The Straight Dope on Crooked Cops

Jacob Sullum | June 21, 2005

Do we really need another book that makes all the familiar arguments against drug prohibition? When it's by a former police chief, we probably do. Last month Norm Stamper, who ran the Seattle Police Department from 1994 to 2000, published Breaking Rank: A Top Cop's Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing (only part of which is about the war on drugs). Alternet has a drug-related excerpt.

"I say it's time to withdraw the troops in the war on drugs," writes Stamper. He lists various costs of prohibition, including

the reputation of individual police officers, individual departments, and the entire system of American law enforcement. If you aspire to be a "crooked" cop, drugs are clearly the way to go. The availability, street value, and illegality of drugs form a sweet temptation to character-challenged cops, many of whom wind up shaking down street dealers, converting drugs for their own use, or selling them.

Almost all of the major police corruption scandals of the last several decades have had their roots in drug enforcement. We've seen robbery, extortion, drug dealing, drug stealing, drug use, false arrests, perjury, throw-down guns, and murder. And these are the good guys?

In a similar vein, former San Jose Police Chief Joe McNamara has been working on a book titled Gangster Cops: The Hidden Cost of America's War on Drugs. Former law enforcement officials like Stamper and McNamara are crucial for bringing credibility to the antiprohibitionist cause, especially on the topics of corruption, black market violence, and diverted police resources. The group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) organizes and publicizes such dissenters.

[Thanks to the Drug Policy Alliance's Tony Newman for the Alternet link.]

Comments

|6.21.05 @ 2:33PM|#

Well, I think that one will go to the top of my must-read list. He saw some serious crap going on in Seattle on his watch.

|6.21.05 @ 2:38PM|#

I may have to buy these books. Just to help their sales so the books get more publicity.

Damn, I feel so Scientologist!

MP|6.21.05 @ 3:07PM|#

He sounds like a consultant for The Shield.

|6.21.05 @ 3:43PM|#

scientologist is the new black.

|6.21.05 @ 4:50PM|#

I just ordered a used copy...does that hurt sales reports?

R C Dean|6.21.05 @ 4:51PM|#

Are there any black scientologists?

|6.21.05 @ 4:59PM|#

yes. i met one when i was wearing my l. ron hubbard "ascended charlatan" t-shirt.

|6.21.05 @ 8:09PM|#

Isaac Hayes.

|6.21.05 @ 9:12PM|#

In a political conspiracy to gain support for a make-over of Fountain Square, the focal point of Sinincincinnati, the Church of Scientology had a huge canopy there today at lunchtime, with faux-ministers under it, all as if to convince the hoi polloi how boring the Square is "before."
What keeps the Square dull is an ordinance excluding profit-making--read FUN--events/festivities.

That said, see this quote from the local, lone truth-teller, The WhistleBlower, my buddy:
> �--> A federal employee we know says two sitting members of Cincinnati City
> Clown-cil are on the take from developers. Any company that needs Clown-cil
> approval for a city development or re-development project knows to approach
> those council members with envelopes containing $5,000 in cash. One major
> developer has reportedly insisted that when he is granted audiences with the
> two crooked politicians he would pay the bribes by check only. He won the day
> some time ago. That developer showed the federal employee three checks each
> made out to the two city council members totalling $30,000.

So government corruption is redundant.
It doesn't take much to tilt it.

|6.22.05 @ 7:45AM|#

"scientologist is the new black"

You are sooooo right, zach! Omigod! I love this guy! No, I really mean it! I LOVE THIS GUY!!

|6.22.05 @ 9:09AM|#

Ruthless at June 21, 2005 09:12 PM

I'd be surprized if the Feds found a city where there were no council members on the take from developers.

|6.22.05 @ 9:46AM|#

Wait a minute. I thought Kabbalah was the new black. Or is that over already?

|6.22.05 @ 10:58AM|#

The lawsuit that the mother of Christopher Wallace (AKA Biggie Smalls, AKA The Notorious B.I.G) filed against the city of LA should shed light on the role gangster cops aligned with the Bloods had in his murder.

Here in Dallas, the city is still sorting out cases where two cops, with the help of a paid informant, were setting up illegal immigrants with fake drugs (ground up dry-wall).

The drug war creates to many opportunities for corruption. It's hard for morally gray, underpaid and under appreciated cops to resist the temptation. Narcotics are bringing down our law enforcement agencies they same way they brought down the mob. Nice to hear that a few on the inside see that.

Isaac,

In other Dallas news, the FBI just raided the mayor pro tem and a city council member's homes and offices looking for evidence of kickbacks from developers.

|6.22.05 @ 8:42PM|#

In Cleveland the big news is that one of the former mayor's assistants (Nate Gray, assistant to Mayor Mike White) was receiving huge bribes to steer government contracts to specific companies. Though Mike White hasn't been officially charged, the local papers keep insinuating that it's only a matter of time. It's being described as the largest political scandal in Cleveland history.