An Officer’s Journey Through the Drug War
This is the transcript from a 2014 presentation by Michael Wood Jr….
My name is Michael Wood, not to be confused with the English historian, although I doubt that mistake comes in often. Then again, Mr. Wood takes people on a journey through history, and we will do a little version of that here as I lead us on a glimpse into my history.
My journey picks up at 16 when I signed a promise to serve our country in the United States Marine Corp. At 17, I honored that pledge and headed off to Parris Island. From boot camp to infantry school to my four years as a member of the Marine Corps’ SWAT team, called FAST, the Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team. I thought the Corps was great. The comradery was exceptional and the training, professional. It was what I thought it would be.
The Marine Corps was about becoming an adult and doing good. A significant reason why I followed that path was to be better at my career of choice, being a police officer. I served in the BPD for 11 years and was forced to retire in 2014 from a shoulder injury. In both agencies, I was highly praised, awarded, and promoted very quickly, always the youngest everywhere I went. I was the youngest Sergeant in FAST, youngest detective in major case narcotics and youngest Sergeant in BPD. I’ve completed over 300 training courses with collegiate credit, innumerable others training events, and I earned my B.S. in Criminal Justice while working. This is how obsessed I was at being the consummate professional. It was to the point of silliness. Despite learning everything I possibly could, it was not until I was on the other side of the badge and switched disciplines for Masters and my current Ph.D. work, to management that I began to be able to reflect on this career.
Futility
Soon, I accepted an assignment to a plain clothes narcotics street enforcement team. This is known in Baltimore and as portrayed on TV, for The Wire fans out there, as the “knockers.” The knockers, because they are known for knocking the heads of the people they targeted. As a “knocker,” we worked low-level narcotics enforcement. The idea was to aggressively target street dealers and users, and that would lower crime.
There was a corner on the south side of Park Heights which we immediately saw as drug dealing hot spot. This was one of the first times we ended getting an assignment that allowed for some investigation. Utilizing all the resources allowed to us, we worked this corner for about three days, then executed the raids. Normally, we have a couple of people go to the rear of a location when we do raids, but in this house, it was deemed unnecessary. There was only an exit on the 2nd-floor balcony, and there was a cliff going into the woods, meaning, it would be close to a four-story jump. We busted through the door and watched as all the three suspects in the house, ran out of the 2nd-floor door and leaped from the balcony. After running to the balcony in a bit of shocked amazement, we looked over to see one of the guys on the ground with a broken leg, one running north and the other south, far from our ability to get back around to them. The guy with the broken leg tried to drag himself away but realized the effort would have been in vein. After searching the locations of the search warrants, not much was found, some narcotics, and a few hundred bucks, no guns or leads. We had enough evidence from the previous few days for the arrest warrants we had anyway. So, at the very least we got them off the street and cleared that neighborhood for a while. The very next day, I drove through the neighborhood and saw a beautiful and serene transformation.
No, of course not, I admit my naivety at being shocked, when less than 24 hours later, the house had changed, but the look-outs were in place, the runners were ready, and the supply was out meeting the demand. The faces had changed, but the drugs remained. This is nothing new, Baltimore’s own D. Watkins, a drug-dealer turned scholar, makes the same observations from watching as a child through running his own corners.
Officer Harm
The man with the broken leg was nothing I thought very much of. Suspects get hurt in these raids and drug war all the time. It was a price of business. But, how many police get hurt doing this cost of business? Not just the tragic deaths, but all the career ending injuries, minor injuries, and workman’s compensation claims. When people have medical problems, there are ripple effects that extend beyond the myriad of concerns in the police department, but more importantly, on the families, friends, and co-workers of that person. I wonder what the math is. How many dead cops per pound of marijuana seized is acceptable to the people of this country?
As I have learned more and reflected on the realities of the war on drugs, I am increasing angered by how these policies have placed police in a persistently adversarial position with the community which they are supposed to serve. This adversarial position breeds fear and strengthens the blue wall of silence, further separating police from their communities. At best, officers are forced to navigate an ethical minefield of protect and serve while engaging in a war. All too often, first responders are injured and killed while fighting the War on Drugs. Law enforcement officers are effectively become sheep, set out to pasture in a failed ideology.
Public Harm
While that was one of the first exposures to the lack of success on an operational level, as I continued on my narcotics career, I happened to continually come in contact with a young man named Daniel. Daniel was selling small amounts of marijuana when we first interacted from my arresting him for distribution. As I got to know Daniel through official interviews and street interactions, I learned that Daniel began selling marijuana as a teen, just to make some money and got caught early on. Expecting a baby, Daniel did not want to be the typical teen dad, he wanted to provide, but dealing with the prior arrest, he could not find anything, so he turned back to the streets. He only sold marijuana but got caught again. His girlfriend’s parents moved her out to the county to get away from him after the police run ins. Daniel had tears in his eyes as he spoke of just wanting money for diapers and formula, but now he needed a car to get out to see his son, but how was that possible? He has courts fees and bail fees piling up, no job opportunities, and truly wanted to be there for his child. I did not have an answer at the time, and I lacked the maturity to speak like I do now. I just empathized with him but would end up busting him one final time for selling marijuana. At this last time, the neighborhood essentially ambushed us after arresting Daniel. They were tired of the War on People because of this War on Drugs and a brief period of chaos ensured.
During the chaos, Daniel got out of the police car and fled. Escape is a considered a crime of violence, so then Daniel got a violence charge on his record. I did not see Daniel for months and months after the escape, but I checked his neighborhood frequently. I hoped that he was just laying low and spending time with his kid. Then one day I saw Daniel in his neighborhood and couldn’t believe it. I walked up behind him, and when he turned and saw me, his shoulders slumped, and he just sat down. I had to ask him why he would come back. He just told me he missed everyone, and shouldn’t have run, but he wanted to be able to see his child one more time. We never spoke again. I never looked to see what happened, and I do not think I want to know.
Daniel ended up as part of the prison population in America, a country which has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners, the highest rate of incarceration in the world. After being a part of this community, no matter how momentarily, employers wouldn’t hire Daniel, college loans become unattainable for Daniel, and public assistance benefits are not available for Daniel. Daniel’s family could have been evicted from their home, private or public, and if Daniel or his family become homeless, social services will put their kids in foster care. Daniel is now permanently barred from jury service and has lost the right to vote. With these types of marginalization, how can we expect Daniel to ever be a full member of society? When Daniel gets out, he will most likely end up back in prison, as 68% of those in Daniel’s position end up back in jail within 3 years. As Jack Cole, the founder of LEAP and a longtime undercover narcotics cop in New Jersey likes to say, “You can get over an addiction, but you can never get over a conviction.” Many of the worst life consequences for those caught up in the drug world, come not from the drugs themselves but from the War on Drugs. The drugs don’t receive any consequences, maybe that’s because there can’t actually be a war on drugs, in application is ends up being a war on people. To this day, talking about Daniel affects me, and I think that is because I really liked Daniel, personally. He was funny, charming, kind, and I saw a lot of myself in him, and I think with the pressures he was facing, he did better than I could. I am not sure I would not have broken down being caught in that cycle. I find it unquestionable that I had I been in Daniel’s shoes, I would have also become a part of the dramatic rise in incarceration rates starting with drug prohibition.
During this time of my career, I had just about run out of training courses that I could do and was finishing up my B.S. so, I started reading a lot more. One of the books that stuck me was Breaking Rank, by someone I later found out was also a LEAP member, Norm Stamper. Norm is a retired Seattle Chief of Police, who turned against the War on Drugs for this reason. As a young cop on the beat in San Diego, he was forced to spend most of his shift pursuing marijuana possession calls which left him unable to respond to assault and domestic violence calls. I found it shocking that nothing had changed and upon reflection, I noted how little time I ever spend on victim crimes.
I realized that about 90% of my police work was spent fighting the War on Drugs and the other 10% was not actually spent protecting and serving either. For a significant portion of my career, all I did was fill prisons with drug offenders. During this time, enormous improvements in policing, from DNA testing to ballistics, surveillance and wiretaps, and more advanced the tools of investigation significantly. Despite the advances, we’re catching a lower percentage of murderers than we were in the 1970s. For many reasons which should have been obvious to us, we simply cannot have a war on our citizens and expect that cooperation will ensue. That divide which is created when we have a War on People and takes a tremendous toll on the efficacy of police work. That reduction of resources did not extend to my knocker unit. Just going after street-level narcotics my unit had more than adequate resources.
Expense
Those resources included, an off-site leased building with offices with desks and computers filling each office, a squad of seven veteran detectives, making middle to upper middle class incomes with benefits and pensions, unmarked rental cars, thousands of dollars in equipment per detective, piles of reports, confidential informant money, evidence control procedures, cameras, gas, equipment maintenance, training of officers, court, overtime, equipment damage, civil suits, and more, all before incarceration. This is the actual building that I worked out of at that time.
Evidence
As I continued my academic studies, I started to pursue the facts. I had assumed from watching the price of street narcotics drop that supply was flowing in at will, and the science supported that. I had assumed that it was much easier for a juvenile to get illegal marijuana than it was to get legal alcohol from my time watching the narcotics trade, and the science supported that. I continued to dive deeper, and I learned that other countries have had great success with decriminalization and legalization. Portugal stands as a shining example of shifting the focus of attention to the medical treatment of addiction and not criminalization. Switzerland turned its principal drug problem, heroin, into a medical problem and has seen reduced usage and a healthier population of those still heroin dependent.
Colorado has marked success in a rookie effort here at home with marijuana legalization and has seen excellent tax revenue along with a decrease in juvenile usage of marijuana. Which makes sense for a variety of reasons, such as losing that “cool” factor of being something illegal, being harder to get now that it is not on the black market, or maybe the success of a more honest public education about marijuana. Whatever the reason is, what it doesn’t show is more important. It shows us that prohibition does not achieve the goal of reduced usage.
Speaking of education, I learned about the success of smoking reduction campaigns. The success has gone beyond all the people who we know who or quit or never started smoking, the public education campaigns and tax regulation of tobacco have resulted in a 50% reduction in teenage smoking rates. Looking back, I realize how that message got to me. I am sure that I was obnoxious in a variety of different ways, but one I was notorious for was that of a cigarette destroyer. As a young child, the message of the harms of tobacco effectively reached me. I evangelized this message by preaching to all of the smokers around me. My grandmother would get so upset as I scolded her for her selfishness and stupidity. She would get even more upset when she made the error of leaving a pack of cigarettes out because I ripped up and threw away every pack I found. I would remind her that she couldn’t do anything about it. What was she going to do? Tell the police I was trying to save her life?
It’s education and regulation that successfully reduces usage, not criminal enforcement. It seems evident that a large amount of success lies in education because if heroin were available on Amazon right now, I would not be ordering any to shoot up this afternoon and I don’t think many of you would either. That is because we know better, we’ve been educated.
Empathy
What I really needed to be on the other side of the badge to see, was the empathy component. I think back to the callousness that the drug war sewed in me from early on. One of my most hated calls occurred all too frequently. I’ll give you an example. Working midnight shift and hoping to get home and get to sleep, I was dispatched to an odd location by some crumbled down buildings, for a female who looks to have overdosed. I thought to myself, “Damn it, I really wanted to get home, now I will be here until lunch because some idiot wants to kill herself.” After searching around through the rubble and weeds, I found the body of a young woman slouched against a pile of rocks. She was blue and cold. I checked her pulse, felt nothing and detected no breathing. She looked dead to me, but I followed procedure and requested a medic with the intent to try Narcan. May as well get the report started I figured, so I found her ID and began to write her name, let’s call her Cindy, on the report. I filled in Cindy’s information as for her body sunk into the dirt and debris of one of worst places in America, lifeless, alone, and ignored by me. The medic found me and retrieved the Narcan. With a comment about how it couldn’t hurt to try, he administered the antidote, and Cindy shot awake, gasping for air. “Hot shit,” I thought, “I am out of here. I can’t believe it worked.” I got on the radio, reported that I was heading in, to code the call, David — No.” I told the medic to have a good day and hopped in my patrol car.
There was a coding system for calls in my agency. You either wrote a report or gave the call an oral code when there was nothing to report. The “No” in my report means, not domestic related, which I really did not know. The “David” says “No Police Service” meaning that nothing that happened here required the police, just like I would say if I got a call for trash blowing in the wind. I realize now, how the war on drugs, had cost me my empathy and compassion. Cindy is somebody’s daughter, mother, husband, or friend who is dealing with a medical issue, but I saw Cindy as just as a report number and being stuck late, as did the medic. The two of us were so cynical that Cindy’s gasping to air as life returned, was no more important than changing the parameters of how the call was going to be handled. By her being alive, it meant that the medic had to take her and I did not have to do a dead on arrival report.
We do not seem to think this way when we mourn the loss of strangers, just because they are celebrities who have touched our lives. To someone, every Cindy has affected their life much more than any celebrity, and there’s far too many Cindy’s for me to recall in addition to the other things I did fighting this drugs war, such as, hitting a man so hard, he crapped his pants, wrecking police cars, utilizing overtime, spending time in vacant buildings watching drug transactions, leaving affluent neighborhoods to go into poor neighborhoods for enforcement stats, and more all in the pursuit of non-violent drug arrests.
LEAP
Eventually, it became quite clear to me that the war on drugs was harming our society, wasting resources, and ruining the honor in the profession of policing. I had been educated, and now that I know better, I owe to the make amends for the harm that I did, to teach others and help stop this war on our streets.
When LEAP Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (Now, Law Enforcement Action Partnership), reached out after hearing me speak to some of these realizations, I was happy to find out, that I was not alone and that there were LEAP members spanning the globe and consisting of police officers, judges, prison wardens, prosecutors, federal agents and other law enforcement professionals who also believe that we need to end the prohibition of drugs to make our communities safer. The mere existence of LEAP should encourage you to take a deeper look at the war on drugs. Despite coming from a broad spectrum of professions, education levels, and political affiliations, what brings us together at LEAP is the shared vision. LEAP envisions the world in which drug policies work for the benefit of society. A system of legalization and regulation will end the violence, better protect human rights, safeguard our children, reduce crime and disease, treat drug abusers as patients, reduce addiction, use tax dollars more efficiently, and restore the public’s respect and trust in law enforcement.
Conclusion
Poetically, it was diving into the underworld of narcotic distribution that I began to see the futility of the war we were fighting at home and what it does to our society. I wonder how far it will be allowed to go. What does your vision of the future of forced regulatory compliance to drug laws look like? Is that the vision of the future that we want to work towards? Do we want to spend our money, sacrifice the lives of our loved ones, imprison our fellow human beings in cages, criminalize those in need of mental/medical care, pick up the bodies of youths lost to the inevitable wars of prohibition, and imprison our lives in fear?
We must stop doing what we absolutely know is not working.
This war on drugs is an act of futility which leads to officer harm and the public harm of our fellow human beings, at the expense of our limited resources.
Despite all evidence to stop, we are becoming less human as we lose our empathy.
Michael Wood Jr. is a police management scholar who after spending a career in the USMC and Baltimore Police Department, took to dismantling the blue wall of silence and creating the pathway to reform; a model called Civilian-Led Policing. His fight for justice has included leading the historic Veterans for Standing Rock action in December of 2016, listening to the front lines of Black Lives Matter, opposing money in politics, and elevating the voices of others. You can find Michael in hundreds of media appearances, from HBO’s Fixing the System documentary with President Obama, to The Joe Rogan Experience, to published opinion pieces in The Guardian and Baltimore Sun, and everything in-between, where he furthers the discussion on criminal justice systems and institutions, and the needs of society.
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