Category: Crime

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This might just be a wild hair up my ass but I keep thinking there is a better way to deal with criminals we can’t actually catch or prosecute — particularly those involved in the illegal drug trade. Pablo Escobar famously had more money than he could ever spend — loosing hundreds of millions of dollars to decay because he hid his money so poorly. And, despite the worms eating the dollars, he still had billions left to spend.

To start out with, let me acknowledge that Pablo Escobar was an asshole. He murdered people. There is no doubt about it. And the general resume for someone involved in the illegal drug trade would be someone similar in ilk to Escobar. They deserve stiff prison sentences more than their ill gotten money. The people hurt by these criminal deserve justice.

The problem is catching them and/or prosecuting them isn’t always successful. The criminal eludes justice and gets to keep his money which largely goes unspent and whatever money is spendable goes to mostly dubious ends. The victim doesn’t get any justice or restitution for what happened to them without prosecution.

The government wants somewhere in the neighborhood of 46 billion dollars to deal with illegal drugs. Some of this goes to drug treatment but at least 11 billion goes directly into enforcement. The question, then, is do we get a good return on this investment. Illegal drugs, for as long as I can remember, seem to be doing just fine. Yes, there is something to be said for there being no price on justice. The criminal justice system is taking the hard way out here — there has to be punishment for the criminal or there is no justice. Perhaps, but getting a financial settlement is better than nothing at all.

This means if a person wants a return to society with the ability to spend some of their cash legally, the drug dealer will surrender all of their hidden cash, pay a very stiff fine from those funds, pay any taxes due based on this money and get out of drug dealing. Since a lot of these dealers are sitting on pile of cash and are pretty tired with running from the law, they might jump at a chance to get out of the game.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But, then, much of the justice system is imperfect. What we are aiming for is a reduction in crime. If this takes some people out of drug dealing, it is better than getting nobody out of drug dealing.

Won’t this only encourage people to commit crimes if they aren’t punished for their crimes? Maybe but then, it is illegal now and a lot of people seem to be willing to take the risk. I think the government would have some discretion in how they move forward. Focus would be on the big dealers with large amounts of hidden cash. Also removing the bigger names from the drug trade might have some impact on the food chain for trafficking in drugs.

The problem here is that the government since the 1960’s has been fighting a losing war with illegal drugs — mostly because a significant portion of the citizenry want to use them which makes the illegal trade of drugs profitable. This doesn’t look like it is going to change any time soon. I am betting that some of these people are tired of running and would like a way out. Right now, there is no realistic exit — it is death or jail. Letting them get out with something might make them think differently.

And their is precedent for this — the Sackler family. The Sacklers unleashed Oxycontin onto the American Public with devastating effect. The government, in order to get something out of this criminal family, made deals that involved financial penalties. It was far from a perfect deal, particularly for those families who lost loved ones to addiction. On the other hand, the Sacklers were able to hide a lot of their money and delay the legal process that they might never have gotten anything if they waited for justice. Again, the settlement wasn’t perfect, but it was something and something is better than nothing.

Maybe we forego punishment over an imperfect pay off.

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Imagine being caught smuggling Fruit Roll Ups

Would you even go to prison for this? I assuming the smuggling is the issue but throwing the book at someone caught selling fruit roll ups for such a penny-ante crime seems a bit harsh. And if you did manage to send these smugglers to prison, what would the other prisoners think? Is there any cache to be a fruit roll up smuggler?

Why are fruit roll ups so expensive in Israel? This a pretty bizarre shortage. I mean can’t some candy store just import more fruit roll ups if there is a shortage? And how many fruit roll ups can you bring into Israel before it is smuggling. I imagine a family of four going to Israel with a hundred fruit roll ups each for a 2-week trip. That doesn’t seem like a lot of fruit roll ups really but what would Israeli customs say?

Finally this seems to me to have the makings of a great television crime drama with rival gangs vying for control of the fruit roll up territories of Tel Aviv.

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Heather MacDonald worries that Black on Black crime is the real problem plaguing the Black community and not a racist cop problem. That Black on Black crime problem is rooted in the racist cop problem eludes her. She thinks it is simply a matter of the Black community behaving better and all will be taken care of. She offers nothing in the way of tangible ways to make this happen and, because she ignores the racists cop part of the problem, her idea is doomed to failure even if she could trouble herself to make a tangible recommendation to address Black on Black crime.

MacDonald sees the problem quite narrowly — Blacks are committing too many crimes against other Blacks. Blacks need to stop worrying about bad cops and do something about their criminal youth then there would be no problem at all. But crime has been with us since humans began living together. It isn’t going to stop. Say a stranger attacks me on the street. I will certainly be pissed off about it and want something done. Now, if that person is a cop, I am going to be pretty damn upset about it. I just don’t expect much from my neighbors. They are strangers and I they can be half crazy for all I know. I do, however, expect cops to be helpful. I don’t expect them to attack me. They are public servants paid, in part, with my taxes. The worst I, as a white person, expect from a cop is that the crime will remain unsolved and I will never hear from them again. Some Blacks fear a different reaction from the police and that is a problem. A problem that impacts all crime in a Black neighborhood.

This doesn’t mean Blacks like their neighbors committing crimes against them or that they don’t see this as a problem. They may, however, have different concerns about the police. They may worry that the police will somehow entangle them in a bigger problem, or that the cops might overreact to what happened and, instead of solving the problem, they may kill someone or send someone to the hospital. They might weigh their decision about whether to involve the cops. Is this going to be worth any trouble I get from the police. This is an impediment to crime control. It also makes the police peculiarly ineffective in handling crime in Black neighborhoods. How can police solve crimes when the people they are serving mistrust them so much that they are circumspect in their interactions with the police? MacDonald never addresses this.

But she does point out that Black criminals are more dangerous to Blacks than the police. I don’t think anybody would argue with that. Criminals are more dangerous than the police. The problem here is that the police aren’t supposed to be dangerous. Fear of the cops is not an issue for MacDonald. For MacDonald, the data should convince Blacks about that, why should any other effort be made when the numbers prove her point. But, even if you assume the numbers are right and MacDonald is correct about Black on Black crime, it doesn’t really matter. Perception is everything. If the Black community believes Racism is still a problem then it is still a problem and the police need to change that perception. The burden for change rests firmly with the cops. Present day cops are paying the price for the racist behavior of their predecessors. It’s not fair to them but it is up to the present day cops to change this perception.

I also would argue that MacDonald is wrong about police racism being inconsequential and all in the Black community’s mind. Here is a sample of police racism which might explain this fear: the Central Park rape trial of innocent blacks, the drug arrests of innocent Blacks in Tulia Texas, George Floyd who died in police custody over a bad check, Tamir Rice, a twelve year old boy with a toy gun, who was shot and killed seconds after the police arrived — a grand jury decided not to take case to trial, John Crawford III who was shot holding a BB gun in a Walmart — a grand jury decided not to prosecute, an all white jury finding a white policeman not guilty of shooting of an unarmed black man, a white Louisiana judge using the N word, an Illinois cop fired for his racist posts, six Georgia policeman caught using the N word, a Mississippi police chief caught bragging about killing a black person, and just recently an Oklahoma sheriff was caught on tape talking about lynching black people. Why would Black people think they could be treated fairly when their daily personal experiences tell them differently? Why would Black people work with the police to stop crime in their neighborhoods when they are suspicious that these efforts might be used against them or their kids?

Black on Black crime is a problem but it isn’t “the” problem. Blacks have plenty of reasons to mistrust the police. MacDonald telling them this no longer is a problem in 21st Century America isn’t going to change many minds because Black people have a history with hundreds of years of police racism. Those feelings don’t just disappear overnight. In order to fight crime, Black people need to have confidence in the police. A lot of them don’t. Until then, MacDonalds complaint about Black on Black crime is an impotent response to a difficult and complicated problem and therefore meaningless.