Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

a--institution into believing that forced invasions of people's private resi-t25Only an intensive ideology of militarism could drive much of the policedences using police units designed around the Navy Seals model for thepurpose of conducting a crude investigation into minor drug law infrac-tions are a reasonable and beneficial crime control tactic.36For their part, police sometimes complain that the ''war'' metaphor (against crime,or against drugs) is not taken literally enough. Never one for understatement,former IAPD Chief Daryl Gates once told the Senate Judiciary Committee: 'Thecasual drug user should be taken out and shot. ... " When Los Angeles Timesreporter Ron Ostrow asked him if he meant that, the chief was glad to explain:Yeah, Ron, I did .... if we have people who smoke a little pot or snort a littlecoke, who simply want to go out and party and use drugs, I think theyought to be taken out and shot, because if this is a war on drugs, they aregiving aid and comfort to the enemy. 37Self-righteousness and self-interest often lean on each other suspiciously.Behind their moral platitudes and somber denunciations, the police havealways been major beneficiaries of vice--drugs, gambling, prostitution. Inthe nineteenth century, selective enforcement of vice laws stood to profit theindividual cops, their commanders, and their political masters. The police stoodat the center of a multi-faceted protection racket. The threat of raids kept theowners of illegal saloons, gambling houses, brothels, and opium dens obedientand willing to pay the going rate. Or, the promise of protection might be withheldfor either political or commercial reasons (that is, to eliminate a sourceof income for a rival political faction, or to give the competitive edge to a loyalclient) . And the thing that made all this corruption possible was the puritanicalobsession with other people's free time.38At the end of the twentieth century. things looked a little different. At th elowest levels of the law enforcement ladder, the police still sometimes soldprotection to street-level drug dealers, pimps, and prostitutes; or, conversely,they offered them the opposite of protection-robbing them of guns, drugs,and money, assaulting them, and making no arrest.39 As bad as this was, itwas only a small-time, illegal version of official policy. On a much wider scale,and with much lower risk, entire departments were involved in exactly thesame sort of extortion, under the guise of asset forfeiture.First introduced by a 1970 anti-racketeering law (the irony here is sickening), the practice of seizing drug money and other property has been expandedrepeatedly, most notably by the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control Act. The1984 law allowed local and state authorities to seize the assets of suspecteddrug dealers, try the cases in federal court, and keep up to 90 percent of theloot for departmental use. Forfeiture cases are not considered criminal proceedings-infact, no one need be charged with a crime at all-and so thehearings carry a lower standard of proof. Cases involving assets under $100,000are handled in administrative hearings, not reaching even civil court. Morequestionable still, prosecutors sometimes reduce charges when defendantsagree to surrender their assets without a fight.40Racial profiling innovator and Volusia (Florida) County Sheriff Bob Vogelused these laws quite adeptly. Between 1989 and 1992, he confiscated $8 million202