Pubdate: Fri, 27 Jul 2012
Source: Philadelphia Daily News (PA)
Copyright: 2012 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
Contact: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/about/feedback/
Website: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/339
Author: William Bender

CALL IT MATH AMPHETAMINE

Cops Tend to Be High When Giving Drugs 'Street Value'

IT HAPPENS before the news conference, before the plasticwrapped
bricks of dope are arranged on the table for the TV cameras and before
headlines are made.

Cops calculate the "street value." It's a branch of mathematics in
which economies of scale meet public relations.

By envisioning thousands of transactions that will never occur - and
sometimes padding the numbers on top of that - law-enforcement
agencies can wind up doubling, tripling, quadrupling, quintupling,
sextupling or even septupling what the confiscated drugs are worth to
the bulk-level dealers who got popped.

In the hands of a narcotics cop with a calculator, $2 million of
heroin can become $9 million, $500,000 worth of meth can become $ 2.5
million, coke worth less than $1 million can become several million.

"If you're dealing with kilos, you could break it down to grams to
really inflate it and make it look good," said Newtown Township Police
Detective John Newell, a senior investigator with the Delaware County
Drug Task Force. "You're going to get two different numbers. One's
going to be real big, and one's going to be realistically what someone
would pay for it."

Guess which numbers make the 6 o'clock news? Hint: Take the over.

Police pump up the value by simulating on paper what would have
happened if the drug seizure hadn't occurred. They generally assume
that all of it would have made it to the street and would ultimately
be sold in quantities of a gram or less. Heroin, for instance, is
typically sold to users for $10 in stamped bags that might contain as
little as 25 milligrams of product. Other drugs, like cocaine, are
sold in many different quantities.

Some cops then multiply the estimated street value by another number
to account for the likelihood that the drugs would be cut with other
powdery substances. The numbers soar.

Welcome to Drug Math 101.

'Basically a farce'

Here's the thing about describing bulk-level drug seizures in terms of
their approximate street value: It's not real money, even when cops
use conservative calculations. The dollar figure commonly cited in
news stories is the estimated collective value of the drugs to
thousands of end users who will never buy it. And, because drugs can
get resold several times between wholesale and retail, the
street-level figures are usually much higher than what the defendants
paid for the drugs or what they would have sold them for.

Experts say this can grossly exaggerate the impact that large busts
have on the drug-distribution system.

"The notion that you calculate it in terms of street value, as opposed
to what it's worth to the immediate buyer or seller, is basically a
farce," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy
Alliance, which advocates overhauling U.S. drug laws. "It doesn't make
any sense from an economic or business perspective. When cops seize
something, who is taking the hit, who is losing the money?"

Not the consumer or the corner dealer, yet that's the scenario on
which police often base their figures.

Last week, for instance, Bensalem police confiscated 15 kilos of
heroin and 20 pounds of meth - described as one of Bucks County's
largest drug busts - from two California men driving a tractor-trailer
on Street Road. Police originally estimated that the drugs were worth
$10 million, then upped it to $11.7 million.

But the estimated wholesale value of those drugs - a ballpark figure
of what they're actually bought and sold for at those quantities in
this area - is about $1.6 million, according to prices used by the
Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement agencies.

Bensalem Public Safety Director Fred Harran said that police arrived
at their figure, which is more than seven times higher, by dividing
the drugs into $200 per gram of meth, and $300 per gram of heroin.
Then, he said, they multiplied those new totals because the drugs
would have been diluted, or "stepped on."

"Instead of 20 pounds, if you cut it once with another substance, you
now have 40 pounds," Harran said.

He estimated that the retail value of the heroin alone is $9 million,
instead of its $1.2 million approximate wholesale value. But Peter
Reuter, a University of Maryland criminologist and drug-policy
expert, described that calculation as a "pretty egregious case" of
"overstating by a long-shot" the impact of the seizure on the
drug-distribution system.

"It makes them look important. 'We took $11 million worth of drugs off
the street' has a better sound to it than, 'We deprived drug dealers
of $3 million worth of goods,' " said Reuter, former president of the
International Society for the Study of Drug Policy. "It's perfectly
understandable why they do it."

Aside from generating increased press coverage, however, it's not a
particularly useful number, Reuter said.

"We want to know how much this seizure cost the drug-distribution
industry, and the answer is probably a quarter of the retail," he
said. Estimating the street value is "a different concept, and I don't
think it's a relevant one," he said.

Police numbers don't account for the probability that some of the
product could have been seized down the line, consumed, or sold in
relatively large quantities instead of street-level quantities.

"They're all right in their own way," Newell said of the different
ways of valuing drugs. "But if you're busting someone that has 20
kilos, they're not selling it in grams."

$100-a-hit LSD?

Sometimes the numbers are all over the place.

In January, every news outlet in Philadelphia covered the bust of a
major LSD operation in West Philly that included two Drexel University
students.

The Daily News and Inquirer reported that cops had seized 9,500 hits
of acid worth about $28,000, according to the Philadelphia District
Attorney's Office. At $3 a hit, that'd be a cheap trip.

But District Attorney Seth Williams announced at a news conference
that the defendants were selling the psychedelic drug for between $10
and $30 a hit. The latter figure is higher than what acid is typically
sold for.

Then an updated news release from Williams' office claimed that the
LSD had a street value of about $950,000 - a ludicrous price of $100
per hit - and said that officials now estimated that the ring had sold
more than $4 million worth of acid last year.

"That's ridiculous. We haven't had that kind of inflation yet," Brad
Burge, of the Multi-disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies,
said of the $100-a-hit figure. "You're talking $5 to $10 a hit."

D. A. spokeswoman Tasha Jamerson said Thursday that the estimated
selling price of the confiscated acid is now $35 to $40 a hit. But she
lowered the street value of the confiscated drugs from $950,000 to
$380,000, saying a former deputy district attorney might have
miscalculated.

Jamerson declined to discuss how her office calculates its street
values, saying the Dangerous Drug Offenders Unit doesn't "feel
comfortable" having numbers attributed to the office "because it
really is a very subjective process."

Laura Hendrick, field intelligence manager of the DEA'S Philadelphia
division, said her agency typically calculates drug values based on
the wholesale price if they are seized in kilos or pounds, but
"different agencies calculate it differently."

Mo' money, mo' money

Reuter said some law-enforcement agencies seem to be scaling back
their figures in an effort to publicize realistic drug values. But
Harran said describing huge drug seizures in small-quantity prices is
"probably the best number to use, because that's what it would have
been worth at the end of the day."

Proponents of drug-policy reform say inflated numbers are still
common. Nadelmann said the news media, which typically report the
higher figures without question, should stop participating in cops'
"street value charade" altogether.

"It happens across the board," said Jim Gray, a former Superior Court
judge in Orange County and federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. "We're
human. We want to make a big dent. We want to show how effective we
are, how the other guys are the bad guys. All of those things factor
in."

Daniel-paul Alva, a former Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney
who worked in the Narcotics Unit, said that police and prosecutors
nationwide have a strong practical and political incentive to use the
highest numbers, such as justifying the billions of dollars spent
annually fighting the so-called war on drugs.

"The bigger the pinch, the more serious the case, the higher the bail.
Everything gets ratcheted up," said Alva, now a defense attorney. "It
makes for better press. And the bigger the bust, the more money they
can ask for for their budgets."
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MAP posted-by: Matt