http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/304/ludlow.shtml Drug war corruption of the most banal and venal sort is alleged in Kentucky this week. A routine September 17 plea bargain hearing took an unexpected turn when a 19-year-old Ludlow man, Edward Elmore, accused Ludlow Police Chief Ray Murphy of offering to make his case go away for $1,000. And it's not the first time such accusations have been made against Ludlow Police. Elmore, who was arrested August 12 at a "mar1juana party" along with two others, had accepted a plea bargain from Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Jim Redwine. Redwine agreed to drop a felony charge of cultivating mar1juana in return for a guilty plea to possession and a reduced misdemeanor charge of unlawful transaction with a minor. Elmore was looking at a 180-day suspended sentence and a $500 fine as part of the deal -- business as usual, so far, in the lower levels of the war on drugs. And so was the pro forma questioning of Elmore by Kenton County District Court Judge Doug Grothaus to put the judicial imprimatur on the deal. But all that changed when Grothaus asked if anyone had made any promises or offers to Elmore. "Yes, your honor," Elmore replied. A startled Grothaus asked, "What was that offer?" Elmore: "It was, I think, it was the police department of Ludlow." Grothaus: "And what was that offer?" Elmore: "$1,000 to get rid of all the fines." Grothaus: "And who made that offer to you?" Elmore: "The police chief." Grothaus: "And what was that person's name?" Elmore: "I don't quite remember." Grothaus: "Was it Chief Ray Murphy?" Elmore: "Yeah, that was it." Elmore told Grothaus that he had not spoken directly with Chief Murphy, but that Murphy had relayed the offer through Elmore's attorney, Bob Braun. Grothaus then ordered Braun to the stand, but he refused to testify, citing attorney-client privilege. Outside the courthouse, however, he told the Kentucky Post Elmore was telling the truth. "His testimony was accurate," Braun said. "My client told the truth today." Elmore's plea bargain is now on hold and Judge Grothaus has said he is forwarding the accusation to the appropriate authorities. "Given the nature of the atmosphere that is going on, and the fact that Mr. Elmore has indicated that an offer was communicated through his attorney -- from the police chief of Ludlow requesting $1,000 -- to make this all go away, causes the court grave concern," Grothaus said. Murphy has denied making the offer and remains on the job at press time, but Elmore's accusation threatens to drag him into an ongoing scandal surrounding Ludlow police Detective Bill Shilling, who is being investigated by the state police for allegedly offering leniency in drug arrests in return for drug forfeiture money or "reimbursements" to the police department. Schilling sent letters to drug defendants offering to get felonies reduced to misdemeanors if the targets would "reimburse" the department for investigating them. The Kentucky Post reported that a copy of one of Schilling's letters it obtained shows he also asked people facing charges to become informants and make drug buys. In one letter, a "proffer" to Carolyn Merritt, who was arrested along with her parents and husband during a Schilling-engineered "drug sweep" in February, Schilling suggested she forfeit $30,000 to the department instead of having the police seize her home. He also demanded that she make drug buys from five different people so she could inform on them and that she perform 100 hours of community service "at the discretion of the Ludlow Police Department." Kenyon County law enforcement and criminal justice official all said that Schilling was acting on his own and that they authorized no such deals. Schilling remains on the job pending the state police investigation. Merritt pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge; charges against her parents were dropped. The case of Chief Murphy smells of banal personal corruption, but that of Detective Schilling betrays the stench of a more institutionalized corruption that usually goes unremarked upon -- until someone like Schilling gets a little too honest and puts it in writing.
Isn't it time that we create a drug policy that does not corrupt the people in charge of enforcing it? If we had a healthcare and education based drug policy, this kind of thing wouldn't happen.
andymoon, I am disappointed. It took you about 25 minutes to reply in this drug-related thread. tsk tsk.
I have to agree with Andy on this one. It just proves that the drug war driven by the cry of "we've got to do it for the children" is just a way for govt to r****d liberties and corrupt our property rights. Legalize pot, decriminalize the harder drugs and let the chips fall where they may.
Bama, Can you expound on why you think decriminalization of harder drugs would be a more workable policy than hard core regulation? Personally, I believe that even decriminalization keeps many of the harms of prohibition (criminals in charge of distribution, violence, loss of civil liberties, etc.) while reaping none of the profit. There are societal costs caused by drug use and I believe it is up to the government's to highly regulate and tax the distribution and sale of these products so that the societal costs can be paid for by the drug users. Why wouldn't you want the idiots shooting heroin to pay for the treatment center they are sure to need? Why wouldn't you want healthcare professionals to have accurate information about a patient's recent drug purchases? Why would you want to cede the billions of dollars in drug profits to organized crime? Why wouldn't you want to be able to track down the ba$tards who provide drugs to kids so that we can put them in a small cell with a big boyfriend for a long time?
Two things: Hard drugs are an extremely dangerous substance just like .50 caliber machine guns, exotic animals such as cobras and tigers and F1 cars driven on the street. They are not only a danger to the user, they can be a danger (through that user) against the rest of society, thus hard drugs and the other things I mentioned before are made illegal. And since our govt's job one is to protect us from those who would deprive us of our life, liberty or pursuit of happiness, we should desire that our govt protect us from the users geeked up on those drugs by making them extremely difficult for someone to obtain. We don't want crystal meth legalized, for example. Ever seen what that crap does to someone? On that same token, would you want someone tooling down I-10 in a F-1 car with over 1,000 horsepower? I think you have a legit point about the money still remaining in organized crime, but I think the risks of someone being more able to score PCP or LSD by virtue of its legality much more easily exceed that of the cost to society from the pitfalls of its present illegality. I say that we would recoup the costs of the hard drugs through taxing of mar1juana.....trust me, as many people smoke weed in this country, the govt. wouldn't have to worry about paying for the societal costs for the hard stuff (such as rehabs, etc.) because reefer taxes would more than pick up the slack.
I think decriminalizing hard drugs makes sense from the perspective that it --makes it less profitable when the risks are reduced, --which makes smuggling less attractive, --which hurts the bank accounts of drug cartels and poppy-growing terrorists more than defoliation and offering overseas narcotic growers subsidies (which Uncle Sam likes to do) --which makes the drug war's side effects: waste of money and military/ law enforcement resources and abuse of the constitution, go away --all of which makes it cheaper --which reduces the need to steal to support the habit or kill over it (while I'm sure people may kill over a bottle of Thunderbird, it surely doesn't happen as often as it does for cocaine or heroin) A person who compulsively huffs paint, or is an alcoholic has no less of a need for treatment, and would be more likely to get it in a society that doesn't make moralistic distinctions about vice. Taxing any of it would be tricky. You couldn't make the taxes too prohibitive, or you'd create a new black market, which totally defeats the effort. In Downtown LA, for example, a pack of black market Marlboros can be had for $2.50 (instead of the typical $4-$5) without much street wisdom. If you *are* fast enough, you can go bulk and buy cartons for $20. Then again, you also run into the problem that taxing it, and regulating the safety and distribution and sale of anything still requires government to be involved, and as long as government is involved in anything, you can expect waste, corruption and unintended consequences.
I haven't really thought about the fact that exorbiant taxes may create a new black market, similar to that which exists in NYC when it comes to cigarettes. Where is the point you reach where the taxes just cover the societal costs and are not high enough (insert your joke here) to drive people to the black market. Good points.
We are absolutely agreed that these are some of the most dangerous substances that are known to man. However, all of the examples you gave are of things that are highly regulated, but available under certain circumstances. You can get machine guns, tigers, cobras, and street legal F1s if you are willing to jump through the regulatory hoops. This is mostly a fallacy. In general, even hard drug users do not usually present a danger to people other than themselves. In cases where they do, we have laws to take care of that (assault, robbery, whatever) and in a regulatory scheme, you could mandate drug treatment if a jury finds that the crime was committed because of drugs or in order to acquire drugs. We have supposedly made it as difficult as it can be to get drugs and yet drugs even make it into maximum security prisons, which are supposed to be the most secure environments in existance. The government should protect us from those people, but it can better accomplish that through educating those drug user and harshly punishing people who commit crimes on or over drugs. I would want amphetamines available, yes, even though I have held down a man hallucinating as a result of speed withdrawal. I would rather that health care professionals were aware when someone was doing so much meth that they are in danger of seriously harming themselves. Crystal meth users aren't any more dangerous than coke users unless they are using excessively for days and days on end, which could be minimized if we could keep track of how much people buy. The point I think you are missing is that we are only going to sell to adults who have been fully educated on the effects of the drugs they are being licensed to purchase. PCP is a dangerous chemical, but you are underestimating the power of education to keep people from doing that drug. I know an ex-duster who quit using it once I sat down with him and told him exactly what it was doing to him. He wasn't even an adult at the time and he was still able to make a rational decision about what to put into his body. The one thing I think that everyone seems to do with drugs is that they seem to think that drugs have the power to take someone over and make them do things as if they were possesed by a demon or something. Many drug users (while using) use excuses like "it wasn't me, it was the coke" which are hollow to someone like me who has seen drug users and drug addicts for what they are. Addiction can start to resemble demonic posession, but the kind of system I have in mind would be set up to sniff out addictive personalities and treat them as effectively as we can. Although you are right that the pot tax would raise a ton of money, it is the hard drugs that have the real profit potential (legal or illegal). These are the drugs that line the criminals pockets and cause them to kill each other. If we are to kill the black market for these substances and really impact the bottom line of the various mafioso (is that the plural?) out there, we must include ALL psychoactive substances.
Just so that we can be clear about what is meant by decriminalization, I would like to present my understanding of that term. Decriminalization usually refers to a scheme in which drug users are not penalized, but drug sales and distribution are still illegal. This does not reduce the risks, so the price does not go down, and law enforcement is still involved intimately with the drug trade. In order to reduce drug profits to criminals and terrorists, the distribution channels have to be controlled by the government and/or legitimate businesses. This takes money from the criminals and terrorists, and gives us the ability to track drugs as well as problem users. I agree with you totally. I would have the price of drugs decline very slightly (around 10%) from their present street levels. Since around 80% of the money spent for drugs on the street is profit, that reduction would leave us with the other 70% going to taxes. Once the government or businesses clean up the distribution chain by buying in bulk from growers and refiners, the profits would go even higher. Which is why I think the entire program needs to be run by healthcare agencies. Doctors and scientists should be the people charged with educating people and distributing these substances. At the very least, you would have an actual doctor acting as the "drug dealer," which would take away much of the motivation to "psst, try this" when someone is buying, for example, pot. The only reason that pot is a gateway drug is because the only people that supply pot would rather that the person were buying coke or heroin because of the profits and return business. People would be much less likely to use drugs, especially the hard ones, if they know the actual effects of the drugs AND they know that the information they are being given is reliable. If the politicians are the ones spreading the message, "just say no" will not work, no matter what the actual words are. If a doctor lines out the actual consequences, most people will choose not to use the harder drugs. Of course, all of this is predicated on getting drugs out of the hands of children at all costs. I believe that if we can get our children to put off making the decision until they are adults, that they will be able to see the folly in these substances and will be able to make a rational decision. Further, this decision would not be made in front of a bunch of unsupervised peers, but among and as adults who are capable of choosing what goes into their body. We can win the "War on Drugs," we will just have to change our strategy and tactics. If you were a general who had been fighting a war for three decades, would you change your tactics if you hadn't made any actual progress on your objective, despite having spent nearly a trillion dollars?
Back to the topic.... This article has an odd feel to it -- especially the part talking about the "banal corruption" of Chief Murphy -- who's apparently only been accused once, by a drug dealer who couldn't remember his name without prompting. But what's really wierd is the comments by the attorney. Attorney-client privilege applies to discussions between the attorney and the client, not the attorney and the police chief. In fact, since the lawyer essentially witnessed a crime, I think he would be compelled to report it. As an attorney, I think he'd WANT to tell the judge about it, since it would help his client. My bet -- nothing happened. The client either made this up, was approached by the detective and not the chief, or misunderstood something. The lawyer didn't want to commit perjury by agreeing with the client. He didn't want to clarify the situation. He's happy the hint of an accusation is out there, and hopes to use the other scandal to get the DA to drop/reduce the charges.
banal Drearily commonplace and often predictable (from dictionary.com) News of corruption in all forms is very commonplace when it has to do with enforcement of prohibition. Just because it happens in boardrooms, police stations and congressional offices here in America does not make it any different from car bombings, kidnappings and murders of judges in Columbia. It is all related to enforcing prohibition, a failed policy whose time has come. Actually, I think that negotiations between an attorney, his client, and the police would fall under attorney/client privilege. In addition, in some places I think you can be disbarred for breaking privilege. The lawyer did not feel comfortable testifying, and that is his right. He might have WANTED to tell the judge, but was constrained by law. One of the things that bothers me about prohibition is the fact that once someone is accused of a crime, they along with everyone they know, including the lawyer, is seen as not credible. They are all labeled as "druggies" and their reports of injustice are ignored. There was a time when "innocent intil proven guilty" meant something, but it sure doesn't any more. Whatever. They are tying this guy to an ongoing investigation for exactly the same thing with a detective on the force. It is clear that all over this country, people are getting rich off the drug trade and the people who suffer most are our children. They are the ones being told that it's OK to use drugs and that drugs won't hurt you by their peers and dealers. They are the ones that will continue to become addicted and die at the same rates year after year until we face reality and do something about it. We can win the "War on Drugs" if we adopt a healthcare and education based drug policy.
My point with the "banal corruption" is that this article is very slanted. One accusation, in court, but a defendant, who had to recieve that amount of prompting, and there's a "case" against the man for corruption. Legitimate plea bargaining agreements are held in confidence. These plea bargaining sessions would be, and were, held with the district attourney, NOT the police. But even those discussions could be shared with the judge. But he didn't say plea bargaining confidence. Attourney-client priviledge refers to discussions between the lawyer and his client, does not apply if a third party is present. Unless -- he also represents the chief, then we get into a possible conflict of interest. (And since this is a small town, that's not outside the realm of possibility.) An offer from the police chief to make the charges "go away" for money is way outside the plea bargaining process. In effect, the lawyer was a witness to blackmail, and should have reported it. I never said I don't believe they guy because he's accused, or because he's a druggie. But, based on what's in this story, it doesn't pass the smell test.
It was only one accusation against THIS man, there is a detective at the same small police force that is under investigation for the same thing! I would say that it is at least equal odds on who is lying in this instance. This is just one example of the giant red elephant sitting in the middle of the living room of our country. It is time to start talking about this policy and it is time to find something that works. I could throw 90% of the injustices perpetrated by prohibition away and still have enough to claim it the second biggest policy failure in our country's history behind slavery. I think that the author used the word banal not to intimate that this man has had charges leveled commonly, but that the news of a potentially corrupt official is very common and even expected nowadays. A scene from the movie "Con Air" illustrates my point. DEA Agent: I'm DEA, Cyrus, do you know what that means? Snowball: Yeah, it means you're the crookedest n***** on this plane. Thursday night on Threat Matrix, one of the DEA agents had a coke problem in Miami and was transferred to Utah where she started using crystal meth. Stories of the corruption bred by prohibition are everywhere, and nobody is surprised when they come up. When we finally throw this ignorant and abusive law in the round file where it belongs, history will record the "War on Drugs" as the single bloodiest time span in our history. Do we really want a policy that enriches people willing to break the law in return for huge profits? Someone does.
