"How much smoke do you need?" said one veteran commander, who asked not to be identified. ‘When you're stacking up corruption complaints one on top of the other, the least you can do is move people out of the drug unit until you get to the bottom of things’."
In this quotation, a veteran commander expresses his dismay over the lack of corruption charges against members of the Baltimore Police Department and suggests that, until the situation is resolved, the accused police in the drugs unit should at least be moved to alternative units. In this case, even after a full year of allegations, including involvement with a drug ring, pocketing cash seized from drug traffickers, misusing money earmarked for drug informants, and fabricating information regarding cases, the accused police officers were allowed to continue working in the drug unit. Multiple officers were literally being caught planting drugs on suspects and seizing cash from them, yet the detectives investigating them only pursued allegations against one of the suspected officers. They did not even bother to ask the names of the other officers involved with these crimes during polygraph tests.
This quotation made me feel disappointed in the system. In a general sense, this quotation hints that the magnitude of corruption in the police force is troubling. Rather than seeing lower socioeconomic areas as places where people need to be helped and protected, the police merely use those areas to hunt people for their arrests. Theses police were not investigated for their drug-related crimes, but, as we have seen, officers across the country have been accused of everything from theft, drug use, statutory rape, and domestic violence and not investigated. By turning a blind eye to the actions of their colleagues, both the detectives in this specific Baltimore case as well as police nationwide are only contributing to the rampant corruption that exists. Why would anyone trust the police when all they seem to do is hurt the people they are around?
With respect to the more specific opioid crisis, the current approach is demonstratively unhelpful. By targeting the drug users and dealers in lower-income areas and incarcerating them, the police are not helping reduce drug usage. As shown in the case of Deandre McCullough, oftentimes these street dealers are taught to do so as children and begin dealing to help make ends meet. Most often, these child dealers eventually become addicted to drugs and fuel the addiction cycle. The current incarceration approach is not helpful in these cases as they are not reaching the root of the issue. It is necessary to provide these people and children with space and resources to create better alternatives for themselves.
Community-based policing and leadership seem like the best remedy to this situation at both levels. Although police are currently just locking up street dealers, community police will be able to fully interrogate the dealers so suppliers can be pursued. Furthermore, community-based police will support multiple pilot programs, people can see what works in communities. By setting up community police substations in areas most notorious for drug trafficking and allowing community members who are trained to help fix the underlying problems in their communities, these programs will not only contribute to the process of mending these communities but also serve as valuable models for other jurisdictions. Given everything that these marginalized communities need to recover from, this process will take time, but we need to start somewhere.
References
Simon, D. (2018, October 24). Corruption probes jolt police drug unit Western District sergeant, officer are both removed. Retrieved from https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Jv_lbYPM-2cJ:https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1993-08-03-1993215086-story.html+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Simon, D. (2018, October 25). Making the City Crime-Free, One Neighborhood at a Time. Retrieved from https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8mo6uGv57vEJ:https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1991-08-11-1991223132-story.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Simon, D. (2018, August 14). DeAndre McCullough (1977-2012). Retrieved from https://davidsimon.com/deandre-mccullough-1977-2012/
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