The Raw Story reports this week on a story told by one active-duty member of law enforcement, but it affects many more:
“I did not get in law enforcement to destroy a person’s future because that person had marijuana or a pill in their pocket,” the officer explained. “Why would you want to destroy that person’s future and cause them great harm because of that? It’s not worth it.”
Statistics from the FBI reveal that for every passing 19 seconds of 2010, a person was caged by a member of law enforcement for the crime of possessing a prohibited drug. In 2009, 1.6 million people were arrested in the U.S. for drugs.
“The war on drugs is a war on people,” he claimed.
“I just didn’t see problems from illegal drug users that I’d been led to believe,” the officer explained. “Most of the calls that we get on drug use, as police, are alcohol related. Alcohol is a serious drug that can be abused, but I just didn’t see the calls on other drugs like I had been led to believe. I didn’t see these drug-crazed people out there doing crazy things… Even growing up before entering law enforcement, I was always led to believe that the drug war was meant to stop all these people from doing crazy things. But on the street, that’s not what you see. That’s a lie.”
[Regarding his first drug arrest, he writes, "I was thinking, ‘This is not right. This guy’s keeping to himself, not hurting nobody, he’s a peaceful person.’ I instinctively knew this was wrong. I changed my perspective immediately. This was not the war on drugs that I thought it would be.”
[This week], he’s acquired a unique extra-curricular activity: an anonymous blog served up by LEAP, [Law Enforcement Against Prohibition], examining the innards of the drug war from a perspective rarely put on public display. If his superiors knew, he explained, “I would probably be terminated.”
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