This past week I read Marshall Frank's recently published book, Criminal Injustice in America: Essays by a Career Cop, and then reviewed it on Amazon.com. I feel that I didn't do this retired Miami-Dade Captain's book justice, although I did give it the top Amazon rating of 5 stars. I had so much to say that I was only able to cover two of several topics, and only basically – Amazon doesn't want an essay as a review – and left out too much. While I do not agree with everything that Frank has to say, he wins the title of most realistic and intelligent cop that I have ever listened to. I do listen to cops, but most often hear little more than pro-police and system rhetoric. This is a group of people that usually simply enjoys power and considers caging fellow citizens a service. I talk about bad cops often enough, so it's time that I paid a little bit of attention to a good cop.
Frank takes the intelligent position of ditching the useless War on Drugs in its entirety. Now I've never been any more than a moderate user of marijuana throughout my life. Oh, I've tried other drugs when I was much younger, but each had an unwelcome effect that left me with the knowledge that I'd never do that again. It's not necessarily a bad thing to try something once – one can give a correct assessment of its value or lack thereof. The only so-called drug that I found value in is pot, and it is a plant that is used in its natural form – you don't have to smoke pot and can use a vaporizer, omitting the harmful issue of smoke. But Marshall Frank thinks that all drugs should be legalized for users and should be available from a safe source such as a government-run or licensed seller. I absolutely agree. As has been proved in the last 40 years – yes, that is 40 and is not a typo – criminalizing drugs has only served to create criminals. It didn't work for my parent's harmful alcohol, and it will never work for my harmless marijuana.
The Drug War has never worked to stop drug use, or even to stop the flow of drugs. Where there's a will, there's a way. Today it serves to keep the system financially solvent while breaking it at the same time. You're probably thinking that this is contradictory, and you'd be correct. State government is a business, courts are a business, and jails and prisons are a business. If drugs were legal plenty of cops, attorneys, judges, corrections officers, and even clerks and secretaries would be out of jobs. For that matter the people that built prison structures all the way down to day laborers would be jobless, and then the towns and cities that survive on the circulated money could likely fail. So it is a business – and nothing more. Be real and stop pretending that it's any more than that. Forty years is ridiculous, and if you don't get the point by now, you never will.
I have a longtime friend that was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for trafficking in cocaine. Elias has been there for a long time – since 1998 – and won't be released until 2016, and that is with "good time". I'm not going to discuss his particular case at the moment (I will be at a later date), but suffice it to say that the feds were as guilty as he was, and I don't see any of them paying for the dirty deeds. No doubt that most are retired and enjoying the good life as I type. It is a waste of life for Elias. He made a few mistakes as most people do in life, but get real: Twenty-two years is a sentence that should be reserved for violent people, and there was zero violence involved in his case and he is a non-violent person in general. It is a travesty and Elias is a part of the broken US criminal justice system. The worst part is that Elias is far from alone and there are hundreds of thousands of people like him caught in this false war that continues only to save a lot of jobs. Elias is a sacrificial lamb for the system.
I haven't spoken to Elias in some time, although he tried to call me the other day, but when I hit "5" to accept the call, a recording stated that I was not accepting the call and then hung-up on me. The only way to fix such a problem is to write him a letter and ask how. The Bureau of Prisons doesn't resolve anything without being pushed to extremes. Just a part of the crappy system we seem to be stuck with. I do want his permission to speak about his case, so when I hear back I'll tell you about it. I don't think that permission will be an issue though as Elias wants to publish his own story.
Marshall Frank offers the most recent statistics involved in his straightforward book, and though most of the book is stuff that I've known for quite some time, it's just refreshing to hear it from a man that spent 30 years, most of it as a homicide investigator, for Miami-Dade County. Frank makes an honest assessment of what has been done in this estranged War on Drugs and he offers solutions that could be implemented in the not-so-distant future. We have states going broke – California comes to mind first – and governors begging for money to keep it all afloat. Bull! Start releasing every non-violent victim of the Drug War, and start now!
Next – More on Marshall Frank's Book
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