Pubdate: Wed, 09 June 1999 Source: Orange County Register (CA) Section: Metro Copyright: 1999 The Orange County Register Contact: http://www.ocregister.com/ CASUALTIES OF THE DRUG WAR Bryan Ray Kazarian,the Orange County deputy district attorney charged as a key player in a large-scale drug ring this week, is legally considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and he may well be innocent. The very fact that he has been arrested on such serious charges, however, is sad almost beyond saying. However true it may be that most people in law enforcement and the justice system are honest, decent and law-abiding, a case like this inevitably undermines the credibility of law enforcement at all levels. Whatever the ultimate disposition of Mr. Kazarian's case, it is important to remember that the kind of corruption alleged in this case is not an isolated example. One of the side effects of the government's War on Drugs is an increased level of police and law enforcement corruption. The amount of money involved in illicit dealing of a broad range of drugs is so enormous - and will continue to be so enormous as long as Americans insist on dealing with drugs through prohibition - that some law enforcement officials will succumb to the temptation to walk on the illicit side. The point was well made by Joseph McNamara, formerly police chief in San Jose and now a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, who spoke of "a wave of scandals over the past five to 10 years that are quite different than anything we've seen historically." (We found his speech at http://drcnet.org/cops/macnamara.html) He discussed police misconduct in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Atlanta and New Orleans and sadly concluded that "it's not just the lower ranking narcs -it goes up to the top. The police chief of Detroit, former chief, is in prison for stealing drug funds. Police chiefs in little New England towns stole drugs from their lockers. All kinds of sheriffs throughout the country have been convicted of actually dealing in drugs." Former police chief McNamara thins it's not just the money. "When we allowed our politicians to push cops into a war they'll never win, they can't win, and let them begin to think of themselves as soldiers, the mentality comes that anything goes ... We can trace back this changing police behavior to a kind of malaise, in which good cops and bad cops alike have been conditioned to think they can do whatever they want, because after all, this is a problem that can only be solved by a war." As long as America insists confronting the subtle problems surrounding drugs with the blunt instrument of the criminal law and the stirring rhetoric of war, citizens can expect alarming levels of police corruption. Perhaps that is a price some are willing to pay. We believe it's too high. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D