As described in Section III, while the sellers in many of the public drug markets were disproportionately people of color, the buyers were more racially diverse. Steve Freng suggests, “The buyers are predominately White for all drugs, and particularly for heroin. But, possession is not a priority.” As Section IV suggests, while the police occasionally conduct reverse buys, they do so with far less frequency than buy-busts or other undercover opera- tions designed to arrest drug dealers. Many police officers suggested that the reasons for the relative infrequency of this particular tactic were the practical and ethical problems associated with the police “selling drugs.” However, several police officers interviewed, including the current and former
Chief, suggested that they were not foreclosed to the possibility of greater use of the tactic.64 While the enforcement focus on the “seller” may also
reflect public conceptions about the moral culpability of these individuals, the realities of the drug markets sometimes suggest otherwise. The focus on the “sellers” also seems to be ineffective at reducing drug use and drug market activity in Seattle.
The moral culpability of “sellers” is not so clear.
Police drug enforcement disproportionately targets those who sell illegal drugs as compared to those who buy them. This disparity is due, in part, to a social conception that the dealers are somehow more morally culpable than the buyers. Dealing (delivery, possession with intent to deliver) is considered a more serious crime, subject to far more stringent penalties than possession. However, the realities of the drug markets suggest that there may be a much finer line between the two than the laws reflect.
The dealers receiving the bulk of enforcement attention are low-level dealers who are not key-players within the distribution scheme. Further- more, many of these low-level dealers, particularly downtown where a majority of the buy-busts are occurring, are selling drugs to support their own addiction. Bob Boruchowitz suggests that the public perception of “the image of the drug dealer with the gold chain around his neck, hanging around the school hooking kids on heroin,” is not reflective of the reality of “the two-bit seller who is just trying to get his next fix.” These street dealers, however, when arrested for delivery, are not eligible for drug court, whereas they would be if they were arrested on a day when they were buying and not selling.65 Even for those who are not supporting an addiction, there are other
social and economic factors to consider. Council Member Larry Gossett suggests, “People are so desperate and resource-less. They’re so desperate to make a few dollars that they are willing to take a risk. . . . There are social, economic reasons why its done more out in the open compared to Whites.”
Another factor to consider with respect to the moral culpability of selling drugs is that it can be viewed as a consensual crime. Boruchowitz suggests
that this method of enforcement mirrors the problems of enforcement tar- geted at the prostitutes and not the johns, in that it punishes one act while overlooking the other—when both are illegal: “[The police] don’t arrest the customer very often. It’s easier to arrest the prostitute. . . . I think that if the buyers [of drugs] were more afraid of getting caught, it would be a tougher market for the sellers.”
Current drug enforcement practices have not been effective in closing down open-air markets.
Since at least the introduction of crack cocaine in the 1980’s, the SPD has focused a significant amount of resource and attention towards illegal nar- cotics enforcement. With the exception of certain efforts particularly in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s to close down crack houses, most of these resources have been expended on public drug dealing. SPD has made over 3,000 narcotics arrests every year since 1990, with numbers closer to 4,000 in some years. Despite these efforts, some of the most “popular” hot spots still exist where they were over a decade ago.
As discussed in Section IV, most law enforcement interviewees readily admitted the ineffectiveness of police tactics in closing down drug markets, but they pointed out that their role is really something different. As Lieuten- ant Olson pointed out, “Success is there, but not ultimately if success means having it go away. . . . [R]ealistically, really we’re only displacing it.”66 There
was a repeated perception among police officers that displacement occurs. Steve Freng suggests that “[i]t’s more a matter of displacement among blocks than neighborhoods. For example, it will go from Second and Pike to Third and Pike. I don’t know that they feel they could clear those corners so com- pletely and for long enough.” One police officer, who described the patrol job as “herding sheep” from one street corner to the next, echoed this view.
As Kris Nyrop points out, much of this ineffectiveness is due to the public mandate issues discussed earlier. “Police drug enforcement is like squeezing a balloon. I feel sympathy for them. They are charged with an exercise in utter futility. Within their confines, I’m not sure anyone could
give a better plan for what they’re doing. A lot of the drug use is off of their radar screen or they’re not going to pay attention to it because it is off everyone else’s radar screen.”
Council Member Larry Gossett voices the concern that this level of effec- tiveness has come with considerable human costs: “They are incarcerating more people than ever and people are spending long periods of time in prison while drug abuse continues to rise in the US. I don’t see the usefulness or effectiveness of the current drug laws. I don’t see any meaningful solutions being found using these same ingredients.”
Finding 5. There is an important window of opportunity to address