Quote:
Originally Posted by WernherVonTrapp
 Interesting. I made lots of drug arrests during my career, and not one of them was "black". |
It was a scene before I think a senate committee, a hearing, something like that, and the considered state was I think California. The issue discussed was the impact of one certain drug, over a certain period of time when it became a problem some time in the 80s, I think I recall they talked about Crack. The scene is in the movie somewhere. It was not just a claim by the film maker, but info voiced by I think an official in public, before such a committee.
Also, check your national statistics on arrests and skin colour, and how they changed, or not changed over the past 50 years, regarding drugs, and skin colour. Most drug consumers are whites, it thus should be whites leading the arrest numbers. But for some reason it is not like that. Says the police representatives in that film. Blacks consume drugs less than whites, but are overrepresented in arrest over consummation by several factors. That needs to be explained.
Another interview they included - from a police guy, mind you - reflected on how the priority put on war on drugs changed arrest behaviors and shifted the focus of police work from generally more harmful crime like robbery and murder, to bagatelle crimes regarding consummation or possession of even smallest amount of drugs, even such harmless stuff like Marihuana. That officer asked the interviewer this: when an officer gets payed by numbers of arrests per month, and focus is politically wanted on drugs, then this has two effects. The one officer may spend many hours and days for investigating a case of murder or robbery , and at the end of the month gets two or three arrests scored. The other officers knows he gets payed by arrests, so he goes onto the street and starts to arrest suspects over minor drug offences that the law has blown out of proportion, and thta way he scores let'S say 60 arrests by the end of the month. Guess what the police is focussing on, robbery and murder, or arresting persons who consume drugs, may it be Crack, may it be Marihuana? This officer worried about the quality of police investigation work suffering from this, because police now tends to not care for patient, long investment of time, but just sees the street as a fish pond where they take a big fork ionce a day and catch out what they get, without caring anymore for the severity of the offender's "crime" or any contexts leading beyond the letter of the paragraph that calls it an offence.
There seem to be quite some police officers and judges who are seriously worried by how things have turned, and they question both the effic iency and the morality of the rules and paradigms currently being acted by. Many seem to have resigned and do not care anymore. What wil not help to reinstall the trust that the civilian population already has lost.
Anyhow, I'm telling some info from the film by memory only. If somebody has doubts, he better goes out and watches that movie somewhere. I refer to that film only, and by memory. But the real important witnesses are not me, but those people they interview in that film, and who are prison wards, judges, activists, police officers, offenders, family members.