos 55 years, to pick just one case -- were the result of politicos focusing on crime. I seriously doubt that Sugarmann favors that kind of sentencing, aligned as he is with the liberal left. That said, the collective "we" have been avoiding talking one of the most important causes of crime, perhaps the most important, since long before the recent years' crime drop even began: drug prohibition. So long as drugs are illegal, young males (and others) will get recruited by the illicit drug trade, will possess guns as a part of that, and will carry the guns wherever they go. Sometimes they'll use them. Whether crime rises or drops, the violence rate in our society and around the world is dramatically greater than it would be if drugs were legal. All the money that people spend on illicit drugs, hundreds of billions of dollars per year, are going into the criminal underground because of the drug laws. How could that not have a serious increasing effect on violent crime? How much longer can we avoid talking about that? Having mentioned the Huffington Post and the New Republic, I'll point that out that Post published Arianna Huffington is herself a longtime opponent of the drug war, as is New Republic Senior Editor Andrew Sullivan. Whatever else should be done about crime, prohibition must get addressed. A conversation about violence that omits the issue of the drug laws is incomplete.