The War on Drugs: A Narcotics Officer’s Perspective
A study in futility
I joined the San Francisco Police Department in 1981 at the age of 24. Being a cop was something that I had longed to do and I believed then, as I still do, that it was an honorable profession. There is power and authority that goes with the job, but I never felt motivated to oppress people or to feed my ego. My desire was to be an officer who helped people and who was an asset to the community.
My first assignment was walking a foot beat in the notorious Tenderloin district, a blighted inner city area of San Francisco that has some of the highest crime rates in the city. Drug dealing, assaults, robberies and prostitution being the main activities of the denizens there.
Walking a foot beat was something that I loved to do. I had the freedom to interact with the merchants, residents and even the criminals on a much more intimate basis. That intimacy allowed me to develop a level of trust with the people that I served in the community, and that trust engendered a flow of information about criminal activity on the street.
My views on drug use was ambivalent. I grew up in San Francisco in the 60’s and I had a more than passing familiarity with drugs. My high school clique smoked, toked, dropped acid or took the occasional ‘shroom with no long term consequences.
I was also ambivalent about drug enforcement: possession and dealing were illegal but they were not my highest priority. If I received a complaint or observed a violation I would address the violation with arrest or admonishment. I was a “working cop” whose job performance was to be proactive and to make arrests.
Felony arrests are the benchmark of a productive officer and possession and dealing of most drugs at the time was a felony. Drug arrests oftentimes lead to evidence of other crimes or arrests are used to pressure arrestees into providing information, “snitching,” in exchange for leniency.
Narcotics enforcement was not one of the highest priorities of the SFPD. The narcotics unit at the time consisted of 20 officers whose primary focus was on midlevel and upper level dealers. Street enforcement was left to the uniformed street cops.
Narcotics dealing in the Tenderloin consisted mainly of $10.00 “dime bags” of weed, gram bindles of powder cocaine and balloons of black tar heroin. All of that changed in 1984–1985 when crack cocaine arrived on the streets. Overnight the handful of heroin addicts were replaced by scores of desperate “crackheads” searching frantically for their next piece of rock cocaine. Sadly the bulk of the users were of color, primarily African American, and crack dealing was occurring primarily in black neighborhoods.
In 1986 I was recruited to join the narcotics unit, which was being expanded to over 100 officers in response to the “crack epidemic.” I joined an elite unit of handpicked officers who were part of the first wave of foot soldiers in the ironically named “War On Drugs.” My ambivalence toward drug enforcement was overshadowed by the problems associated with crack cocaine i.e. gangs, guns, turf wars and a marked increase in violent crimes, especially homicides.
The men and women recruited for the operation all felt a strong sense of purpose. We used an assortment tactics such as undercover drug buys, surveillance operations, informant development, and endless other creative approaches to make arrests. Unfortunately, some officers stretched the truth to justify the countless detentions, searches and arrests that we were making as a unit. Most officers acted in good faith yet the culture was to be proactive and productive and officers wanted to prove themselves. We were there as a task force whose sole purpose it was to quash drug dealing and we would take liberties, literally, to achieve that end.
Those liberties included detentions and searches made without probable cause and the arrests that resulted from those “dirty searches.” Officers then had to write embellished reports to justify their actions, and eventually taking the stand in court cases and provide corroborating -and false- testimony to support their case.
Crack dealing on the street was concentrated in primarily black neighborhood so we, the mostly white officers, would routinely go to those areas in search of drug deals. We would see a group of mostly young black men hanging around an area known for drug dealing and we would detain them to conduct our investigation. At least that’s how the reports read. And that was our intent, or at least one of them. Barring any real probable cause we were really on glorified fishing expeditions, jumping out of our unmarked cars and rushing the group perhaps inspiring one or more of the “suspects” to take off running, which further justified our existence and our actions.
Drug dealing does not know racial biases and we were aware that other drugs were being sold on the street and elsewhere. We would put a little effort into investigating methamphetamine, marijuana and powder cocaine violations but our focus was on crack and the primarily African American communities where it seemed most prevalent.
Discriminatory actions were not limited to drug enforcement alone. The sentencing guidelines established under the federal mandatory minimums in 1986 set the penalties for possession of powder cocaine versus the possession of crack cocaine at a 100–1 ratio. The rationale for this disparity was that crack was more dangerous than powder cocaine, although they are essentially the same drug. That ratio was reduced to 18–1 in 2010 and efforts are under way to eliminate the disparity altogether.
There was also money to be made as part of the narcotics enforcement team. Overtime was limitless, with investigations and targeted enforcement paid for out of some federal narcotics grant. Court appearances guaranteed three hour overtime minimum thanks to our existing contract. Officers learned how to game the system by including each other in reports to get subpoenaed to court or by befriending certain assistant district attorneys to be called on as expert witnesses. The system was flawed and the officers were taking advantage of the system.
The vast majority of our crack arrests were of black men and women and the criminal courts began to resemble assembly lines where every human being arrested was reduced to the status of a case file. The routine was for the assistant district attorney to show up with an armful of cases, often thirty or more for one day’s hearings, and negotiate with the public defender to get the defendant to plead guilty. First offenders were usually allowed to enter drug diversion programs in exchange for their guilty pleas. Subsequent violations resulted in county jail time, probation and ultimately prison.
One component of a probation plea was that the person would agree to a warrantless search as a condition of probation. A warrantless search meant “knowingly and willingly agreeing to a warrantless search of a person, their place of residence or vehicle, day or night, with or without probable cause by any police or probation officer.” That is the language that was used day in and day out and it meant that the person was giving up their Constitutionally guaranteed right AGAINST such warrantless search. And it made our job so much easier because we then had carte blanche to stop and search whenever we felt like it.
Narcotics enforcement, especially crack cocaine, became the department’s highest priority, as it was becoming nationwide. It also proved to be much more dangerous than any of my previous police experiences. Running wildly into housing projects or blind alleys in pursuit of users and dealers, wrestling with parolees who were determined to not go back to prison and having undercover officers robbed at gunpoint all lead me to conclude that what we were doing was not worth the risks that we were taking. Officers — and civilians — were getting hurt at an alarming rate, all for the want of a tiny white rock. The war on drugs was taking its toll.
There was never any “intellectual discourse” regarding what we were doing or why we were doing it. In the beginning The tactics and strategies that we employed were a knee jerk reaction to a legitimate and serious problem, yet as front line foot soldiers we weren’t in a position to really question those tactics.
I was three years into my narcotics assignment when my frustration boiled over. I didn’t like what had become rote knee jerk police work, tired of the endless rooting around in search of crack addicts and being exposed to extreme levels of poverty and violence and the endless court appearances, watching the same process play out over and over. I requested a transfer, which was denied. So I persevered, still enjoying the collegiality that existed within the narcotics unit and turning a blind eye to the futility of what we were doing.
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Saturday, November 11, 1989 started like every other day in the narcotics unit. Our team met at the office at noon and made plans for the day’s enforcement program. Without any active complaints to investigate we opted to caravan the various public housing projects that were active dealing spots and see if we could spot a deal before rushing out and making arrests.
Our caravan of unmarked cars rolled up to one of the more dangerous public housing developments in search of drug activity. My partner JB and I saw two guys engaged in a “hand to hand” transaction. JB and the others jumped from the cars and the chase was on.
I drove into a busy intersection in search of my team and I saw JB lying in the middle of the street. He had been struck by a moving van and had sustained major head trauma. JB was rushed to the hospital where emergency brain surgery was performed. Three days later the doctors turned off the respirator that had been keeping him alive.
There was no epiphany for me that day, just the sad and painful reality that I had lost a dear friend who was a husband, father and great cop. And JB’s tragic death reinforced what I knew in my heart of hearts was a futile- and fatal- attempt at using force to solve a complex social problem.
Six months after JB’s death the narcotics unit was reduced back to its previous staffing levels and the core group of my peers were transferred back to uniform patrol duties. The department’s philosophy was that the crack epidemic would be handled by the uniformed officers on the street.
Police work in its most basic form is reactive, with officers responding to calls of crimes. Based on the information received, the timing of the call and evidence gathered investigations are initiated and arrests are made.
The arrival of crack cocaine changed the rules of the game and how police officers functioned. The reactive officers on the street were now acting much like the narcotics officers who had been integrated into their ranks, conducting random detentions and warrantless searches. Calling it an “epidemic” and declaring a “war on drugs” created an air of urgency, and police officers like me responded in kind. Because the “war” was occurring in mostly black neighborhoods the casualties were most often the men, women and children of color who lived in those neighborhoods.
The damage being done and the lives being lost by death and incarceration is incalculable and heartbreaking. Compounding the damage is the force and fury with which the police have responded. To say that I was simply “doing my job” is a cop out (no pun intended) and one that I steadfastly refuse to use as an excuse or as an alibi. I was doing my job, but my conscience — then and now — tell me that it was an ugly, unsavory and thankless job that had very little overall effect on the effects of crack cocaine on society.
It is shameful to think that in 2016 we live in a society that still demonizes addiction and poverty. Drug usage, like alcohol and tobacco, is a social issue that is finally being addressed by the legalization of recreational marijuana use in many states. Drug addiction is a social problem that needs to be addressed through education, intervention and rehabilitation.
The war on drugs is a war on the people and it is one that will not be won through state sanctioned violence or imprisonment but only through compassionate and caring measures to save our own.
