I’m still trying to keep my opinionating off Facebook. This is a post I deleted.
Priorities: “There were approximately 600 police officers and detectives manning the borough of Manhattan in the Narcotics Division when I worked there.
When I worked in the Manhattan Special Victims Squad, we were responsible for investigating all felony sex crimes and child abuse cases in the borough of Manhattan. Our caseload totaled approximately 4,000 cases per year. We were staffed with 22 Detectives.
I recall having a pile of active case folders on my desk and trying to prioritize them. Should I work on the infant who was burned with an iron, the woman brutally beaten and raped at gunpoint, or the 11 year old child sodomized by his uncle? Of course I attempted to work all of them with due diligence, as did most of my colleagues, but the frustration of such a caseload never ceased. In the back of my mind I knew there were only 22 of us and yet 600 narcotics officers were working cases without a victim.”
What needs to be added is that Asset Seizure laws have effectively turned the drug war into a For Profit business. We have been fighting this “war” since the Reagan years. I can’t see any strong positives that have come from it. We have, on the contrary, compromised many civil liberties, created many new wards of the State in our penitentiaries, and militarized our police forces. Those are not desirable outcomes. Yes, drugs can cause people to do bad things. So too can alcohol. But as he notes above, surely we can grant that possessing crack is much less injurious than raping someone?