According the Harvard Economist Jeffrey Miron, legalizing drugs could inject$76.8 billionper year into the US economy. Oh well, maybe it’s better to keep spending that money on courts and prisons. It’s not like the economy needs a boost or anything.
Read Miron’s report here.
There tends to more talk about drug “decriminalization” than legalization. What’s the difference? Decriminalization is “safer.” But it’s not enough. It can even do harm. I talk about this a bit in my book.
In general, legalization involves regulation while decriminalization is set up around lessgovernment control. I believe that many drugs are too dangerous to remain unregulated. Hence I support regulation and legalization.
Decriminalization also focuses more on the casual user. I don’t believe users should be locked up. But the harms from drug prohibition are primarily seen in the distributionof drugs. Users aren’t killing each other, dealers are.
Decriminalization almost always ignores the area of the market which has the greatest harms. Decriminalization tends to buy into the myth that users are harmless or victims needing treatment and dealers are evil and need to be locked up. This is an absurd assumption on all fronts. It would be akin a war on bartenders.
We as society can and should control how people get drugs. It’s a shame we don’t.
Check the Sun for the latest update on the shot Baltimore City police officer.
This has got me thinking about when things go bad.
If an officer needs backup, well first he or she shouldn’t have to askfor backup, because, well, that’s what being police is all about. You’ve got each others’ back.
But if you would actually like an extra unit to help keep everything under control, you ask for a 10-11. A 10-11 is a request for a meeting. It could be a meeting for any simple purpose (paperwork, coffee, question, or just for the hell of it). It’s not polite to ask another officer his location over the air. Because you have to answer. If you want to find somebody, better to ask for a 10-11.
But in the context of backup, a 10-11 will cause cops to gently run red lights. But it’s not an emergency. Everything is under control. Better safe than sorry.
Then, say you chaos in the background of a radio transmission, or the fight is on. If you need help and you need it now, you call for 10-16. That means “backup.”
You can also get assigned as10-16 to somebody else’s call. But that’s not a big deal. That just means backup is the sense that the call should have more than one officer responding (like for an armed person, a domestic, or anything in progress).
But when calling for backup, 10-16 is pretty serious. You wouldn’t ask for it lightly. But if you ask for a 10-11 with any sense of urgency the dispatcher will up it to 10-16.
A good dispatcher needs to keep track of all the units (15-plus in the Eastern, at least last time I checked) and call for backup when needed. Thus they’re worth their weight in gold.
If you’re really OK, you can do your best to call off the 10-16 saying something like. “No. I’ve got everything under control. I just need a 10-11.”
There’s no shame in asking for help if you need it. You just don’t want to put other officers at danger for you for no reason. If you need backup, you’ll get it. For a real 10-16, you’re going to haul ass.
And then sometimes, not too often but often enough, things go wrong. When the shit hits the fan, it hits quickly. Signal-13 is broadcast city-wide and there’s nothing higher.
There’s a pause when the Signal-13 alert tone comes the radio (it’s always preceded by a special tone). Everyone shuts up for a quick second to hear the details. Usually, it doesn’t concern you. It’s across town or it’s 10-32ed right way by the officer who didn’t really need (or want) the 13. Like if you don’t answer your radio, you’ll eventually get a 13 dropped until you do.
But if the 13 is for real, the adrenaline kicks in as you hit the gas and go code one. After a second or third 13 comes over the air, half the cars in the city will be heading your way (luckily, I was never on the receiving end of a Signal 13). As backup, you gotta be really careful. It’s a dangerous time to be a cop with lots of fast cars and tunnel vision.
When everything is under control again, you’ll hear “10-32,” enough officers at scene. But by then, after the 13 went out, it’s a little hard to call off the cavalry.
Cops will often come no matter. You get to meet your friends from other sectors and neighboring districts. You say hi, swap gossip, call each other names, and make social plans. It’s a little powwow (and can be quite a clusterfuck). Eventually calls-for-service or a higher up will act as the umpire and break it up.
And if a 13 includes the horrible words, “officer down,” that is not good. In the end, those close to the officer will go to Shock Trauma to be there for the officer and the officer’s family. The sergeant will arrange for family notification and pickup (not a fun part of the job).
Meanwhile those still working the street have to keep answering the same bullshit calls plus a few extra posts. People don’t stop being stupid just because an officer is down.
When the next shift comes in at the district, they’ll be filled in informally and then formally at roll call. If things have been really chaotic, you might skip roll call and go right to the street to relieve somebody. Overall, the mood will be professional and much more business-as-usual then you might expect.
Seven year later, when watching The Wire, I would still perk up and pay attention whenever I heard the Signal-13 sound. And this from a TV show.
Here’s the latest form the Sun:
The officer was shot in the jaw and cheek when he tried to make an undercover purchase, Bealefeld said. His partner returned fire and hit at least one of the suspects, according to police. As the suspects fled, the second officer helped his wounded partner, who was conscious and speaking after the shooting. He was conscious until he was placed under anesthesia for treatment at Shock Trauma.
And don’t forget about every Baltimore City police officer who has to go right to work and do the job like it’s any other day. If yourcoworker got shot on the job, you might get a day off.
Not police.
Stay safe.
This terrible news just in at 10:30pm from the Sun:
A Baltimore police officer is in critical condition at a hospital tonight after being shot in the Seton Hill neighborhood, officials said.
The plainclothes officer was on duty in the 500 block of Orchard St. about 8 p.m. when he was shot in the face, said Nicole Monroe, a police spokeswoman. A police officer returned fire, she said, but it is not known whether the wounded officer, who was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, was accompanied or alone.
Shortly after the shooting, a person with a gunshot wound went to a hospital, Monroe said. Police are investigating to see whether there is any connection with the police shooting.
[update, 10:42pm:I just spoke to a friend of mine. He said word from Shock Trauma is that the officer should live, but did take a bullet in the jaw.
Also, I don’t know the shot officer. Of course that shouldn’t really matter. But, of course, it doesmatter to me. Regardless, I wish him and his family the best in what will not be an easy road to come. I’m with you.]
Police raided a 62-year-old Baltimore man’s home who was suspected of selling prescription drugs. Along with drug (Percocet and Xanax) and money, 19 rifles and shotguns were seized. The Sun reports.
Here’s Peter Hermanm’s report in the Sun.
The short: Surveillance cameras are helpful, but video is no ‘slam dunk’
I enjoyed attending “New Directions for New York: A Public Health & Safety Approach to Drug Policy” sponsored at the New York Academy of Medicine and the Drug Policy Alliance.
I was speaking on the Harm Reduction – Coordinating Strategies panel. Unfortunately, because I broke one of my rules and wrote on the back side of a copied piece of paper (rather than in my notepad), I left my notes at the conference.
You can see the full program here.
The instructions I received, and I chose to accept them, were these:
The role we’d like for you to play on this panel is from a public safety perspective. We would like you to speak about where or how a harm reduction strategy would and could fit in the public safety sector, as well as what the barriers are. It would be tremendously useful to hear your thoughts on this matter as one who is an expert in the field of criminal justice and an ex-police officer that patrolled in an area with a disproportionately high rate of drug use.
There were six on out panal and we each had about eight minutes.
I made the following four points (or at least I tried to):
When I arrived in Baltimore, Harm Reduction as it was perceived was seen as a failed program and Kurt Schmoke, a very smart man and advocate of Harm Reduction, was seen as a failed mayor.
I support drug legalization (though I prefer to use the term regulation). I think it would reduce harm. But to play devil’s advocate to a room of harm-reduction supports I tried to make these points:
1) It’s probably a safe bet that most academics and policy makers who support Harm Reduction don’t live in neighborhoods where Harm Reduction causes harm.
As an example, in both Cambridge, Mass, and Baltimore I lived near methadone clinics. It wasn’t the end of the world, but I certainly prefer not living near a methadone clinic. Nobody wants to live next to a methadone clinic… and often for very good reasons. So if harm reduction involves methadone clinics, people who make policy need to understand the needs of all those affected, and not just those in the target population.
For Harm Reduction to work, it’s very important to understand the opposition to it.
2) Harm reduction needs to be judged with a multivariate perspective. That is to say, harm is a many faceted thing. For instance when it comes to drug addicts and a public drug market, there are a) the potential health harms to drug users, b) the harms of drug-trade (prohibition) violence, and c) to quality of life issues. If you’re just a normal working stiff, you very well might care most about the latter issue. But research, especially in the public-health fields, tends to be public-health oriented. In this case that means a lot of A and a little B.
3) Though I’m happy to back in an era of science, understand that many people oppose Harm Reductions on moralgrounds, for instance: drugs are evil. Public-health people aren’t very good at conceiving of or talking about thing in moral terms.
To find common ground, emphasize the impact on saving lives. That is common ground. Previously, Jill Reeves had given a powerful speech about her own perspective as an addict. She mentioned that one of the greatest needs for addicts is a nine-one-one Good-Samaritan law. In other words, you shouldn’t risk arrest by calling for an ambulance to save a life. That might be a good place to start forming common ground.
4) Police generally are not sympathetic to Harm Reduction because, well, among other things, it’s not job. To ask police to care about clean needles for the health of addicts, well, it’s not their job. It would be like the police asking a doctor for help in bringing down a drug shop. It’s just not gonna happen. Public health messages geared to police need to focus of public safety and officer health.
Clean needles, for instance, should be any easy sell. It’s easy to see the link between dirty needles and officer safety. When an officer is sticked, you really hope that needle is clean. I hated seeing officers crush needles in the gutter. Do any addicts get clean by virtues of a police officer crushing their needles? I don’t think so.
In a different session, P. David Soares, Albany County District Attorney, made a very good point: if we want to stop young boys from working for drug dealers, it would help matters if we didn’t make it illegal for anybody under 16 to work at all.
By far the loudest and longest applause (at least for what I attended) went to a CUNY colleague, Queens College Professor Harry Levine. He brought down the house (at least as much as you can at such a conference — but this conference was open to the public, so it was a little more rambunctious than the average academic fair).
Levine ending his (precisely-timed) 10 minute speech by noting that if Obama had lived in New York under current NYPD arrest practices, he could easily have been arrested and, by having a criminal record, had no chance of becoming president. How many potential Obama’s lives out there right now, asked Levine, have we ruined through aggressive arrest policies in our war on drugs? The crowd, as is almost everybody in my New York world, was very pro-Obama.
Levin is co-author of “Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City 1997-2007.” I learned a lot about New York State marijuana law and police practice regarding said law. And it’s very readable.
I don’t think Levine is on the NYPD Chief’s Valentine’s-Day mailing list this year.
…this articleby Nicholas J. Johnson in the Wake Forest Law Review might ruin your day.
My summary: Stop wasting time trying to take away people’s guns. It won’t work. Deal with it.
300,000,000 guns is a lot of guns to confiscate, especially from people armed with guns.
(thanks to D.K. for sending me the article)
And then as I’m writing this I see this story about another crazy murderer in Belgium (what is it about Belgium? They seem nice enough…). He stabbed a dozen or so babies and infants and three adults. Three dead all together.
Then he got on his bike and road away (and was soon apprehended).
While gun lovers will probably point out that this wouldn’t have happened if only the babies had been packing, I can’t help but be happy that this murderous nut didn’t have a gun.
But liking countries with fewer guns (much fewer) doesn’t suddenly make gun control in this country any more possible.