Z-WAR
By David P Beiter
Date: Tue Jan 23, 1996 4:21 am CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Z: War On Drugs - Nobody Wants to Win
Posted: Bob Witanek
As reported below, over 1/2 of US prisoners are serving time for
drug related crimes. This means that more than half of the duties
of police in this nation is related to enforcing drug laws. The
emphasis on law and order, the pro-cop stature of the politicians,
the enactment of laws requiring mandatory sentencing, longer
sentences, the construction of more prisons, the private security
industry, the public police industry and the prison industry are
all dependent on the ever fanning of the flames of the war on
drugs. This article, which will be serialized over the next
several days, demonstrates clearly that this war is a myth, a sham,
a war that no one has any intention of winning, least of all the
national, state and local governments of this nation. After all,
if the war were won, what we do with all of those prisons, cops,
police brutality laws, etc. ? Where would all that hard cash that
provides a life line to US financial institutions come from? Where
would EASTMAN-KODAK sell all those chemicals used in cocaine
manufacturing? How would the international lending institutions
fare if their client third world debtors did not have cash flow
generated by the drug trade? What would become of capitalism?
- Bob Witanek, Moderator, pol-abuse@igc.apc.org
ZZZZZ
ZZ M A G A Z I N E
ZZ
ZZZZZ
=== An Independent political magazine of critical thinking on
political, culturalm social and economic life in the US. It sees
the racial, sexual, class and political dimensions of personal life
as fundamentals to understanding and improving constemporary
circumstances; and aims to assist activist efforts for a better
furure. Puvlished monthly by (except July/August) by the Institute
for Social and Cultural Communications. To subscribe, send your
address with check for the below described amount to Z MAGAZINE,
18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA 02543; (508) 548-9063.
E-MAIL: zsysop@zbbs.com
Subscriptions: 1 year $26; 2 years $45, 3 years $60
Canada & Mexico, 1 year US $40
International, 1 year US $50
US Libraries and Institutions, 1 year $35
US Student / Low Income $18
====================================================
THE WAR NO ONE WANTS TO WIN
by W. E. Gutman
A Connecticut-based journalist W E. Gutman is currently on
assignment in Latin Amefica. PART 1 OF 3
The United States boasts the world's largest and fastest growing
prison population. Over 50 percent of the inmates-their ranks have
doubled in the past 10 years-are serving time for drugrelated
crimes, which account for better than onethird of all crimes
committed in the U.S. Smuggled in hollowed concrete posts, frozen
broccoli packs, sacks of coffee and crates brimming with exotic
woods and aromatic spices, enough drugs reach the streets to keep
every one of the estimated three million U.S. addicts bombed out
of their heads for two months straight. If the new lords of terror
and high finance-among them corporate leaders, high-ranking
military officers and political bigwigs whose dominions stretch
from the jungles of Colombia to Sicily and the U.S.-have their way,
the richest and most drug-dependent society on earth may never
awaken from its psychedelic stupor.
Juggling deals that exceed the combined assets of Boeing, Texaco,
and Pepsi, funding political campaigns and controlling vast
communications networks, the "narcocracy" has the Power to turn the
mighty and the Well-connected into obedient co-conspirators. The
incorruptible, those few whose influence or silence cannot be
bought at any price, are disposed of less kindly but with
persuasive finality. Intimidation by death is the rhetoric of
choice in the drug traffickers' lexicon.
In 1989, following the assassination of Colombia's leading
presidential contender by the Medellin drug cartel, western
nations, led by the U.S., declared allout "war" against drug
traffickers and money launderers. Six years later, world drug
production has doubled-with coca and marijuana cultivation in
Colombia exploding from 32,000 acres to 150,000 acres. Colombian
pretenders to their nation's high posts have since learned that
brokering deals with thugs is not only profitable but salutary as
well. Tapes of bugged conversations aired recently on U.S.
television reveal that the Cali cartel influenced Colombia's
elections by contributing to then-president-elect Ernesto Samper's
campaign.
Colombian intelligence agents also recently uncovered a plot by
imprisoned drug traffickers to eliminate "uncooperative" senior
government officials, including high-ranking officials of the
Justice Ministry, national police and prosecutor general's office.
"We have evidence," said Deputy Prosecutor General Adolfo Salamanca
in a radio interview, "that drug traffickers and paramilitary
groups are conspiring to destabilize some of our institutions."
In a related operation, police in Cali confiscated documents and
communications equipment used by alleged drug lords, and raided
bunkers said to belong to ringleader Jose Santacruz Londono. Some
of the documents include lists of politicians and military officers
on the trafficker's payroll. The Colombian government has offered
a reward of $1.25 million for the arrest of brothers Miguel and
Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, and $625,000 for second-echelon
figures such as Santacruz. There have been no takers to date.
Counter-bids are said to have been offered in high places to ensure
the traffickers' freedom.
Highly contagious, this blend of greed and savvy has infected
politicians, bankers, and the military from London's stately
Whitehall and the rococo chambers of Paris's Elysee Palace to the
banana republics where drug money-laundering machines are fully
loaded and set on automatic cycle. This race for quick, ill-gotten
profits is fast changing the world's political landscape and
further eroding both the resolve and ability of nations to fight
back.
Grown in the fertile Golden Crescent (Afghanistan, Iran, and
Pakistan), opium, from which heroin is distilled, flooded world
markets to the tune of 800 tons in 1989. Today, the well-tended
poppy fields are yielding in excess of 3,000 tons. A DEA
intelligence analysis made available by Time magazine reports that
the amount of land devoted to opium poppy cultivation grew from
about 2,400 hectares in 1991 to over 20,000 hectares in 1993. The
DEA rates Colombia as the fourth largest opium producer in the
world, after Burma, Laos, and Afghanistan. Raw opium production
is expected to triple in the next two years, according to the DEA.
CONTINUED TOMORROW
Posted in pol-abuse@igc.apc.org
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Date: Wed Jan 24, 1996 1:55 am CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Re: Z: War On Drugs - Nobody Wants to Win
Posted: Bob Witanek
ZZZZZ
ZZ M A G A Z I N E
ZZ
ZZZZZ
=== An Independent political magazine of critical thinking on
political, culturalm social and economic life in the US. It sees
the racial, sexual, class and political dimensions of personal life
as fundamentals to understanding and improving constemporary
circumstances; and aims to assist activist efforts for a better
furure. Puvlished monthly by (except July/August) by the Institute
for Social and Cultural Communications. To subscribe, send your
address with check for the below described amount to Z MAGAZINE,
18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA 02543; (508) 548-9063.
E-MAIL: zsysop@zbbs.com
Subscriptions: 1 year $26; 2 years $45, 3 years $60
Canada & Mexico, 1 year US $40
International, 1 year US $50
US Libraries and Institutions, 1 year $35
US Student / Low Income $18
====================================================
THE WAR NO ONE WANTS TO WIN
by W. E. Gutman
A Connecticut-based journalist W E. Gutman is currently on
assignment in Latin Amefica. PART 2 OF 3
Cocaine production, a virtual monopoly of Bolivia, Colombia, and
Peru in 1989, grew from 800 tons in 1989 to 2,000 tons in 1994.
Today, all countries south of the Rio Grande are lusting after drug
profits.
Nor are nations of the former Soviet Union immune. Having
succumbed to political and economic gangrene, they too compete for
their share of a thriving international market. The hottest new
market for cocaine is Russia, a country where the white powder has
become a nouveau riche status symbol. According to Joe Parker, a
U.S. Customs agent assigned to Interpol headquarters in France,
"much of the traffic is also going through Eastern Europe and
traveling into the West by rail."
Despite the lofty rhetoric and a number of high profile operations
which helped net several drug king;pins and large quantities of
contraband, there appears to be no political will to bring the drug
war to a victorious end. Powerful economic and geostrategic
interests get in the way.
In Western Europe, for example, the principal purveyor of heroin
(70 percent of the market) is Pakistan. When former Pakistani
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited France in 1992, then French
President Francois Mitterrand clamored against Pakistan's human
rights record; but he said nothing about the heroin flooding the
streets of Paris. French drug enforcement agents have known all
along that a number of Pakistani cabinet members moonlighted as
narcotraffickers. Why then stand mute? Simple. Islamabad had
ordered three French submarines-a contract worth $470 million.
France is also selling Pakistan nuclear technology for "civilian
use."
Burma, the nation that savagely quelled student protests in 1988,
is the world's most powerful narcodictatorship and a main supplier-
via France-of opium and heroin destined for U.S. markets. Did
France boycott Burma? No. Instead, a French public company named
Total signed an oil contract with the Burmese. Morocco is France's
main supplier of hashish (60 percent of the market). The French
government has yet to issue a formal complaint, even though King
Hassan admitted two years ago that cannabis fields in Morocco
exceed 124,000 acres.
France is not alone. When it comes to fighting drugs with words,
the U.S. is the undisputed champion of double talk. To help
Nicaragua's Contras, the CIA and Col. Oliver North not only
covered the tracks of their drug-running proteges, they also laid
the drug pipeline from Colombia to the U.S. The Kerry Commission
has since disclosed that Florida's Homestead Air Force Base had
been used as a transit point in the shipment of large quantities
of marijuana.
Last fall, Richard Horn, a DEA agent, filed suit against top former
State Dept. and CIA officers based in Burma, contending that they
acted to thwart his antidrug mission in the Southeast Asian nation.
Horn alleges that he was lied to, electronically surveilled, and
finally kicked out of Burma-not by the Burmese traffickers he was
trying to nab but by U.S. officials who thought his antidrug
campaign should be played down in favor of other diplomatic
objectives, namely discrediting the brutal and repressive regime
in Burma. It is not the first time the priorities of America.n
agencies abroad have been at loggerheads.
Support for a ragtag group of Afghan freedom fighters also
justified any means. After all, at the time the Soviet Union was
still our arch enemy. So the CIA secretly funneled weapons to the
Afghan rebels through the intermediary of Pakistan's military. on
their return trips, supply trucks were brimming with opium which
was promptly processed into heroin in 200 "flying kitchens"-
clandestine labs hastily erected along the Pakistani-Afghan border.
The CIA reportedly knew but looked the other way. Result? In
1979, just before the war, Afghanistan had produced 200 tons of
opium. A year later, according to UN figures, production had
exceeded 3,000 tons.
According to a confidential memo, the U.S Justice Dept. has been
probing widespread drug trafficking among the now-deposed and
"exiled" Haitian military. Prosecutors have evidence that top
officers protected cocaine flights from Colombia and outgoing U.S.-
bound freighter shipments. Obtained from the Associated Press, the
memo also discloses serious concerns that U.S. intelligence
agencies may have cooperated with Haitian smugglers, among them 14
high-ranking military officers, including the chief of police of
Port-au-Prince, Haiti's superintendent of ports, and several agents
of Haiti's National Intelligence Service-all said to be closely
involved with Colombian traffickers. U.S. benevolence-not to say
sycophancy-toward Haiti's drugsmeared (and blood-stained) former
military elite casts doubt on the motives and the seriousness of
last year's "invasion. "
Western nations also turn a blind eye to drug money laundering.
No wonder: The harvest is bountiful. Ninety percent of the
estimated $300 billion drug market is reinvested in industrialized
nations; the remainder goes to drug-producing countries. Many
large western banks have branches in these fiscal paradises,
notoriously fed by narcodollars. These Edens, many of them in the
West Indies, owe their survival to their richer patrons. The
Cayman Islands, the ideal repository of dirty money, is a British
colony. If it really wanted to, the London government could easily
put an end to this operation, not to mention other lucrative
markets in the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Jersey Islands, and Gibraltar,
which are also controlled by London. Narcodollars are also
routinely laundered in the quaint Dutch half of the tiny island of
St. Martin and in Curacao-a fishnet's throw away from the Venezuela
coast-while Amsterdam looks the other way.
Posted in pol-abuse@igc.apc.org
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Date: Wed Jan 24, 1996 1:55 am CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Re: Z: War On Drugs - Nobody Wants to Win
From: Bob Witanek
Subject: Z: War On Drugs - Nobody Wants to Win
Thanks for clarification (see below). What I should have said is that the
fact that over 1/2 of the prisoners incarcerated in the US are there
for drug related crimes indicates that a VERY SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TIME
is spent by police, and much of police staffing requirements, is on account
of the so-called war on drugs. - Bob Witanek
=======================
Posted daviso@u.washington.edu Tue Jan 23 19:20:30 1996
From: Davis Oldham
Subject: Re: Z: War On Drugs - Nobody Wants to Win
Hey, Bob--
A minor point, but worth noting--just because 1/2 the prisoners
are in prison on drug-related crimes doesn't mean those laws
take 1/2 of cops' time to enforce. Drug laws might well take
_more_ than half the cops' resources--it all depends on how
much work it takes to make a drug bust vs., say, a murder
investigation or a corporate pollution bust (yeah, right!).
There's no necessary connection between # of busts and time/
energy/resources per bust. I mention this because this kind
of logical fallacy makes us look bad when we're trying to
convince people of our views.
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
more info: http://www.calyx.net/~refuse/mumia/index.html
http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm
Davis Oldham (daviso@u.washington.edu)
On Mon, 22 Jan 1996, Bob Witanek wrote:
> Posted: Bob Witanek
>
> As reported below, over 1/2 of US prisoners are serving time for
> drug related crimes. This means that more than half of the duties
> of police in this nation is related to enforcing drug laws. The
Date: Thu Jan 25, 1996 9:45 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Re: Z: War On Drugs - Nobody Wants to Win
Posted: Bob Witanek
ZZZZZ
ZZ M A G A Z I N E
ZZ
ZZZZZ
=== An Independent political magazine of critical thinking on
political, culturalm social and economic life in the US. It sees
the racial, sexual, class and political dimensions of personal life
as fundamentals to understanding and improving constemporary
circumstances; and aims to assist activist efforts for a better
furure. Puvlished monthly by (except July/August) by the Institute
for Social and Cultural Communications. To subscribe, send your
address with check for the below described amount to Z MAGAZINE,
18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA 02543; (508) 548-9063.
E-MAIL: zsysop@zbbs.com
Subscriptions: 1 year $26; 2 years $45, 3 years $60
Canada & Mexico, 1 year US $40
International, 1 year US $50
US Libraries and Institutions, 1 year $35
US Student / Low Income $18
====================================================
THE WAR NO ONE WANTS TO WIN
by W. E. Gutman
A Connecticut-based journalist W E. Gutman is currently on
assignment in Latin America. PART 3 OF 3
Tax-free money, even $100 billion worth, can be a headache when it
is generated by drug deals, bundled in small denominations, laced
with microscopic traces of cocaine and stashed away in travel-worn
suitcases. Every year, the world's top drug cartels generate that
amount in $5, $10, and $20 transactions around the world. Most of
these deals take place in the streets of America's major cities.
U.S. law enforcement experts estimate the annual revenues from
cocaine trafficking alone to exceed $35 billion. This money is the
plasma of the cartels, necessary for the operation and growth of
the vast black market. It subsidizes their vast armies and ensures
the silence, if not active complicity, of the nations that shelter
them. With illicit profits, politicians, judges, police, and
journalists are regularly bought-or "neutralized" by hired
assassins.
Nor are the major international financial institutions particularly
vigilant about drug money laundering. Developing countries are
ruinously in debt. Those that produce narcotics (or serve as
willing conduits) use narcodollars to pay off creditors who don't
care where the money comes from. Peru is a case in point. Every
week, until recently, runners for Amazonian traffickers passed $8
million in cash through the Ocona Street black market emporia of
Lima. This is where agents of the Peruvian Central Bank procure
the hard currency they need to pay off their debts. Narcodollars
are then deposited directly into banks. Moreover, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) places upon developing countries
drastic politico-economic restrictions which not only encourage
money laundering but also favor drug trafficking. In 1991, Peru's
President Fujimori signed an accord with Washington: In exchange
for $100 million, Peru pledged to put in place the IMF's
"structural adjustment" clause, opening Peruvian markets to U.S.
corn. The result of this blackjack therapy is that, after four
years, cultivation of corn in Peru fell tenfold, whereas coca
production grew by 50 percent. Why, then, with 70 percent of the
cocaine consumed in the U.S. originating in Peru, did the Clinton
ac ministration slash drug czar Lee Brown's budget, approved
bloodletting cuts in the State Department's Bureau for
International Narcotics, jettison large numbers of DEA personnel
and reduce the Defense Deptartment's drug budget? Why is the
Administration phasing out a key drug interdiction program that has
succeeded in preventing tons of cocaine from reaching America's
streets?
Recycling drug money in privatized institutions of the former
Soviet empire seems to cause no concern for the West. In Russia,
the choices are simple: industrialized nations either control these
often unprofitable businesses by investing in them, or they let a
rich and mushrooming Russian underworld take over. The latter-
letting Russian narcotraffickers and their Italian subcontractors
launder the profits-suits the West just fine. It's easier and less
risky.
Chemicals play a vital role in the manufacture of narcotics.
Cocaine and heroin production, for example, requires "precursor"
materials such as acetone, anhydrides, and hydrochloric acid.
U.S., German, and French chemical companies, despite a convention
which obliges them to select their clientele with utmost care, are
happy to supply drug lords with tons of chemicals. Evidence
suggests that the Germans have fewer scruples than the others.
Raids on clandestine labs from Latin America to the lush fields of
the Golden Triangle routinely uncover large caches of German-made
chemicals. Drug enforcement agencies also agree that German
authorities, buckling under pressure of the drug lobby, doggedly
resist and evade scrutiny.
In response to urgent appeals by the Inter-American Port and Harbor
Conference to intensify port security training among members of the
Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Organization of American States
(OAS) recently sponsored the first regional seminar on the control
of drugs, chemicals, and hazardous materials. Held in Barbados and
conducted by the DEA, the Port of Miami, the U.S. Coast Guard, the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the U.S. Customs Service, the
event brought together 45 port managers and security officials from
both the private and public sectors in CARICOM member nations of
the OAS and Suriname. Maritime security, port access and control,
theft preventive measures, container inspection, and standard
vessel boarding techniques were among the topics covered at the
seminar. Participants also familiarized themselves with the
International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code, and with the
packaging, stowing, and segregation requirements for hazardous
materials.
Meanwhile, drug use continues to grow, though somewhat less rapidly
than drug production, a phenomenon which illustrates the cartels'
resolve to submerge the world with drugs. In the West, consumption
is rising at an annual rate of 10 percent. However, whereas
"recreational" use of cannabis and cocaine appears to be declining
among students and yuppies, addiction to heroin, particularly in
the ghettos of America and Europe, is growing at an alarming rate.
Unsold narcotics are auctioned off, first in the producer's
backyard (drug use in Pakistan was insignificant in 1980; there are
now over three million addicts), then in neighboring markets-India,
Nepal, Thailand, and East Africa.
West Africa has not been spared. In the Ivory Coast, a gram of
heroin costs less that $30-better than half its street value in
Europe and the U.S. Unthinkable a decade ago, large numbers of
children in Togo are now addicted to crack cocaine.
Ronald Goldstock, director of the New York State Organized Crime
Task Force, recently suggested that "law enforcement is spending
too much money on [blocking] supply and not enough on [curbing]
demand. People must be stopped from wanting drugs," he urged. A
lofty, if somewhat Quixotic crusade in a world where greed,
deception, the mathematics of death, and the politics of silence
prevail. z
A Connecticut-based journalist W E. Gutman is currently
on assignment in Latin America.
===================================
Posted in pol-abuse@igc.apc.org
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Date: Tue Feb 13, 1996 12:10 am CST
From: snet l
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: snet-l@world.std.com
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Z: Crime & Capitalism (fwd)
<---- ---- FORWARDED MESSAGE BEGIN>
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 1996 19:42:50 -0800 (PST)
Reply-To: Moderator of conference "justice.polabuse"
From: Bob Witanek
Subject: Z: Crime & Capitalism
To: Recipients of pol-abuse
ZZZZZZ
ZZ M A G A Z I N E
ZZ
ZZZZZZ
===========================
Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 1995
==========================
An Independent political magazine of critical thinking on
political, culturalm social and economic life in the US. It sees
the racial, sexual, class and political dimensions of personal life
as fundamentals to understanding and improving constemporary
circumstances; and aims to assist activist efforts for a better
furure. Puvlished monthly by (except July/August) by the Institute
for Social and Cultural Communications. To subscribe, send your
address with check for the below described amount to Z MAGAZINE,
18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA 02543; (508) 548-9063.
E-MAIL: zsysop@zbbs.com
Subscriptions: 1 year $26; 2 years $45, 3 years $60
Canada & Mexico, 1 year US $40
International, 1 year US $50
US Libraries and Institutions, 1 year $35
US Student / Low Income $18
====================================================
AMERICA'S BIGGEST WALL STREET MERGER: CRIME AND CAPITALISM
by C. Stone Brown, a Black history/political writer who lives in
Philadelphia
PART 1 OF 2
Make the connection .... enjoy the surge corrections is facing an
explosion.... why shouldn't your company profit from this
incredible growth?
-1994 promotional brochure,
American Correctional Association
The United States of America has quietly become one of the world's
leaders in the rate of incarcerating its citizens. Federal and
state prisons have reached the dubious milestone of having a
million or more imnates in prison. That number does not even count
America's jail population, which according to the U.S Justice
Department is a record 490,442, double the jail population a decade
ago.
The custodians of America'g penal systems have abandoned the idea
of rehabilitating convicts. No doubt, the custodians are acting
on orders from an impatient mainstream America, who regard
criminals (with exception to white collar criminals) to be innately
corrupt, natural born predators of society.
What is America's collective sociological need that drives its
approach to dealing with crime? Statistically, violent crime
disproportionately affects the underprivileged of our society.
However, solutions are not often the ideas of the underprivileged,
frequently they are paternally administered by the privileged
class. If the solution to America's crime problem is left to the
actions of the privileged class, we should expect the solution to
augment their status, while further alienating the underprivileged.
This explains the presence of America's growing "Prison Industry."
According to The National Prison Project Journal, some of America's
largest Wall Street brokerage firms, such as Goldman Sachs & Co,
Prudential Insurance Co., Smith Barney Shearson Inc., and Merrill
Lynch & Co., are underwriting prison construction with private tax-
exempt bonds. Indeed, America has found its anecdote to crime, it
is Wall Street's biggest merger to date-Crime & Capitalism.
Crime & Capitalism is a very suggestive expression, it immediately
discloses an American trend -that crime does pay, and if justice
does not prevail, profits surely will. The increasing number of
private prison firms are the latest societal indicator that
"street" crime is permissible, under the tacit prescription that
it is contained, managed and operated like a business enterprise.
Private prison firms are very attractive to many states whose
budgets have been depleted by mandatory sentencing guidelines and
the latest "three strikes your out" craze. These private firms
offer their services on a per item charge to house the state's
convicts. This relieves state governments of the burdensome cost
of constructing new prisons, paying guard wages, insurance,
pensions, and other associated maintenance security cost.
There are approximately 50,000 private prison beds in the United
States; experts believe this number will rise considerably in the
next decade. According to an article in the Toronto Star, the
largest private prison company is (CCA) Corrections Corporation of
America. CCA was founded in 1983 by Doctor Crants, a graduate of
West Point and Harvard Business School. CCA is listed on the
prestigious New York Stock Exchange, it answers to shareholders and
has board meetings like all publicly traded companies. What does
distinguish CCA from other listed companies is how crime affects
stockholder profits. Indeed, the annual FBI and Justice Department
national crime data, are excellent leading indicators of future
dividends. For companies like CCA, the local Metro sections of
American newspapers are no less important than the business
section.
CCA has grown considerably since its debut in 1983. It is now a
$100-million company with 21 prisons spread over America,
Australia, and the United Kingdom. CCA has already come under
scrutiny in two states. Tennessee's $60 million contract with CCA
is currently under review by the state legislature, and at two of
their private facilities in Texas, a 1990 report revealed that
"inexperienced" prison employees had used excessive force on
inmates. Additionally, inmates were not extended services which
were required under the state contract to assist imnates return to
society. Few would argue, it is in the interest of CCA profits,
that prisoners return to their facility and not back into society.
Surprisingly, some of America's icon companies are diversifying
their investments in private prison construction. For instance,
American Express has invested millions in private prison
construction in Oklahoma. And (GE) General Electric has invested
in "life" sentences by financing private prison construction in
Tennessee. As America's system of justice sanctions the profits
and privatization of prisons, convicted criminals are no longer
viewed as pariahs of society. Comparable to slaves during
America's colonial period, convicts have become a very desirable
commodity across the nation. Perhaps the convicts are not as
seductive as the profits they yield to many communities. For
example, the state of North Carolina sends its convicts to a
private prison in Oklahoma, and recently the state of Virginia
chartered 150 inmates to a county-owned, for profit detention
center in east Texas. In 31 days, those 150 Virginia prisoners
earned the Texas county more than $200,000. The owner of the east
Texas detention center, Bobby Ross remarked: "Its kind of like a
factory in a sense. "
CONTINUED TOMORROW
==========================
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<---- ---- FORWARDED MESSAGE END>
;-)
=======================================================================
He's a man of great common sense and good taste -- meaning thereby a
man without originality or moral courage.
-- George Bernard Shaw
=======================================================================
Donna J. Logan revcoal@pcnet.com
=======================================================================
Date: Mon Feb 12, 1996 8:22 pm CST
From: Moderator of conference justice.polabuse
EMS: INTERNET / MCI ID: 376-5414
MBX: bwitanek@igc.apc.org
TO: * David Beiter / MCI ID: 635-1762
Subject: Re: Z: Crime & Capitalism
Posted: Bob Witanek
ZZZZZZ
ZZ M A G A Z I N E
ZZ
ZZZZZZ
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Z MAGAZINE OCTOBER 1995
==========================
An Independent political magazine of critical thinking on
political, culturalm social and economic life in the US. It sees
the racial, sexual, class and political dimensions of personal life
as fundamentals to understanding and improving constemporary
circumstances; and aims to assist activist efforts for a better
furure. Puvlished monthly by (except July/August) by the Institute
for Social and Cultural Communications. To subscribe, send your
address with check for the below described amount to Z MAGAZINE,
18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA 02543; (508) 548-9063.
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AMERICA'S BIGGEST WALL STREET MERGER: CRIME AND CAPITALISM
by C. Stone Brown, a Black History/political writer residing in
Philadelphia
PART 2 OF 2
For many involved in the industry of crime, it's no surprise that
a county in Texas would be one of the first to recognize the
profitable merging of Crime & Capitalism. It is projected that in
just a few months, Texas will have the largest penal system in the
country, larger than the even the federal government. At a
projected figure of 155,000 inmates, Texas knows convicts like
Idaho knows potatoes.
Although Texas may be the Lone Star State, they have plenty of
company when it comes to taking advantage of America's swelling
prison population. In California, crime is a synonym for job
security- Just ask the state correctional officers whose average
salary is $45,000 annually. It was a small investment for the
prison guard union to contribute nearly a half million dollars
($425,000) to Gov. Pete Wilson's gubernatorial campaign. This was
the largest single contribution ever reported by a candidate for
governor. If the old adage "money talks," has any legitimacy, one
can only deduce that Gov. Pete Wilson was being advised in
unequivocal terms that "crime" is the commerce of California',s
future.
In the East, New York city crime is a "cash cow" for one particular
Republican county in New York state. According to the state's
corrections committee chair, in 1992, the 110th district received
$124 million in salaries, local purchases of food and supplies,
maintenance contracts and other operating expenses. Suburban
counties similar to the 110th district in New York state have a
financial interest in watching urban crime flourish across the
nation. For instance, in New York state, 71 percent of prison
imnates are from New York city. However, nearly 99 percent of
those prisoners are transported up-state to New York's affluent
white middle class suburbs, where urban crime is converted to good
paying jobs.
In Pennsylvania, privatization of prisons is being challenged in
court by Prison Employees Union. According to an August 22, 1995
Philadelphia Inquirer article: "Prison Union Sues Over Loss of
Jobs," caught between a bitter law suit is the second largest
private prison company, Wackenhut Corrections Corp. The lawsuit was
filed by the Delaware County prison employees union, asserting the
county's decision to privatize was illegal under the state
constitution. With 250 union employees, the union has no
assurances of being rehired by Wackenhut Corp. With only one labor
union in its 23 U.S locations, Wackenhut Corp. isn't exactly a
haven for union activity. In other areas of the state, draconian
measures are being employed to help defray the cost of
incarcerating inmates. For instance, counties such as Berks,
Chester, Montgomery, and Lehigh charge inmates for health care and
in some instances rent, says Angus Love, Executive Director of
Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, a legal service agency.
When inmates are unable to pay, collection agencies are hired to
pursue payment. Critics see such measures as an unnecessary
roadblock to financially handicap a convict's chance to integrate
back into society.
Along with warehousing criminals, state penal systems have located
another method of exploiting its prison population. State
governments are instituting a slave-like work force within its
prison walls. With cooperative agreements with small manufacturing
companies, states are merging in creating a semi-factory prison
work force. The prison work force is paid minimum wage, at least
where labor unions have forced their hand. Inmates net
approximately $1 an hour after deductions. Thirty states have
legalized privately run operations. Here are just a few of the
states, companies and products/services involved:
California: logos for Lexus automobile
Hawaii: packing Spaulding golf balls
Maryland: modular houses, processed hot dogs
New Mexico: hotel chain reservations
Oregon: designer blue jeans, called "prison blues"
South Carolina: electronic cables
Washington: Eddie Bauer garments
There is also a boom in companies vending their product or services
to the "prison industry." How many industries can boast the rate
of its target market (prison population) is growing 8.5 percent
annually? The scope of vendors at the 1995 (ACA)American
Correctional Association Convention, range from a "Dial soap"
representative, to QueTel Corp, who impress prison wardens with
technology to bar code imnates.
Should Americans be legitimately fearful that Wall Street has
recognized that crime not only pays, but it pays billions? Ask
Arthur McDonald, former owner of California's largest private
prison firm, Eclectic Communications Inc. McDonald, now retired
from the $10 million dollar sale of Eclectic, told the Los Angeles
Times, "Crime pays. I hate saying that, but it really does." Since
that sale in 1988, Eclectic has received contracts exceeding $50
million.
Have we reached that critical stage in America where the alienated
and disenfranchised of our society are valued only for their
eventual imprisonment? Although these are questions for all
Americans to answer, how they are answered, will disproportionately
affect the future of African Americans.
The American prison and jail population is over 1.5 million.
While African Americans are 13 percent of the general population,
they are nearly half of the 1.5 million incarcerated population.
Experts believe that the prison population has swelled due to the
socalled "War on Drugs." Drug related convictions are certainly one
of the reasons African-Americans are disproportionately
incarcerated, but one has to question why? According to the
Department of Health and Human Services, 2.4 million (64.4 percent)
of crack users are White, compared to I million Blacks (26.6
percent). Yet, in a 1992 study by the U.S Sentencing Commission,
91.3 percent of those sentenced for federal crack offenses were
Black, while 3 percent were White. Such stark numbers reveal that
African Americans are the flesh that maintains a profitable prison
industry.
When the privileged of society take aim to profit from the misery
of crime, they become accomplice to social disorder, complicit in
creating a criminal class. Their quality of life becomes tied to
a misery/revenue index where profits are merely a function of the
misery of others. America's symbol of justice is unfolding before
our eyes. It is no longer a blind-folded woman, it is now an
accountant, not balancing the scales of justice, but debits and
credits on a balance sheet.
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To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Subject: Z Magazine
Message-ID: <199604221101.NAA23816@ZEUS.MONACO.MC>
Letters to:
Lydia_Sargent@lbbs.org
Z Magazine
18 Millfield St.
Woods Hole, MA 02543
LSD, Deadheads, and the Law
Psychedelic POWs
By Thea Kelley and Dennis Bernstein
Z Magazine, April 1996
copyright 1996 Z Magazine
After three decades, the traveling village that was the
Grateful Dead scene has dispersed. Where will the Deadheads
go? For some, it may be a hard choice. Others aren't free to
choose. About 2,000 of them are in prison, most for LSD.
Most of them are young, nonviolent, first offenders, yet many
are doing 5, 10, frequently 20 years---longer sentences than
they would have gotten for attempted murder, rape, arson,
embezzlement, kidnapping, or child molesting. Captives from
one of the strangest battlefields of the Drug War, many call
themselves "psychedelic POWs."
The Dead scene meant a lot of things to a lot of people. To
drug enforcement it was the best place to find LSD sellers.
The law scooped them up, sometimes dozens at one show. It
was an abundant source of easy arrests leading to plenty of
prison years.
Dose for dose, there are few drugs that carry more federal
prison time than LSD. Few bystanders know this; nor did
most of the "hippies" who are now behind bars. The U.S.
Sentencing Commission has concluded that LSD is less
dangerous than cocaine, heroin, or PCP. Yet only one dose of
LSD on a sugar cube, or 125 doses on blotter paper, carries
the same 5- year federal sentence as several thousand doses of
heroin or cocaine. Yes, you read that right. It matters whether
it was on sugar or blotter. Under current law, LSD sentences
are computed by weighing the drug along with its "carrier
medium," which generally weighs far more than the drug.
Hence, many of these 2,000 people are serving sentences
based largely on possession and distribution of paper, sugar,
gelatin, or water. While the unfairness of crack-versus-powder
cocaine sentencing has gained media notoriety, the disparities
around LSD aren't as sexy: fewer people are involved, and
there's no violence to splatter across the news page.
Unnoticed by the general public, the "carrier weight" law
was challenged in the Supreme Court this December, in Neal
v. U.S. On January 22, the Court unanimously reaffirmed the
law. "There may be little logic to defend the statute's
treatment of LSD," the Court admitted. "It results in a
significant disparity of punishment meted out to LSD
offenders relative to other narcotics traffickers." Nevertheless,
the Court stated, "It is the responsibility of Congress, not this
Court, to change statutes that are thought to be unwise or
unfair."
In rare federal cases where the carrier medium has not been
included, the drug has been calculated at eight times its actual
weight to allow for the statute's intended application to a
"mixture or substance containing LSD."
Heather Silverstein Jordan turned 30 in December in the
Federal Prison Camp at Dublin, California. She is a self-
described "psychedelic POW." Heather had finally found a
"family" in the Grateful Dead scene, she says, after running
away from a broken home and spending the latter half of her
teenage years in an orphanage. "So when I turned 18," she
says, "I didn't have a whole lot to fall back on."
After some time in a commune, she discovered "Deadland,"
the never-never-land to which so many lost kids have found
their way. "I needed a community to grow up in....There's a
lot of family there. It was a healing experience."
But the Dead scene was not the only medicine. Even before
that, she had experimented with LSD at the age of 15 during a
time of "suicidal depression" and reckless use of pills, pot, and
alcohol. "With the LSD, I did a lot of inner exploring and
thinking about my life," she says, which led to a renewed
commitment to living and a big cut in her drug use.
Odd as it may appear, testimonials about decreased overall
drug use after LSD are commonplace in the psychedelic
community. In fact, the most well-known research on
therapeutic use of the drug has centered around treatment of
substance abuse.
By the time of her arrest Silverstein Jordan was 25-years-
old and well established, with a motorhome, close friends, and
a business license under which she made and sold hats. And
she had a soulmate.
Heather Silverstein and Pat Jordan fell in love at a Dead
show in 1990. The whirlwind romance that followed was
brought to an abrupt halt when Pat was busted for selling "a
few hits" of LSD. Desperate to bail him out, Heather started
scrambling for money in the fastest way she knew, selling
LSD. When he got out five months later, he became involved
in the deals. Not long after, their main customer snitched on
them and they were both arrested.
"They make movies about hippies being arrested by Bubba
out in the middle of the southern states," Heather says, "and it
wasn't that far from the movies." In the first jail I was infected
with scabies. The second wouldn't give me medical attention
for it. The third place, people kept escaping, so they moved
me from there. The fourth place, somebody died because they
wouldn't give them their insulin."
At another jail she was beaten by a "huge football player" of
a guard, she said. "One officer held me down and the other
punched me in the face." The one holding her had not known
the other officer was going to hit her, and later tried to testify
on her behalf. He was immediately fired, she said. "They
pressed assault charges against me to cover for them. It was
dropped."
Heather and Pat were married in a county jail, with glass
between them, in red prison jumpsuits. The only people in
attendance were a Unitarian minister, their lawyers, and the
guards. "They would not let us have any contact," said
Heather. "I had flowers. I cried the whole time. And that was
pretty much it. They took us back to our cells." Pat and
Heather were sentenced to eight and ten years, respectively,
with release dates in 1998 and 1999.
Heather and Pat are active networkers, and both are
frequent columnists for the Midnight Special, a Deadhead
prisoner newsletter. Heather was one its earliest editors,
pasting it together with toothpaste in a county jail cell. The
Special is soon to be a World Wide Web page.
Community has always been the name of the game among
Deadheads. Among the prisoners, the camaraderie springs not
only from love of the music, but also from a shared sense of
persecution. Deadheads have been pulled over and searched
because of their bumper stickers, had their stickers and tie-
dyes used as evidence against them in court, and classified in
prisons as a member of a "gang."
Drug Enforcement Agency officials have repeatedly insisted
that they do not specifically target Deadheads, while admitting
that "We go where the drugs happen to be---at the concerts,"
said Michael Heald, spokesperson for the DEA in San
Francisco.
Why is law enforcement so keen on busting acid-heads?
Michael Levine, a highly decorated 25-year veteran of the
DEA, regularly testifies as an expert witness for both defense
and prosecution at drug trials. "You have a bureaucracy that
has to prove itself constantly, year by year, to an electorate, to
taxpayers," he says. "They do that by numbers of arrests," he
said, "and by racking up the extraordinarily long sentences
common with LSD."
"It's just like a predator," says Ed Rosenthal, an expert
witness at numerous drug trials. "A predator goes for the
vulnerable. That's exactly who gets picked off in these Dead
concert raids: naive, often troubled young kids who are
trusting."
Mark Kahley was 23 when he was first busted at a 1992
Dead show at Nassau Coliseum. "I had 47 doses in my
pocket. Their sole reason for searching me was because I was
a white man with dreadlocks," Kahley asserts.
Kahley was given five year's probation, and went to live
with his parents in Kentucky where, according to his mother
Doreen Kahley-Bradshaw, he was doing well and even had a
4.0 average in college.
"Part of the probation was that I had to go to narcotics
anonymous meetings, Kahley says. "There I meet this guy
who, like, befriends me and is the only person I know there."
His "friend," it turns out, was an informant who was
attending meetings specifically to set him up. Kahley says the
snitch sold him marijuana to gain his trust (a maneuver known
as a "reverse sting"), then lured him into selling 800 doses of
LSD to an undercover state trooper.
His lawyer and stepfather, Les Bradshaw, feels that there
was "a form of entrapment" in the sting. "He was trying, and
they targeted him the moment he got here. A New York DEA
agent called and told the local officers to try and get him, and
they did."
For his second offense, Kahley was sentenced to ten years in
prison, plus eight years supervised release. The state trooper
who had arrested him, Mark Lopez, was later indicted on
charges of forgery and implicated in an array of felonious
behavior including stealing official evidence and drug
trafficking. While Kahley sits in jail, Lopez has yet to come to
trial.
Broken families, snitching, and excessive sentences are
among the damage done by the Drug War's most potent
weapon: mandatory minimums. The federal Anti-Drug Abuse
Act of 1986 created minimum sentences for drug crimes,
based solely on the weight of the drug---or in the case of
LSD, the "mixture or substance" containing the drug. One
gram gets five years, ten grams gets ten years; double it for a
second offense. Other than the standard 15 percent reduction
for good behavior, the law forbids parole. There is no
consideration of character or circumstances. The judge may
not even consider the defendant's role in the
crime---mastermind or messenger, if a gram was involved,
everybody gets five years. The only way around the minimum
is to give "substantial assistance," i.e. to snitch. Since the
passage of mandatory minimums the number of drug convicts
in the U.S. has more than tripled.
A breathtaking list of organizations have come out in
opposition to mandatory minimums, including the U.S.
Sentencing Commission, the Federal Courts Study
Committee, the American Bar Association, the National
Association of Veteran Police Officers, and the American
Civil Liberties Union.
"There is no single issue affecting the work of the federal
courts with respect to which there is such unanimity,"
According to Judge Vincent Broderick, chair of the Criminal
law Committee of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. "Most
federal judges ... believe ... that mandatory minimums are the
major obstacle to the development of a fair, rational, honest
and proportional federal criminal justice sentencing system."
At least one federal judge has resigned in protest. Reagan
appointee J. Lawrence Irving left the bench in 1991 because
he felt that the drug sentences he was forced to impose were
often "Draconian." "The sentences are too long; there is no
logic to them," he told us. "I just hope that sometime
Congress comes to their senses and changes the laws."
Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens has written that
the law's consequences for LSD defendants are "so bizarre
that I cannot believe they were intended by Congress."
Eric Sterling, former counsel to the House Judiciary
Committee, helped write the law. He now calls it
"frighteningly unjust" and says Congress's primary aim when it
rushed to pass the legislation was "to vaccinate the Democrats
against soft-on-crime charges after Reagan had pounded them
on the issue in 1984." Today he is president of the Criminal
Justice Policy Foundation in Washington, DC.
LSD was more or less an afterthought during the four-week
period in which Congress held a series of show hearings,
according to Sterling, leaving repre sentatives to "just willy-
nilly pick numbers out of the air" in determining mandatory
sentences. There was virtually no debate on the LSD carrier
weight issue or expert testimony about the drug.
Leigh A. Henderson, co-editor with William J. Glass of
LSD: Still With Us After All These Years, agrees that
legislators have appeared uninterested in the facts. Hardly a
wild-eyed radical, Henderson is a consultant to the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration. The book
concludes that adverse health effects of LSD, whether
physical or psychiatric, are rare.
Despite compelling research findings, the DEA insists LSD
is "a very dangerous drug." Other news sources have quoted
administrator Robert Bonner saying, "It once was referred to
as 'do-it-yourself brain surgery' ."
Meanwhile, taxpayers pay dearly to fight this "very
dangerous drug." At more than $20,000 a year, a 20year
sentence will run up more than a quarter of a million dollars in
basic prison costs. Add to this the costs of law enforcement,
courts, and social services to inmates' dependents.
Roberta Goodman, 32, is currently serving a staggering 72
years, according to news reports, for several counts of LSD.
Locked up in the maximum-security Tennessee Prison for
Women, she says, "There are women in here who have killed
people, and they're not in for as long as I am. One woman has
57 counts of child abuse---burning a child with cigarettes,
curling irons. She got 15 years." Goodman has served that
much time already and will not be eligible for parole until
2007.
"You know, we're having a civil war here," says Goodman.
War destroys families and pits people against their own
friends and relatives. Drug prosecutors use children as a
wedge to force parents to become informants, according to
Virginia Resner, FAMM's San Francisco coordinator. "They
pressure women by saying, 'We'll take your children and put
them in foster care,' that women will even make up
information about people."
Conspiracy laws originally intended for use against
racketeers have found greatly expanded use in the drug war,
Resner says. "In this drug war, you never have to touch any
drugs to become culpable."
Nicole Richardson was 20-years-old and living with her
boyfriend Jeff, a small-time LSD dealer. An informant called
their home and asked where he could find Jeff. She knew the
caller wished to buy LSD and she answered his question. This
was her entire involvement in the conspiracy. Nevertheless,
Nicole was sentenced to 10 years based on the quantity of her
boyfriend's subsequent drug deal. He, meanwhile, helped the
prosecutor with other drug busts, and got off with five years.
"Acid has been demonized," says Dennis McNally, the
Grateful Dead's publicist. "The government doesn't have
communism to kick around any more; they had to choose
something," so drug users were scapegoated. He is appalled
by the "McCarthyite" suppression of dialogue on drug issues.
The band members have not been immune to this climate of
fear, and have been noticeably quiet on the subject, limiting
their actions to private lobbying, contributions to FAMM, and
exhortations to fans not to sell drugs at shows.
"We made a conscious decision," says Dennis McNally,
"that to lead a political struggle, which we could not win,
would only serve to bring more heat on the Deadheads."
The tragedy of the psychedelic prisoners is a cause for
which it is hard to find a champion. Pat Jordan feels that a lot
of apathy comes from the fact that "the casual user...does not
see the Draconian sentencing practices as being their
problem...You know---'Gee, that guy with 25,000 hits of acid,
well, he asked for it!' The moral issue, though, is that casual
use causes the market, which in turn creates the dealer."
Inmate Tim Clark wrote to Deadhead magazine Relix,
which publishes a list of prisoners in every issue. "To me the
worst part of the country's stand on drugs is not the unfair
laws like the mandatory minimum and the carrier weight issue,
or even what it does to people's families, [but] what is
happening to our society as a whole. Neighbors telling on
their neighbors. Friends telling on friends. And law
enforcement doing whatever is needed, legally and illegally. I
think we as a country should declare war on the 'War on
Drugs,"' wrote Clark.
FAMM has been doing just that, through projects such as its
participation as a "friend of the court" in the Neal case. Neal's
defeat, according to president Julie Stewart, means that "we
have to take our fight to Congress. Unfortunately, the timing
is bad. Rumor has it that the Republicans plan to use drugs as
their primary platform during this election year, citing how
little President Clinton has done to 'solve the drug problem' ."
The psychedelic POWs are scapegoats, distractions from
society's real ills, says Sterling. Calling their persecution a
"culture war," he has gone so far as to suggest that a war
crimes tribunal may be in order and that he himself has wrongs
to atone for.
The psychedelic prisoners should all be freed, he said, "because
you may not like their lifestyle, but it is their lifestyle. The choices
they've made about drug use do not warrant prison---not in a free society."
Z Magazine
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 08 May 1996 15:02:33 +0000
From: Peter Webster
To: drctalk@drcnet.org
Subject: POLICE DIRTY DEEDS
Message-ID: <199605081301.PAA00199@ZEUS.MONACO.MC>
Police Crime
By Christian Parenti
Z Magazine March 1996
Lydia_Sargent@lbbs.org
After the videotaped beating of African American motorist
Rodney King, and the toxic ranting of Los Angeles police
detective Mark Fuhrman, mainstream America has finally
begun to address the question of police racism and brutality.
But at the same time, there is mounting evidence of a
nationwide plague of police criminality. From San Francisco
to New Orleans to Cleveland to Philadelphia to New York
City, police are being indicted on charges of extortion,
robbery, perjury, and weapons and narcotics trafficking. In
city after city the old maxim that "the cops are the biggest
gang in town" is truer than ever.
It is clear from the patterns of police crime---which usually
hits impoverished neighborhoods of color---that the inherent
racism of the war on crime has paved the way for police
gangsters. The 1980s war on drugs and today's more
generalized war on crime have imbued many American's,
regardless of their skin color, with intense fear and frustration.
People want results---even if cops have to bend the rules. The
crime wars have also intensified racist notions that
communities of color are naturally or entirely criminal. This
has allowed police to act with relative impunity to brutalize,
rob, and frame innocent residents of high crime
neighborhoods. In the past police corruption generally
consisted of cops taking pay-offs. Today's criminal police are
actively generating crimes of their own.
Rotten Apples
In New York City three years ago, in the Bronx's 48th
precinct, a racially-mixed working class area, the police used
to began their night shift at the local bars---not rousting
"perps" (perpetrators) and restoring order but getting drunk,
taking drugs, and plotting their next eight hours of robbery,
graft, and brutality. That was until May 3, 1995, when most of
the night shift---16 officers in all---were arrested and indicted
on charges ranging from falsifying evidence to stealing
weapons and money from illegally-raided apartments.
According to Internal Affairs investigators the 48th's night
shift was run not by the sergeant in charge but by the
notoriously brutal officer Richard Rivera. "He did a lot, got
away with a lot, [and] did it in front of his supervisors," said
an internal affairs investigator who worked on the 18-month
long investigation. " And in a real, sad sense he was the
leadership."
In early 1994---stung by criticism from community activists
and the recently convened Mollen Commission which
investigated police corruption---Internal Affairs, the police
unit which investigates police wrong-doing, busted Rivera.
Contrary to the officer's tough street persona, Rivera, after
only three hours of interrogation, agreed to turn states
evidence and spy on his colleagues. His services revealed a
pathological brood of drug addicted sadistic cops who did
whatever they wanted to whom ever they wanted.
The most mind-blowing charge of all was that one officer,
Michael T. Kalanz, kept $1 million dollars cash in his police
locker as part of, what federal investigators said was, a Cali
drug cartel money laundering operation. Most of the other
indicted officers were charged with "booming doors," i.e.,
raiding apartments and robbing the occupants and beating
innocent residents with their radios, clubs, and flash lights.
The busts in the 48th precinct are only the latest in a string
of police criminality cases. The most recent revelations began
surfacing in May 1992 when Michael Dowd and five other
members of a police gang from the 75th precinct in Brooklyn
were arrested for cocaine trafficking in Suffolk County Long
Island. It was only due to the intervention of Suffolk County
Police that New York City's police corruption became a
public issue.
Before Dowd's bust on Long Island there had been 16
complaints alleging that he dealt cocaine and robbed street
dealers. None of these complaints were investigated, despite
the fact that Dowd drove a new, bright red Corvette and
frequently had limousines pick him up at the station house and
chauffeur him to Atlantic City for gambling trips.
The arrests of Dowd and his six colleagues led to the
creation of the Mollen Commission to investigate allegations
of widespread police crime. By the end of the summer of
1992, Dowd and his cronies had been charged with wholesale
narcotics trafficking, extorting drug dealers and even robbing
drug affiliated grocery stores. Dowd, who snorted cocaine off
the dash board of his cruiser, received payments of between
$4,000 and $8,000 a week from dealers. In exchange, he
tipped off his clients to police raids.
In March 1994 the Mollen Commission, having heard
testimony from Dowd and an anonymous, hooded former
officer from Manhattan's Lower East Side 9th Precinct,
produced its first indictments. A police gang known as the
"Morgue Boys" was uncovered operating in Brownsville's
73rd precinct. Three young cops were charged with dealing
drugs while on duty, extorting dealers, and robbing civilians.
Later investigation by the Mollen Commission showed that
the "Morgue Boys" had dropped even the pretense of law
enforcement, spending much of their onduty time in a
secluded part of the precinct drinking, snorting cocaine,
meeting their girlfriends or prostitutes, and shooting their
guns.
Shortly after this first show of force by the Mollen
Commission, which many feared would also be its last, three
officers in Harlem's 30th Precinct were videotaped beating
neighborhood residents and stealing drugs and cash. The
epicenter of the scandal was a gang of cops called "Nannery's
Raiders," after the leader Kevin Nannery, who used to place
fake 911 calls to justify raiding drug dealers apartments.
Eventually 29 officers from the "Dirty 30" were charged
with crimes including perjury, assault, extortion, and
wholesale drug trafficking. In one case an office was accused
of shooting a dealer who could not make extortion payments.
Along with Dowd's gang, the "Morgue Boys" in the 73rd,
the madness in the "Dirty 30," and the misadventures of the
48th's night shift, numerous other precincts, including the
109th in Queens and the 9th in Greenwich Village, were hit by
revelations of police criminality. Yet the New York City's
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association spokesperson, Joseph
Mancini, insists that: "The New York City Police department
is the most closely monitored organization in the world" and
that corruption is relatively rare.
However, the Mollen Commission's 1994 final report found
that corruption was widespread, well organized, and
permitted by the "willful blindness" of Internal Affairs
investigators and high level police officials. The Commission's
report found that virtually all corruption" . . . involved groups
of officers---called 'crews' that protect and assist each other's
criminal activities." The "crews" averaged 812 officers, with
set rules, group names, and worked in flexible networks,
planning and coordinating their criminal raids with the help of
department intelligence, communications, and special
equipment.
Cocaine & Brotherly Love
A similar pattern of police gangs and brutal armed robbery
by cops has emerged in Philadelphia's 39th police district and
among an elite highway patrol unit. In the 39th district
officers behaved much like their colleagues in New York.
Federal prosecutors charge that the officers---some of whom
where known to North Philadelphians as the Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse---used their police powers to locate crack
houses and drug distribution hubs which could then be raided
for cash, cocaine, and weapons. The cocaine was then used to
pay informants, setup suspects, bribe witnesses, and buy
sexual favors.
So far six officers have been indicted, five have plead guilty
and more indictments are expected soon. Over 50 drug
convictions have been overturned due to perjured testimony
or police-planted evidence. A grand jury is investigating over
100,000 other arrests.
"What's most disturbing about the Philly corruption," says
Lynn Washington, legal scholar and editor of the
Philadelphiapard New Observer, " is that the DA knew what
the cops were up to, but tolerated their use of planted
evidence because it boosted conviction rates." Like many
other observers, Washington blames much of the current
police criminality on the anti- crime and anti-drug frenzy of
the 1980s and 1990s.
"No one from the judges on down wants to look soft on
crime, so everybody has turned a blind eye to police
misconduct...", says Washington.
The war on drugs and the proliferation of the narcotics
trade has also provided police with nationwide opportunities
for more lucrative forms of criminality. Today corruption is
large scale, proactive, and intimately involved with the
narcotics trade. While much police robbery may focus on
cocaine and heroine dealers, their terrorism can be quite
inclusive. In Philadelphia the police even managed to frame
Betty Patterson, a 54-year-old, church-going grandmother,
who was recently acquitted.
Same Thing: Different City
Police criminality is not limited to large northeastern
metropolitan departments. Throughout the country there is
growing evidence of widespread police gangsterism. The
following is just a partial survey:
Los Angeles 1990 --- seven sheriff's deputies, members of an
elite narcotics squad, are found guilty of stealing $1.4 in
confiscated cash.
Cleveland 1991 ---30 police of ficers are among forty seven
individuals indicted for extortion, obstruction of justice,
narcotics dealing, and gambling.
Gary, Indiana 1991, the entire vice squad is indicted on
charges of extortion, dealing narcotics and robbing drug
dealers during phony drug raids, as well as one count of
murder.
Detroit 1991 --- the former police chief, William Hart, and his
deputy chief, Kenneth Weiner, are found guilty of embezzling
$2.6 million from a special fund for undercover investigations.
Camden, New Jersey, 1991 --- Detective Allen R. Schott is
arrested and charged with robbing two banks . In 1995 of
ficers in Jersey City, New Jersey are charged with selling
themselves 113 impounded cars at discount prices. Newark's
chief of police is suspended while under investigation.
New Orleans 1994 --- ten officers, from what is ranked as the
most brutal police department in the country, are indicted for
dealing drugs and guns. One officer is charged with arranging
the murder of a woman who filed brutality charges against
him. The next year, officer Antoinette Frank is found guilty of
robbing a restaurant and murdering three people in the
process, one of whom is her own off-duty partner.
Greenpoint, New York--- 1994, the entire police department
(nine officers in all) is disbanded due to corruption, ineptitude,
and widespread drug and alcohol abuse by on-duty officers.
San Diego 1995---an officer is caught on video and convicted
for breaking into and robbing a software firm.
These are just a few abridged examples of police criminality.
Civil libertarians and police accountability activist's think these
cases are just the tip of the iceberg. "Police corruption and
criminality is notoriously hard to prove," say Jon Crew of the
San Francisco American Civil Liberty's Union. But Crew does
point out that, "It is, in fact, quite routine, to see clients who
have lost cash and property to the police. Whether things are
stolen or just unaccounted for is hard to prove."
Despite the difficulties in proving police criminality, three
San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) narcotics officers
were recently indicted by a Grand Jury on charges of perjury,
soliciting perjury, wrongful arrest, and stealing from suspects,
many of whom were not charged with any crime. The pattern
is familiar: doors are kicked in and alleged dealers are relieved
of their valuables. The Grand Jury indictments do not seem to
be isolated incidents.
In another case that has not gone to court, a white
professional whose home was raided for methamphetamnine
and mescaline, lost $3,000 dollars worth of video and
computer equipment to a SFPD narcotics squad. A 1995 New
Years Eve raid on an AIDS benefit in San Francisco's SOMA
district reveals a similar pattern of missing cash, computers,
and video equipment. The victims of that raid---mostly white
political activists---are suing and the 21 cops who conducted
the raid are being investigated. But as criminal defense
attorney Rose Braz points out, "most people are too scared
and too poor to press charges when the police rip them off.
And most juries and judges think the cops are the only thing
between them and chaos." Z
Christian Parenti is a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics.
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