Street Rips

Major Daniels, as we've seen on The Wire has an idea that I think all good liberals are supposed to like -- the Baltimore Police Department could stop doing "street rips" aimed at nailing low-level offenders and start targeting their energies at building felony cases against high-end drug figures. I wonder, though, how much sense this makes. The guys who pass for high-value targets in Baltimore are, at the end of the day, mid-sized fish at best in the drug trade at large. Arrest as many of them as you like and you'll still have the wholesalers who bring the coke and heroin into Baltimore around. And you'll still have all these drug addicts who want to buy drugs. The combination of demand for drugs and supply of drugs is going to ensure an endless stream of middlemen, no matter how many people you arrest.

Street level dealers, by contrast, are a bona fide nuisance. You wouldn't want those dudes slinging on the corner where you live or right outside the shop where you buy stuff. And there's no law of nature that says people need to be selling drugs more-or-less openly out in high-traffic public places. Are you going to get the people to stop selling drugs? No. If someone wants to buy them, someone will sell them. But if the cops made it a sufficient hassle to operate an open-air drug market while winking at people who manage to stay discrete, you could envision a world in which the drug dealers start showing some discretion and quality of life for the neighborhood's taxpayers goes up.

It sort of sounds correct that the key to more effective crime control policy would be taking up Daniels' suggestion and doing more highly professional police work -- complicated investigations and the like -- but the important thing is really to focus on what things are and aren't achievable. A police department's ability to influence the fact that people use drugs and other people sell drugs to them is going to be pretty minimal. Their influence over where, when, and how drugs get sold, by contrast, could be pretty large as long as you went at it with some focus.

UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman responds with, in part, some recollections of living in Columbia Heights during the great MS-13 War of 2002-2003. I was in that neighborhood for the tail end of the conflict and, I dunno, I recall it as having been scary as shit notwithstanding the fact that I knew, rationally, that virtually everyone getting hurt was in the game and that my odds of being killed were, in fact, extremely low no matter how often one heard sirens by night and saw police tape by day.

Comments

A basic difficulty is that pressure from the police is a form of natural selection-- dealers who survive, whether high-level or low-level, are smarter and more successful than the ones who are caught. And natural selection works both ways, because cops who take the risks and the pressure necessary to really have an effect won't last as long as the ones who concentrate on the easy pickings.

Posted by MattF | October 31, 2006 10:50 AM

The idea of influencing where, when, and how drugs get sold was the central theme of the Hamsterdam series of the Wire. I suppose a policy of 'you must be in-doors and out of sight' might be a more workable arrangement than a outdoor tolerance area.

Posted by otto | October 31, 2006 10:54 AM

Perhaps it's different on the East Coast, but I think it's "slanging", not "slinging." But close enough.

But what about the government taking responsibility to tax and/or regulate these potentially dangerous substances? Isn't it rather negligent for the government to declare prohibition, and several decades later, with the policy obviously a quantifiable failure, continue to do nothing whatsoever to establish a legitimate regulated market for these goods that people obviously want and will continue to want? I acknowledge there'd still be a black market, but the black market for things like alcohol and tobacco is insignificant in the US because given comparable prices, people prefer to buy things legitimately, with some quality control. Why this isn't applied to drugs other than tobacco and alcohol and pharmaceuticals, well it's one of the more baffling policy failures of our time.

I tend to conclude that prohibition = inflated prices = money must be laundered = eventually ends up on Wall St. or invested elsewhere. So if the business of America is business, hell maybe prohibition is great. Who cares if we have to deal with street dealers, crack whores, the rural meth epidemic, unavailability of cannabis for the sick, etc etc etc? Yay prohibition!

Posted by Murph | October 31, 2006 11:13 AM

In The Wire, it's definitely "slinging."

Given that David Simon has been pretty clear about the fact that he thinks the war on drugs is a total disaster, it seems right that we shouldn't think that Daniels's method will be effective. Fat lot of good getting the Barksdale crew did, right?

The only thing that's shown any signs of promise in beating drugs is Bubbles's entrepreneurship, and even that's been very rocky.

Posted by ogged | October 31, 2006 11:34 AM

The only thing that's shown any signs of promise in beating drugs is Bubbles's entrepreneurship, and even that's been very rocky.

Michael Jackson's pet monkey? He's never gonna get off the pipe.

Obviously, I watch The Wire all the time.

Posted by Murph | October 31, 2006 11:58 AM

I think you're ignoring one of the biggest problems with drug trafficing: the violence. The sort of systematic wholesale slaughter that the barksdale and marlo crews engage in are what the major crimes unit are focused on. Going after the barksdale crew in season one did have a chilling effect on many of the major drug dealers' desire to engage in murder. The likes of Stringer and Prop Joe realized that cooperation would be in there best interests as it limitted the "bodies" that attract police attention.

Posted by WillieStyle | October 31, 2006 12:06 PM

I tend to conclude that prohibition = inflated prices = money must be laundered = eventually ends up on Wall St. or invested elsewhere. So if the business of America is business, hell maybe prohibition is great. Who cares if we have to deal with street dealers, crack whores, the rural meth epidemic, unavailability of cannabis for the sick, etc etc etc? Yay prohibition!

And, as long as drugs are illegal, the CIA and other covert governement operations can be funded by drug money. Where are we going to get the money to fund our black ops if the cash cow that is drug smuggling disappears?

Posted by Rambuncle | October 31, 2006 12:11 PM

That would be an interesting experiment. You'd essentially surrender a zone of the city to libertarian paradise. Drugs would be legal and everyone would be completely on their own.

It would be like the postapocalyptic Seattle of the Dark Angel TV series, only without any Jessica Alba types running around.

Posted by Jalmari | October 31, 2006 12:16 PM

Street level dealers, by contrast, are a bona fide nuisance. You wouldn't want those dudes slinging on the corner where you live or right outside the shop where you buy stuff. And there's no law of nature that says people need to be selling drugs more-or-less openly out in high-traffic public places. Are you going to get the people to stop selling drugs? No. If someone wants to buy them, someone will sell them. But if the cops made it a sufficient hassle to operate an open-air drug market while winking at people who manage to stay discrete, you could envision a world in which the drug dealers start showing some discretion and quality of life for the neighborhood's taxpayers goes up.

I think that nicely sums up difference in the governments's attitude toward rich white drug use, vs. poor black drug use. Stockbrokers, Models et al. pretty much get a free pass, while poor, black offenders get huge mandatory minimums. I'd think that has a lot to do with the fact that it's not so much drug use per se that society objets to, but evidence of drug use, i.e. dealers on corners

Posted by TW Andrews | October 31, 2006 12:26 PM

I think the Wire's critique of street rips is essentially is that they involve a lot of time and effort to bag a couple of itinerant workers. The only people who wind up with charges after the street rips seem to be the kids who are doing the hand to hands, if even them. Those jobs seem to be done by people who are more or less itinerant day-laborers from a population where labor supply vastly outstrips demand.

In other words, arrest all the hoppers you want -- you're not going to stop Bodie from being back up on that corner in another 12 hours with fresh workers.

Posted by Dan | October 31, 2006 12:43 PM

Matt,

Enforcement is not just a matter of where, when, and how. It also about who and how much, and it is only through Daniels level enforcement and higher that the public can get a true sense of these things. This information is key to long term civic management of the drug economy.

It is clear that the needs driven multi-billion dollar market for drugs in the US will make even the largest international players a replaceable commodity. Any drug-bust even at the international level only serves as a network disruption rather than a system stoppage. But ironically its the local level that pays the highest price, which is what make The Wire such an interesting show.

Continuous street rips can clean off some corners and to some extent can "neaten up" street trade. But these solutions are only cosmetic and temporary, the next wave of messy competition is always looming. You can permanently clean some areas but in doing so you will permanently sacrifice others. This is not a winning strategy.

Daniels investigations lead to the most interesting types of operations- asset investigations. Daniels does not mention this but he his girl friend and Lester Freman all know this is exactly where they need to go. With asset investigation we see can answer the who and how much questions. And what we will find is that a large chunk of buyers come from outside the areas where the selling occurs, and a large amount of profits through land deals and other measures go outside the of the selling areas, and that this is the ugly truth behind the decay of the modern city. And it is this reality that will lead to much more realistic management strategies that will truly enable cities to recover from the losses from decades of poor management of the drug trade.

Posted by patience | October 31, 2006 1:02 PM

MY,

I think you are looking at Daniels' proffered approach too narrowly. It's not just drug enforcement but all kinds of policing that the focus on street rips hurts. If all you are doing is banging heads on a corner, what incentive does Carver have to get to know his neighborhood? How do you not end up with every other patrolman turning into Officer Walker (?) playing the game for himself?

Bunny made the point at the end of season three that the drug war destroyed a lot of what was good about the profession of policing - it turned it into a paramilitary operation rather than an investigative and preventative one (just ask Radley Balko)

So while higher end work might not be as 'effective' when looking at drugs narrowly, it could plausibly benefit the whole enterprise considerably.

Posted by Pooh | October 31, 2006 2:20 PM

I think Matt has the better of this argument, though not necessarily for the reasons he cites.

Organized crime has provided vice to good American citizens for well over a century, and at many points in history the mob leaders have been politically well-connected and have operated with de facto state monopolies. There were occasional bloody turf wars, and fools who got in over their heads got whacked, but generally speaking it served the public interest to have stable, professional leadership at the top of the underworld. I think a very strong argument can be made that the successful federal efforts to eliminate the professional immigrant mafia organizations led directly to the crime wave of the 1970s and 1980s by shifting power to a fractious assortment of smaller and much less professional youth gangs from the housing projects.

For cops to bust the guys who commit murders or sell out in the open serves the public interest by forcing dealers to operate more quietly and reduce the gratuitous bloodshed. Busting the kingpin perversely creates new competition to provide the supply. And competition among criminals is very, very bad for all parties concerned.

Of course, the simple solution of legalizing and regulating vices is generally in everyone's best interest. Bootleggers, loan sharks, and numbers men have largely been replaced by brew pubs, credit bureaus, and riverboat casinos. But crack dealers are still crack dealers.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 31, 2006 2:31 PM

I think Pooh is correct in that Daniels is trying to get his guys to be better police. But, we also know that Daniels is not the visionary that Bunny Colvin is. He does not have the guts to be truly innovative. He is going to be a good leader. A good administrator. He is better than most. But, I think we will see that his brand of investigation just does not work in the end. Its better than buy and busts at the hand-to-hand level. Its also more honorable police work and more fulfilling to people like him. That can have its drawbacks too.

Posted by Jason McDaniel | October 31, 2006 2:36 PM

That would be an interesting experiment. You'd essentially surrender a zone of the city to libertarian paradise. Drugs would be legal and everyone would be completely on their own.

There are already places in Baltimore like this. They are called "Up the Way."

And, no, just leaving markets to consume the dealers and the buyers doesn't work. We tried that in the 90s.

Posted by Sharon | October 31, 2006 3:46 PM

James Buchanan made precisely this argument in:

"A Defense of Organized Crime?," in The Economics of Crime and Punishment, ed. S. Rottenberg, 119-32 (Washington, D.C.: The American Enterprise Institute, 1973).

Posted by Chris | October 31, 2006 4:29 PM

Obviously drugs aren't the problem (or the prohibition of alcohol and cigarettes would be a good idea) drug laws are.

I have no desire to design a strategy that prolongs this failed, phony, and hypocritical drug war. The war is not on drugs, but on the citizens who use the wrong drugs. Can't they all just be alcoholic?

Posted by epistemology | October 31, 2006 5:00 PM

WillieStyle:

I think you're ignoring one of the biggest problems with drug trafficing: the violence.

Really? My wife has been buying cigarettes for decades and nobody has shot at her once.

I think you're ignoring one of the biggest problems with drug prohibition: the violence.

Posted by epistemology | October 31, 2006 5:04 PM

We had a coke dealer selling out of the apartment across the street and it was a major nuisance, especially when he wasn't there: addicts would show up in the middle of the night and howl like coyotes under his window in their desperation for drugs. We finally had him evicted.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 31, 2006 5:20 PM

Drug Prohibition is an abject failure if the goal is to reduce drug use, violence, criminality, access to drugs by minors, corruption, disease, suffering.

Several years ago, Latin Trade Magazine estimated that laundered drug profits constited 5-10% of Mexico's GDP. Most people familiar with the economics of prohibition thought that figure laughably underestimated (and Mexico's economy is not by any means the most heavily drug-profit dependent in the world.) The UN, in 1998, estimated that illegal drugs comprised 8% of all global trade by dollar value. Take any business that (at the top) produces annual returns on investment of 65-85%, charge them no taxes, and let it run for a generation or so. How much do you think the principals of that business would be worth? What (and whom) would they own? What legitimate industries would they now be involved in? What might be their interest and influence in the political world?

Answer those questions from the perspective of our very short-lived dalliance with alcohol probibition. Now multiply that by orders of magnitude.

The truth is that there is so much drug money that has been laundered and re-directed into so many areas, both legitimate and illegitimate, and there is so much additional money (and so many careers) tied up in "enforcement" that there is an enormous and very powerful set of interests that want nothing less than a more reasonable drug policy.

Those kids selling on the street? The mid-level dealers? The cops? The neighborhoods? The moralists? The addicted? The millions of responsible users? The spread of disease? The violence? The insanity of it all?

Despite the rhetoric, none of that is really on the radar. None of that is the point. It's bidness, man. On a global scale. And its tentacles reach to the highest levels of wealth and power in almost every country on earth.

That's not a conspiracy theory. That's just the intersection of basic economics and human nature.

Posted by ajsmith | October 31, 2006 8:11 PM