A smarter way to end drug crimes?
September 28th, 2006 by Atomictumor
Found an article in Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette detailing t
actics used by some police deparments in reducing the amount of street corner drug dealing, and sounds like it’d work pretty darn well on the crack problem that nobody wants to admit is in Scarboro. True, Oak Ridge has meth, and way too much, but unless you know somebody who lives in or frequents the valley, you have no idea how big the crack problem is in Oak Ridge.
One of the problems in stopping the ‘drug trade’ is that the people who get nailed are most often the hustlers, who are small time, and might point one or two notches up the latter, but fingering somebody and getting evidence against them are two completely different things. The people further up the chain are cagey, and know how to keep from getting busted.
The techniques described here, which has seen some early success already, involves identifying the tail end of the chain, the street pushers and sellers and getting in contact with their ‘influentials’. Relatives, mentors, etc, are contacted, and relationships are formed between them and the police. Once enough evidence against the hustlers are amassed, they’re brought in en masse to police headquarters, where they’re faced with first these ‘influentials’, and afterwards with DAs and cops talking about how much trouble they’ll be in if this keeps up. Then they’re let go.
The experience seems to indicate, based on this article, that people have actually stopped dealing, or at least brought it far underground.
The police department is getting some word for making headway, and hopefully a new DA will help keep these people off the street, but more people will pop up to take their place unless deterrents are made to keep that from happening. Lets face it, after 30 odd years of Nixon’s War On Drugs, it’s still a dead heat. Problem is, as we’ve see, the drugs are a lot more dangerous and addictive now than they were back in Tricky Dick’s time.
Y’know, I’d go so far as to say we wouldn’t have a crack or meth problem if Whitey would have just let up on pot back in the 70s, but, thats just me.
September 28th, 2006 at 11:10 am
The only war on drugs I’m familiar with was Punky Brewster’s. Punky power!
September 28th, 2006 at 11:37 am
I saw an article about that, too. I thought it sounded like a pretty good idea. On a related topic, I was listening to everyone’s favorite NPR radio station and some guy who reviews commercials for some newspaper in some city was talking about the government’s various anti-drug commercials over the years. In his opinion they’ve vastly improved their approach, and in recent segments had a bunch of stoners sitting on a couch talking to the camera. The stoners say that they’ve never killed anyone, raped anyone, etc.. and that pot isn’t that bad, but then the commercial goes on to show how boring their lives are sitting around stoned on their couches instead of snowboarding, off-roading, whatever. Hmmm… I though the whole thing was kind of thought provoking. The gov’t appears to be softening their approach on how evil pot is - absolutely no mention of “gateway drug”, and just pointing out that there is better things you can be doing with your time.
Of course, who’s to say that getting stoned and then going snowboarding wouldn’t be kinda fun?
September 28th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
I notice that the Oak Ridger, coincidently, ran an article dealing with the ORPD’s crack dealin tactics, which has netted an indictment or two. However, the meat of the story seems to me that they’re arresting buyers, and petty dealers, which is same old same old in the drug war scheme, and hasn’t gotten us anywhere. The article alludes to the department putting ‘pressure’ on upper dealers, but I’m not so sure they’re sweating very much, if the market allows that an unknown face can sell crack to 15 people in town off of a street corner.
I don’t see the ’supply and demand’ tactic working from the demand side of it, because, if Dave Chappelle (or Whitney Houston, Marion Barry, etc) taught us nothing else, its that you can’t keep a crackhead down.