Nowhere in the Constitution is authority given the Congress to legislate in the area we call "drug control". It contains no provisions permitting the government to restrict, deny or even to regulate, except in interstate commerce, anyone's access to any substance they choose to use. PERIOD. Therefore, that authority simply doesn't exist, and the Congress and the Courts know it. The police know, just as we ALL know that these laws are not legal. Never have been. A cursory study of the Volstead Act will demonstrate as much. Even the "Single" agreement, the Treaty that all good party members claim as their legal authority to legislate such distatsteful acts, precludes any act that is not in agreement with that sgnatory's Constitutions or laws. And there ya have it. Let's don't even start to discuss the collective insanity these laws have caused, nor the violence the state commits in real lives daily in its attempt to criminilize an act nearly as common as breathing. It has taught an entire culture to lie, to lie to OURSELVES about any uncomfortable fact associated with the activity. We've taught our own children the "virtues" of such duplicitousness. What's truly the act of "liberal" politicians, as any true conservative not only doubts the purposes, ability and the jurisprudence of any elected bpody or person,, they don't like anything the government peddles, including their foreign adventures, their lying, cheating, conspiring, tyrant aspirations. Freedom isn't free, and people either need to LEARN this, or struggle with their inability to accept the very idea this country is supposed to be based on. Frankly, I think they are on the losing side, as even the VT incident seems to be awakening that understanding in millions..

As a prosecutor I see the harm the 'stop snitching' campaign does every day. For example, I have seen case after case where an person gets shot and refuses to testify about who shot him. Initially after the shooting the police will be able to get a taped statement from him where he says 'Tookie or Mookie or Tyrone shot me because . . . ' When they are still angry they tell the truth. But then months and in many cases years pass and when the case finally comes to trial the jerk can't remember anything. The shooter gets released and sooner or later an innocent person gets killed. And no one sees anything there either.

This has nothing to do with the war on drugs. These people aren't thinking about that. They are just listening to what their hip-hop singers are telling them about how to stick it to the man. But they are only screwing themselves.

I could care less if no one ever cooperates in a drug investigation again. But when it comes to real crime, people need to start 'snitching' unless they like living in hell.

Unjust laws will be broken. The addage used to go: If you live outside of the law you must be honest. Honesty requires that you take responsibility for you own actions. A snitch avoids this responsibility by offering up their friends and family in a sacrifice to save themselves. This is not new, Judas was a snitch.
Patrick Cannon
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David, thank you for articulating what so many of us are thinking! We live in a society where our United States Attorney General is rewarded with job security when he refuses to tell Congress what he knows to be true. Our Vice President is protected when he refuses to speak with police after literally shooting a person in the face. Every day police protect one another with the Blue Wall of Silence and refuse to give information about crimes committed by other police officers to the authorities. Can Anderson Cooper really believe that a few rap artists are more influential than all of this?

Worse, police systematically fail to offer any protection in inner city communities, so why would anyone trust them? People who go to the police in Black and Brown neighborhoods run the risk that the police will turn the story around and blame them for something. And people who go to the police can be almost certain that the police will fail to protect them from the violent criminal that Anderson Cooper expects them to turn in. Essex County/Newark, New Jersey reported just last week that they are completely out of witness protection funds - they literally have NOTHING to offer as protection.

The real issue is the failure of the police to offer true protection, and build trust, in communities that have a problem with violence. Everyone wants, and deserves, to be safe and secure in their communities. Until Anderson Cooper covers these issues, he will not be taken seriously by anyone who has studied these issues or anyone who lives through them.

In this area, snitches have wrought more misery than previously thought possible. Our "Drug Task Force" runs on a steady intake of "intelligence" from drug users who are quite willing to barter information about their fellow users in order to be left alone in their own "endeavors". The police are more than happy with this arrangement, as it keeps the headlines touting their "success", and the court docket at full capacity. Bails, fines, forfeiture of assets, and so forth are now regular income for the drug warriors who hold sway here. The worst is this; the folks around here are more than happy to surrender all their privacy, and freedom, to those who would protect them from some crisis of drug use, not realizing that it's just the latest pretext to convince you that less freedom is more. We need help here, as the forces of freedom are at a low ebb, and malnourished, as well. So much for "mountaineers are always free".

... on police, prosecutors, judges, government officials and administrators. Nobody is perfect and as soon as someone learns that one of these officials conducted themselves, immorally, put them in jail.

Keep snitching on murderers, robbers, and other violent thugs. Work to end the drug war as well. Then we might have peace in our streets.

But I am really disappointed that he has joined Lou Dobbs as an ONDCP cheerleader. I am a law-abiding citizen, but I have completely lost faith in the police. Yes, there are some good ones, but the corruption has risen while morale has fallen, thanks to the drug war. It's all about who can pay their way out and who has friends in high places...shoot first ask questions later. There is no justice in America. Good cops don't want to be morality enforcers, and that's what drug laws are. They want to fight real criminals, not get into people's private lives. The people that join the force because they like the power over others that the gun & badge give them, love the drug war! They get to seize assets and nobody cares what happens to "druggies"...so they can beat them, rob them, rape them...whatever. The good cops have to go along with it all, or be seen by their own as snitches!

I'm an older white person and I hate Hip-hop & rap music, but I came to these same realizations without hearing hip-hop or living in a black neighborhood. I read, I'm informed, and I see the people next to their cars on the highway while several cops go through all their personal stuff, looking for a few grams of MJ. Meanwhile, we have a sexual predator epidemic going on, starting in Congress & Homeland Security! Better to keep the ignorant masses busy worrying about "druggies".

These show trials are worthless. Let's decrimin alize grug abused and treat it like akcohol abuse. Check the LEAP web site. These are law enforcement officers who regard the war on drugs as futile.

http://www.leap.cc/

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is a great group -- the "good guys". I am a non-law enforcement member. Not everyone who has come to recognize the drug war for what it is -- Prohibition II, is a drug user. Some are patriots and realists.

The best thing that comes from this kind of law enforcement it the protecting of the snitches. I have a friend that has been arrested for meth a few times, not small quantities- she's got a problem. She steals identities to feed her habit. As I said she has been arrested and each time has been released with the promise of assisting in other drug investigations. As soon as she gets out of jail she goes back to stealing identities. End result is people's credit and finances are screwed in order for the drug gestappo to pad their stats. NICE SYSTEM.

It's interesting to read the diverse perspectives, especially those of prosecutors. In general, as Borden alluded to, something like the anti-snitching mentality is best examined from an etiological perspective -- i.e. what could possibly cause even law abiding citizens in the inner-city to look upon the police as an enemy rather than an ally?
I remember being at a Dead Prez show at 9:30 club and Dead Prez certainly rep an anti-snitching philosophy -- but not one which is nearly as ignorant as that of Camron as presented by CNN. They had an audience participation callback of "Snitches get dealt with." -- I am a middle-class suburban college kid so I'm not from this background, but if you can't understand at all where minorities or the poor are coming from with their anti-snitching mentality then you have to expose yourself to culture more broadly...

There is an anti-snitching mentality, not only because the police rather than the drug dealers (and sometimes reasonably so!) are perceived as the criminals in the inner city. Even in murder investigations, my understanding is that not only is there a fear and stigmitization of going to the police in the community, but there is also a sense that someone else's justice is being applied to their communities.

To the suburban, middle-class, middle-aged, white, or otherwise "unhip" person who can't understand where an anti-snitching ethos comes from you should check out The Wire or maybe The Shield too -- not that I'm suggesting thats where one can learn a lot about these phenomenons, but if one can't understand where they come from perhaps this should help.

Although fiction, I feel like The Wire presents a really accurate depiction of the moral complexity of the war on drugs, especially in so far as how enforcement actions are inevitably received in underprivileged communities. The Bal'Mo police department's use of their CI, bubbles also represents the questionable use of self-motivated Confidential informants.
The depleted self-esteem of some addicts -- and their lack of moral scrupples (if they get in the way of the next 'fix) -- makes them easy targets from which to extract information. Drug users have a self-interest in offering up some information and are usually rewarded if their information is somewhat credible or useful -- though it need not be true in the least.
More violent criminals are in essentially the same position, where their self-interest supplants any aversion to lying they may have previously had.

The Shield is another police drama which highlights the legal gray areas in which cops are known to spend so much of their time -- i.e. in the sense that Joseph McNamara talks about the war on drugs creating an "officers liars club" for example.

LEAP is one of the best anti-prohibition groups around because their experience gives them such strong credibility, which is crucial in light of people's natural reticence to believe just how big of a fiasco are drug war really is.

Z.D. --Where are you from?
Prosecutor above where are you from also?

PJM

I just wanted to make another point:

One thing one should understand is that though we view inner-city drug markets as a "cauldron of criminality" -- to use Stephen Duke's phrase --, to the inner city resident disturbances to peace and order are probably interpreted as happening primarily when the police enter the neighborhood. Drug addicts are a minor nuisance but not much more.

The drug dealers with their guns and 'thug mentality' are not (to poor inner-city dwellers) the villains we mythologize about; These drug dealers employ violence and violence is a deplorable part of the illegal drug trade and one of the main reasons we need to gradually move towards legalization. The important caveat though -- which we miss when only look at the murder statistics -- is that similiar to the wise-guy moral code, only those who are in the "game" are fair targets, anyone else is a civilian.

Another really important aspect is that even these gun-toting, drug pushers don't always fit the anti-social personality archetype we imagine them in. Not this is exculpiatory in a legal-moral sense (though it should be mitigating), but to the impoverished, disadvantaged inner-city minority slanging crack on the corner can be seen as the only means of making a living -- Biggie: "This is for all the people who called the police on me, when I was hustling outside my building, trying to buy diapers for my daughter."

Allen Iverson, the Newport News ("Bad Newz"), Virgina born NBA superstar grew up in this kind of an enviornment. Iverson has been asked how he feels about his Step-Father -- who was in and out of jail (for slanging rock) while Allen was growing up -- and Iverson frankly dismissed the implication -- that he was ashamed or felt neglected by his step-father's frequent absences -- of the reporter's question, instead explaining that his step-father had sacrificed a lot for him growing up and had done whatever he could to keep bread on the table for the family.

I'm not saying that anyone should support their family slanging crack -- but the black and white morality presented on the evening news lies in stark contradistinction to the moral complexity of reality. The sociology of law -- see Donald Black -- has also taught us a lot about the functional differences in legal attention attracted and adjudications administered on the basis of the social status and level of social integration of both the defendant and the victim.

PJM

I tell you what the point is after I tell you what it's *not*. It's not about economics. It's not about making our streets safer. It's not about the children.

It's about not stepping on the freedoms of free men who are not causing direct harm to others.

(If you need me to interpret direct you should just step out of the debate altogether and leave democracy to the sane.)

(And if you don't agree you should step out of the debate and leave the debate to the non-evil.)

Evil?

Yes. Evil. It is evil to lock up free men and women in a cage because they used a chemical to alter their own physical or mental state. Period. End of story.

And, then, it's obvious that the right to sell a substance to a free adult is also a freedom that shouldn't be interfered with, either.

This kid in jail -- maybe he's pretty old now -- for "conspiracy" regarding distribution of cocaine -- a drug that has been used by extraordinary amounts of people, including the current President and at least one past Pope in addition to nearly every popular rock musician of the 70's and many of my friends (ha! what company they're in) -- deserves an enormous f'ing apology from this entire country.

All of you who support the drug laws, if Jesus returns during your lifetime and you come to your senses, you should all get down on your knees and spend the rest of your life pleasuring him to make up for what you've robbed him of.

Murderers rob people of moments they could have otherwise lived and enjoyed. They steal life.

Drug laws do the same. Thus, so do people who support them. The drug snitches are part of this group, too. They all steal life.

You'll enjoy the same circle of hell.

SAY IT LOUD AND SAY IT CLEAR -- THIS IS ABOUT FREEDOM AND MORALITY, NOTHING ELSE.

I have people who were robbed at gun point or who were beaten up - they don't want to come in to testify for fear of being labeled a 'snitch.'
I had a potential witness who wanted to speak to me. He had good information about an alleged crime that would have cleared his juvenile neighbors of any wrong doing. He was afraid to speak with me, however, because those juvenile defendants had some of their friends in the courtroom. They were gang members and they were watching him. We eventually spoke in private and I dismissed the charges against the defendants - even though they were scumbag gang members themselves they probably weren't guilty of that crime. This is not snitching. Speaking to police officers and prosecutors and coming to court to testify about crimes (especially violent crimes) is NOT SNITCHING.

Yet, every day some defendant charged with a crime (usually drugs) will willingly agree to testify against his co-defendants in return for less time. They would turn in their mom to get out of jail. This is snitching. These people are rats. And it goes on all the time.

The main problem is that people aren't speaking to the police or coming to court when they are witnesses to real crimes - not drug crimes. That is why I am critical of the so-called 'Stop Snitching' campaign.

- The Prosecutor guy - I'll comment more about where I am from after I resign this summer.