Lit_Match

Ending prohibition
12-05-08|The Post-Standard |by Sean Kirst

Today is the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition, the period in American history in which temperance advocates succeeded in making alcohol illegal. That time frame empowered and institutionalized modern organized crime. Today - as the allure of the multi-billion dollar narcotics industry in the United States helps to traumatize and destabilize such nations as neighboring Mexico - organizations like Syracuse-based ReconsiDer continue to argue that the "War on Drugs" equates to prohibition.

ReconsiDer, which includes retired cops and judges among its members, is really a think tank for possibilities: Its members offer solutions ranging from the relatively mild, such as rolling back the Rockefeller drug laws or legalizing marijuana, to full-blown legalization and government control of illegal drugs. I attach a column I wrote on Jack Cole, a former narcotics investigator who founded "LEAP," or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

On this anniversary day, I have two questions: What's your take on Reconsider, and its positions? And do you know of any Syracuse taverns that have survived since reopening just after Prohibition?

Respond here, at skirst@syracuse.com or on the forum.

- Sean

The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY)

June 7, 2002 Friday Final Edition

EX-LAWMAN QUESTIONS BENEFITS OF CRACKDOWN

BY: Sean Kirst, Post-Standard columnist

Jack Cole spent 26 years with the New Jersey State Police, including many years as a narcotics investigator. Cole, now retired, offered a blunt reaction to this week's announcement of a police crackdown on street gangs in Syracuse.
"I think it's totally useless," Cole said Wednesday from his home in Massachusetts.

He is a founding member of LEAP - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a new organization that consists of active or retired cops who support reforming U.S. drug laws. Cole, 63, is also the keynote speaker for Saturday's annual meeting of ReconsiDer, a Syracuse-based forum on changing national policy on illegal drugs.

Syracuse Police Chief Dennis DuVal and other local officials maintain that a well-executed police sweep, done with sensitivity toward neighborhood residents, can disrupt and eliminate violent gang behavior.
Cole is skeptical.

He said the modern city street gang is usually built around sales of crack cocaine, marijuana or other drugs, which ties together the issues of guns, gangs and violence.

"Let's say, in the right spot, I can make up to $1,000 a day (selling crack) on the corner," Cole said. "Now you decide you want that $1,000 a day. I can't get rid of you by reaching into my pocket and pulling out a contract. Instead, I reach into my pocket and I pull out a gun and I shoot you, or maybe I shoot that little kid standing right behind you.

"It became clear to me as a police officer, a long time ago, that when I arrested someone for rape or assault and put them into jail, then I was taking care of a crime, and I was putting someone in jail who might do that crime again. But when I arrested a (corner) drug dealer, all I was doing was creating a job opening for another 200 people. There is so much money involved that this will go on forever. The war on drugs is an abject failure."

Cole said urban despair only escalates the problem. If a child from a dysfunctional home has a chance at making, say, $100 a day - a child with limited academic skills, and nonexistent adult support, and a world view limited to three or four city blocks - then fear of arrest will never dissuade that child from "slinging" drugs on the corner, Cole contends.

The first step in reaching that child, he said, is eliminating easy drug money as an option. And Cole said the only way to make that happen is by "ending prohibition," making government-monitored narcotics legal in some fashion.

His views represent one end of the ReconsiDer spectrum. Some members call only for revising the extreme penalties mandated by the Rockefeller drug laws. Others call only for legalizing marijuana, which they say would allow investigators to focus on "harder" drugs.

Cole argues that any half-measures on reform will always fail. He began his career, he said, as an enthusiastic true believer who thought he could sweep sinister pushers from the streets. He found himself, instead, arresting drug users and distributors whose morality was not always easy to pigeonhole as being good or evil.

Sometimes, Cole said, he would arrest "dealers" who were actually teen-agers buying street drugs in bulk, planning to hand them out to friends who'd chipped in money. Cole wondered at the fairness of a world in which many young people, whether rich or poor, used illegal drugs, and the ones who got through that time without getting caught could rise up to be doctors, lawyers. ...

Even president.

Yet the ones who got caught and jailed, Cole said, were often scarred for life.

"Think of all the people you know who used drugs, who today are leading productive lives," Cole said. "Now suppose that guy next to you (20 years ago) had handed the joint to me. I would have knocked off the fire, put it in my pocket and two months later the cops would have been knocking down his door, because that guy was distributing a drug. I tell you, we're destroying our young people."

Cole's critics argue that legalization would be a catastrophe, a way of creating a new culture of addicts. But Cole responds that he's no apologist for narcotics use.

"I'm completely against drug addiction," he said. "I would never try to get anyone to use harmful drugs, especially tobacco and alcohol, which are the most harmful drugs out there."

He described the "war on drugs" as a war against our neediest people. Without a change in law and philosophy, Cole maintained, any police crackdown in poor neighborhoods has no chance to succeed.

In the coming months, in Syracuse, we'll see if he's a fool or a prophet.

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