The Dollars and Sense of Large Paramilitary Police Forces

Aurora Colorado learned something the federal government has known for years – it is difficult to maintain a standing army during a recession.

In 1993, voters of Aurora passed a measure requiring two police officers for every 1,000 residents. Currently there are roughly 320,000 residents of Aurora and 635 police officers.

The cost to train, outfit, and arm a paramilitary force of 635 is astronomical. The city budget comes up short approximately $6 million annually. The shortfall requires the city to cut funds from other services like public libraries and children’s programs.

Aurora is not the only city struggling to fund its army; it is a common theme around the country these days. Fortunately for the cops, they are protected by a powerful union and can't be downsized as easily as the federal army.

We've seen this play out across the country as teachers and other public employees are laid off or lose benefits, while the police unions threaten lawmakers and citizens with disenfranchised gun wielding cops and promises rampant crime. Denver has been particularly susceptible to this type of coercion as the city struggles to pay for an increasingly abusive police force. Police advocates demand the status quo even as crime rates drop dramatically and cities are bankrupt. 

The Founding Fathers were leery of a standing army, they believed it threatened both the peace of a nation and the liberty of its citizens. I wonder what they'd say about our standing city armies that drain the tax coffers and make threats to city officials?

 

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$1 trillion drug war gets more cash from Obama as experts say – STOP!

Forty years after it started, and $1 trillion later, the U.S. and an international pannel of experts declared the war on drugs a total failure.

The question is, in the face of overwhelming evidence and calls from the international community to stop the waste and violence, will the Obama administration quit the failed policy? Answer - not likely.

I spent most of the '90s flying in and out of drug hot spots in unmarked Air America charter planes as a commander of a Special Forces Team fighting the war on drugs. Having your own private plane is fun, it is also expensive. Four-star resorts, five-star restaurants, safe houses, clothing allowances, and $250 a day per diem were also fun - and expensive. The job was a cross between Miami Vice, James Bond, and Clear and Present Danger. Big on budget, small on results.

The law enforcement agencies had it even better. During this time, and I don't think it has changed, the DEA, CIA, and FBI all controlled vast militaries of ships, men, and airplanes. Everything from jet fighters to ships of war, private mercenary armies accountable to no one to the finest soldiers the American tax dollar could buy. The average DEA agent working in these hot spots made over $130,000 and lived in a privately secured villa - lived like a drug lord.

Last year Gil Kerlikowske, U.S. drug policy czar, said of the war on drugs, "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful." Yet, this year, Obama increased the counter drug budget to record levels, funding over $15.1 billion with $10 billion going directly to law enforcement - remember the private planes and villas, no down sizing here. In response to the increased counter-drug budget Kerlikowske said, "Nothing happens over night, it will take time for spending to match the (White House) rhetoric."

Prior to becoming the drug czar Kerlikowske was the Seattle police chief and taught a few classes a year at Seattle University were I was an associate professor. No policy genius, what he is probably best known for in Seattle is having his pistol stolen out of his unlocked vehicle while he shopped in a downtown mall.

If Kerlikowske was not a great cop, he was, like most successful police chiefs, a great politician. He knows that large police budgets and happy police unions translate into successful elections for mayors and presidents alike, and job security for the czar. As Ed Quillen of the Denver Post wrote, "the drug war offers an excellent employment program for federal, state and local enforcement agents, undercover agents, customs agents, snitches, snoops, prosecutors, investigators, lab technicians, prison guards, parole supervisors and the like. They all eat at the public trough, directly or indirectly, and naturally want to keep their jobs. So you can count on them to support the war on drugs with a passion and, during slow times, to creak new threats to justify increasing their budgets.''

The annual drug war budget has increased 31 percent in adjusted dollars since former President Richard Nixon declared in June 1971 that "Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse."

The Associated Press tracked how taxpayer's $1 trillion war budget was spent, their findings can be seen below in Funding a Culture War.

Unfortunately, $1 trillion is a lowball estimate for the war on drugs. The Justice Department figures the overburdened justice system, health care, and lost productivity costs the U.S. an additional $215 billion annually. Put that figure on top of the billions of hidden ''black'' funds in the CIA and Defense budgets and the cost of the drug war is most likely double.

This week the Global Commission on Drug Policy released its assessment of current drug policy and the results of the 40-year war on drugs. The commission was staffed by a distinguished group of international leaders that included former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz, former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Paul Volker, former President Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, and former President Ernesto Zedillo of Mexicao.

The commission concluded, "the global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies." 

Devastating consequences looks different depending on your perspective and geography. In Mexico devastating is over 40,000   deaths caused directly by drug violence and a complete disruption of the fabric of society. In Colombia it is tens of thousands murdered and the genesis of narco-guerrillas who use American drug money and weapons to fund campaigns of political terror. In the U.S. it is the incarceration of 37 million nonviolent drug offenders and a thinly veiled Jim Crow justice system - if you are black in the U.S. you are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated for a drug offense than a white drug offender with the same charge.

If you live in Colorado devastation has the face of 45-year old father of nine, Israel Mena, who was shot eight times in a botched no-knock SWAT paramilitary drug raid on Sept. 29, 1999. The SWAT team had the wrong house, the Mena children now have no father.

In response to the Global Commission's findings Kerlikowske commented that the White House does not have, "a culture war or drug war mentality." His words do not match the reality of record funding approved by Obama to escalate the war or that we have my Green Beret comrades now operating in Mexico. To accentuate the administrations commitment to the war on drugs, Secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton this week promised an additional $300 million to be spent this year in fighting the drug war in Central America.

Obama, Clinton, and Kerlikowske know the truth, like all politicians since Nixon - police prosecutors, federal agents, prison guards, and probation officers all VOTE and their unions give big campaign donations. The poor, minority populations, drug users, and felons DON'T VOTE and they don't have a lobby - no money, no voice.

Funding a Culture War

How did the government spend $1 Trillion?

• $20 billion fighting drug gangs in their home countries
• $33 billion in ''Just say No'' marketing to U.S. teens
• $49 billion in counter-drug border law enforcement
• $121 billion in the arrests of 37 million nonviolent drug offenders
• $450 billion in federal incarceration (state and county costs not included)*

*63 percent of all people incarcerated in Colorado are drug offenders