"Someone Has To Start Wondering What the F Is Going On."

The Wire co-creator Ed Burns talks about failure in the drug war, public education, the war in Iraq, and police strategies.

Radley Balko | March 7, 2008

(Page 3 of 4)

It’s the same thing they discovered in Iraq, oddly enough. Once they got away from the idea of suppression, they started getting much more information from Iraqis. The soldiers and Marines in Iraq basically use many of the techniques developed by law enforcement. They do the same type of searches. They gather the same type of information. They collate it the same way. They use cell phone data. They’re doing everything that law enforcement normally does. But they’re only successful when they’re connected with the people. In Baltimore, they’re not connected to the people because they’ve alienated everyone in the neighborhood.

So when you need to know something, when you need information, where do you go?

reason: What do you make of the "Stop Snitchin'" movement, the street campaign that discourages people from cooperating with police, which seems to have started in Baltimore?

Burns: Well, again, it’s something that’s incidental. It’s a symptom. If the police were connected, if the police were actively involved with the people in the neighborhood, the amount of information they would be getting would be so great that the whole idea of snitching wouldn’t be important. When I was a cop, having informants was a rare thing. They were looked down upon. I had sometimes as many as 50 guys working for me. I didn’t have to go out on the street. I could sit by the phone and just wait for the information to come. But you got that by being decent to people, working with them, helping them out on their little charges, stuff like that. That’s a lot of work and a lot of money comes out of your pocket to keep them happy and cooperative, but the amount of information you get back is profound.

Cops aren’t taught to do that anymore because today it’s all about numbers. You can get a number by just going up on the corner and grabbing somebody and getting a bag off of him. That’s the easy thing. If taking a guy in for drinking a beer on the street is a “1,” and catching the kingpin is a “1,” well, it takes two minutes to catch the guy with the beer can. It could take you two years to catch the kingpin. If numbers is all the department cares about, then the guy who pursues the kingpin is wasting his time.

And it is all about numbers. It’s how they talk, how they rate themselves. The fact that the murder rate in Baltimore stays constantly above the norm would be seem to be an indication that maybe they should try something different. But they’re bankrupt. They don’t have any idea what they need to do because they’re separated from the people. They’re not of the people. You’re policing as an army of occupation, not as police in the community. And that just doesn’t work.

reason: David Simon once wrote that you are “the living manifestation of lost wars,” since you were a soldier in Vietnam, a cop fighting the drug war, and a teacher in the public school system. Do you agree those three wars were or have been lost? Are there any institutional similarities you’ve observed that contributed to those three failures?

Burns: Well, we definitely lost Vietnam. And we lost Iraq. And we’ll lose any war where we allow an insurgency to exist. As for the war on drugs, I don’t think we’ll ever recover from the mindset we’ve gotten into to fight it. The educational system is an absolute and total disaster. And that of course is fueling the drug war, because there are so many kids who have no alternative but to spend their time on the corners.

The failure is institutional because no one sets out to lose these wars. This is dangerous stuff, self-defeating stuff. Education has no relevance. It doesn’t mean anything to these kids because they can’t connect to it. They spend those eight years or nine years in school because they have to. Of course, they have to learn something. And what they learn is how to sit quietly in a corner and make the school become a kind of training ground for the corners. The administration and the teachers basically become surrogate cops. And the kids play through these fantasies with the stand-in “cops” until they’ve tested their mettle enough to go up on the corners and try it with the real guys.

We’ve had 20, 30 years of this stuff, and 20, 30 years of spending billions of dollars on failed systems. And if you go to one of the private schools and see these kids in action and then go to an inner city public school, you can see the chasm. There’s separation even in the way of being, in the way they think, in how they operate. It’s profound, but it’s nothing new. We’ve been doing this for a long time.

reason: What reforms do you think are necessary? What can policy makers do to make public schools more effective?

Burns: Five years ago I couldn’t have given you an answer to that question. But I’ve learned about a program right now in Harlem. It’s been around for 12 years now. It’s called the Harlem Children’s Zone. The basic philosophy is so logical and so obvious. What works in the middle class is that you have input, the healthy positive input into an infant every day of that child’s life, as an infant and as a young child. Somebody’s always there. That’s how we raise our kids, and the success rate is very, very high. There are some failures in the middle class and the upper middle class, but the success rate is high.

That’s what they do in Harlem in the Children’s Zone—with about 35,000 kids. From birth, someone is with that kid until he gets out of college. They’re normal kids—not geniuses or anything—but they will be able to break the cycle of poverty and of drugs in those neighborhoods because those kids are not focused on drugs and poverty. They’re focused on the positive aspects that come from traditionally raising kids where you expect things from them. You tell them how good they are, you boost their egos, and you light the fires under them. That’s how you do it. That’s how it’s done in most middle class homes. I mean, that’s how simple it is. In Harlem, it cost them $4,500 a child.

And in talking with Geoff Canada, who runs the program up there, they’ve had 2,200 different groups—around 2,200 groups that have come to see their program. People who come to watch are impressed and want to go back to other states, to other countries, with the hope of implementing the program. Yet there isn’t another Children’s Zone that I know of anywhere in the country.

reason: Is that from a lack of funding?

Comments

TallDave|3.7.08 @ 3:09PM|#

I started watching this recently, courtesy on-demand from comcast, after hearing how great it was. I watched the first couple episodes of Season 5, and frankly didn't see what all the fuss was about.

Did I just pick it up at a weak point in the series?

kinnath|3.7.08 @ 3:38PM|#

TallDave, I started with seasons 1 through 3 on DVD. There is no way you're going to understand season 5 without starting at the beginning.

I need to pick up season 4, then I'll have to wait patiently for season 5.

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.7.08 @ 3:46PM|#

I gotta admit, it's been pretty great. Basically season 1 is about the cops and the drug dealers (and in a way, so is every season). Season 2 is about the dockworkers' unions, season 3 is about the politicians, elections, and drug legalization, season 4 is about the school system and the kids, and season 5 has been about the newspapers and the homeless.

It's been great and like the article posted here the other day, Omar Little is one of the greatest characters on TV ever (along with Spock, Barney Fife, Archie Bunker, Al Swearingen, George Costanza, Livia Soprano, and probably the greatest ever: Andy Sipowicz).

On second look, my list seems a bit sexist. Who are the other great characters I'm missing? Not looking for catchphrasey-kinda things, but characters whose writing and acting somehow combines to make the character more real than other TV characters, and probably more real than most movie characters could be.

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.7.08 @ 3:52PM|#

OK: Eric Cartman's absence was an obvious slip-up.

kinnath|3.7.08 @ 3:58PM|#

Dexter only has two seasons, but he is clearly a future candidate for your list.

kinnath|3.7.08 @ 4:04PM|#

Hawkeye Pierce & Hot Lips

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.7.08 @ 4:06PM|#

Oh yeah, I've heard about that show - on SHOWTIME, right?. It sounds cool, but I haven't seen it yet. Speaking of the actor who plays the main role in Dexter, I'd like to add someone from Six Feet Under, but although I think it was a great show, I'm not sure that any of the characters were quite to that level.

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.7.08 @ 4:07PM|#

Though if any were, it was his character, David, probably.

kinnath|3.7.08 @ 4:08PM|#

It sounds cool, but I haven't seen it yet.

Buy or rent the DVDs; you won't be disapointed.

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.7.08 @ 4:09PM|#

Calamity Jane might deserve a spot from Deadwood along with Swearingen.

|3.7.08 @ 4:10PM|#

OT regarding "The Wire" but here goes:

Dr. Johnny Fever, Les Nessman, Bailey Quarters (WKRP)

Emily Newhart (Newhart 1)

Larry, Darryl and Darryl (Newhart 2)

If mini-series count: Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call (Lonesome Dove)

kinnath|3.7.08 @ 4:10PM|#

Deadwood, Wired, Dexter . . Best TV in the last 5 years.

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.7.08 @ 4:13PM|#

and Mal Reynolds from Firefly...I can't believe I forgot him. They managed a lot with that character in just thirteen episodes.

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.7.08 @ 4:14PM|#

Duvall's performance in Lonesome Dove may be the best acting job ever.

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.7.08 @ 4:14PM|#

I still want to do Bailey.

|3.7.08 @ 4:22PM|#

I never seen The Wire, but it struck me as being like The Sopranos;
just interesting and intelligent enough to force you to follow the plot and characters, but so dry that it becomes a pain in the ass to sit through.

kinnath|3.7.08 @ 4:27PM|#

. . . but so dry that it becomes a pain in the ass to sit through.

I was home ill a week or so ago. I watched 7 straight hours of the Wire and was disappointed that I had to stop because I had finished season 3.

|3.7.08 @ 6:01PM|#

Someone Who Doesn't Want to Lose His Job | March 7, 2008, 4:14pm | #
I still want to do Bailey.

Run Ron, Run!!

|3.7.08 @ 7:36PM|#

Someone Who Doesn't Want to Lose His Job | March 7, 2008, 4:14pm | #
Duvall's performance in Lonesome Dove may be the best acting job ever.

Thumb's up from me - and I think the rest of the cast gave him plenty of support.

Someone Who Doesn't Want to Lose His Job | March 7, 2008, 4:14pm | #
I still want to do Bailey.

Me too... and Emily Newhart... together or separately.

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.7.08 @ 8:04PM|#

Emily Newhart was...wait...let me think of it...Suzanne Pleshette, right? Oh, yeah. She was really unbearably hot too.

I have a girls in glasses "thing", though.

Thumb's up from me - and I think the rest of the cast gave him plenty of support.

The scene where he hangs Jake is maybe the best performance ever.

|3.7.08 @ 9:46PM|#

Finally someone at Reason came to their senses and revised the swear word that was front and center on the home page. It's a shame though, that someone actually thought the F-word was acceptable usage for Reason's home page.

|3.7.08 @ 10:41PM|#

It's a shame though, that someone actually thought the F-word was acceptable usage for Reason's home page.

I did...

Mrs Manners|3.7.08 @ 10:41PM|#

Reason sucks

|3.7.08 @ 11:21PM|#

Hit & Run needs to follow Fark's lead, and create a filter that changes "reason sucks" to "I'm a sheep-molesting douche".

NP|3.8.08 @ 7:14AM|#

The Wire is a third-rate crime drama that occasionally rises to the second-rate tier when it ceases, if only for a while, taking itself too seriously. How any sane person would give it a tenth of the respect it's been accorded so far is simply beyond me.

LarryA|3.8.08 @ 10:48AM|#

So how do you change all of this? You change the numbers game. You require police to reconnect with the people, and you start focusing everybody on the major crimes, the ones that make living very, very difficult-murder, rape, and robbery.

Once again:

The [London] Metropolitan Police's founding principles and, de facto the founding principles of all other modern (post 1829) UK police forces, was summarised by Sir Richard Mayne (the first commissioner) in 1829 in the following terms:
The nine principles by Sir Richard Mayne

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

http://www.magnacartaplus.org/briefings/nine_police_principles.htm

|3.8.08 @ 1:25PM|#

The Wire is a quality show with good, believable characters much like the too short Deadwood.

One thing that really stands out with The Wire is, it clearly dramatizes the epic fail on every level that is the war on some drugs. From the cops, to the politicians, from the dealers to the users, The Wire pulls no punches and lays the hard realities of the war against drugs with all its unintended consequences.

/Need a dramatic show about medical cannabis.

//Weeds is more comedy than drama.

economist|3.8.08 @ 5:15PM|#

I noticed that they censored the title. What the fuck is up with that?

|3.8.08 @ 7:22PM|#

I'd like to add someone from Six Feet Under, but although I think it was a great show, I'm not sure that any of the characters were quite to that level.

Sarge

|3.8.08 @ 8:22PM|#

It's been great and like the article posted here the other day, Omar Little is one of the greatest characters on TV ever (along with Spock, Barney Fife, Archie Bunker, Al Swearingen, George Costanza, Livia Soprano, and probably the greatest ever: Andy Sipowicz).

No love for TGIF? Steve Erkel, Michelle Tanner, and Balki Balkokovitch(sp?) all deserve a spot on that list. And what about Fox "MF'in" Mulder? And if Cathy Young were posting on this thread, I'm sure she'd say Xena Warrior Princess, and I'd agree. Jack Bauer too.

some guy|3.8.08 @ 8:50PM|#

It's just pop culture. Transitory, disposable.
Pay your cable bill. More tomorrow.
Move along now.

|3.8.08 @ 10:38PM|#

What the fuck is with the title?

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.9.08 @ 10:36PM|#

OK I was wrong. Michael isn't the new Marlo.

I won't say much else, at the risk of spoiling it for someone.

Someone Who Doesn\'t Want to L|3.9.08 @ 10:55PM|#

Except I'll say that the end of the Michael storyline was really cool.

If that makes me a spoiler, then so be it.

|3.10.08 @ 7:48AM|#

Y'all forgot to mention Doogie Howser, if it weren't for him typing away on his computer at the end of each episode this blog wouldn't exist. True story.

Culprititus|3.10.08 @ 12:38PM|#

I've been downloading episodes of this great Canadian show that is sort of a cross between Weeds and BBC show IT Crowd. It is extremely geek/nerdy at times with lots of social commentary. Never watched The Wire myself, but I have been interested in looking at it from all that I've heard and read.

Culprititus|3.10.08 @ 12:39PM|#

oh yeah, the Canadian show is called JPod

|3.10.08 @ 4:54PM|#

The majority of the comments seem focused on the gritty entertainment 'the Wire' has provided, rather than Mr. Burns' useful, though baleful insights based on his experience in the real world. Maybe entertainment and real life are indistinguishable in our culture any more. He describes a program in Harlem designed to redeem the lost and disadvantaged children of the welfare state called the 'Children's Zone', whose basic philosophy 'is so logical and so obvious':

"... what works in the middle class is that you have input, the healthy positive input into an infant every day of that child's life, as an infant and as a young child. Somebody's always there. That's how we raise our kids, and the success rate is very, very high. There are some failures in the middle class and the upper middle class, but the success rate is high."

What quaint middle-class phenomenon is so logical and so obvious that social services professionals and educators and government aid workers have been missing all these years? By any other name they're called parents. Nothing is going to fix the intractable problems on the streets and in the schools except parents (caregivers or whatever euphemism you want to use) who are accountable to the community and take responsibility for raising the children that they, after all, have produced.

Related References:

Theodore Dalrymple in the City Journal

Christopher Lasch, 'The Culture of Narcissism' (Among other things, the book describes how, beginning with the Progressive era around 1900, professional social services workers educators, therapists, and gov. bureaucrats have undermined the authority and accountability of parents.)

CDL