Former DEA Agent: We Were Told Not to Enforce Drug Laws in Rich White Areas.

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Enzom21

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http://bennorton.com/dea-agent-we-were-told-not-to-enforce-drug-laws-in-rich-white-areas/

http://youtu.be/8ImeWd5gFTo

Matthew Fogg, a former US Marshal and special agent for the DAE who worked his way up the departmental chain, earning the nickname “Batman” for his enthusiastic work, told the story in an interview with Brave New Films.

In the segment, Fogg makes explicit comparisons between the so-called “War on Drugs” and literal military wars. He also draws attention to the overt racist and classist nature of the decades-long internal “war” (emphases mine):

We’re talking about Gotham city. … We were jumping on guys in the middle of the night, all of that, swooping down on folks all across the country, using these sort of attack tactics that we went out on, that you would use in Vietnam, or some kind of war-torn zone. All of the stuff that we were doing, just calling it the war on drugs.

And there wasn’t very many black guys in my position. So when I would go into the war room, where we were setting up all of our drug and gun and addiction task force determining what cities we were going to hit, I would notice that most of the time it always appeared to be urban areas.

That’s when I asked the question, well, don’t they sell drugs out in Potomac and Springfield, and places like that? Maybe you all think they don’t, but statistics show they use more drugs out in those areas [rich and white] than anywhere.

The special agent in charge, he says “You know, if we go out there and start messing with those folks, they know judges, they know lawyers, they know politicians. You start locking their kids up, somebody’s going to jerk our chain.” He said they’re going to call us on it, and before you know it, they’re going to shut us down, and there goes your overtime.

What I began to see is that the drug war is totally about race. If we were locking up everybody, white and black, for doing the same drugs, they would have done the same thing they did with prohibition. They would have outlawed it. They would have said, “Let’s stop this craziness. You’re not putting my son in jail. My daughter isn’t going to jail.” If it was an equal enforcement opportunity operation, we wouldn’t be sitting here anyway.

It’s all about fairness, man. And understanding “How would I want to be treated?” Whether I’m on the one end, or the other end. How would I be treated if everything was done equally?
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More videos of Fogg:
http://youtu.be/tvhnu_bko1M
http://youtu.be/Q4fiJRevVNo
 
earning the nickname “Batman”
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mysmilie_4698.png
 
“You know, if we go out there and start messing with those folks, they know judges, they know lawyers, they know politicians. You start locking their kids up, somebody’s going to jerk our chain.” He said they’re going to call us on it, and before you know it, they’re going to shut us down, and there goes your overtime.
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JeffGoldblum.gif

This shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. Sad but that's the reality.
 
Racially biased law enforcement in America?

Never happen. It's all lies.

I am reminded of a passage in PJ O'Rourke's book Parliament of Whores when he talks about a Bush Snr speech about the WoD and made the point that the while thing was hugely racist.
 
If they actually enforced the War on Drugs in rich white areas then we probably would have had prosecutions over the Great Recession.
 
Whenever people talk about "Well why don't black people lift themselves by their bootstraps blah blah blah" I want to shove this shit down their throats. This racist selective enforcement has a rippling effect that cripples poor minority neighborhoods from several different angles. This needs to end.
 
I feel like we should forgive people for drug use and try to rehabilitate and educate them instead. Most of these people start at a young age, and it makes no sense to send them to jail and ruin their lives.

Right?
 
CrushDance said:
I feel like we should forgive people for drug use and try to rehabilitate and educate them instead. Most of these people start at a young age, and it makes no sense to send them to jail and ruin their lives.

Right?
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No one should be seeing the inside of a prison cell for drug use.
 
CrushDance said:
I feel like we should forgive people for drug use and try to rehabilitate and educate them instead. Most of these people start at a young age, and it makes no sense to send them to jail and ruin their lives.

Right?
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No, because they are black and fundamentally different from them white folk. See, when a white "child"; I use parentheses because a white "child" can be anywhere from 2 to 29 years old, depending on it's convenient to those in power. Now a black "man" can be anywhere from 12-126, depending on whether they are in custody, suspicious, thuggish, ever consumed a drug, or dead.

These "children" need to have a second chance and learn from their mistakes without consequence. These "adults" made their choice and deserve the full extent of police force, especially if they have the gall to question their treatment.

Fast forward a couple years, and wonder why these children are so keen to judge others so harshly and without a shred of empathy, whilst simultaneously protecting the system that they so benefit from. Wait I'm sorry, they got there all on there own without any help from NOBODY.
 
hmmm, but isn't this more classism than racism? (even if the classism happened trough racism in the first place)

i mean, they know the middleclass and upper class can defend itself against it so they won't even try it there. (atleast thats what i read or am i wrong?)
 
Jenenser said:
hmmm, but isn't this more classism than racism? (even if the classism happened trough racism in the first place)

i mean, they know the middleclass and upper class can defend itself against it so they won't even try it there. (atleast thats what i read or am i wrong?)
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Drug laws are specifically written to punish you more for having drugs popular in minority communities versus the versions more popular in white communities. Crack cocaine vs cocaine, for example.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/crack-law-not-only-cruel_b_496670.html
 
Here's the real question : Is this a race thing, or a class thing?

Would rich black people who know lawyers judges etc be punished while poor white folk get let off the hook?
 
Jenenser said:
hmmm, but isn't this more classism than racism? (even if the classism happened trough racism in the first place)
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Absolutely, this is the outcome of a disparity in wealth not race in particular. Even though like you said, it's race that originally caused the massive disparity in wealth. They are targeting poor areas because they are more likely to commit crimes, not because they aren't white.
 
"Shocking!": Said not a single minority.

But seriously guys, we can solve this blatant racial bias by simply tightening dem ol' bootstraps up!
 
Lead Based Paint said:
No, because they are black and fundamentally different from them white folk. See, when a white "child"; I use parentheses because a white "child" can be anywhere from 2 to 29 years old, depending on it's convenient to those in power. Now a black "man" can be anywhere from 12-126, depending on whether they are in custody, suspicious, thuggish, ever consumed a drug, or dead.

These "children" need to have a second chance and learn from their mistakes without consequence. These "adults" made their choice and deserve the full extent of police force, especially if they have the gall to question their treatment.

Fast forward a couple years, and wonder why these children are so keen to judge others so harshly and without a shred of empathy, whilst simultaneously protecting the system that they so benefit from. Wait I'm sorry, they got there all on there own without any help from NOBODY.
Click to expand...
I was purposefully being a bit of an ass and mocking some comments in the other thread. Comments about forgiveness and education when it came to racism against blacks, and not so much when it comes to the mass incarceration of young black men especially. Most of those young people, having their lives ruined with criminal charges being thrown at them, in a justice system that doles much harsher sentences. Nobody gives a fuck about black peoples lives being ruined though. For the same shit everyone does.
 
O C said:
Here's the real question : Is this a race thing, or a class thing?

Would rich black people who know lawyers judges etc be punished while poor white folk get let off the hook?
Click to expand...

If it was simply a class issue, Black American drug users whom are only 15% of the users shouldn't have a system skewed against them where they take on 40% of all incarceration penalties.

Consider this, 70% of the US population is White American and Black Americans make up 12%. Now poverty in White America is up to 5.4%, do the math and you've just covered roughly 1/3rd of the entire population of Black Americans.

Its not a class thing at all.
 
I have heard some people argue that us drug laws aren't racist and that someone dealing crack in say Camden, New Jersey or Detroit does more harm to their community than a judge's son in Redmond, Washington who deals cocaine for shits and giggles. That said, it's kinda bullshit. I have read studies that say that black people smoke less weed to statistically identical amounts of it. For other drugs black people do significantly outside of maybe crack.

From my African American friends a lot have never tried drugs, from my non-black American friends a lot have. From people I know in the UK, the difference I know is even more substantial.

Long story short when people say US drug laws are racist, they might have a point.
 
Derwind said:
If it was simply a class issue, Black American drug users whom are only 15% of the users shouldn't have a system skewed against them where they take on 40%.

Consider this, 70% of the US population is white American and Black Americans make up 12%. Now poverty in White America is up to 5.4%, do the math and you've just covered roughly 1/3rd of the entire population of Black Americans.

Its not a class thing at all.
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Interesting stats. Thanks for the insight.

In this case though, not as America as a whole, could it be a class issue? Rich vs poor?
 
The cool thing about the system is that if one uppity black moves into a rich white area they can just deploy George Zimmerman.
 
O C said:
Here's the real question : Is this a race thing, or a class thing?

Would rich black people who know lawyers judges etc be punished while poor white folk get let off the hook?
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Nothing quite that extreme, but the evidence suggests a significant racial disparity does exist in the length and severity of sentencing by the judiciary for identical crimes.

Anecdotally speaking: I have read about poor white defendants with court-appointed attorneys receiving more lenient sentences than middle-class black defendants for identical non-violent crimes. I don't think making it just a class-based issue gels with reality: It's probably a combination--with race--which hits those who are poor and black the worst.
 
CrushDance said:
I was purposefully being a bit of an ass and mocking some comments in the other thread. Comments about forgiveness and education when it came to racism against blacks, and not so much when it comes to the mass incarceration of young black men especially. Most of those young people, having their lives ruined with criminal charges being thrown at them, in a justice system that doles much harsher sentences. Nobody gives a fuck about black peoples lives being ruined though. For the same shit everyone does.
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what you got to ask yourself is.....why is there racism towards black people the original people and true owners of this planet?

who's the fucking aliens? ayyyy
 
O C said:
Interesting stats. Thanks for the insight.

In this case though, not as America as a whole, could it be a class issue? Rich vs poor?
Click to expand...

I'm not quite sure what the question is (I'm being sincere).

The stats I just copied off of wiki and us census, quick google search is all it took. But the point I was trying to get with those numbers is that Black drug users get far harsher penalties then White drug users on average. And also that just simply people below the poverty line the White demographic still makes up a third of the entire population of Black Americans. Where not talking about lower class or the working class etc. We're talking about at or below the poverty line. So if this was a class issue then we'd see far higher incarceration rates for White Americans simply out of the sheer number of population.

This is not the case, so the metric being used is very racial here.
 
We know this already. Good to hear someone admit it though.
 
CrushDance said:
I feel like we should forgive people for drug use and try to rehabilitate and educate them instead. Most of these people start at a young age, and it makes no sense to send them to jail and ruin their lives.

Right?
Click to expand...

This already happens... If you live in an affluent neighborhood. My ex-gf was a HS teacher, and had students get busted doing cocaine and heroine (both off campus and at school dances), without so much as a suspension.

Just "keep your kid out of trouble" from the local police. She found it infuriating as a disciplinarian; I tried to explain to her that white people don't generally go to jail for casual drug use. Instead, these kids go to college without any blemishes on their records. Meanwhile, in the city, some brown kid is getting 18 months for marijuana possession.
 
Sho_Nuff82 said:
This already happens... If you live in an affluent neighborhood. My ex-gf was a HS teacher, and had students get busted doing cocaine and heroine (both off campus and at school dances), without so much as a suspension.

Just "keep your kid out of trouble" from the local police. She found it infuriating as a disciplinarian; I tried to explain to her that white people don't generally go to jail for casual drug use. Instead, these kids go to college without any blemishes on their records. Meanwhile, in the city, some brown kid is getting 18 months for marijuana possession.
Click to expand...

Right. And that literally does ruin their lives if what I've learned about how criminal records is true. That is complete and utter madness, but I assume the response is "Well don't do drugs then". zzzz
 
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