Police Chief Joseph McNamara Who Fought to End The Drug War Dies at 79

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
September 22, 2014

Contact: Darby Beck: darby.beck@leap.cc or 415.823.5496

RETIRED SAN JOSE POLICE CHIEF WHO FOUGHT TO END THE DRUG WAR DIES AT 79

Joseph McNamara Leaves Behind a Remarkable Legacy of Public Service and Activism

MONTEREY, CA—Retired police chief Joseph McNamara passed away last Friday, September 19th at the age of 79. His thirty-five-year law enforcement career began in 1956 as a beat cop for the New York City Police Department. He would later become a criminal justice fellow at Harvard, where he focused on criminal justice research and methodology. During this time McNamara took leave from police work to obtain a doctorate in Public Administration, and was appointed deputy inspector of crime analysis in New York City upon his return. McNamara spoke out publicly against the drug war long before the issue had come to the political forefront. He was a speaker and advisory board member for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a group of law enforcement officials opposed to the war on drugs. “When you’re telling cops that they’re soldiers in a Drug War, you’re destroying the whole concept of the citizen peace officer, a peace officer whose fundamental duty is to protect life and be a community servant,” said McNamara at a presentation for the International Conference on Drug Policy Reform in 1995. “Chief Joe McNamara was one of the first people of position both to see the futility of our drug policy and have the courage to speak publicly about it,” said retired California Superior Court Judge James Gray, another LEAP speaker. “Without his contributions this movement would not be nearly as advanced as it is today.” In 1973 he became the Kansas City police chief and is credited with leading the charge on groundbreaking and innovative programs and research. He hired more women and minorities, worked to bridge the racial divides for which Kansas City had been infamous, and promoted accountability within his department. He instituted record-keeping policies, updated technological capabilities, and spoke out against racial profiling. After three years McNamara was appointed police chief of San Jose, California where he remained until retirement in 1991. After retirement, he became a consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, and the State Department. He also authored five books including a crime-prevention text and three best-selling crime novels. Retired Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper remembers him fondly. “What I do remember,” said Stamper, “...was Joe’s graciousness, his humor, and his integrity. Over the years, he demonstrated the power of principle, of speaking one’s mind and heart, of advancing the causes of justice and equality.” Joseph McNamara is survived by his three children and his wife, Laurie.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is a nonprofit organization of criminal justice professionals who bear personal witness to the wasteful futility and harms of our current drug policies.

2nd Report from UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs

This is the second report from LEAP board members present at the 56th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs this week. 

VIENNA

March 15, 2013

According to reports issued by the Secretariat for the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, methamphetamines represented the largest increase in illicit drug use worldwide in 2012 as reflected in part by the seizure of 60 tons of meth that year. Those same reports reflected that forty nine new psychoactive substances were identified and in use among European Union member states in 2011, compared with forty one new substances in 2010 and twenty four in 2009.

The Commission on Narcotic Drugs is charged with responsibility for establishing drug policy for the United Nations, consistent with three UN prohibitionist treaties adopted in 1961, 1971 and 1988. In March of each year, the Commission has the opportunity to study the Secretariat's reports and other evidence of drug use and trafficking, examine the effectiveness of its policies, and recommend revisions and changes to world drug policy. Given that responsibility and authority -- and given the Secretariat's facts regarding the explosion of meth use, meth seizures and new synthetic-drug proliferation -- a serious reexamination of the UN drug prohibition policy was warranted.

But it didn't happen. Concluding a week of meetings of the 56th session of the CND on Friday, the three UN drug prohibition treaties escaped alive and well without any significant policy change recommendations.

One reform group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a non-profit organization composed of drug cops, prosecutors, judges and other law enforcement personnel, who for years led the fight against drugs but who now oppose the failed drug war, expressed disappointment that the CND never engaged in a discussion of fundamental questions concerning world drug policy.

The CND failed to take up the question of whether drug prohibition does more harm than good. Despite the huge meth seizures and proliferation of new drugs in the market, the CND failed to take up the question of whether drug prohibition policy itself causes increased drug availability, potency, use, abuse, addiction, disease and death.

Ignoring other fundamental questions, the CND failed to consider whether drug prohibition policy itself causes addict crime and turf-war crime, violence, corruption and injustice; and whether it erodes freedom, liberty and human rights.

The CND failed to consider the fundamental question of whether the United Nations should repudiate the UN/Al Capone style drug-prohibition paradigm, instead adhering to the failed and harmful drug-war policy.

Triggered by unrelenting violence and other threats to the public health and safety of their people, some Latin American countries, such as Guatemala and Uruguay, are increasingly unwilling to accept the drug-prohibition status quo. Signs of change are also evident in the United States, where the people of Colorado and Washington have expressed unwillingness to live with nonsensical cannabis laws that feed Mexican drug cartels and deprive citizens of freedom.

In some European countries sentiment is also being expressed for a rejection of the top-down UN-mandated prohibition of drugs and for the restoration of national sovereignity that would enable each country to establish drug laws that best fit their people's problems and needs through a system of legalization, regulation and control.

Courageously, Bolivia, by insisting on the constitutional right of its people to preserve the traditional use of the coca leaf, has shown the nations of the world a way to throw off the straight-jacket, zero-tolerance UN prohibitionist conventions.

Following Bolivia's procedural success, other nations of the world could also reject the current prohibition policy and replace it with drug policies that are conducive to the public health, safety and welfare, through a system of legalization, regulation and control.

- Jim Gierach, Annie Machon, Terry Nelson, Maria Lucia Karam

Notes from the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs

Note: Four of LEAP's board members are in Vienna attending the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs this week, from which they sent us this special report.   

03/11/2013

VIENNA - Bolivian president Evo Morales again stole the show at the 56th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), proclaiming that the UN drug rules and conventions had failed to control drugs and had led to "more and more drugs on the market," "more violence," and "more hidden money in the banking sector."

More than one year ago, Pres. Morales created a CND stir and committed drug policy heresy by leading Bolivia to repudiate and withdraw from the UN 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. After initially requesting an exemption from the international convention in order to permit the chewing of the coca leaf for cultural, traditional and medical reasons, and being denied such relief, Bolivia unilaterally withdrew from the treaty, a first by any nation of the world.

Last year, at the same CND annual meeting, Pres. Morales asked that Bolivia be readmitted as a signatory to the Single Convention with the exception that the coca leaf be removed from the long list of UN prohibited drugs. Although the coca leaf has many constructive uses in food, beverage, and medicinal products, it is also the foundational ingredient for cocaine. Morales, however, made clear that he and Bolivian were opposed to legalizing cocaine.

In response to Morales 2012 speech, rather than being condemned by other Member States to the Single Convention, many delegates to the 55th Session applauded him. And during the past year, all Member States to the Convention, with the exception of 15 countries, approved the re-admittance of Bolivia to the drug prohibitionist UN family.

President Morales had more news for the 2013 Session.

Bravely, he declared that the international drug rules and conventions had failed. He proclaimed that despite UN anti-drug treaties, today "we have more and more drugs on the market," "more and more violence," and "more and more forbidden money in the banking sector."

He also pointed out that despite the UN war on drugs Afghanistan had an 18% increase in the production of poppies this year over last. The poppy is the plant from which opium, morphine and heroin are made. Morales pointed out that the mushrooming poppy crop occurred despite the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan, and that one-half of Afghan provinces and one-third more families were cultivating opium.

Morales contended that drug war has become an instrument of political domination. He also pointed out that without U.S. "occupation," Bolivia is doing much better in drug control than it did historically.

Contravening another UN mantra, Morales stated that drug control is not a "shared responsibility," explaining that Bolivia no longer receives any anti-drug money from the U.S. He further touted the fact that Bolivia does not use chemicals to eradicate the coca plants, and contented that thereby it was protecting "Mother Earth."

Challenging other UN conventional protocol, Morales claimed that alternative development in substitution for coca plant cultivation was a waste of time. He explained that the illegal market dictates the price of coca, and no legal crop is comparable in price. The only competitive product for the coca plant would be opium or marijuana. 

- Maria Lucia Karam, Jim Gierach, Annie Machon, Terry Nelson

From Amsterdam: Lessons on controlling drugs

Hot off the presses, here's an article I wrote in today's Washington Post Sunday magazine. I talk about the difference in policy and police attitudes toward drugs in Amsterdam and in the U.S.:

In Amsterdam, the red-light district is the oldest and most notorious neighborhood. Two picturesque canals frame countless small pedestrian alleyways lined with legal prostitutes, bars, porn stores and coffee shops. In 2008, I visited the local police station and asked about the neighborhood's problems. I laughed when I heard that dealers of fake drugs were the biggest police issue -- but it's true. If fake-drug dealers are the worst problem in the red-light district, clearly somebody is doing something right.

and

History provides some lessons. The 21st Amendment ending Prohibition did not force anybody to drink or any city to license saloons. In 1933, after the failure to ban alcohol, the feds simply got out of the game. Today, they should do the same -- and last week the Justice Department took a very small step in the right direction.

Read all about it! The only unfortunate part is they removed the "member of LEAP" part on my bio.

From Amsterdam: Lessons on controlling drugs

Hot off the virtual presses, here's an article I wrote appearing in this coming Sunday's Washington Post. I talk about the difference in policy and police attitudes toward drugs in Amsterdam and in the U.S.:

In Amsterdam, the red-light district is the oldest and most notorious neighborhood. Two picturesque canals frame countless small pedestrian alleyways lined with legal prostitutes, bars, porn stores and coffee shops. In 2008, I visited the local police station and asked about the neighborhood's problems. I laughed when I heard that dealers of fake drugs were the biggest police issue -- but it's true. If fake-drug dealers are the worst problem in the red-light district, clearly somebody is doing something right.

and

History provides some lessons. The 21st Amendment ending Prohibition did not force anybody to drink or any city to license saloons. In 1933, after the failure to ban alcohol, the feds simply got out of the game. Today, they should do the same -- and last week the Justice Department took a very small step in the right direction.

Read all about it!

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

Hard Core in Brazil

Just a week or two after Jon Lee Anderson's excellent article in the New Yorker on drugs and favelas in Rio de Janeiro, drug gangs shoot down a police helicopter. That's hard core. I mean, I've thought about shooting down police helicopters, but luckily I lack the .30-caliber anti-aircraft gun used to bring that baby down. Three police officers were killed. All together, 21 or so died in related chaos.

I can't think of a worse combination than drugs being illegal and the government giving up to control to drug gangs in the ghettos. It's one thing to fight a war on drugs. It's another to start a war on drugs and then give up large parts of your city away to the criminal drug gangs.

There are close to 5,000 murders a year in Rio de Janeiro. That's a rate about twice as high as Baltimore and about 10 times as high as NYC.

“Rio is one of the very few cities in the world where you have whole areas controlled by armed forces that are not of the state.”

Here's Anderson's latest update. And his audio slide show. Good stuff.

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

Mass. Decrim Has No Effect On Schools

So say some Massachusetts school officials--the same ones who say decriminalization "sends a terrible message to kids." The story by John Hilliard is here (via the Agitator).

This really is no surprise, but it's important for a few reasons. Prohibitionists seem to care more about "the message" than about actual drug use and drug harms. For too many, it's a moral issue and not a policy issue.

I like to ask those who support the war on drugs if they would support legalization if legalization and regulation decreased drug use. I'd say close to half say "no." Better, they tell me, to keep drugs illegal regardless of drug usage rates. Sometimes increased drug use and overdose deaths can be useful, some drug-warriors even say, for having people overdose in the ghetto sends a powerful “message” to others.

Hmmmmmmm. This sort of ends the debate. So it’s not about drugs. It’s about morals and the power and symbolism of the law.

Prohibition is about a conservative world view that sees drugs as evil. And evil needs to be outlawed. Prohibition is about big-government telling people what to do and how to live their lives.

Take Harry Asslinger (oops, honest typo but much too good to delete)--I mean Harry Anslinger. He was very happy, after failing to maintain alcohol Prohibition, to raise the false alarm about marijuana.


Perhaps Anslinger’s greatest accomplishment was to push marijuana from a fringe drug into the mainstream. That's what happens when you call it the evil weed and highlight the moral turpitude of minorities, immigrants, Catholics, liberals, and other city folk who, like Anslinger believed, were destroying the moral fiber of America.

Whatever. Good or bad, those cool cats sure knew how to party!

In my mind, the debate on drug decriminalization comes down to one main issue: in an era of legal and regulated drugs, would drug use increase or decrease? Of course we can't be sure because we haven't tried it. But the evidence strongly suggests the use would not go up and might go down.

System of liberalization and/or decriminalization result in no increase in drug use. Marijuana usage rates in the Netherlands (where it is publicly sold and legally consumed) are lower than in the U.S. Decriminalization in Portugal has also been a success.

How does this work? Lot's of reasons. Forbidden fruit. Distrust of authority. And consider what Diego Gambetta recently pointed out to me: there’s a lot more pressure in social situations to conform and partake in illegal activities than for comparably legal activities.

If a joint is being passed around, you’re expected, especially in young crowds, to smoke a little. This serves two functions beyond social bonding.

1) It shows you're not a cop.

2) You can’t blackmail anybody with your knowledge of illegal behavior since you're guilty too.

There’s a lot more pressure (especially for teenagers) to smoke a joint being passed around than to smoke an offered cigarette. These days cigarettes, regulated and taxed, aren’t even being offered much.

Marijuana decriminalization in Massachusetts has not resulted in a bunch of school kids suddenly discovering the drug and firing up. Hell, the first time I ever saw marijuana was in school, watching a drug deal go down in the bathroom (regulated drugs aren’t sold in school bathrooms). And the best anti-drug lesson I ever got was from the guy who sat behind me in first-period German class. He would also come in late, stoned, and reeking of (tobacco) cigarettes. He never learned any German. But then neither did I.

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

New Heroin Addicts

“Believe it or not, as a high school teenager, [heroine] was easier for us to get than alcohol,” he said. “It’s cheaper than anything out there.”

That's because alcohol is legal and restricted and heroin is prohibited and unrestricted.

But I guess it's only newsworthy when rich white kids get hooked.

Here's the story in the New York Times.

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

PATRIOT Act used for drugs, not terrorists

Ryan Grim reports in the Huffington Post that only 3 of 763 "sneak and peek" requests involved terrorism cases. A sneak and peak is when the government searches your home or office without telling you. It was supposed to keep us safe from terrorists.

But most sneak and peaks, not surprisingly, were for drugs. Also worrisome, only three requests were denied.

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

The Day the Police Came Crashing Through His Door

In the Washington Post, Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, MD, writes about his experience:

I remember thinking, as I kneeled at gunpoint with my hands bound on my living room floor, that there had been a terrible, terrible mistake.
...
In the words of Prince George's County Sheriff Michael Jackson, whose deputies carried out the assault, "the guys did what they were supposed to do" -- acknowledging, almost as an afterthought, that terrorizing innocent citizens in Prince George's is standard fare. The only difference this time seems to be that the victim was a clean-cut white mayor with community support, resources and a story to tell the media.

What confounds me is the unmitigated refusal of county leaders to challenge law enforcement and to demand better -- as if civil rights are somehow rendered secondary by the war on drugs.
...
As an imperfect elected official myself, I can understand a mistake -- even a terrible one. But a pattern and practice of police abuse treated with utter indifference rips at the fabric of our social compact and virtually guarantees more of the same.

You know what they say: a liberal is a conservative who's been raided (actually I just made that one up).

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

Deep Undercover

Kristina Goetz of the Memphis Commercial Appeal has this story about an officer doing "deep undercover."

She also had to restrain her police instincts to break up a fight at a convenience store or call social services if she saw a dealer hit his child because being caught would compromise the larger goal.

And what larger goal was more important than preventing physical child abuse? I would sue the police department if I were an assault victim and a police officer present did nothing.

But such is the nature of the war on drugs. Locking up a drug dealer (not preventing drug use) is more important than preventing injury or the beating of a child.

All the evils she saw? Those weren't caused by drugs. They were caused by bad people in bad conditions. And people who commit bad crimes should get locked up.

So let me get this right. All the crimes you saw, the poverty, the desperation, the tricks, the violence, the child abuse? You saw people in f*cked up situations doing bad sh*t. And you were a police officer and you let it happen. You let all that slide because you were fighting some bigger fight. You rationalized that you needed to let some crimes slide so that you could go "up the ladder" and maybe even lock up some "kingpins" and win the war on drugs?

Did you?

In a year's time, this officer's work "resulted in more that 280 arrests -- from low-level drug peddlers to big-name dealers." And is Memphis safer? Have murders gone down? Has drug use gone down? By being "deep undercover," you ignored your oath as a police officer to defend the laws and the Constitution of our land.

Look, it's not like this officer didn't give her all. So did LEAP founder Jack Cole. They just gave it for the wrong reasons. Like Jack Cole, perhaps she too will speak out against the war on drugs. Maybe she'll wonder if some of the people she locked up weren't really that bad. Maybe she'll feel bad that some people are in prison because they were in bad situations and they trusted her. They thought she was their friend. And for all I know, she might have been their friend. And then she ratted them out.

That would be a heavy weight on my shoulders.

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

Alaskan Privacy

I've been a little fuzzy on the topic. But thanks to a reader, I've learned a bit.

Remember when marijuana used to be legal in Alaska? What ever happened to that?

Well here's the story, best I understand it.

In May, 1975, in Ravin v. State, the Alaska State Supreme Court ruled that possession of weed by an adult, at home (in small quantities) is protected under the a privacy clause of the state constitution.

It appears that the use of marijuana, as it is presently used in the United States today, does not constitute a public health problem of any significant dimension... It appears that effects of marijuana on the individual are not serious enough to justify widespread concern, at least as compared with the far more dangerous effects of alcohol, barbituates, and amphetamines.

The Alaska state troopers said the ruling was "horrendous" and vowed to keep enforcing drug laws under federal statutes.

Of course the sky didn't fall.

But in politically conservative Alaska, where alcoholism, "creeping" and incest are more major problems, the legislature re-outlawed marijuana in 2006. Of course you can't "outlaw" a supreme-court-decided right any more than you can legislate for slavery or against the First Amendment. Here's to the right of privacy! I wish it were in the Bill of Rights.

So more recently the 2006 Alaska law was appealed... but without a victim (has nobody in Alaska been arrested for such a crime?). It's a rare legal strategy, but one that makes sense to me. Why should you have to arrested before the court decides a law is unconstitutional? But no matter. The Alaska Supreme Court punted the decision on the grounds that it isn't "ripe." But regardless, the Ravin case decriminalizing marijuana still stands.

Scott Christiansen of the Anchorage Press writes:

The Alaska Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the Ravin decision, even to the point of limiting a law passed by a vote of the people, instead of the state legislature. In a 2004 case, Noy v State, the court explained that even though ballot initiatives can make law, those laws are on par with laws made by the legislative branch and still subject to constitutional tests in court. (And a collective, “Well, duh” was heard throughout the north.)

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]

A barrier to recovery

On Wednesday night, Mexico's drug prohibition war spilled into a treatment clinic in Ciudad Juarez. From the article:

"The deed was stomach-turning: Hooded gunmen burst into a Ciudad Juarez drug treatment center, gathered together those inside and lined them up before opening fire with semiautomatic weapons. When the shooting was over, 18 people were dead."

Apparently these clinics have become recruiting centres for organized crime groups:

"Drug-treatment centres in Mexico draw some clients from street gangs that serve as foot soldiers for drug cartels. Gangs often use the facilities as recruiting grounds, creating potential targets for enemies."

The Yahoo! article states this is the third attack on an addiction clinic in Ciudad Juarez.

Chicago drug bust. So what?

The "most significant drug importation conspiracies ever charged in Chicago" says the US Attorney.

Federal authorities have disrupted a massive cocaine operation that was bringing 1,500 to 2,000 kilos of cocaine a month to Chicago from the most powerful drug traffickers in Mexico, in what law enforcement is calling the most significant drug conspiracy ever to be broken up in Chicago.

Thirty-six people in Chicago and Mexico were indicted.
...
Authorities, led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, are seeking to seize $1.8 billion in cash.

The whole story by Natasha Korecki in the Chicago Sun Times.

And so what? This will result in: 1) More money spend on prison (and yes, I see how this is not a good example of my general position on immigrants), 2) more violence (and police death) in Mexico, and 3) somebody else bringing in the drugs to supply the heroin and cocaine needs of Chicago and the Midwest.

Notice how there isn't even talk about this 1) will make our streets safer, 2) lower drug use, or 3) increase the street prices for the drugs. The last point is downright bizarre, because no drug bust ever seems to increase price (except in the very shortest of terms). Even I can see how if you disrupt a major supplier, supply should go down, and prices up. But that never needs to be the case.

[from Peter Moskos's Cop in the Hood]